He’d done what he could to deflect blame away from the man in his basement. Jeff Duncan was probably up to no good, but the very idea the mild-mannered white man living on his property was some sort of a terrorist was asinine. Arthur had seen something on the man’s face; a world-weariness, a hardened interior, maybe. But he wasn’t as bad as all this, Arthur felt sure.

Bernice, on the other hand, kept muttering to herself that she knew Jeff Duncan was low-down and no-account, and she berated her husband mercilessly for not seeing this for himself.

The Washington Metro Police Department refers to its SWAT unit as ERT, the Emergency Response Team. The head of the ERT unit had sat down with Mayberry a few minutes earlier and asked, “You are certain there is no access to the house from the basement apartment?”

“Look, young man. I told the other officers. I built that place myself. You would need to knock a hole in the wall to get into the basement, and even if you could bust through, you’d be over there on the side with the furnace and the water heater.”

Arthur had then drawn up the diagram, and although the police seemed to be very concerned about the man in the basement, Arthur could tell the Emergency Response Team captain was glad he wouldn’t have to split his men and hit multiple entrances at the same time. They could, instead, enter the basement, and then, if the subject wasn’t there, they could exit and reenter the home to clear it. Another thirty police officers were on the scene and charged with cordoning off the block to keep anyone from entering or exiting. If the cordon around the property was any good, and their suspect was inside, they’d get him, wherever they found him.

Now Arthur and Bernice sat quietly, waiting for the tactical officers to get on with their raid and remove their tenant from their home in handcuffs, so they could go back home and back to bed.

—

Denny Carmichael awoke from a deep sleep on his sofa.

The phone on his desk trilled and he grabbed it, both surprised and hopeful.

“Mayes?”

“It’s Brewer, sir.” She sounded almost out of breath.

“Talk.”

“D.C. Emergency Response Team has surrounded a house in Columbia Heights. They think they have the suspect from Dupont Circle holed up inside.”

Carmichael clenched the receiver tight. “And why do they think this?”

“A Crime Stoppers tip led them to the area. Detectives came out and interviewed neighbors, showing them a picture taken from the Easy Market, and another taken at Dupont. They got a hit, apparently.”

“And why are we just learning about this now?”