Creepin’

by L. A. Banks

  “It’ll never happen,” Sarai said, smartly tossing her bag onto her shoulder and walking away. “What a monumental ego,” she said in a low voice as she pushed open the lobby door.

  “I heard that!” Nighthawk said with a short laugh.

  “Of course you did,” she said in an equally low voice, knowing he could hear her. “Go screw yourself.”

  “I’d much prefer screwing you.”

  He knew she had heard that, too.

  She didn’t respond, though. She just got out of there as fast as she could.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  Angry, Daniel tossed the newspaper he’d been reading into the wastebasket beside his desk and reached over to press the intercom button. “Maya, would you get me that reporter on the phone?”

  “Mark Houston?” Maya asked cautiously.

  “You know which one I’m talking about,” Daniel said irritably.

  “Just a minute, Daniel,” Maya said.

  Daniel sat back in his chair and impatiently drummed his fingers on the surface of the desk. This would be the last time a reporter referred to him as the Mike Tyson of Capitol Hill simply because he was an ex-boxer.

  He and Mike Tyson had nothing in common except that they were both ex-pugilists.

  He had started boxing when he was twelve. His father, a man who thought a black kid had only one way off the mean streets—by using his fists—had been his first trainer.

  But his father hadn’t been able to resist the streets himself and had turned into a drunk who knocked around both his wife and his kid when the spirit hit him.

  One night, when the old man had come in looking for a fight, Daniel had given it to him. Beaten and humiliated, his father had thrown him out of the house while his mother had looked on helplessly.

  He’d been only sixteen, but he’d been a man even then. He made a vow never to do two things—consume alcohol or hit a woman, no matter the provocation.

  He moved in with his mother’s brother, Jake, who took him to his neighborhood gym where one of the trainers immediately recognized his potential. By the time he was nineteen he was a two-time Chicago Golden Gloves champion.

  For the next ten years he trained like a madman and steadily rose in the heavyweight rankings until he achieved the ultimate goal: Heavyweight Champion of the World.

  His Uncle Jake had been in his corner all the way. His father died of liver cancer five years ago. His mother was now living in a mansion in Florida.

  At thirty, he retired from boxing. He’d already been doing it for eighteen years and had enough money to live on for the rest of his life. He would have to be a fool to risk brain damage for money and glory. He went back to college instead and majored in political science. The news media ate it up. A boxer displaying intelligence? They were known for having brawn, not brains.

  Daniel surprised them all by graduating in the top ten percentile of his class at Northwestern. Then, he shocked them again by announcing that he was going to run for the House of Representatives. There were a lot of young people, he said, who needed to know that hustling on the streets or becoming a famous athlete weren’t the only two ways a person could be a success in life.

  He went back to his old South Side neighborhood and opened a youth center. The people were skeptical at first. But when he moved into the neighborhood, they knew he was for real. They got behind him and got him elected. He felt duty bound to represent their interests in Washington, D. C. Now, he felt having reporters always referring to him as the Mike Tyson of Capitol Hill detracted from his purpose, which was to have his constituents’ concerns heard and taken seriously in this town.

  Maya knocked quickly but came into the room before he could say “come in” as was her normal routine. Smiling, she placed a fresh cup of coffee in front of him, and went to sit on the chair across from him. “Do we really want to antagonize Mark Houston? He works for the biggest paper in D.C. Can’t we simply ignore that comment at the end of the piece? The rest of the article was complimentary. He said you were effective, smart, and devoted to your constituents. He didn’t mean anything by the Mike Tyson comment, I’m sure. It’s just that you and Mike are the most popular ex-heavyweight champions. You for who you are and Mike for who he is,” she said, grimacing. “I mean, I’m sure Mike gets tired of them reminding him about the past, too. But as long as you used to be the Champ they’re going to remind you.” She smiled. “Wouldn’t you much rather talk to Sarai? I have her on line one.”

  “You’re fired,” Daniel said, pointing to the door as he reached for the phone. “Out!”

  Maya, smiling happily, rose and left the room. She knew she wasn’t really fired.

  Daniel always thought twice before letting her go after she disobeyed a direct order.

  Although she had a huge crush on Daniel, she would never dream of letting him in on the secret. For one thing, she loved working for him, and for another, she knew he adored Sarai who was the only person who could talk sense into him, which she hoped was what was going on in his office right now.

  Tell Mark Houston off, indeed! Houston was just waiting for Daniel to fall flat on his face. The thing about Washington, D.C. was that the only thing more interesting than politics was the politicians making fools of themselves in the media. Daniel was a good man, and way too idealistic to recognize that not everyone in town had his best interests at heart. In fact, most of them didn’t.

  Sometimes, she had to step up and save him from himself.

  She sat down at her desk, and took a sip from her coffee mug. She glanced at the red light on the phone denoting that line one was still in use. Smiling, she continued with her morning correspondence while the man sitting in the office waiting to speak with Daniel tried to be unobtrusive about staring at her breasts.

