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.