“We will do everything we can to support you,” Jarvis said. “Just call me once every day, so that we know you’re okay, understood?”
Ethan hoped that his voice was not trembling as he spoke.
“Okay, tell me how you want me to do this.”
POTOMAC GARDENS PROJECTS
G STREET ON 12TH, WASHINGTON DC
What do we got?”
Metropolitan Police Department detective Lucas Tyrell drove in a characteristically sedate fashion along a deserted G Street. Streetlights above drifted past against an overcast dawn sky that sealed in a sweltering blanket of late-summer heat. Beside him sat Detective Nicola Lopez, reading from a notebook.
“Search request from the DC Housing Authority on an abandoned town house opposite the projects. Neighboring residents have reported unpleasant odors.”
Tyrell winced, his black skin creasing around his eyes as he turned onto 12th. He looked in the rearview mirror to see a pair of brown eyes watching him from the rear seat. Bailey, his four-year-old dachshund, tilted his head and flopped an ear to listen to his voice.
“Who’s down there?” he asked Lopez as he cruised toward ugly apartment blocks weathered by years of neglect.
“Kaczynski and his guys are on site, coroner’s got jurisdiction. An FBI incident team’s on its way under Axel Cain.”
“Cain,” Tyrell muttered, as though he had something unpleasant in his mouth.
“Can’t have everything.”
Tyrell watched from the corner of his eye as Lopez glanced over the paperwork, a strand of black hair dangling in front of her face. She was petite and slim, with butter-smooth skin, a third generation Latino from down on the gulf. Tyrell, on the other hand, was obese. Like two-hundred-eighty obese. Most all the detectives at the First District Station joked that if Tyrell ever caught a criminal red-handed, the perp had better hope that Lopez was the one to pin him down.
Nicola closed the file in her lap.
“It’s probably just another crack den.”
“Never reach a conclusion without first evaluating all of the evidence,” Tyrell cautioned. “Most everybody does that and they usually get it wrong.”
“This is it,” Lopez said, gesturing ahead. “Twelve fifty-five G Southeast.”
Four MPD cruisers were parked across the road, incident tapes cordoning off the last in a row of abandoned town houses. The cruisers’ lights flashed like nightclub beacons in the pale dawn. A few dark-skinned faces appeared on balconies on the projects opposite, smoking and wiping sleep from their eyes but watching with interest.
“Let’s go see what’s up,” Tyrell said, and turned to look at Bailey, who whined softly. “Now, you stay here and guard the wheels, ’kay, boy?”
Tyrell levered himself from the car, pausing to catch his breath before leading Lopez through the police cordon. A cheerful-looking officer by the name of Kaczynski walked toward them.
“Hope we didn’t get you guys up too early,” he said, glancing at the thin sheen of sweat glistening on Tyrell’s brow. “Warm enough for ya?”
Tyrell shook Kaczynski’s hand and gestured to Nicola.
“Detective Lopez, Lieutenant Terry Kaczynski. Any news from the inside?”
“Nothing,” Kaczynski admitted, smiling at Lopez in a manner that suggested the only thing he’d ever successfully flirted with was rejection. “We’re just waiting for you to show us the way.”
“What we’re here for,” Tyrell said without fanfare, wiping the sweat from his brow with a tissue.
“Best get on with it then,” Kaczynski said with a shrug. “If there’s anyone inside lookin’ to give us trouble, they can’t have missed this goddamn circus.”
Kaczynski turned and cleared the way for them to the windowless front door of the town house. Tyrell glanced at the trees growing outside the row of abandoned buildings, gnarled branches concealing the clapboard houses and their mangled chain-link fences. Dense weeds thrived in long-abandoned gardens. Living opposite the Potomac Gardens projects with its drug trade and gang warfare had driven the occupants out long ago.
He could see that the front door of the house was blanketed with a kaleidoscope of sprayed tags and gang colors, the signature of misled youth on a citywide scale. Mara Salvatrucha 13 was the dominant gang in the District, an assortment of El Salvadoran gunrunners and drug dealers who had migrated across America over the past twenty years. Brutally violent, they complemented the local peppering of Crips, Bloods, Surenos, and La Razas fighting for turf as far out as Prince George’s and Maryland.
The two detectives drew and checked their weapons one more time before Tyrell nodded to a tall, robustly built young officer. The officer hefted a black iron ram from where it had been leaning against the sidewalk.