The Guardian

by Marliss Melton

  “Awesome. I’m a little sunburned, but I’m rested. How’s your master scheme unfolding?”

  “Terrific,” she lied. Humid air wafted into the car window, smelling of hot pavement and cow manure. She closed the window, cranked up the air conditioner, and pulled slowly away from the bright lights. “Davis has agreed to be interviewed,” she disclosed, too distracted by the night’s events to feel much of a victory. “But first I’m going to interview the others so he’ll lower his guard while I get some practice in. That way I’m prepared to lead him to his execution. I won’t question him till next week.”

  “Good idea,” Peter said. “So everything’s going as planned.”

  Not exactly. “Did you get my email?” she asked as casually as possible. “Something is going on with the office servers. I had to send it to your g-mail account.”

  “Yeah, the servers at work have crashed big time. I’ve got the IT guys working on it. That’s actually why I had to come back early. I’ll check my g-mail tonight, babe. What’s up?”

  “Oh, I just need your help identifying one of the parolees.”

  “Why don’t you just look him up on the NCIC? I thought your friend at the DA gave you his log-in information.”

  “I did. This guy isn’t there.”

  “How could he not be there? It’s a national database,” Peter pointed out.

  “I know, but he’s not. Plus, he’s been trying to get rid of me from day one when he saw me with my camera.”

  “He saw you?” Alarm raised the pitch of Peter’s voice.

  She deliberated whether to tell him of the break-in; how else would she explain her missing equipment? “This guy actually broke into my house and stole my camera and my laptop. I’m having to use the computer in the store.”

  “What?”

  He definitely didn’t need to hear about Abdul’s death threat.

  “His name is Abdul Ibn Wasi, and he obviously has something to hide,” she stated quickly, keeping him focused on the mystery and not on the danger. “Supposedly, he served time for running a pit-bull fighting ring and pocketing wagers, but I’m not buying that.” She’d seen how the dog in Artie’s parking lot had ceased to bark at his command, a behavior that connoted respect not fear. “It doesn’t explain why his history has been erased.”

  “Maybe he’s in some kind of witness protection program.”

  “Do you think you can find out?”

  “Babe, I can find out anything,” Peter said with egotism that grated her ears, but assured her nonetheless.

  “Excellent.” After the stunt Abdul had just pulled, he was going to rue the day he met her.

  “I’ll start making inquiries tonight,” Peter promised.

  Given all his myriad contacts in the law-enforcement community, Lena had high hopes he would find something soon. “I appreciate it.”

  “How’s everything otherwise?” Peter didn’t sound so optimistic.

  “Perfect. I’m in with the parolees, I’ve still got my pendant, and I can always replace my laptop,” she assured him.

  “You sound a little shaken.”

  He knew her too well. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for your help, Peter. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Before he could fill her mind with doubts, Lena ended the call and put her phone away. Talking on a cell phone while driving was illegal in Maryland, anyway, and coursing the dark highway and the even darker country road to her rental home required concentration.

  With every mile, her tension mounted. She hoped to God she wouldn’t be coming home to more destruction and death-threats tonight.

  When the light on her front porch splintered the dark copse on her right, she breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t look like anyone had been here wreaking havoc in her absence. All the same, she held her pistol before her as she ventured inside, ready to shoot.

  **

  Jackson slipped on his running shoes and started for the door. He’d been waiting all damn day for this.

  Corey looked up, startled. “You gonna run in the rain?”

  “Rain don’t bother me none,” Jackson assured him, stepping out into the deluge.

  It had been the longest damn day of his life. Between Ike’s text advising him to rendezvous with Toby at nineteen thirty tonight and Imam Ibrahim’s eye-opening lesson that morning, everything felt like it was up in the air. Plus, Ike must have found out something critical for Toby to be meeting him in person.

  Pounding up the highway, Jackson arrived at the utility road in record time. By the time he bounded to the secure spot where Toby had played a practical joke on him previously, the rain had soaked him to the skin.