  It was hard to do, though, because Maya Stephenson was quite a beauty. She had rich chocolate skin, sooty black-brown hair that she wore in a short, layered cut that flattered her heart-shaped face. Lips a man’s eyes lingered on. And a tall, curvaceous body with legs that the guy sitting across from her had glimpsed only once when she’d gotten up to go into the inner office but now swore were the finest he’d ever laid eyes on. He was hoping she’d get up again so he’d get the chance to see if his eyes were deceiving him or not.

  But, no, the buzzer sounded, and he heard Representative Wingate’s voice say, “Maya, you can send Mr. Green in now.”

  Send him in. He sighed regrettably. He wasn’t going to see those legs anymore.

  In Chicago, Sarai replaced the receiver in its cradle on her desk. Speaking with Daniel only intensified her need to see him in the flesh. He’d been gone nearly three weeks now, and she missed him terribly.

  Lord knows she’d done her best to stay so busy that when she returned to an empty apartment at night all she’d have the energy to do would be to take a shower and fall into bed. Still, she craved him so badly her dreams were filled with him. He was the only thing she wanted to dream about.

  As for work, the case against Young was getting stronger every day. All three of the girls they’d rescued positively identified him as their captor. Even his parents were offering tidbits about his strange nocturnal habits. It seemed they didn’t sleep as deeply as their son had assumed and were awakened many nights by the sound of his either leaving the apartment, or returning to it.

  They were appalled that he could have done such horrible things, and while they would pay for his defense, if he were found guilty, they thought he should be punished to the full extent of the law. If that meant life imprisonment, then so be it.

  Fortunately for Young, in 2000, then governor, George Ryan imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. The present governor hadn’t seen fit to lift the moratorium. Therefore those who would have formerly been put to death were instead sentenced to life in prison.

  Sarai could understand why the death penalty didn’t work. However, animals like Young were benefiting because of a flawed system, and that rankl
ed her.

  She turned her attention to her next case: that of Sean White. As was the modus operandi of many pedophiles, Sean had chosen a career working with children. He was a kindergarten teacher at a private school. The city’s wealthiest families inadvertently sent their little darlings to school to be fondled by him.

  He first came to the police’s attention in 2005 when the mother of one of his students filed a complaint against him saying her son, Peter, age five, had told her that Mr. White had touched him “down there.”

  At the time, Sean White explained, and quite believably, he had only been trying to assist Peter with a stubborn zipper. Peter admitted that he had been trying to get his zipper down in order to use the toilet.

  A five-year-old makes a very bad character witness. His own character is not yet fully formed, and he is bound to make poor judgments. The school wanted to drop it.

  It would be bad publicity to have their name dragged into the news. Peter’s mom simply removed Peter from the school. The school then terminated Sean White on general principle.

  In their opinion, he was probably innocent. But it wouldn’t do for the source of rumors to still be on their exalted staff. They gave him a nice severance package.

  Today, Sean White, brought down a peg or two by the incident, was working at a lowly public elementary school. Once again, a mother lodged a complaint against him.

  The school, less worried about its reputation than the welfare of its students, brought the police in and the mother pressed charges. White was arrested, spent the night in jail but disappeared the next day after being bailed out by his brother.

  Sarai was just happy that White had not thus far shown a propensity for murder like John Michael Young. So what if she had to track the big doofus down? She had a good feeling that he hadn’t gone far. His bank account couldn’t support a flea, and it wouldn’t be the first time a fugitive from justice tried to get lost in the city of Chicago.

  Therefore, she and Jim were focusing on all of White’s friends and family. They figured someone he knew had provided him with a hideaway.

  “Wanna grab some lunch?” Jim asked, looking up from his computer monitor.

  “Not hungry,” Sarai said. “You go. I want to go through White’s employment record again.”

  “You’ve already been through it with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “Yeah, but I keep thinking I might have missed something.”

  Jim smiled as he pushed himself up from his desk. He was a good-looking guy with dark brown hair and eyes. He was five-eleven, and had a fit, but not overly muscular build.

  At forty he had been a policeman for fifteen years. He’d been a Marine before joining up. Sarai had met him the first day on the job more than ten years ago and he’d treated her with respect from the beginning. It was not something she could say about some of her other male colleagues who either treated her like a Barbie doll, as if an attractive woman had to have been born without a brain in her head, or as a sex object.

  “Okay,” Jim said finally. “I’ll bring you back a sandwich.”

  He was always looking out for her.

  “Thanks,” she said, and returned her attention to the thick file on her desk.

  What had struck her about White’s work history was that there was a lapse of two years between one position at an elementary school and employment at another. She didn’t think he had not had to work those two years. She figured he must have gotten a job where he was paid under the table. That meant he was paid in cash and the employer neglected to report it to the proper governmental authorities.

  Taking into account his need to be near children, she narrowed his options down to neighborhood daycare centers whose proprietors didn’t care whom they hired as long as they got cheap labor.

  She got on the phone with a friend in Social Services. Ten minutes later she received a fax with the list of all the daycare centers in the city that had been written up for violating labor laws in the past twelve months.

