A Dark Hobby

The name is Stephen Channing. At first glance, I seem like your everyday average guy. I stand six feet two inches tall, lean, with dark brown skin and pale amber eyes. A proud son of Mother Africa and the British Fatherland, that's me. My father Luther Channing was an Englishman, my mother Edwina Franklin was African-American. They met in Boston during the summer of 1968 and got married in 1969. Two years later, I was born. They bought a nice townhouse in Boston's Back Bay and built a life together. Dad worked as an engineer and mom was a college professor. I grew up in a loving household. Which is ironic considering what I do.

Right now, I'm sitting on the Subway, reading my copy of the Boston Globe. On the front page, the headline reads "Boston Serial Killers Strike Again." A twelfth body has been discovered in the Charles River. The body of Jessica West, a young woman who escaped from the Framingham Correctional Facility for Women. She had been serving a fifteen to life sentence for shooting her boyfriend Jason Verde for sleeping with her best friend Ashley. Oh, well. The news has the city gripped with fear. Someone is killing the city's career criminals. Corrupt cops, thugs, hustlers, prostitutes and gang bangers. They've all been found dead. A bullet to the forehead.

The old white man sitting next to me says he hopes the police kill the creep who's killing people when they find him. A young black woman sitting across from me says the killer is doing the city a favor by getting rid of undesirables. He's not a villain in her book apparently. I find that fascinating. A lot of people think that if you're a villain, you've got no rules and no values. That is such bullshit. Because I'm a prosecutor, many people see me as a villain. As the supposed villain in question, I am far from what they think of me. By day, I am a lawyer. I work for the Suffolk County Prosecutor's Office in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. I am quite good at what I do. You see, someone's got to put bad people in jail. And it's what I do best. I am so good at my job that it scares people. I love my job but it's not the only thing in my life. I'm also a loving husband and father. Recently, I lost the love of my life. I don't think one can ever truly recover from that.

I am referring of course to my dear wife Chantal Cavalier. A six-foot-tall, beautifully voluptuous and dark-skinned young black woman who was destined to become the love of my life. We met at Boston College Law School in 1984. Like me, she was a Boston College graduate who opted to stick around for a couple more years. Long enough to get a law degree. She came from a long line of Eagles. Her brother Joss Cavalier used to play football for Boston College. I met him back at Boston College High School. I never knew he had a sister until I saw the two of them at the campus law library one afternoon. I fell in love with Chantal. She was fine-looking, smart, funny...and friendly. A friendly, positive, outgoing and open-minded woman is hard to find. You had better believe I wasn't about to let her slip through my grasp.

Throughout my first year of law school, I pursued Chantal Cavalier. And she pursued me in her own way. When we both graduated from law school in 1987, we got hitched the following summer. I started working for the city as an assistant prosecutor to pay back law school loans and she started practicing corporate law. My lady was the big earner and I was happy for her. It didn't cause friction in our relationship. I've always believed in crusading for justice and she believes in power plays. We took the world by storm. In 1989, our sons Jeremiah and Joseph were born. It was the happiest day of our lives.

From that moment on, nothing was ever the same. Fatherhood changes you. I took a break from working for the prosecutor's office. As a new father, I had to earn more money to support my family. Especially since my wife temporarily stopped working. I became a defense attorney with Lawson & Dale, one of the largest law firms in Massachusetts. I'd gone against them back in the day when I was an assistant district attorney. They welcomed me with open arms. I made them suffer when I was a A.D.A. but as a defense attorney, I was one of the best people they had. I defended the guilty and the innocent alike with equal zeal and made the big bucks. I hated it but I provided for my family. That's all that mattered. In those days at least.

Chantal and I strove to create a positive and affirming family environment for our sons. Raising a son in America isn't easy. Especially if you happen to be black. You've got to choose your schools carefully. Many schools out there aren't male-friendly. That's why lots of young men are failing in school. Teachers don't understand the unique needs and learning styles of young men. Neither do parents. They pump young men full of Ritalin and turn them into mindless drones. They become sullen, and lose interest in education as well as other worthwhile pursuits. By the time they're old enough to go to college, they're beyond hope. Most of them.

I've always believed in single-sex education. It works wonders for both men and women. It just might be the only solution to the Crisis in Boys Education. Schools like Morehouse College and Spelman College in the town of Atlanta, Georgia, produce great men and great women, respectively. Men and women are equal in talent and intellect but not identical. Teachers should understand that. Coed schools fail young men because they never reach out to them. Helping male students do better in school isn't in the agenda of most educational institutions in America. Except maybe some single-sex schools.

