Protect and Serve (7 page)

Jason could sniff out a lie a mile away. That’s why he wasn’t going to let Penny leave again until he got the truth out of her, once and for all.

Jason cleared his throat. “My name is Jason Hightower, by the way.”

“Yeah. I’m Gerald McEarly.”

Bingo.
Gerald McEarly was the man who’d originally been convicted in the case on his desk. He’d recently been cleared of a double murder—a married couple who had been prominent community activists on a crusade to rid the streets of drugs and crime. Now Jason knew he had to try to find out as much about the man as he could. Finding out about him might offer up some clues that would help him solve the case.

“Well, Gerald, welcome back. I grew up with your daughter, and we dated throughout high school before we both went away to college.”

“Oh, really?”

Jason could feel Gerald’s eyes on him as he drove. He turned quickly and found the man studying him intently.

Jason offered a little of his own history to make Gerald feel comfortable. “We grew up in the same church, and played together as kids. Me, her and our friend Terrill used to be inseparable.”

“Umm…what happen?”

“Times change. People change.” Jason had no desire to rehash the past with Penny’s dad. The point was to get Gerald to open up. It would be nice if he could gather some insight into who might have had the biggest motive to set Gerald up for murder, or who might have had an even bigger motive to commit the crime.

Gerald probably wouldn’t offer up that information if he flat out asked him tonight. But he might offer some insight unknowingly, if Jason could get him talking. It was surprising how many cold cases were solved just by detectives talking to people, reinterviewing old witnesses, that kind of thing. Time could help the truth come out, at least in some cases.

“So when did you get out? And what made you decide to stop by their place tonight?”

“I just wanted to see my daughter. I’d only ever seen the baby pictures and pictures of her as a toddler. And then, for a minute when she was dancing in them videos, I saw some of them when the guys would watch them in jail. But you know, the last thing a guy wants to do is listen to a bunch of horny jailbirds commenting on the video girls and know one of them is his daughter.”

Jason nodded. The last thing a college student wanted to do was watch music videos with his new college buddies and listen to them rave about that hottie with the body and the copper eyes. His college years had been rough thanks to Penny’s stint as a video vixen.

He pulled up to the address on Temple Street that Gerald had given him and made a U-turn so he could drop him off right in front of the weathered gray house.

“Thanks for the ride, young man. I appreciate it.” Gerald opened the door and slowly stepped out. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Oh, you can count on that
.

Until Jason found out who had really committed those murders, and whether this man was any threat to Penny, Gerald McEarly would definitely be seeing more of him. He nodded as Gerald shut the door. Instead of heading home, Jason went to the precinct. He had a sudden urge to find out all he could about Gerald McEarly, and to dive into the latest cold case to land on his desk.

The downtown precinct of the Paterson Police Department was unusually busy, even for a Friday night. Jason tried to take that as a positive sign, since it meant many more criminals were off the street, at least for the night. But a crowded precinct meant there was more crime out there to begin with.

Ideally, he’d be home watching a game with his brothers or out on a hot date on his night off. Ideally, he wouldn’t even be concerned about the drama going on in the life of his cheating ex-girlfriend. Too bad ideal situations seemed to be lacking, and all he was left with was this obsessive and overwhelming need to protect and serve Penny.

The fact that her father was the man cleared of murder in a just-reopened cold case wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t believe in coincidences.

“Hey, Jason. What are you doing here tonight? I thought this was your night off.” His brother Lawrence eyed him as he chugged coffee out of Jason’s Pace University alumni mug.

Jason had gotten his BS in forensic science from Pace’s stellar program. Once he was done, he’d moved back to Paterson and joined the Paterson Police Department, like his father and other men in his family—the ones who weren’t firemen, anyway. The desire to serve the community just seemed to run through the blood of Hightower men, and he was no different. It had never really occurred to him to do anything else.