  He slowed to a walk, silencing his breathing as he followed Toby’s tracks in the damp earth. Last week, he’d been pegged by Toby’s air soft gun. Hell if he would let the former Army Ranger catch him off guard again. Seeing Toby propped against a tree trunk in plain view took the fun right out of their ongoing game. So did the serious expression usurrping Toby’s habitual smirk.

  “What’s going on?” Jackson asked. His gaze flicked to the message on Toby’s damp green T-shirt: I LICK ON THE FIRST DATE. Jesus.

  “We know why the journalist is here,” Toby stated, getting straight to the point.

  Finally. “What took so long?”

  Toby stuck his fingers into his pockets. “Her name isn’t Lena Alexandra. She adopted that name when she started writing for Crime and Liberty. Her real name is Magdalena Anastasia Xenakis.” He articulated every syllable as his eyes scanned the darkening forest, a habit from his Ranger days.

  “Go on,” Jackson urged, pleased that he’d guessed her first name correctly.

  “Nine years ago, Davis was accused of murdering her fifteen-year-old sister, Alexandra.”

  It took Jackson a second to absorb the awful news. “The girl in the photo by her bed,” he guessed, recalling how uncomfortable he’d felt wrecking Lena’s bedroom when the eyes in the photo seemed to follow him. It disturbed him to think that the delicate, dark-eyed girl in the picture was dead. “Davis was a cop back then,” he recollected.

  “That’s right. Alexandra had been walking home from an evening church service when she ran into a troubled teen named Curtis Vandaloo and his friends. They were high on coke and tried to talk her into snorting. Davis showed up and put her into his squad car under the pretext of getting her safely home. Curtis Vandaloo watched the cop drive away with her, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive.”

  Jackson’s dinner of stewed lamb burbled inside him.

  “When the girl’s burnt body was found in a dumpster two weeks later, Curtis came forward. Unfortunately for him, he had a juvy record, so investigators initially suspected him of killing Alexandra, only he was seen by neighbors at his house around the time that the victim was murdered. Investigators swabbed Davis’s cruiser for Alexandra’s DNA and found nothing, suggesting it had been wiped clean, so with just Curtis’s incriminating statement, they went ahead and pressed charges. Two weeks before the trial, the kid disappeared. His parents filed a missing person’s report, and the city looked high and low for him, but he was never seen or heard from again.”

  The soft patter of rain filled the gloomy silence. “And that’s why none of this is on Davis’s rap sheet,” Jackson guessed.

  “Exactly. No witness, no trial. The charges were stricken from Davis’s record.”

  A droplet of rain slipped under Jackson’s collar to course his spine. Now he knew what had brought Lena Alexandra to Mechanicsville. Sure enough, her mission was personal, as well as dangerous enough to merit carrying a weapon. “So her cockamamie story that she’s here to write a book is a cover, just like we thought,” he considered out loud. “I think she’s hoping to incriminate Davis without his knowledge.” Recalling how masterfully she had manipulated the men so far and how she’d been garnering information over the years from various criminals, it was clear to see why she thought herself capable of such a daunting task.

  “Using the hidden camera
you suspect she’s wearing,” Toby finished, “the pendant. You want me to take it from her?” he asked, flashing an evil grin.

  “I’ll do it,” Jackson insisted.

  Toby raised an eyebrow. “I thought the boss told you to steer clear of her. It’s only going to rouse her curiosity if you grab her pendant from her.”

  “Her curiosity’s already roused. Let me handle the journalist. You break into Artie’s tonight and hack the computer looking for my picture,” he suggested, designating tasks to keep Toby busy. “She’s bound have offloaded the contents of her pendant by now, and the store’s computer is the likeliest destination.”

  “I see what you’re doing.” Toby’s smile grew as he folded his arms across his chest. “You just want to jump the broad yourself.”

  Jackson scowled at him but didn’t bother to deny it.

  “Can’t say as I blame you, Stonewall, but the boss ain’t gonna like it,” Toby pointed out.

  “So don’t tell him,” Jackson bit back.

