Dangerous Intent: A Nichelle Clarke Crime Thriller Read online

  DANGEROUS INTENT

  A NICHELLE CLARKE CRIME THRILLER

  LYNDEE WALKER

  LAURA MUSE

  Copyright © 2022 by LynDee Walker and Laura Muse.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Severn River Publishing

  www.SevernRiverPublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-64875-251-3 (Paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-64875-252-0 (Hardback)

  CONTENTS

  Also by LynDee Walker

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Fear No Truth

  Thanks for Reading

  FEAR NO TRUTH: Prologue

  FEAR NO TRUTH: Chapter 1

  FEAR NO TRUTH: Chapter 2

  FEAR NO TRUTH: Chapter 3

  Read Fear No Truth

  Love Reading Mysteries & Thrillers?

  You Might Also Enjoy…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  ALSO BY LYNDEE WALKER

  The Nichelle Clarke Series

  Front Page Fatality

  Buried Leads

  Small Town Spin

  Devil in the Deadline

  Cover Shot

  Lethal Lifestyles

  Deadly Politics

  Hidden Victims

  Dangerous Intent

  The Faith McClellan Series

  Fear No Truth

  Leave No Stone

  No Sin Unpunished

  Nowhere to Hide

  No Love Lost

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  Fatal Features: A Nichelle Clarke Crime Thriller Novella.

  To the queer kids: may you find a safe place to land.

  1

  The news never sleeps—it’s a fundamental fact of my job I’ve never minded.

  The problem these days is that the life cycle of the average crime story is about five blinks: if all goes well, a suspect is usually apprehended in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. That’s enough time for a daily news source to do a teaser, a full story, and a follow-up, back-to-back-to-back. For a weekly? Not so much.

  I never thought I would miss the days of getting phone calls in the middle of the night with tips on a story, racing competitors to the scene to ask all the right questions, and surviving on too much coffee and not enough food or sleep while dashing from interview to interview. But after the third major crime story in a row was done and dusted before I could do much more than tease my upcoming piece on Twitter? I was about ready to throw my favorite pair of sapphire Jimmy Choos through the wall.

  Slouching into the morning staff meeting with nothing to show for myself has always been the worst feeling. If only the familiar orange chair and Bob’s usual greeting were enough to conjure a story from the big bucket of nothing I had to offer. At least I had coffee, which I set precariously on the edge of my editor’s desk to free my hands.

  “Morning, kiddo,” Bob said. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the leather blotter. I could tell by the firm set of his mouth that he was disappointed and trying not to show it. “Did you see the headline in the Telegraph this morning?”

  Nope. But I had a feeling I was about to see it and hear about it, too.

  I picked up the paper resting on his inbox. The new crime reporter at the Richmond Telegraph, a “rising star”—or so Rick Andrews proclaimed when he brought him to Richmond from Tampa, anyway—named Mark Lowell, led the daily paper’s front with the headline: “Subway Slasher arrested.”

  “Subway Slasher? Really?” I shook my head. “It was a stabbing in the parking lot outside of a Subway restaurant. There was no slashing. Ergo, no need for a catchy serial killer nickname.”

  “Catchy serial killer nicknames sell newspapers,” Bob said.

  “Lucky for us our paper is free?” I tested a smile, which he met with a scowl. “Come on, Bob—even Charlie Lewis had more tact than this in her coverage last night. And me admitting Charlie did something right is cause to pinch yourself and make sure you’re not dreaming. Charlie dug far enough to find the reason for this mess, which was a feud over a woman, who is the victim’s current girlfriend and the suspect’s ex-wife; and a child, who is the suspect’s son.”

  “So what else can you find out about it to get us more than they had?”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything else here to get. There’s certainly no cause for this kind of fear-mongering language. It was an isolated incident, and they arrested the guy.”

  Mark had only been on the Telegraph’s staff for a few months, but he was already dancing on my last nerve. To totally dehumanize the situation like that and remove all of the motivating emotion went against my personal reporting philosophy: the center of every story is a person, and putting the human element first is the key difference between muckraking nonsense and good journalism. But Mark was exactly Rick Andrews’s kind of man: a snappy writer with a great grasp of what sells papers.

  “You have to give the guy some credit,” Bob said. “He knows how to keep you reading.”