He was tempted to snatch his mug away from his nosy older brother, but he decided it wasn’t really worth it. “What are you doing here? I thought you all but moved into the satellite trailer on Governor Street since the McKnight twins were released.”

It was rare that their paths crossed, since Jason spent the bulk of his time going through old reports, retesting old evidence when newer, more cutting-edge tools became available and interviewing old witnesses for new clues. As a narcotics detective, Lawrence spent the majority of his time in surveillance mode, stalking dealers and getting them off the streets.

Lawrence shrugged. “Somebody has to keep the riffraff in line. But that still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here.”

“I just wanted to do a little research.” Telling Lawrence he wanted to do research on Penny’s father would no doubt earn him an earful that he had neither the time nor the inclination to listen to, so Jason left that out. “The release of the guy cleared of the double murder of that community activist couple means more work for me.”

Lawrence nodded knowingly. “Pouring yourself into your work might be just the ticket until Penny goes back to Los Angeles. You don’t want to end up doing anything stupid.”

If by stupid Lawrence meant hounding Penny for answers and digging through her father’s records to make sure the man wasn’t a threat, he was way too late.

When it came to Penny, Jason realized, he bypassed stupid and went headfirst into crazy.

“Yeah, well, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.” Jason shrugged and started to walk away. “And make sure you clean out my mug and put it back. I don’t know why you always take my mug, with all the dang mugs there are in this place—including three of your own.”

Lawrence grinned and held up the mug in a mock salute.

Jason kept going and didn’t stop until he entered the records room.

After several hours reading up on Gerald McEarly, Jason felt he didn’t know the man any better than he had before he started. Nothing in the man’s past seemed to scream that he’d be a threat to Penny. But Jason couldn’t say for sure he wouldn’t be.

And there was also nothing about Gerald McEarly’s past that seemed to point to who the real murderer was.

Who had done it? Someone had killed the couple and hadn’t had to pay for it. Nothing in the court records, or Gerald’s police records, gave any hint of a lead.

Gerald McEarly had made bad decisions in his past. Decisions that would have landed him in jail eventually even if he hadn’t been found guilty of the crime he’d recently been cleared of. That meant he had to be watched carefully, as far as Jason was concerned.

If Penny weren’t involved, he might not have been so obsessed about Gerald. But she was, and Jason had to come to grips with the fact that it made all the difference in the world.

Jason rubbed his head in frustration and leaned back. There were times when his stubborn streak paid off. Unfortunately, tonight didn’t seem like one of those nights.

It took a certain amount of tenacity to be a good detective, and even more to be a cold-case detective. What other kind of person would think he could solve crimes that were sometimes decades old?

He stood and walked over to the only window in the small room. The sounds of the still very busy police department seemed miles away, and the pounding of his heart seemed way louder than normal.

Cars zoomed down Martin Luther King Boulevard. As he watched them, he tried to process his feelings.

Penny was back for a short time. The very beautiful woman was the same very beautiful girl who’d lied to him and stomped on his heart. Why the heck was he spending his Friday night trying to make sure her deadbeat dad meant her no harm?

Because it’s related to your case,
he told himself. But he knew that was only a fraction of the reason why.

Given Penny’s deceit, maybe she and her parents deserved one another. He should really leave them to their sordid little lives….

Then he thought about Penny.
His Penny…
His copper-eyed angel…

She’d been as sweet and innocent as they came back then. She’d given him her heart and her virginity, and no one could tell him they hadn’t been soul mates.

So what had made her stray?

And what had made his
other
best friend, the only man outside his family he’d have trusted with his life, the one he’d thought would always have his back, want to destroy him without any regard?

Those questions had overwhelmed his detective’s mind for the past fifteen years. Now he had to complicate it with Penny and Terrill’s reappearance, questions about Penny’s father and the reopened murder case.

He groaned out loud and moved away from the window. Nothing would be solved tonight. But he knew he wouldn’t rest until at least one fifteen-year-old mystery was laid to rest. He
would
find out why Penny and Terrill had betrayed him.

