Prophet

by Frank Peretti

  Max eyed them a moment to make sure, then gave it a try. “Deanne, this here’s John Barrett, Junior. He’s John’s boy. And this here is . . . uh . . .”

  “Carl.”

  “Yeah, Carl . . . John’s grandson.”

  Deanne extended her hand, still trembling a little, and they greeted each other. “May I bring you something to drink?” she asked.

  John and Carl looked at each other. “Uh . . . coffee?”

  “All right. Please sit down.” She looked at Max and he said, “Yeah. Sit down. Sit down.”

  There was one couch in the small living room, so they took that. Max sat on the edge of a worn-looking stuffed chair. Deanne went into the kitchen, a small area divided from the living room by a dining table and six unmatched chairs.

  “Daddy . . .” came a timid voice from down the hall.

  “’s okay, honey. Come on in here, say hi.”

  Two bedroom doors toward the back of the house opened. From one room came a boy about ten. From the other room—the one with the Michael Jackson poster on the door—came two girls, one about twelve and the other in her midteens. They moved gingerly down the hall toward the living room.

  Max waved them in with his hand. “C’mon, c’mon, it’s all right. Nothing wrong here . . . These are friends.”

  They came into the living room and stood side by side, like notes in a musical scale, ten-twelve-midteen.

  Max introduced them. “This is George.” “Hi” was all George would say. He was being shy. “He likes fast cars. And this is Victoria.” The twelve-year-old just gave a little wave and stared at them, rubbing the back of one foot with the other toe. “She’s the dancer.”

  “Daddy, I’m a fashion model,” she protested.

  He laughed. “Okay, honey. Seems like the same thing to me. And this is Rebecca. She’s the artist.”

  “Hello. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  They were beautiful children, though clearly frightened.

  “You go on now. We’re talkin’ in here. Get your homework done.”

  They scurried down the hallway, obviously relieved. Max continued to gaze down the hallway even after the kids were back in their rooms. Then he nodded toward the end table where he’d put the knife. “I’d kill for them. Yeah, you know I would.”

  John swallowed and ventured his first full sentence since they’d become guests. “We’re terribly sorry for any alarm we may have caused you.”

  Max smiled a devilish smile. “How’d you like my ambush?”

  “It was great,” said Carl.

  “Gotcha good, didn’t I? Turned out the light, snuck ’round the back, nailed you. Pow!”

  Carl held up his hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t want to be on your bad side.”

  “Yeah, well, some people are, and I thought you were them.” He looked straight at John and added, “I thought you were the ones that killed your father.”

  John had to look at Carl. Carl’s expression must have matched his own—dumbfounded disbelief.

  “Uh . . . say again?”

  Max explained, “You know, callin’ me up and sayin’ you were John Barrett. Well, ever’body knows John Barrett’s dead, so I thought you were them, just tryin’ to scare me.”

  “Them? Who?”

  “The people that killed him. I thought they were comin’ after me now. They killed my Annie, then they killed John, so I figured now they’re after me.”

  “Oh . . .” John was lost and groped for a starting point. “We got your phone number from a girl named Rachel Franklin. She’s a waitress at Hudson’s. Fine young lady.”

  “I know who she is. Ain’t seen her since Annie died though. I think I ran ’em all off, all of Annie’s friends. I wasn’t handlin’ it too well.”

  “Uh-huh. Rachel said you were asking around, trying to find out if Annie’d had . . . an abortion. Is that right?” Max didn’t answer, but just glared at him. “Well, listen, we don’t know anything about this. I never knew you and Dad were friends . . .”

  “And I never seen you before. I guess you ’n’ your ol’ man didn’t hang around together much.”

  John admitted, “No, I guess we didn’t. So . . . I just didn’t know about you, and I never knew anything about Annie.”

  Max went over to the bookcase in the corner and picked up a framed photograph. He handed it to John, who shared it with Carl.

  “That’s Annie,” said Max. “That’s her senior picture.”

  She looked a lot like her mother, smooth-featured, lovely, with a captivating smile.

