Past Prologue: Where are our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 4 of 9

by Gary Sapp

saw in the months after told me.” Christopher searched the ceiling for answers again, but found none. “God, I can still hear them screaming, Doc. Every time he took one them I could hear it. As crazy as it sounds, Angel, I sometimes wished it was me. Those other boys hated me. They hated my guts. I was the teacher’s pet. I was molester’s puppet. I was the only one of them not being abused and they hated me for it.”

  Angel knew that her friend was close to cracking. She had the terrible truth. She had all of it. But he needed to finish this once and for all. “And he promised to never molest you and to never harm those other children unless you tried to escape.”

  Christopher’s laugh held no humor; in fact it may have been the bitterest sound that she’d ever heard. “Keaton soon trusted me enough to have me run the errands for him. Can you believe that, Doc?” Chris said as the tears flowed freely. “I actually passed my own home almost every single day when I went out to buy food and drinks for the other boys. Keaton knew I wouldn’t dare run away. He’d told me about the Caretaker. He warned me what would happen to those other boys if I did not return to him as he asked.”

  “I’m so sorry, Christopher.”

  “I tried to choose times when I knew that knew one would be home as I passed.”

  “The temptation must have been overwhelming.”

  “It was,” Christopher nodded. “I was told time and again that the Caretaker and his agents in Pandora were watching my every step. He told me he would have both parties…those helpless boys killed as well as my father, step mother and Xavier as well. Worse of all he promised me that I would be recaptured and that I would no longer be spared…his pleasures if anything went wrong.”

  Angel allowed the conversation a breath…she let their tears dry themselves before she pushed on to the climax of this terrible episode of her friend’s life. “So that is why you reacted so…violently…when Xavier found you.”

  “I tried to run as fast as I could when he spotted me. Goddamn him, he had cut school that day. He wasn’t supposed to be at home. He was. He recognized me, called my name, and ran me down. He had to tackle and pin me down to keep me from escaping.”

  “You poor soul,”

  Christopher hopped up and a vein in his temple flared. “To hell with me, Doc,” He yelled. “This Caretaker fella must have been enraged. I had single handily endangered his entire operation. I knew Louis Keaton. I knew where he was. I could identify the man abducting Atlanta’s children…or at least one of the men that were. So instead of risking Keaton’s discovery and the exposure of Pandora to the world, the Caretaker killed them all. I killed them all. The APD found all six boys in six different areas with their throats slit and their bodies burned.”

  The childhood friends held each other and cried for a long time afterwards.

  Angel asked him in the minutes following that, “Who else knows about this? Who else knows what you have told me tonight?”

  Chris expressed to her what she may have guessed on her own: The doctors who were appointed to his case must have examined him and realized the lack of physical abuse to his private area. He told a shrink or two that treated him afterwards. Yet, these men were under the scrutiny of doctor-patient privilege. They would never divulge to anyone other than his father and step mother what really happened…and what didn’t happen to him.”

  “What about your brother?” Angel and Christopher’s younger half-brother Xavier had never been terribly close. She always felt that he tolerated her existence because of what her friendship meant to his older sibling.

  “We had a heart to heart after what Carter and his goons did to him up at Princeton. And I told Hoshi on the night that I asked for her hand in marriage.”

  “You never told Denise did you?”

  “No,” Christopher said without malice. “Xavier and now you are the only living people who know the entire truth. Back to Denise though, we were married for 12 years and yet I never felt close enough to her in all of that time to mention this part of my past. I guess, in part, the truth about what happened to me is part of the reason why what Erica did to cut so deeply.”

  “Erica,” Angel felt another heartfelt story coming. As badly as she wanted to get out of the rest of these clothes and get into her booze, if her friend needed her a while longer—

  And then there was a knock on Christopher’s door.

  The two of them glared at one another.

  No one knew that they were here except…

  There was another knock, this time the thumping was more urgent than the first round. Angel tightened her housecoat without looking at it as Christopher stepped towards the door with his pistol in his hand.

  Denise Prince said: “Hi, Chris. Look, I changed my mind. I needed to…we need to talk. Will you let me in?”