T
he adult choir always sang on the second Sunday at Mount Zion, and Penny was happy for it. Not that she didn’t appreciate the staid and steady songs sung by the elders in the senior choir, which Big Mama used to belong to, but they did seem to make church service drag on just a little bit longer whenever they sang.

And with every single member of the Hightower family, including Jason, sitting in church this afternoon, she wanted the service over quickly, so she and Terrill could get out of there without having to have yet another uncomfortable, awkward encounter.

Determined not to draw attention to herself, Penny didn’t even stand up and sing along with the choir.

“Speak to My Heart” was one of her favorite songs. Today, calmness came over her spirit when she heard the song. It almost seemed as if, by sitting still and listening properly, she’d be able to figure out the right thing to do.

She did manage to clap as the choir finished singing. The soloist had a voice like an angel, and Penny could see the wheels turning in Terrill’s record executive head. Since there was no way they’d be able to have him try to connect with the potential next big thing
and
get out of the church without running into the Hightower family, Penny hoped he’d turn his star-finding mode off. She thought about shooting up a silent prayer. But given her track record since she arrived home, she had an inkling of how that prayer would be answered.

She was starting to regret her decision to come to service. She should have been spending the day going through Big Mama’s things and deciding what to tackle first at the start of business on Monday morning. The sooner she wrapped things up, the sooner she’d be able to go back to Los Angeles.

The last time Penny spoke to her business partner, Maritza Morales, she had said she had everything under control. However, Penny still felt the need to get her life back to normal as soon as possible. Last night with Jason had been a close call. She didn’t think she could take much more of his probing.

Then there was the fact that she was still very much attracted to him…. If that kiss they’d shared was any indicator, the man still sparked her fire.

Lord, look at me lusting after the man. And in church, no less. Forgive me.

She took a small peek toward the ceiling and hoped lightning didn’t come down and strike her.

“Ahhh, speak to my heart. Speak to my heart!” The pastor stood behind the podium and pounded it with his hand. “Oh, some of us bid the Lord to speak to us and tell us what to do, but we don’t listen…. Y’all don’t hear me…”

The pastor turned as if he were going to walk away, only to be called back by the responses of “Preach!” and “Tell it!” from the congregation.

“It never ceases to amaze me how God’s children can see signs of His desires for them all around them. Know in their heart what the Lord wants them to do. Hear the soft sweet voice of
Je-sus
whispering the right thing in their ear, and still go off and do what they want to do. Still go off and do things their own way. That’s disobedience, church!”

“Sure is! Tell it, Pastor!”

“Mmm…hmmm…. Preach!”

The amen choir was in full form today, ready to amplify and agree with everything the pastor said. The man had just started preaching, and already they were dead on with the call and response.

The sun shone through the beautiful stained-glass windows of the church, each one a superb artistic rendering of a key moment in Jesus’s life, from his birth in the manger to his death on the cross. The bold colors of the stained glass refracted the light and dispersed it around the church in such a way that even the glass seemed to be in accord with the pastor’s powerful voice.

Penny felt an odd stirring deep inside of her, and she looked down at her hands in an effort to find something to do besides listen to the pastor. She recognized the feeling coming over her for what it was.

Big Mama used to say you knew it whenever the Word was speaking to you, knew it when you came to church and got the message God was trying to send to you, knew it when the word was
meant
for you.

“Some of y’all think you know better than the Lord. You think you have a better plan for your life than God does!” The pastor slammed his hand on the podium and did a little spin. “And some of you so high and mighty, you think you have a better plan for others’ lives, too. You’re not just content to ignore God’s plans for you. You’re so tough, you think you know what’s best for everybody. You’re busy messing with God’s plans for others. Some of y’all are busybodies, always in other folks’ business.”

“I know that’s right, Pastor! Mmmph.”