  “She was seventeen,” said Max. “Senior at Jefferson. Sweetest thing you ever saw.” He hesitated as tears came to his eyes. He looked toward the kitchen. “Coffee ready, babe?”

  “Just about,” she replied.

  He looked back at them and wiped his eyes. “I gotta be careful what I talk about.”

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Brewer.”

  “Just call me Max.”

  “Max.”

  “Annie died in May . . . May 26th, Sunday. I’ll never forget that. We didn’t know nothin’ ’bout what happened to her. She came home sick from school on Friday and went to bed. We thought it was the flu or somethin’, and she never told us different. We put her in George’s room and had to move George outa his room, put him on the couch here so Annie’d have a room of her own. We didn’t want the other kids gettin’ it. She kept gettin’ worse all night long, gettin’ a bad fever and complainin’ ’bout her stomach, so we took her to the doctor on Saturday and he gave her somethin’ for flu, for the fever, but it didn’t help. Finally took her back to the doctor on Sunday and he says, ‘Get her to a hospital,’ so we did, but—” He couldn’t finish.

  Deanne came in with coffee in mugs. “We were too late. Annie died in the hospital from a severe infection. We just never knew that’s what it was. We thought it was the flu, and the gynecologist who examined her told us it was toxic shock syndrome.” Now she was trying to control her emotion as she asked, “Would you like any cream or sugar?”

  John figured she could use the diversion. “Uh, both please.” He held his coffee for a moment. The room was silent. Finally he ventured to ask, “So . . . Annie died from toxic shock syndrome? Rachel Franklin was thinking it may have been an abortion, at least that’s the impression she got, and . . .”

  Max began to answer but broke into tears and buried his face in his hands, his huge body quaking.

  John felt foolish. “I’m sorry . . . I’ve overstepped . . . I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re right,” said Deanne as she brought the cream and sugar. She sat in a chair next to her husband and said in a quivering voice, “Annie died from a septic abortion. We never knew she was pregnant. She never told us. But we found out that she’d had an abortion, and . . .” She blinked away some tears. “. . . and somehow it wasn’t done right, and she became infected, and the infection spread through her body until it killed her.”

  John was stunned. So Rachel was right. He leaned forward just to think, to digest this, his fingers over his mouth. He could feel Carl looking at him and looked back. Carl sat there motionless, his eyes intense.

  John ventured another question. “So is that what the hospital told you?”

  Max wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his T-shirt. “No. There was this other doctor, this woman’s doctor . . .”

  “An ob-gyn,” said Deanne. “Our doctor said he couldn’t handle it, and he told us to get Annie to the hospital, and this other doctor, his name was . . . Lawrence, Dr. Lawrence, he took care of Annie ’til she died, and then he’s the one who said it was toxic shock. That’s all he ever told us, and that’s what he wrote on the death certificate.”

  “Then how did you find out it was from an abortion?”

  Deanne gave a smile and said, “Your father.”

  “My father?”

  Max explained, “Annie was gone and buried for . . . what? Close to two months, and we just accepted it, you know, didn’t know any better. Then
, it was one Friday, I was drivin’ home from work and goin’ by that Women’s Medical Center, and that’s when I saw your dad, John Barrett, Senior, jus’ walkin’ back and forth outside the clinic, him and about ten other folks, all carryin’ signs and protestin’. And then it hit me. Don’ know why it never hit me before. Friday. Annie got sick on a Friday. And these people, seemed like they was always protestin’ on a Friday. I don’ know, I just pulled over, thought I’d have a talk with ’em.”

  Max wiped his eyes again and took a moment to take some coffee from Deanne. “Thanks, babe.” He took a good gulp. “I picked out your dad ’cause he was the oldest. I don’ know. Just looked like he’d know what was goin’ on. And he did.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Deanne agreed.

  “I walked over to him, and he took one look at me and said, ‘Brother, you’re hurtin’. Tell me what’s wrong.’ I mean, he knew I was hurtin’, and so I told him. I told him all about Annie and what happened to her, and you know, he told me things I never knew before. Did you know that clinic sends a van down to Jefferson High like every Friday to bring girls back to get abortions and their parents never know nothin’ ’bout it?”