  I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes, burying my nose in my coffee cup and taking a sip of sugar-free white mocha. Hearing Bob praise Mark Lowell brought out a petulant side that had me feeling more like a cub reporter fresh out of school than the professional journalist with more than a decade of experience that I was.

  “He did get the scoop on three big cases before I could even draft a feature.” Three long swallows of my latte later, my voice sounded smaller than usual. “Seriously, Bob. Am I losing my touch?”

  “Still got weekly jet lag?”

  It had been almost a year since up-and-coming RVA Week plucked me, Bob, sports reporter and local baseball legend Grant Parker, and veteran photo editor Larry McCoy from the Richmond Telegraph, and I was more than a little ashamed to admit that I was still struggling to get my feet under me.

  “I don’t know whether to be mad at Aaron for doi
ng his job too well or at myself for not keeping up.” I sighed, dropping my head into my hands. Aaron White was the public information officer at the Richmond PD, long a favorite and trusted source. But he had to give Mark and Charlie the same information he gave me, no matter how much of a deadline advantage they had. I let the wallowing go on for thirty more seconds before straightening my spine and looking back at Bob. “What I need is something they don’t know to look for.”

  “Unless you plan on committing the crime of the century yourself, you can’t exactly force it.” Bob’s face softened into a smile. “You couldn’t lose your touch, kiddo. You just need to find your new groove. You’ve had a few big hits along the way here—the only thing left now is making that consistent.”

  I swallowed the “And how long is that going to take?” when the rest of the staff started trickling in. Grant Parker dropped into the chair beside mine. “Morning, Lois.”

  As in Lois Lane, intrepid investigative reporter. The nickname had never felt more off-base.

  “Hey, Parker. How’s Mel feeling?”

  His face lit up with the thousand-watt grin that made women all over Virginia call for smelling salts even now that he was a self-described “old married dude.”

  “She’s gorgeous. And starving all the time. Like she’s making up for the months of misery and puking all at once.”

  “Morning, everyone,” Bob said, picking up his notes and launching the meeting by asking Larry about possible cover art before moving on to the food section.

  “I stumbled on something yesterday you might want to check out.” Parker spoke softly out of the side of his mouth as Bob got a rundown of this week’s music news.

  Interest officially piqued, I was about to whisper-ask what when Bob turned to me.

  “Sounds like the big crime cases have been slipping right through our timeline.” Bob’s searching gaze didn’t let up even when I started squirming in my seat. “Which means you need to look elsewhere. Try out a feature; you’ve done them before.” He snapped his fingers a few times, lost in thought.

  I knew better than to interrupt him when he was digging through his internal filing system. I may have a relatively reliable photographic memory, but my editor unfortunately did not. Then again, he had a Pulitzer and I did not—yet, anyway.

  “The drug dealer’s brother.” Bob pointed a finger at me, the details finally surfacing. “Even Eunice said your feature on him was solid way back when.”

  He was talking about Troy Wright—and Eunice, the features editor from our Telegraph days. When Troy’s older brother was killed and then framed as part of an elaborate coverup, I found the truth…and got myself kidnapped and almost murdered for the trouble. In the aftermath, Troy and I had become friends. Bob was right about that feature: a star student, Troy fostered dreams of becoming a TV sportscaster, even doing a ride-along with Parker for some sports reporting experience before he went off to college, and with the tragic death of his brother for a backdrop, it made for a fantastic human-interest piece.

  “You want the story that people won’t stop talking about, even if they don’t know anything about it right now,” Bob said. “What this newspaper—hell, this whole city—needs are big-picture discussions, and you, kid, can write a story that paves the road to them.”

  It sounded strangely less daunting when he put it that way. There was so much going on in Richmond and the world around it, I couldn’t spit without hitting “big picture.”

  “Larry, we’ll keep you in the loop if Nichelle comes up with something that will require different cover art.” Bob clapped his hands. “My office isn’t newsworthy, so get out and find me something to print.”

  “Thanks, Chief.” I drained the last of my coffee and stood up.

  Parker’s eyes were shining, a hint of that superstar smile already teasing up the corners of his lips. His artfully tousled blond hair caught even the unflattering fluorescents in the office to complete the picture of gorgeous male specimen. It was funny to think about how off-putting I once found his good looks and self-confidence, given how I almost didn’t notice anymore after so many years of calling him one of my closest friends and standing up as a bridesmaid at his wedding.