Was that Sophie’s voice? I
know
that wasn’t Sophie.

Penny shook her head at the fact that not everyone was ready to hear the message. Truth be told, she wasn’t ready to hear it, either. But she wasn’t hypocritical enough to act as if she didn’t have the faults the pastor was preaching about.

“Preach on it! Preach on it!” One of the deacons waved his right hand in the air in agreement with what the pastor said.

“See, but I’m gonna tell you something you might not know.” The pastor leaned forward on the podium, as if he were letting them in on a secret. “You can’t mess with God’s will.” He stepped back and shook his head. “No. What God has planned for a man, no other man can mess with.
His will be done.
On Earth as it is in Heaven.” He pointed his finger at the congregation. “You can’t mess with God’s will!”

“Sure can’t!” a younger woman shouted.

Another man clapped and stood. “Tell ’em, Pastor. You betta tell them!”

“And even if you ignore the voice of God, speaking to your heart and telling you the right thing to do, you can’t ignore it for long. God isn’t going to let you cause havoc and strife in the lives of His children for long, either…”

Penny started thinking about her role in Jason and Terrill’s broken friendship. She had decided at the time that deceit was the best route to take, even though everything in her heart told her it was wrong. She had thought it would be best for Jason if she was no longer a part of his life.

She hadn’t meant for Terrill to become a casualty of the fallout.

At the time, she’d decided to ignore everything she knew was right, even her own love for Jason. But she’d done it so he could have a better life. Didn’t that count for something? It wasn’t as if she’d done it to be cruel.

“Not even your
best
intentions can measure up to the Master’s plan. And if you
truly
let God work through you, then you’d know that…” The pastor’s words seemed to be a direct response to her thoughts.

Well, alrighty then
…

Penny wrapped her arms around her waist and pulled herself farther into the corner of the pew. It would have been nice to disappear right into the pew.

“Think about the Lord Jesus before he died on the cross for our sins. Think about what it meant for him to follow God’s plans…what God told his heart to do…. Think about what it meant to do his Father’s will when it meant his very life on Earth would be lost.” The pastor paused and shook his head for emphasis. “And some of us don’t want to do the right thing because it’s just
easier
to do the wrong thing. We think we can save ourselves some hurt or discomfort. We take the easy way, instead of God’s way, and we end up losing.

“And some of us don’t want to do the right thing because our material possessions might be at risk. Or our money might be a little lighter if we do. So we don’t pay our tithes like we supposed to, even though the Bible clearly tells us
ten
percent!
Yes, think about the Savior giving up his life for you and imagine what you might have done in our Savior’s place.”

The pastor wiped his face with a white handkerchief, even though he hardly seemed to be sweating. He must be giving the congregation enough time to imagine themselves in the place of Jesus.

Penny tried to imagine herself making the decision Jesus had made, but she kept coming back to the decision she’d made fifteen years ago.

It didn’t make any sense for her to come clean now.

Did it?

“Would you go to the cross and die for the sins of people who you hadn’t even met, folks who you knew going in would ignore your Word, ignore you when you spoke to their hearts? People who just went on ahead and did things their way, because they couldn’t be bothered with silly things like right and wrong?” The pastor twisted up his lips in a decidedly disgusted fashion.

“No. No, you wouldn’t. You’d work out some kind of a rationalization in your mind about how unworthy some of the people were. How some of them wouldn’t even take the balm of salvation you were offering, would never open up their hearts to know God. And how you could really do so much more alive and walking among them, even with your Father whispering in your heart it was the right thing to do…”

Penny lifted her head toward the ceiling.

Oh, yeah, Big Mama was definitely up in heaven pulling strings now.

Penny remembered when she’d lost the baby all those years ago, when she’d made up her mind to break up with Jason and let him think she and Terrill were a couple. Big Mama had voiced her opinion on the matter once, and only once.

