“I can’t wait anymore,” my wife insisted. “I’m going to that building with or without you. Now.”
“Bree, I told you—”
“You said give him another night,” Bree said. “We gave him one. He could be in there sleeping as we speak.”
I was hopelessly awake by then and I could see by the way she held her jaw slightly to the right that it was useless to argue anymore.
“Okay, okay,” I grumbled. “We’ll go, but then I’m coming back for a nap.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said, jumped out of bed, and started to dress.
I moved a little more slowly, but within fifteen minutes we were driving through the back streets of Southeast and then heading across the river into Anacostia. Dawn was still just a shade of gray when I stopped at a coffee shack.
“Do we have time for this?” Bree demanded.
“I don’t want to go prowling around in there until I can at least see a little,” I replied. “That old building is his home. He can walk around it in the dark easy. I can’t. And neither can you. And if we go in with our flashlights, he’ll probably just spook out of there, and at that point he might be gone forever.”
She looked at me a long moment before saying, “Hazelnut latte. Double shot of espresso.”
By the time I parked us down the street from the abandoned factory building, it was cracking light and the caffeine had done its work. I was alert and on edge when I climbed out of the car.
I described the layout to Bree, including the room where the burned body had been found, the other room where the homeless guy was camped, and the escape route I thought he’d taken up the stairs and out a rear window. Then I told her what I wanted her to do.
“Sure you want to go in there alone?” she asked.
“I think I can handle it. You?”
She smiled. “You just flush him. I’ll take care of the rest.”
We split up as we approached the building. Bree looped around the back. I went in the same way I had two nights before, through the front door, making no effort at all to be quiet. Instead, I kicked cans and made small bursts of racket as I looked for the near staircase to the basement.
It was almost full light outside, but in the old condemned building it was still twilight. Then again, I didn’t need to see the homeless guy run anyway.
I heard him go when I was almost to the bottom of the stairs, right by the room where Jane Doe’s body had been burned.
He pounded up the far stairs. I ran after him at a more leisurely pace, giving him time to make his preferred exit.
By the time I reached the broken window and looked out, he was cursing at the fact that Bree had him facedown, a knee on his back and zip-ties going around his wrists. The Louisville Slugger lay on the ground behind her.
Chapter
29
“That’s quite the swing you’ve got there,” I said to the homeless guy, whom Bree had dragged back into the building along with the baseball bat.
He said nothing as we returned him to his nest and set him down on his filthy mattress. In the light of day he bore more than a passing resemblance to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, with that wild tangle of hair and beard, and pale-blue eyes that tracked out of sync.
“Name?” I asked, noticing small twigs and bits of leaf in his beard.
“You cops?”
“As a matter of fact, we are,” I said, showing him my badge and ID.
“I need a lawyer?” he asked.
“I could arrest you for criminal trespass and assaulting a police officer,” I said. “Or you can answer our questions.”
He studied us with those weird eyes for several moments before saying, “Everett Prough.”