  “Okay, tell me what you’ve got,” I said, “but you have to walk with me to the kitchen for my coffee refill first.”

  “Deal.” Parker fell into step beside me.

  The coffeepot was almost empty, so I topped my mug off to the brim and quickly started another brew for the next person. I’d been on the receiving end of an empty pot way too many times to count, and I needed all the good karma I could get. Besides, it was just common shared-coffeepot courtesy.

  As soon as the coffeemaker was gurgling, I turned to Parker. “Now, what was it you wanted me to check out earlier?”

  Parker swept an arm toward the door, shepherding me to his desk. “You know your old pal Troy Wright?”

  Two mentions of Troy in one morning? “Yeah, what about him?”

  “He wrote a killer article this week for his campus newspaper.”

  “Campus newspaper? Has he crossed over to the print side?”

  Parker laughed. “Not even I could convince that kid to abandon his TV dreams.” And that was saying something, considering how Troy had looked at me like I was offering him a Golden Ticket to the Willy Wonka factory the first time I introduced him to Parker.

  “This was an op-ed,” Parker continued. “One-off piece, not a staff job or anything.”

  “Now you’re just teasing me. What was the topic?”

  “Their first-string quarterback was benched.” Parker raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for me to guess why.

  I was raised in a house where Dallas Cowboys football was as much a part of fall Sundays as church and baked chicken—and I can quote player stats and scream at the TV during games with the most diehard fans—but I didn’t know quite enough about behind-the-scenes locker room detail to guess what he was getting at. Fraternity hazing, underage drinking, allegations of sexual assault…a quick scan through any newspaper’s sports section would provide way too many possibilities to make guessing practical.

  “He’s gay,” Parker said. “And when he decided he was tired of being closeted, he lost his starting spot.”

  Not even in my top ten.

  “Why would that get him benched? Pretty sure the NCAA doesn’t have a ‘heterosexuals only’ rule for football or any other sport.” I took a long sip of my coffee.

  “That’s just it,” Parker said. “They don’t—and your boy Troy wasn’t afraid to say so.” He steered me to his computer, where the article was already up.

  Two weeks ago, Holden Peters decided he was tired of living a lie. In an environment, on a campus, that likes pretty words about equality and acceptance, a top collegiate athlete decided to trust those pretty words and tell the world he’s a gay man.

  His trust was met with shattered dreams when Coach Don Farrelly benched him three days after his coming-out Instagram post.

  Picture it: first-string quarterback at a division one school, second-year All-American, a Heisman contender, a potential draft pick for the NFL, his name regularly brought up on ESPN. All of it gone with the flick of Farrelly’s pen.

  I paused after the first paragraph, glancing over my shoulder at Parker.

  “He’s good, right?” he said. “It’s a little heavy on the commas for my taste, but kid’s got heart. You can feel it.”

  “No kidding.” I kept reading.

  While I can’t say Peters’s absence is the sole cause, the “winning team” Farrelly promised lost last weekend with fewer yards passing in the entire game than Peters posted in his average first quarter last season. I don’t have a crystal ball, but if this is the team culture—if this is our school culture—it would be no surprise if we had a losing season this year.

  Peters has done nothing wrong, nothing that needs defending. His sexuality does not make him a bad football player or a bad teammate. What it does, though, is sho
w us as a school, as football fans, where we still have room to grow.

  The official line is that Peters was benched for failing a drug test. Peters, who is notorious for not drinking at his fraternity’s parties even though he’s of age, failed a drug test? I, for one, would like verification, or at the very least a public statement from Peters himself. Coach Farrelly has been in every local paper about this issue, but Peters hasn’t had a single statement printed in his defense. I’ve talked to him myself, and he says he would gladly retake the test publicly, in front of cameras if that’s what it takes. Farrelly shot down that idea, saying that Peters will spend the mandated six games on the bench, thus killing his shot at the Heisman before the season even really gets rolling.

  Coach is on year four of a very expensive ten-year contract to turn the Crimson football program around. The hopes—and wallets—of countless donors, shareholders, and alumni are riding on Coach’s success. He clearly wants to win.

  So how much notoriety, how much in revenue does the team and the school stand to lose by knocking Peters out of the running? Millions in ticket sales and free press. Perhaps that’s a language that even Coach Farrelly can understand.