Big Mama had said she didn’t care how much Penny rationalized things in her mind, her heart had to know it wasn’t right. She’d said one day Penny’s heart was going to let her know she’d done wrong, and hopefully it wouldn’t be too late to make things right.

Too late.

It was really too late. Jason hated her, and he should. He also hated Terrill, and for that she would always feel guilty. But it was too late to do anything about it.

“Maybe…the Lord…is trying…to tell you something. Maybe the Lord is trying to tell you something. Right now…” The pastor started singing, and the choir chimed in.

No, they didn’t bust out, “Maybe the Lord is Trying to Tell You Something,”
Penny thought. There was no way she was going to have a
Color Purple
–inspired, come-to-Jesus moment.

It’s too late, Big Mama. Stop it.

As the choir sang the words, they penetrated her heart more than she could have imagined. She felt as if she were inside a pressure chamber and she could feel everything squeezing and pushing in. The steel enclosure she had encased her heart and her feelings in all those years ago wanted to cave in under the strain.

How long would it be before her walls collapsed? She didn’t feel she had a lot of time at all.

“Maybe the Lord is putting something on your heart right now.” The pastor spoke in a softer voice, and the choir started to hum along. “Maybe you’re tired of trying things your way and want to give God’s way a chance. Maybe you just need to bring the heaviness in your heart and hand it over to the Lord today. Maybe you just need to sit in a space of silence and listen to His voice this morning. I invite you now to come on up and bring it to the altar. Lay down your burdens. The Lord is thy Shepherd. Let him lead you. Let him help you carry the load if it’s too heavy. Bring it to the cross.”

Before Penny even realized what she was doing, she stood and started walking up to the altar.

So much for not trying to call attention to herself….

In her heart, she knew there was no way she was going to make it through losing Big Mama, her father’s reappearance, Carla’s antics
and
Jason’s relentless probing without a little help from the Lord.

Jason watched as Penny made her way to the front of the church and wondered what she had done that made her feel the need to head up to the altar. Because of the way Big Mama raised her in the church, he knew, Penny didn’t wear guilt easily.

However, he’d only ever seen her go up to the altar twice before. Once was after the first time they’d made love in high school. She’d felt so torn and guilt-ridden about it, and, he’d thought they would never be intimate again. Luckily—or maybe not so luckily, depending—that didn’t happen.

Their hormones had continued to get the better of them, and eventually a condom had broken and she’d gotten pregnant.

Then she’d said the baby wasn’t his after all.

The memory of those words led him to the only other time Penny had made a trip to the altar of Mount Zion Baptist, right after she got out of the hospital, when she’d lost the baby.

At the time, he could only fathom it was because she had been guilty of cheating on him. Now he was starting to think she might have been feeling guilty about lying to him and making him
believe
she’d cheated.

Watching her kneel in front of the pastor as he prayed for her and the others at the altar, Jason could only frown.

Maybe the Lord was trying to tell him something. Because he knew he couldn’t rest until he found out the truth.

He felt Joel’s elbow in his side and closed his eyes. Everyone else’s heads were bowed in prayer, and he was busy watching Penny and trying to figure her out. Joel’s nudge served as a reminder. But Jason couldn’t help but wonder what Joel was doing paying attention to him when he should have had his own eyes closed in prayer.

Jason noticed his mother making a beeline over to the pew where Penny and Terrill were sitting instead of lining up to shake the pastor’s hand. She practically stepped over his father and anyone else in her way. And Jason could only shake his head in dread as he thought about what his mother’s mad dash could possibly mean.

He sincerely hoped she wasn’t inviting them to Sunday dinner. And since he knew his mother so well, he could then only hope Penny and Terrill had the sense, the common decency and good taste, to say no. Because if he had to sit through Sunday dinner with the two of them—her in her beautiful navy and cream silk floral dress and him in his navy-blue designer suit, looking like a power couple—he didn’t know what he’d do.