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Author's Chapter Notes:

Ick factor ramping up here... Enjoy? TAG


Chapter 5 - Meet The Prescotts.



It didn't take long for Daphne, in her Nancy Drew persona, to make a few calls to the folks who ran the soccer camp and arrange for us to meet with their coach. 


Daph gets off on that shit, to be honest. I still remember the summer when we were ten when she made me follow her around the country club, magnifying glasses in hand, trying to solve the mystery of what had happened to our favorite swimming instructor, Anneke. Daphne, who’d spent most of the prior school year voraciously reading every single Nancy Drew Mystery she could get her hands on, had been convinced that Anneke’s disappearance had nefarious underpinnings. We’d conducted interviews of the Club staff, examined Anneke’s locker in the staff locker room, even snuck into the Club’s administrative offices and tried to pick the lock on the file cabinet that held the employee files. It took us weeks of pseudo-covert operations before we discovered that Anneke and her boyfriend had been caught skinny dipping in the pool after hours and she’d been summarily fired. So much for our ten-year-old detective skills. 


I was hoping those skills had improved a little with age. The current plan, for what it was worth, was for the two of us to pretend that we were a young married couple looking for a summer camp for our beloved, only son, and use that cover to surreptitiously scope out Coach Langley. I don’t know what I hoped to discover by this ruse. I guess, mostly, I just wanted to talk to the guy and get a feel for him. Find out if he was really a threat or not. See for myself if he was as big a perv as Michael had implied. While I was at it, I’d be checking out the camp that Gus seemed to have his little heart set on.


The kind people at the KickIt! Camp offices had been more than happy to discuss their camp with a prospective parent. Brenda, the camp secretary, had raved about Coach Wade Langley, pointing out his years of experience coaching youth soccer and emphasizing his kind and caring nature. Brenda had given Daphne the hard sell; going on and on about how sports builds character in young boys, etc. Daphne, for her part, pretended to be worried about her son and unsure about sending a child so young to a sleep-away camp. Brenda outlined all the safety precautions the camp supposedly took, including mandatory two-deep staffing and youth protection training. When Daph had continued to feign indecision, Brenda had suggested she meet with the coach in person and directed Daphne to the athletic fields in a nearby park where Coach Langley’s Boys U6 soccer team practiced on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. 


Which is how we ended up driving to a park about fifteen minutes away from Liberty Avenue late on Tuesday afternoon. As we approached the field where a gaggle of small boys were running every which way chasing after a plethora of matching blue and white pentagonal-patched balls, we easily spotted the one adult in the group. The man, a reasonably attractive guy in his early-sixties, with short-cropped salt-and-pepper grey hair and wearing stylish J. Crew chino shorts, was kneeling on the ground giving one of the players a hug. While the gesture appeared outwardly innocent, something about the sight gave me the willies. Trading glances with Daph, I could tell she felt the same. But, telling myself it was too soon to rush to judgement, I kept walking towards the man, pausing when we were a couple of meters away. When the kneeling man saw us, he whispered something I couldn’t hear into the boy’s ear and then got up, patting the young soccer player on the shoulder. The kid frowned, never looking up from where his eyes were focused on a brown patch in the otherwise impeccably maintained lawn, before slowly shuffling off to rejoin the rest of his team. That’s when the Coach turned to smile at his visitors. 


“Coach Langley?” Daphne took the lead while I hung back and observed the man we were there to surveil. “I’m Dee Dee Prescott and this is my husband, Mark. Brenda from KickIt! sent us over to meet you and observe your coaching methods. We’re considering sending our son, Zach, to your camp this summer.”


I took a moment to appreciate my accomplice’s acting skills - and her ability to come up with fake names on the spot - before I chimed in. “Zach is just dying to go to your camp, Sir, but we’re not sure he’s ready. He’s only five - he doesn’t turn six until just before school starts in the fall - so we’re a little reluctant to send him away to camp for a full month.”


“It’s nice to meet you both,” Coach Langley replied, his supremely confident low tenor voice landing on my ear mellifluously. “And I’d be more than happy to alleviate any fears you might have about sending your son to our camp.” He paused long enough to yell some direction to a group of boys that were practising a ball dribbling drill nearby and then returned his attention to us. “I’ve been associated with the KickIt! Group for seven years now and I don’t think we’ve ever had any unsatisfied customers. So, tell me what I can do to reassure you.”