  “Denise…hey,” He holstered his gun and unlocked the door. “You can come in but I do have company.”

  When the door opened Denise did not break the threshold. Instead she said: “Oh, my God. I should have known you would be here with her.”

  Angel ignored what she said and offered the other woman her hand in greeting. “Hi, Denise…it has been a long time.”

  Denise didn’t feel like shaking hands tonight so Angel guessed that a little small talk was probably out as well.

  Chris’ cheeks flushed as much as his skin color allowed. You would have thought that he had been caught in an affair. “Denise, this isn’t what it looks like. We were down here interviewing an important—“

  Denise stepped past her ex-husband and gave her full measure of furor to Angel. “If I truly had been honest with myself I shouldn’t really be surprised to see you here.”

  Angel felt herself frown. “Wait a minute, Denise.” She said cautiously. “Just like Christopher said: We were just talking—“

  “Yea, I see how much talking you two were doing.” Denise swiped at Christopher’s face where Angel’s lipstick had made its mark. The other woman then took three giant footsteps, planted her hands on her hips and got into Angel’s face. “Just look at you…you’re dressed only in a bathrobe and only God knows what else in the middle of the night in my husband’s hotel room.”

  “I’m your ex-husband,” Christopher reminding her. “Denise, we’re divorced. We have been for a long time now. Let’s all calm down—“

  “Damn you and your calm, Sir,” Denise shouted at him. “I know that Erica hurt you baby. I know that I’ve hurt you as well in the past. My little girl is dead now. How much longer are you going to hold a grudge against us, your family?”

  “I’m not, Denise,” But Christopher made the mistake of looking away when he said it. “I swear it’s not the truth.”

  “Well then, Sir, I guess you’ll have the chance to finally prove it.” Denise smiled for the first time since Christopher had opened the door for her and she directed it at Angel. “I can’t think of a better time…or better person for you to make this proclamation in front of, Chris. Your lifelong friend can bear witness to our announcement.”

  “What are you talking about, Denise?” Agent Christopher Prince wanted to know.

  Angel did know. But it didn’t make hearing the insanity travel from Denise’s lips to both of their sets of ears any easier whatsoever.

  “My little girl is dead. I need you back in my life more than ever before. Almost a decade and a half ago you asked for my hand in marriage, baby.” Denise got on one knee. It was the sweetest thing…it was the most pathetic display Angel had ever watched another woman do. “I’m asking for you to marry me again. I’m asking you to take me back at your wife.”

  Angel looked to her friend—to witness as Denise had said—what would come next.

  Christopher said quietly: “Denise…you know I can’t do that.”

  Denise screamed at him in an extraterrestrial voice of grief and insanity that Angel had only mouthed from a handful of patients in her long career. She had to summon security to keep them at bay until they could be subdued and eventually taken away in restrai
nts. There was no security and no restraints to aid them here in this off the map hotel room. Angel had decided not to wait around to see how this one turned out. “I should leave you two alone.” Angel limped past the couple.

  “No, Angel,” Denise spat her name out. She brushed past Angel on her way out the door from which she came. Once she was out in the courtyard she spun around long enough to say: “You should stay. Whatever happens next is on your head, Doctor. As for you, Sir, there are only two women in this world that you have ever loved, and you’ve proven to me for the very last fucking time that I am not sure as hell one of them.”

  Seth

  MOMENTS BEFORE:

  “Erica lied.”

  Dr. Seth Dupree frowned at the woman sitting on the passenger side of his rental car. “Excuse me?”

  Denise fumbled with her purse and used the time to gather her thoughts. She actually took a moment to smile at him, but it was a humorless one that Seth thought was more than a little sad. There was a full moon out tonight here in the middle of nowhere in central Georgia. Seth checked the electronic map on his phone one last time to see if they had landed in the right parking lot of the right hotel where Denise’s ex-husband, Special Agent Chris Prince was staying. In the distance they both heard a dog howling. A minute later what sounded like a pack of dogs joined the first in the late night serenade.

  “When Erica was 15 years old she accused Chris of molesting her. My little