  When Jim returned with her sandwich, she rose and handed him a copy. He gave her the sandwich, a turkey on rye. “What’s this?” he asked, peering down at the sheet of paper.

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” she said, putting on her jacket. “I’ll drive.”

  “I need two things from you,” Nighthawk told Embeth, which was the name of the ancient sorceress. “If you provide them, I’ll do what you wish.”

  Her eyes, the only lively feature in her face, shone with excitement. “You promise?”

  “I swear,” said Nighthawk. “But I want your assurance that the enchantment will last as long as I wish it to. Not just for a few days as most of your spells do.”

  “This spell will last as long as I draw breath,” Embeth promised. “And I’m still a few years away from my four-hundredth birthday.”

  Nighthawk smiled his pleasure. “Wonderful. You have eight days to work your magic.”

  “More than enough time,” Embeth said in anticipation of her impending death. “I need to know one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Nighthawk asked, nervous about any stipulation she might insist upon. Lately, she was more concerned about her spells not causing harm to others.

  She used to be a stand-up gal. Always willing to kill or maim in the name of Lucifer.

  Now it seemed the closer she got to death, the more she wanted to make sure that the tote board that kept count of her bad deeds and her good deeds had a vastly superior number on the good side.

  Frankly, that made him nervous.

  However, one didn’t come by a powerful sorceress every day. They were as rare as a faithful husband, which reminded him why he was there.

  “What’s that?” he patiently asked again.

  “I would feel better about it if I knew you were doing this because of true love and not as another bid in your quest for power,” she told him boldly.

  “I love her,” he said with sincerity.

  Embeth studied his face for several minutes before agreeing to his request. “Come back tomorrow,” she said at last.

  Sarai and Jim’s search for White proved fruitless for four days. On the fifth day they went to a daycare center in an old South Side neighborhood.

  The building was a large renovated frame house painted a loud blue as if the application of a bold primary color was the first indication to prospective clients that children would naturally be happy there. Sarai went to the front door and introduced herself while Jim went around back to prevent White from skipping should he be on the premises.

  The black woman who answered the door was big, tall, gray-haired, and from the expression on her mocha-colored face, had little time for visitors. The noise level was in the upper registers, infants screaming, other children ripping and running all over the place, plus a dog barking. Sarai guessed the woman’s nerves were frazzled.

  She held up her ID and the woman looked at it through the screen door.

  “Police?” she said, frowning. “What y’all want ’round here?”

  “Hopefully, nothing,” Sarai said with a reassuring smile. “There is a very dangerous pedophile who’s on the lam. We’re checking every daycare center in the city because he usually gravitates toward children.” She tiptoed, peering behind the woman. Most of the children Sarai saw were either African American or Hispanic.

  Two women were trying to corral the ones who were causing havoc. They were also African American.

  “Pedo-what?”

  “Pedophile,” Sarai said. “It’s a person who molests children.”

  This was obviously distressing news to the woman. Her eyes stretched wide. “Listen, this is my business. I’ve been running this place for nearly thirty years. Now, I had a problem with somebody who worked here falsifying papers in order to stay in the country and I got in trouble because of it. But since then, I check out everybody who works here. Everybody!”

  “That’s good,” Sarai said calmly. “That’s excellent, in fact.”

  The woma
n suddenly looked embarrassed. She smiled tentatively as she held the screen door open for Sarai. “Come on in, child,” she said. “Come on back to the kitchen. We ain’t gonna be able to hear ourselves think in here.”

  They walked through the melee toward the back of the house. The kitchen was a big, clean room with a huge oak table in the center and the south wall had a huge picture window. The backyard looked deep, and beautifully manicured. A large yellow dog romped in it.

  “Sit down,” the woman offered.

  Sarai sat down.

  “You’re Mrs. Davenport, then,” Sarai assumed. A Nora Davenport was the owner of Wee Heaven Daycare Center.

  “That’s right,” said Nora proudly. “Up until last year, I didn’t have any problems from anybody about the operation of this place. It scared me. Now, I request a résumé and I call the references every time. I don’t just ask for them and never phone to check them out.”

  “That’s a good habit to have,” Sarai complimented her. While she was talking she was pulling out a manila folder with copies of White’s mug shot in it. She opened the folder and handed Nora a copy.

  “Have you seen this man?”

  Nora’s skin went pale underneath her mocha coloring. Her large brown eyes looked frightened. “Oh, God, that’s the new guy. I just hired him two weeks ago.”

  Sarai contained her excitement. There would be time to celebrate after White was in custody. “Is he here now?” she asked softly.

  Nora shook her head. “No, he won’t get here until noon. He works from noon until six when the last of the kids who stay longer because their parents work late go home. I’ve never seen him in a car. I think he walks to work.”

  Sarai glanced at her watch. It was fifteen minutes until noon. She had parked the unmarked police car down the street, thinking that if White was there he’d be jumpy and seeing any car pulling up to the daycare center might make him bolt out the back.