  John and Carl let their eyes meet. Well, they knew since Rachel had told them. “We weren’t aware of that . . . not until recently.”

  “Well, your dad told me what mighta happened to Annie, tol’ me about abortions gettin’ too fast, and doctors makin’ mistakes and nobody knowin’ when they do, and what he said was too close, man, too close to what really happened. So I knew what killed her. I knew. And I was gonna go in that clinic and just ask ’em about it, but your dad said, ‘No, let’s go back to the hospital first and ask ’em again,’ so we did.”

  He drank some more coffee, exchanged a look with Deanne, and then continued, “We went back and cornered that Dr. Lawrence and asked him again what killed Annie, and he told us the same thing, but then John said we wanted to see the autopsy report.” Max enjoyed the memory and laughed a little. “Your dad was a fighter, man, he didn’t give up easy, didn’t let those doctors bluff him. Ol’ Dr. Lawrence, he wasn’t ready for us pushin’ him like that, I could tell. But he said we’d have to go down to the Records Department, so we did.

  “And then when we get down there, here they go again. They gave us a buncha trouble and said they didn’t have no autopsy report or nothin’ . . . said they lost it, couldn’t find it. But John seemed like he’d done this before. You couldn’t turn him around, you know? He says, ‘Then let’s see the pathologist, the guy that did Annie,’ and . . .” Max cursed. “They weren’t gonna let us see him neither! Started makin’ excuses, but we got to him. Seems like we ran all over that hospital, but we found the Pathology Department, and then we still had to wait all afternoon, but we got in there and we saw him. Mark Denning, that was his name.”

  John took out his writing pad. “Denning. Okay if I write that down?”

  “Yeah, write it down. Denning was cool. Wouldn’t tell us a thing out in the open, and when we got into his office he talked real quiet.” Max leaned forward and lowered his voice, as if mimicking Denning’s manner. “He was afraid of somethin’, you know? He talked quiet and said he really couldn’t discuss the case, but then he got out a folder and left it on the desk and said, ‘I gotta step out for twenty minutes, guys. You didn’t hear anything from me, and if you want to sneak a look at this, I won’t see you do it,’ and then he went out of the room.”

  Deanne got up and went into their bedroom as Max continued. “So, hey, what do you think ol’ John and me are gonna do? We got that thing open, and we started lookin’ through it tryin’ to find out what really killed Annie, and we did. We could see it. Mosta that stuff you couldn’t understand what Denning was talkin’ about, but the last paragraph he wrote it out pretty clear, so we copied that paragraph and anything else we could find that we figured said somethin’.”

  Deanne returned and handed several sheets from a yellow legal pad to John, along with a document. He quickly perused them.

  “This is Annie’s death certificate,” Deanne pointed out, “and you can see what Dr. Lawrence wrote.”

  “Mm-hm. ‘Primary cause of death: septic shock . . . due to septicemia . . . due to toxic shock syndrome.’”

  “And then . . . well, here’s what your father and Max managed to copy from the autopsy report.”

  Max’s handwriting was done in a hurry, that was certain. John easily recognized Dad’s handwriting, had the usual trouble reading it, and found himself dwelling there, just looking at the words because Dad had written them.

  John read the first paragraph they’d copied, this one in Dad’s handwriting. “ ‘Septic shock due to septicemia due to . . . septic abortion.’”

  Deanne commented, “That’s where we found the first contradiction to the death certificate.”

  Max pointed. “Check out that paragraph on the second page there, the one I copied.”

  John read as Carl watched, “ ‘The most attractive hypothesis that would explain the mechanism of death in this case would be that initially this person had an abortion complicated by staphylococcal infection resulting in peritonitis and septicemia leading to septic shock and inadequate oxygenation of the vital organs, leading to death.’”

  John shared the report with Carl, and they continued looking it over as Max continued. “All those big words, we didn’t know what we were copying mosta the time, but I think we got enough. We know what killed Annie. Your father even took it to another doctor to have him check it over, and he said that’s what it was, if we copied it right.”

