“Excuse me?”
“What will it cost to get you to leave?”
“I think you’re the one who needs to leave, Mom,” Maggie said from the doorway.
Neither of them had heard her come in. Patrick had forgotten to lock the door and set the alarm. Maggie must have recognized her mom’s car in the circle drive.
“Patrick’s a guest here. I suggest if you want to continue to be one, you’ll leave right now.”
“I expected you to be curious about him. Maybe even want to meet him. I didn’t expect you to drag him into our lives.”
“My life. Not yours.”
Kathleen O’Dell slid off the bar stool and stood in front of Maggie. That’s when Patrick realized she was a bit wobbly on her feet. She may have had a few drinks before she arrived.
“So you’re choosing this bastard half brother over your own mother?”
“I’m not choosing anyone. You want to talk about choice, Mom? Maybe you should tell me how you
“Jeffery Cole is an award-winning journalist. How was I supposed to know that he would twist my words?”
“Right, he twisted your words to make it sound like you were betraying your daughter.”
“Betraying? You see that as a betrayal? But this—inviting him into our lives—that’s not a betrayal?”
Kathleen O’Dell waved her hand at Maggie like she thought she was being ridiculous. She shook her head, a slow side-to-side motion that Patrick thought looked melodramatic and perhaps even practiced. She made her way to the door without argument, either anxious to escape or simply needing the last word. Either way, Patrick realized she was willing to leave without further explanation or apology.
Before she left she mumbled something that sounded like “You’ll be sorry.”
From the disappointment on Maggie’s face, Patrick thought she already looked like she was sorry.
CHAPTER 59
Tully wore jeans, an old gray sweatshirt, the grimiest pair of high-tops he owned, and a threadbare jacket he’d bought earlier from a Salvation Army thrift shop. Last night when he carefully went through the red backpack he had found an interesting assortment of worthless junk. Or at least he had believed it to be worthless. Then he discovered that whoever had been using the backpack had one of the same habits Tully had—pocketing an extra napkin or two from whatever fast-food joint or vendor he ate at.
Tully took out all of the napkins—eight different ones, plus four from the same place. Then he bought a tourist map of the District and started highlighting all the napkin food stops.
More than half of the food places were around the fire site and close to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, where the homeless buses picked up and dropped off passengers. The others were downtown. The four duplicate napkins were from a small corner shop called Willie’s between the library and the fire site on Massachusetts Avenue.
The guy who tripped Tully and ran away from Maggie, only to drop down a manhole, had looked homeless. Maybe it was just a disguise. If he was the arsonist, maybe that’s how he managed to blend in. Both Tully and Maggie suspected that the fire starter walked to the sites. How better to get away than to drop underground and make your way safely home?
Of course, the church fires in Arlington threw Tully’s hunch way off. Still, he had a gut feeling that this guy— whoever he was—knew something more. Maybe he had seen something or someone. After all, why disappear down a manhole the night of the fire when he could have easily walked away without notice? And was it a coincidence that he disappeared before the second building burst into flames?
Between the corner shop named Willie’s and the fire site, Tully had narrowed it down to three manholes that could easily be accessed without much notice or without traffic running over them. Then he found a place where he could watch all three.
Along with the napkins he had found several store receipts smashed into the bottom of the backpack. Most of them were from Willie’s. And all of those had time stamps between five and seven o’clock in the evening.
Tully bought a sandwich and coffee from Willie’s and found his place. It was ten minutes before five. He figured he could kill a couple of hours hanging out. He sat down on the cold concrete, realizing quickly why most of the steamy grates were already occupied.
He ate his sandwich, sipped his coffee. He had memorized the blown-up photo he had of the guy. Although the features were mostly shadows, he thought he would recognize the guy’s build, shaggy hair, and pointy beard. But it didn’t really matter. How many guys would be coming up from a manhole after five o’clock?
He sat and ate and sipped and watched. Thirty minutes later his butt felt numb against the cold concrete. He thought about moving to one of the grates, but there were no vacancies and he worried he might not be able to see all three manholes. The sun had disappeared behind the buildings and from the sidewalk. It would get damp and chilly very quickly.
Tully pulled himself up and leaned against the building, looking for a warmer place. He was a bit distracted when suddenly an orange hard hat popped up out of the manhole farthest away on the other side of the street.
CHAPTER 60
Maggie watched Dr. Mia Ling clearing her credentials with the uniformed cop at the first checkpoint. For Ling to be here instead of Stan Wenhoff, the medical examiner, or one of Stan’s deputies, meant the bodies inside had been reduced to very little flesh and mostly bone. Pathologists worked with tissue and organs. Anthropologists were called in when there wasn’t much left to recover.
Just before Ling ducked under the crime scene tape she saw Maggie. She didn’t bother to hide the obvious relief on her face.
Maggie wished that all it took was a familiar face to make her more comfortable. The fire had already been put out, the building no longer in flames or spewing black smoke. Firefighters had pulled back their equipment. A rescue crew of paramedics was treating three firefighters at the mobile unit. One sat with an oxygen mask. Another’s head had been wrapped, the gauze already soaked with blood. The third was bent over beside the tire well and it looked to Maggie like he was throwing up.
She tried to ignore her own nausea. She had just taken three ibuprofen, hoping they might dull her headache. No luck yet. In the short time it took for her to walk the hundred feet over to Dr. Ling, she noticed the woman’s look of relief change to one of concern.
Before Ling could ask if she was okay, Maggie held up her hands in surrender.
“Just a bad headache,” she told the doctor, deciding not to share the fact that her stomach had started to roller-coaster on her.
“You don’t have to go inside.”
Maggie hadn’t gone into the previous buildings. Ling was right. She didn’t have to go into this one either. But this arsonist was accelerating at an unpredictable speed. If she wanted to understand him and know how to catch him, she would have to look at the crime scene herself.
“I need to see what he does.”
Dr. Ling stared at her for almost a minute. Then she nodded and headed for the burned-out entrance. Before going in, Ling stopped, opened her duffel bag, and pulled out two pairs of tightly rolled up Tyvek coveralls. She handed one to Maggie.
“I always carry extra.”
A firefighter had given Maggie a pair of fire boots when she arrived. She had slipped them over her leather flats and they still felt like clown shoes on her feet. She kicked them off to pull on the Tyvek coveralls.
Both women rolled up their sleeves and pant cuffs. Maggie folded and placed their jackets in the duffel bag. She stuffed her feet back into the boots while Dr. Ling tugged on a pair of her own. Ling continued her preparation,