  Both of Toby’s eyebrows shot up this time. “You want me to lie? Damn, Stonewall, I didn’t know you had it in you,” he said with approval.

  “It’s not a lie,” Jackson insisted. “Just don’t tell him anything. I know for a fact Lena Alexandra won’t leave this place unless we offer her something she can’t refuse.” He’d come to that conclusion just today.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Davis’s head on a platter. I won’t tell her how I’d do it, just that I could help her bring about his ruin. Maybe that would be enough to send her on her way.”

  Toby scratched his chin and sent Jackson a dubious look. “Whatever, man,” he finally agreed. “I won’t tell the boss if you don’t want me to. In fact, we never had this conversation. You said you had some news on your end?” he prompted.

  The reminder of what had happened today dropped a heavy weight on Jackson’s shoulders. “You guys were right about Ibrahim being a Five Percenter,” he admitted, experiencing the same disillusionment he’d felt earlier that day. “He pulled seven of us into his office this morning, took down that book I told you about, and then proceeded to hammer his philosophies into our heads.”

  Toby grimaced. “How committed does he sound? I mean, the NGE can be a positive influence if it’s not taken to extremes.”

  “This is extreme.” Jackson swiped the rainwater out of his eyes. “He was skillfully brainwashing us, recruiting us to join him and his followers, and this wasn’t his first recruitment, either. If you ask me, the majority of those men who attended last Friday night’s service became Five Percenters years ago. That’s what he credits their success to.”

  Ibrahim’s words echoed in his mind. God is you and you and you and every black man to walk this earth. “He told us that on Judgment Day we would defeat the Devil and rule as we were destined to rule. I have to tell you, he’s pretty damn persuasive. He had me sold right up to where the Devil was identified as the white man, the scourge of the earth. As annoying as I find you, Burke, I wouldn’t go so far as to call you Satan.”

  Toby smirked. “How touching.”

  “Anyway, it looks like we’ve got a gang leader on our hands. I’ll keep a finger on the pulse and keep you updated.”

  “Cool.” Toby glanced at his watch. “You’d better head back, Stonewall.”

  “Right.” Jackson made to turn away and then thought better of it. “Where’s your gun?” he asked, raking his colleague with a mistrustful look.

  Toby blinked. “Come on, do you really think I’d shoot you in the back, especially now that I learned you’re a god?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wound me, Jack,” Toby said, clapping a hand over his heart. “We’re partners now. You gotta learn to trust me.”

  With a final suspicious once-over, Jackson turned and ran.

  Seconds later, a pellet whacked him in the right butt cheek, stinging like a son of a bitch.

  “Prick,” Jackson muttered, picking up his pace.

  Toby’s rumbling laughter echoed through the murky forest.

  Emerging onto the rain-slick highway minutes later, Jackson’s gaze went straight to Artie’s neon sign. Under the weeping sky, its lights bled a rainbow of color.

  He thought of the horrific crime Davis had inflicted on fifteen-year-old Alexandra Xenakis, and a cold wave of fear washed over him. Did Lena seriously believe she could elicit a confession from her sister’s killer? If so, she needed a reality check. If Muhammed wasn’t being interviewed by her at this very moment, he’d pound on the back door of Artie’s until she granted him entrance.

  Only what would he say that wouldn’t expose him as an agent of the law? If he disclosed his knowledge of her agenda and offered to help her incriminate Davis, that might get her attention, certainly, but then she’d wonder how he knew.

  He couldn’t just tell her who he really was. She was a crime journalist, for Christ’s sake, who wrote for a tabloid that railed against the abuse of civil liberties. Not only might she jeopardize his investigation but she could expose it to the percentage of the population who’d be most offended by the government’s meddling.

  On the other hand, turning a blind eye to her agenda was unpardonable. Davis would shred her like a rabid animal if he knew she had a bead on him.

  Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  If only Ike had a means of whisking Lena to safety, like he’d done for Eryn. But, making Lena disappear for a couple of weeks wasn’t an option. The parolees at Gateway would be the first to fall under suspicion if an employee at Artie’s suddenly went missing. And Jackson needed scrutiny like he needed a hole in the head.