Daphne, who’d already talked at length with Brenda, took the lead in the discussion, asking all sorts of questions while I hung back and observed Coach Langley’s demeanor. Outwardly, the man didn’t seem very threatening. He was smooth and charming. He laughed with Daphne, telling her little stories about prior years’ camps and even winking at her at the conclusion of a little joke he told. A normal, non-suspicious person would have probably found him quite likable. I, however, was not a non-suspicious person and I found all the schmoozing distasteful. But, even so, there was nothing concrete I could put my finger on that would explain why I shouldn’t like him.


“Zach is totally in love with soccer right now,” Daphne raved about our non-existent son. “I don’t really know anything about it myself, but the peewee team coach said he thought Zach had a lot of potential. Plus, we both work,” Daph gestured back and forth between the two of us, “so we need to find something to do with our son over the summer. If this camp works out, it would be great for all of us.”


“Quite a few of our parents are in the same boat,” Langley confirmed with what I’m sure he thought was an understanding smile. “But, if your son really is that good, our camp is definitely the right place for him. I pride myself on helping the boys I’ve coached explore their full potential. If Zach really wants to become a better player, I’m the one who can make that happen. I’ve been doing just that for years; I’ve been coaching PeeWee and Youth Soccer for almost thirty years now. You won’t find anyone with more experience.” 


“Oh, really?” I asked, pretending innocence, “I didn’t realize you’d been coaching all this time. I thought someone said you used to be a teacher?”


“That’s true. When I was just starting out, back in the stone ages,” he joked, “I got my teaching certificate and worked as a physical education teacher, first in the Philadelphia school system and then here in Pittsburgh. However, after spending a few years teaching, I decided that coaching youth soccer was my real passion. I’ve always enjoyed working with kids of all ages but it’s the little ones that I enjoy the most and soccer is my sport, you know.”


I made a mental note to check on the status of Langley’s teaching certificate, just as a precaution. 


Meanwhile, Langley had continued to rhapsodize about his experience working with young boys. “I get such a thrill out of molding their minds and bodies,” he elucidated. “At that age, they are so much more open to new ideas and new experiences, you understand, and I can teach them anything. Of course, boys that age sometimes also need a firm guiding hand, and so many of the youth I work with lack strong parenting examples - many without any fathers in the picture at all - but that’s one of the reasons I find coaching so rewarding. I just love watching how some of my boys bloom after I take an interest in them.” He took that opportunity to point out the boy he’d been hugging when we arrived, using the child as an example. “Taniel there, for instance, is a special case. Unlike you two, his parents are too busy with their own lives and careers to pay any attention to him. I can’t tell you how much that boy needed someone - anyone - to step in and prove they cared about him. After he came to our camp last summer, though, Taniel finally started coming out of his shell. And now, just look at him! He’s probably my best player.” 


We all paused and watched as the boy Langley had been discussing broke away from a guard that he’d been facing off against and scored a goal in the little make-shift net that had been set up for the team’s practice session. The rest of the boys in that drill group cheered and congratulated little Taniel. Langley yelled out a ‘Good Job, Tanny’ and clapped. When the boys all looked over towards the coach he smiled at them patronizingly. Then, blowing the whistle that had been dangling around his neck while we’d been talking, Langley made a circling motion in the air and all the drill groups stopped their activity to come assemble. 


“Great job, boys. I think that’s enough drills for today. How about a short scrimmage before we wrap up practice for the day?” There was cheering from amongst the assembly of children. “Taniel & Wes, you two can be captains for this round. Choose up your teams and then you’ve got fifteen minutes to show me what you can do.”


We watched as Taniel and a little blond boy took turns calling out the names of the other players in order to form up two teams. When everyone had been assigned to a group, they all headed out onto the field and started to play. Daph and I watched as the boys scrambled after the ball, with Taniel quickly breaking out of the pack to steal the ball away from another boy and boot it down the field to another forward.


“I’ve made a bit of a special project out of that one,” Langley bragged as he watched Taniel’s exhibition, obviously proud of the boy’s skills, which were clearly advanced for his tender age. 


But that term - ‘special project’ - combined with the way Langley smiled while he watched the boy, caused my hackles to rise. I might have been imagining it, but that grin had a possessiveness about it that worried me, even though I couldn’t pin down exactly what it was that had me squicked. Nothing that Langley had said was incriminating, in itself. It was more a gut feeling. And, yeah, maybe I was predisposed not to like the guy after what Michael had told me, but . . . There was no reason to suspect the guy of anything more than being a devoted coach, but I just didn’t like him for some intangible reason I couldn’t put into words. 


While I was busy trying to examine my instinctual dislike of Coach Langley, Daphne had been pelting the man with still more questions about the upcoming summer camp. 