Chantal and I agreed to send our sons to study at the Fessenden School in the city of Newton, Massachusetts. It's an elite single-sex institution. Afterwards, we sent them to Boston college High School. My wife and I were dedicated to providing our sons with the best foundation possible. Young black men aren't automatically doomed to a life of crime from the get-go. Not if their fathers and mothers join forces to do the best they can for them. Parenthood is a mission which was never meant to be shouldered alone. Chantal and I put our heads together to do the best we could for our sons. And in the end, it paid off.

In 2007, Jeremiah and Joseph graduated from Boston College. Jeremiah went to attend Boston College. Joseph went to Northeastern University. Chantal and I were so proud. It seemed like our hard work paid off. Our sons were grown and starting college. Both of them had received academic scholarships to the schools of their choice. We had done our job as parents. This goes to show you that black men and black women can get together, have both family and career, and find happiness and success on their own terms. It's not impossible. Chantal and I love and respect each other. I respect Chantal and she respects me. We don't undermine each other at every turn. When I told her I wanted to go back to being a Prosecutor, she was very supportive. We don't fit the image of the bickering, eternally angry black couple everybody thinks of when they imagine what black families are like. Our sons are accomplished scholars and fine young gentlemen. Not criminals. Not thugs. Not rappers. Got it? Cool.

Not for the first time in ages, I was thankful to God Almighty for everything He had blessed me with. My wife and I lived in a beautiful house in Boston. We had successful careers. Our sons were in college. We were living the American Dream. Until one day on January 1, 2008, our world came crashing down around our ears. Chantal and I were coming from the movie theater in downtown Boston. We were strolling through Boston Common when suddenly two thugs came at us. Two men in ski masks. They brandished guns in our faces and demanded our possessions. I handed them my wallet. Chantal refused to hand them her stuff. She was too proud to kowtow to a man in a mask. Before my shocked eyes, the thug put a bullet in her skull. Then he shot me three times in the heart.

When I came to, I was at Mass General Hospital. I was surrounded by doctors and nurses. They told me I was lucky to be alive. When I asked about my wife, they fell silent. Angrily, I demanded answers. Nobody said anything. That's when I knew. I wasn't having a nightmare, as I had desperately hoped. My wife was dead. That was my reality. When my sons came to the hospital, teary-eyed, I couldn't bear to face them. They embraced me, but I couldn't feel them. They needed me more than ever. They had just lost their mother and needed their father's strength and their father's love. I couldn't give it to them. All I felt was a cold emptiness inside.

Eventually, I recovered. And I returned to work. I became the District Attorney, and earned a reputation as a particularly vicious defender of justice. Whenever a man or woman broke the law, I made sure they got convicted. I didn't care. They were all guilty in my book. The city of Boston praised me. The Mayor was an admirer of my work, as was the Governor. I smiled at all of them and told them I was just doing my job. I was there for my sons. We always had dinner together at least twice a week regardless of what was going on in our lives.

My sons were changing right before my eyes. Jeremiah introduced me to his girlfriend, a lovely Asian gal named Jasmine Yasimoto. She was a transfer from the University of Tokyo in Japan. Their relationship was pretty serious. I was happy for them. Really, I was. It was good to see my son being happy. Of course, I told him that if he got her or any other woman pregnant before he graduated college, I'd dock him. Yeah, like that. I'm not joking. My son laughed. Proves how little he knew the new me. As for my other son Joseph, he was too busy being a spectacular scholar to pay much attention to the opposite sex. He went to study abroad, at the University of Paris in France. How about that?

Yes, life was good. There was a rash of killings in the Boston area. Anne Brandon, a secretary recently released from prison for falsely accusing her former boss of rape was shot to death in broad daylight in the South End. As was Dale Hancock, a pyromaniac recently released from Walpole State prison. Black widow killer Elisabeth Madison was shot to death in her living room in Dorchester. Pet kidnapper, animal abuser and husband killer Lena Harris was shot while in police custody. The cops took their eyes off her while she was at the court house and that's all it took for someone to kill her. Weird how that happens.

When I speak to the Chief of Police and the Homicide Detectives conducting the investigation, they tell me they're baffled. They think a network of vigilantes are behind the rash of killings. No way one guy did this all by himself. They vow they will catch the killers, though. They think a group of renegade cops are behind the killings. Cops are looking at their brothers and sisters in blue with suspicion. In the meantime, something strange has happened in the city of Boston. A cult following has grown around the Boston Serial Killers after people found out what wretched human beings the killers victims were. It's funny. The authorities want to kill the guys on sight. The populace wants to give them a medal. People are so funny. When I ask the cops what they think the killers motivation are, they say the killers might be a bunch of guys with too much time on their hands who watched crime-fighting movies too many times. I wish them the best of luck in putting these killers behind bars. In the meantime, I'm going to have dinner with my son and his girlfriend. I think they've gotten engaged, which is cool in my book but they think they're going to surprise me. As if.