  “But Denning wouldn’t tell you himself? That seems so bizarre.”

  Max shook his head. “He wasn’t supposed to tell me, and he said I didn’t have no legal right to see the report ’cause of the privacy laws, but . . . he took a chance, didn’t he? He walked out so he wouldn’t see us lookin’ at it.”

  John shook his head. “Strange.”

  Max gave a knowing sneer. “Tell me all about it.”

  “But . . . my dad was there too, involved in your situation.”

  “He was in it all the way. He was a good man.”

  “Who was the doctor?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you know the name of the doctor Dad took the report to?”

  Max and Deanne looked at each other and drew a blank. John made a note to check into that. Mom might know. “And do you have any positive link to the Women’s Medical Center? Is there any way you can prove Annie was there?”

  “Hey, sure she was! She went to Jefferson, she got sick on a Friday, the clinic sends the van over to Jefferson every Friday, the clinic does abortions, Annie died from a bad abortion. That’s it. They did it.”

  John admitted, “Well, that sounds convincing, but . . .”

  “But nothin’!”

  “Have you asked the—” John stopped and reversed gears. “Mm . . . I don’t suppose the Women’s Medical Center has told you anything?”

  That was a laugh. “No, not quite. But don’t think I didn’t ask. Your father tried to stop me, but I went into that place and told ’em what I knew and I asked ’em, ‘Did you do an abortion on my daughter, Annie Brewer? And they wouldn’t tell me. Said it was confidential. And I said, ‘We talkin’ about my daughter. Now if you did it I wanna know,’ and they wouldn’t tell me nothing . . . just told me to get outa there.

  “And I got mad. Ain’t nobody gonna do that to my little girl and tell me it ain’t none of my business! Well, I didn’t touch nobody and I didn’t break nothin’, but they called the cops and told ’em I did, and I spent the night in jail. Good thing I didn’t really bust anything or I woulda been in jail a long time. The judge said I have to stay away from there and if I’m good he’ll let it go.” Then his eyes burned with fury. It was frightening to see. “But that place is still there, and that van’s still runnin’ every Friday.”

  He drank some more coffee, taking time to calm down. John held up the pathologist’s repor
t. “Is this the only copy?”

  “We got some more copies made. Your father has one, we’ve got a few.”

  “May I have one?” John stole a glance at Carl. “If we . . . pursue this, we’ll need all the information we can get.”

  “What do you mean ‘pursue’ it?” asked Deanne.

  “Well . . . I can’t promise anything, please understand that, but we’re talking about a young woman, a minor, dying due to a botched medical procedure and how nothing was ever done about it, nothing was ever reported, no one was ever held accountable. That bothers me, I know it bothers you, it bothered Dad, and it should bother the people who watch our newscasts.”

  “You gonna put this on the news?”

  John could feel Carl waiting for the answer. When he did answer, he felt he was answering Carl as well as the Brewers. “I can’t promise that.”

  Carl mumbled derisively, “I can’t promise that . . .”

  John spoke more firmly; he may have even raised his voice a bit. “I’m sure we’ll need more information first.”

  Max sneered a bit. “Well, good luck. We were thinking ’bout contactin’ a lawyer, but your dad said the same thing: we don’t know enough. I told you what happened at the hospital. The clinic wouldn’t tell me nothin’, the school counselor wouldn’t tell me nothin’, and the law says they don’t have to. Who else you got to ask?”

  “Well . . . give me some time to think about it, do a little homework. I might be able to find out something. In the meantime, Max, try to rest easy until you hear from me. Don’t . . . uh . . .”

  “I gotta stay outa trouble, I know. I’ve caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people. After we got that stuff from Denning I climbed all over those people at the hospital for holding out on me. Got the people at the high school mad at me. Scared away most of Annie’s friends.” Max added in a somber tone, “I made trouble for your father too. Got him pulled into my troubles, got into that fight at the rally. Good thing I didn’t get arrested again. Him and me, we got a lot of people mad at us. I been layin’ low. Whoever got him, they gotta be after me.”