“Our Zack has always been a bit on the shy side, you know, which is why we’re a little hesitant to send him to a sleep away camp,” Daph explained, looking wistful as she worried over her imaginary son. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe this would be just the thing to entice him out of his shell. We’d love to see him ‘bloom’ like you say this other boy has.” My wife pointed to the field where Taniel was kicking some serious six-year-old butt on the field. “What do you think, Mark?”


Unfortunately, I’d already forgotten my fake name so I didn’t respond when ‘Dee Dee’ posed her question. Daphne had to elbow me to get my attention. I laughed and pretended that I’d been so caught up in watching the kids on the field that I hadn’t been following the conversation. Daphne repeated the question with a sideways look at Langley that seemed to intimate that I was always a clod of a husband.


“Well, if you can teach Zach to handle the ball like that kid,” I pointed at young Taniel, “I’m all for it.”


“Like I said before,” Daph saw the opening I’d left and ran with it, “Zach’s coach has told us - multiple times - that our boy is a bit of a soccer prodigy, even as young as he is. Coach Crawford said that Zach could maybe even end up playing professionally some day, provided he gets the right training.” 


Then Daphne pulled out her phone and showed Langley a picture of a beautiful, brown-haired boy that we’d pulled off the internet. Random Brunet Boy #2345 was a small kid with big brown eyes and shaggy brown hair who looked remarkably like Gus. I imagined that Brian must have looked a lot like that as a child as well. The picture we’d selected showed the boy in a blue and gold soccer uniform so it was completely believable that this might be our child, or at least believable enough to convince Langley, who looked at the image for longer than was really necessary when you were just looking at a pic of a stranger’s child. And, was that an excited sparkle in the man’s eyes? I didn’t think I liked where things seemed to be heading . . .


“If he’s as good as you suggest, I’d love to coach your son. There’s nothing more satisfying than working with a truly gifted young athlete.” Langley paused and looked once more towards Daph’s phone, where you could still see the picture of the boy on the screen, and nodded. “You know, there’s no reason we have to wait for summer to get started on his training. I sometimes provide private training sessions for my more promising players. If your son has as much talent as his coach says, I could work with him one-on-one and get him ready for camp. Then he’d have a leg up on the other boys and be ready to really shine.” 


Daphne looked at me, pretending that she was interested in that suggestion, and I tried not to betray the growing unease I was feeling. 


“I can’t tell you how much I love working with promising young players. If I can help them on the way towards a better future, all the better,” Langley continued, focusing his sales pitch on Daphne, clearly thinking she’d be the easier sell. “You know, a number of the boys I’ve trained over the years have gone on to play in college, and there were even a couple who rose to the level of semi-professional club soccer, although I’m still waiting to get one of mine on the professional circuit. I’d be happy to evaluate your son and, if he’s a good candidate, we could talk about setting up some private lessons.”


“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Daphne demurred. “We probably don’t have the money to afford that kind of training.” 


Langley laughed and waved off her concerns. “Nonsense. For the boys that really please me, I’ve been known to provide my services for free. Seeing a boy grow into his potential is all the payment I need.” He smiled smarmily at the both of us in turn and I felt my stomach do an uneasy flip-flop. Sensing that he hadn’t completely sold us, he continued on a different track, adding, “sometimes the extra training pays off big in the long run; I can get your boy to a level where he’ll really shine. And, if he’s good enough, he might even get recruited for a more advanced, elite team. I know a few that will offer scholarships that cover the costs of the equipment and travel for better players. After that, who knows? With that kind of head start, a career in soccer might be your son’s ticket to the bigger things. I even had one boy who ended up with a full-ride scholarship to college after training with me.” 


That comment made alarm bells start to ring in my head. Was Langley talking about Brian? Had he coached Brian for longer than that one month when he’d subbed at Brian & Michael’s highschool? Or was there some other boy that Langley had coached who landed a college scholarship for soccer? 


I remembered back, before Brian’s freak out in NYC, how dead set he’d been against Gus playing soccer. How he’d commented that he didn’t want Gus to have to ‘whore himself out to a university athletic department just to go to college’. The way he’d talked about it, a soccer scholarship didn’t sound like a good thing at all. But here was Langley, pushing it on us as a sales point? 


The more the coach went on with his sales pitch, talking about the boy he’d mentored all the way from the peewee leagues to a full-ride at Penn State, the more unsettled I felt. It certainly sounded like he was talking about Brian. Which meant that Coach Langley and Brian must have met long before his brief stint as a substitute teacher when Brian was in high school. 