  There was no apparent solution to his predicament. Somehow, someway, he had to convince Lena to abandon her plans without revealing how he’d come to know them. Plus he had to confiscate her pendant while tracking down the videos she’d possibly already offloaded.

  It all sounded impossible.

  Dealing with a resolute crime journalist was proving far more difficult than discovering Gateway’s ties to terror.

  Chapter Nine

  The rain had put a damper on the parolees’ usual game of basketball. As he drew nearer to Gateway, Jackson spied the parolees taking shelter under the dormitory’s overhang. Light from the windows behind them cast their dark forms into silhouette.

  “Whassup?” Jackson asked, avoiding Davis’s hostile glare as he joined them. A pungent cloud of body heat and body odor greeted his nostrils as he stepped under the portico.

  “Yo, Muhammed’s been over there for over an hour, dog,” Jamal whined, nodding at Artie’s with a look of envy.

  “It’s gonna take that long to tell his life story,” Corey pointed out.

  “Maybe we should go an’ get ‘im.” Nadim shot Jackson a pleading look. “Ain’t nobody gone into the store in all that time. What if he don’t mind his manners?”

  Jamal perked up suddenly. “Here he come now!”

  Sure enough, Muhammed was darting across the highway with a ghostly plastic bag over his head. He whipped it off as he joined them under the overhang.

  “How was it, brotha?” Jamal asked him. The men gathered eagerly around him.

  Jackson remained on the periphery, feigning disinterest.

  “Nice,” Muhammed gushed. “Just like we was on a date. She gave me a hot dog and a soda. “We was in the back room, sittin’ all close and shit.”

  Jackson’s temples throbbed. Surreptitiously, he studied the faces of the men around him, especially Davis, for signs that they suspected ‘Maggie’ wasn’t who she said she was.

  “She look’ good, too,” Muhammed said, warming to his tale. “She had on a white shirt that was all tight and showin’ off her stuff.” The men broke into guffaws as Muhammed pretended his hands were breasts. He thrust them into Nadim’s face and said in a falsetto, “‘Tell me about your chil’hood, Muhammed.’ Damn, I had trouble rememberin’ my own name!”

  The men roared with laughter.
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  “What kind of questions she ask?” Nadim wanted to know.

  Muhammed shrugged. “All kinds. I tol’ her what I done and how conversion changed the way I thought about myself and all.”

  The men lapsed into thoughtful quiet.

  “Did you tell her everything?” Hasan wanted to know.

  “Yeah, all I could think of,” Muhammed admitted. “Hell, I got no shame. She ain’t usin’ our real names, no how.”

  As the men argued over how much of their shady pasts to divulge, Jackson slipped into his dorm room to peel off his waterlogged clothing. He’d heard enough to confirm that Lena Alexandra had successfully pulled the wool over Muhammed’s eyes. Plus she’d indulged him with just enough flirtation to announce to the others that they were going to get their turn at flirting with her, too.

  Having read several of Lena’s published articles, Jackson acknowledged that she’d interviewed murderers like Davis before. She knew what she was doing. Only, this situation was strikingly different. The men she’d interviewed had been incarcerated, with armed guards at the ready, not on parole. And none of them had butchered a member of her family. The more he considered it, the more convinced he became that her plan would backfire.

  Davis would smell her fear, no matter how many parolees she interviewed first to prepare herself. As a former cop, Davis had questioned plenty of perps. He knew what a leading question sounded like. If he sensed her questions were geared to entrap him, he would react like the predator he was.

  In good conscience, Jackson couldn’t let it come to that. He had to supply a solution to Davis that didn’t involve her interviewing him and, at a risk to his undercover assignment, he needed to do it tonight. Peeling off his sodden shorts, he cranked on the shower. Why waste another moment? His chilled, naked body tingled with anticipation. And it wasn’t just the thrill of violating orders once again that egged him on. It was the prospect of going toe-to-toe with that feisty woman and seeing who came out the victor, this time.