And they’d done it within ten miles of Capitol Hill.
As I headed toward the corner where Ned Mahoney was supposed to pick me up for a meeting at the Justice Department, I decided that the cartel’s act was beyond brazen. It was defiant and reckless and—
My phone buzzed in my hand.
Congratulations on your youngest’s latest exploits, Dr. Cross. Ali is quite the chip off the old block. Well done. Applause from the cheap seats and all that.
On another note, you deserve to know that all is not as it seems when it comes to the letter M. In this case, you should know that there is an impostor posing as me. He is a madman—cruel, vindictive, cunning, brutal, and highly intelligent. He hired the man who stabbed Sampson. Focus your efforts on finding the impostor and leave us to ending the corruption and the Alejandro cartel. The Hernandez family will be avenged.—Maestro
Ned picked me up a few moments later, looking haggard.
“How are you, Ned?”
“Shell-shocked, to be honest,” he said. “I mean, they care absolutely nothing about human life. And John and I were on that porch just a few minutes before. It makes you think, Alex. It really does.”
I waited until we were almost to DOJ before reading him the text.
“Two Ms?” Mahoney said. “How does that happen?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But it’s true, now that I think about it, that there have been two different kinds of messages from M over the years. One was always insulting, derisive, and bent on disrupting our efforts. The other showed us the way in multiple investigations.”
“I’d have to see the messages sorted that way.”
“Good idea. I think it can be done. I’ve saved every one of them.”
Mahoney pulled into the parking lot below the Justice Department. “Two different criminals under the same name, one psychotic and one avenging.”
“Or one psychotic and the other the leader of an organization operating under the name Maestro.”
As we took the elevator up, I explained Marco Alejandro’s theory that Maestro was a partnership or a team that had taken the law into its own hands.
“Which makes them murdering criminals in my book,” Mahoney said as we got out. “No one’s above the law, Alex. No one’s allowed to claim justice for themselves.”
“Agreed, a hundred percent,” I said. “But let’s use the idea of a team to filter the evidence we’ve gathered so far. See where it gets us.”
“I’ve learned never to underestimate your instincts, Alex. If that’s where your nose is leading you, have at it. But let’s not mention this text or this idea until the evidence is stronger.”
Upstairs, we met Sampson. He and Mahoney briefed a task force of high-ranking agents from every law enforcement branch under the DOJ umbrella. All of them were chosen because of their reputation for integrity, honesty, and grit in the field.
“This situation is appalling and we have to get it right,” Mahoney said. “We have to look at the very real corruption that this vigilante force has exposed as being like a cancer that spreads from one organ to another. We have to cut the corruption out before it causes any further damage to U.S. law enforcement. That is also our path to finding these vigilantes and ending this war. We track down and verify every detail in those confessions and use them to figure out how the vigilantes knew who was corrupt.”
I said, “What about the cartel? Don’t we want to be fighting this on both fronts?”
“Absolutely,” Mahoney said. “That attack last night will not go unanswered. The director is forming a second task force to track down whoever is responsible.”
“With all due respect, Ned, we know who’s responsible. Whoever took over the Alejandro cartel after Marco Alejandro was put in supermax.”
“What do you want us to do, Alex? Go down to Mexico and ask them to stop?”
“That might be a starting point,” I said.
“I’ll take it under consideration,” Mahoney said.
Sampson raised his hand. Ned acknowledged him.
“The vigilantes. Maestro. M. Their computing power and reach has to be massive,” Sampson said. “Like, National Security Agency–massive.”
Mahoney looked at him oddly. “Come again?”
Sampson said, “I have been thinking about M for as long as anyone. The way he—or they—are able to just text us, the way they know what’s been happening in our lives. I read that book by Edward Snowden. I know what the NSA can do. Listen in on everything and everyone if they want. Download your data. Look back at you through your cameras. Mess with your computers. It’s the most secretive agency in the world, and a connection to that organization would explain how M is able to contact us at will and without a trace and how he always seems three steps ahead of us.”