Shit.


I mean, on one level it made sense. I didn’t think that one freshman-year blow job would have been enough to cause Brian to lose it so completely that he’d walk off into traffic. There HAD to be more to the story, right? Even if Brian had been somehow manipulated into it at the time - pressured by Langley into a sex act he wasn’t entirely comfortable with as a fourteen year old - would that alone have been enough to account for the amount of trauma Brian was now exhibiting? Dr. Kajiwara’s admonition - ‘In my experience, severe dissociation like the kind Mr. Kinney is exhibiting is almost always tied to childhood trauma’ - had made it sound like the cause for Brian’s recent freak out had to be something pretty serious. Considering the level of ‘trauma’ that I’d seen every time Langley or his soccer camp was mentioned, whatever had happened had to have been majorly bad, making me wonder if the trauma we were talking about - which was somehow tied to Brian’s relationship with Langley - had gone back a lot further . . .


“I tell you what, Ms. Prescott,” Langley added, seeming to think it was time to close the deal, “one of my older boys has recently moved on to a new team so I actually have an opening on Wednesday nights. If you’re interested in pursuing private training sessions for your son, I might be willing to start working with him right away. That way I can get him ready for the summer camp and he’ll feel right at home when it’s time for the real thing.” 


Daphne pretended to be interested in that idea but then turned to me and said, “oh, wait. Wednesdays won’t work. I’ve got that class I’m taking this semester on Wednesday evenings and you work till nine.”


Instead of accepting the conflict and moving on with the conversation, Langley seemed to get even more excited about the idea. “That shouldn’t be a problem. I’d be happy to step in and help you out. I could pick the boy up from school for you - I’ve done that in the past with some of my other special students - and then, after we finish our training sessions, he could just hang out with me until you’re able to pick him up. It wouldn’t be that big a deal. I do whatever it takes for my special boys . . .”


I faked an interested look, as if I’d be willing to go along with that idea, while inside there was a voice inside my head screaming ‘Danger! Danger!’. “That might work,” I said aloud, ignoring my internal panic. “Let us check our schedules and we’ll get back to you, Coach Langley.” 


The Coach stretched out his hand to shake mine, a self-satisfied look on his mug, and then made a point of giving me a business card with his personal cell phone number on it. “I’m looking forward to your call. I can’t wait to start working with your Zach. From everything you say, I’m sure he’s going to end up being one of my favorites.” 


Those words made me cringe and, while I felt like puking, I managed what I hoped was a banal smile as I pulled Daph back towards where the car was parked as fast as possible. 


“Okay, so that was hella creepy, right?” Daphne commented as soon as we were back in her car and couldn't be overheard. “Both Brenda and the camp website were pretty explicit about child safety and all; it says on there that there’s two-deep adult supervision at all times. But this guy’s out here saying it’s no problem for him to pick up a kid from school and keep him all night without anyone else around? What’s up with that?”


“And did you see the way he was touching that one boy when we arrived? I think he’s the boy in the flyer. The one who wasn’t smiling . . .” I pulled the picture up on my phone so both Daph and I could confirm that Taniel was, indeed, the one unhappy camper.


“Yeah. Something’s really not right here, Justin. I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”


“Same,” I replied with a worried frown. “You heard the comment he made about the boy who went on to a full-ride college scholarship? Sound like someone we know?”


“Brian was a scholarship kid, right?” Daphne asked, although, from the look she gave me I could tell she already knew the answer.


I only nodded. 


“Fuck . . . Well, if what I’m starting to suspect is true, that would definitely explain Brian going all Zombie Freak Out on you when he saw the guy’s picture.”


“Yeah. I’m starting to suspect the same thing,” I confirmed with only a moment’s hesitation. “But we still need to prove it. We can’t go around making allegations like this without confirmation. Only, how can we be sure? How do we confirm our suspicions about something that happened, like, more than twenty years ago? I don’t want to just go to Brian and shove this in his face without all the facts. He’s just barely hanging on as it is. Who else would know though?”


“Well, there’s one person . . .” Daphne spoke up, looking nervously in my direction. “His mother would know, right?”


“Daph, I’ve told you about Brian’s mother. She’s not going to help us. She hates me. She’d never tell me anything. She wouldn’t even answer the door if I went over there to talk to her.”


“But she doesn’t hate me . . .”


 

 

Chapter End Notes:

6/13/21 - How much do you hate Coach Langley already? Well, hang on to your hats because it gets worse... More torture to come, I’m afraid. TAG

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