A.L. studied her. He likely didn’t believe her but he also understood that sometimes it really was better to compartmentalize. To give your full attention to something else besides what was troubling you. And right now, it was almost 11:00 at night and she’d been up since 5:00. She should be tired. But the thought that they’d found Coyote Frogg was exhilarating.

The door of the conference room opened and in walked an analyst who often helped them with video evidence. “Hey, Louisa, thanks for hanging out with us tonight.”

“No problem. My thirteen-year-old son is having a friend over tonight. Lots of yelling and screaming at the video games. My husband is better suited to dealing with that.”

“I get it.” Would Gabe be that kind of dad? If she backed out of this deal, would he ever be any kind of dad? Damn. Compartmentalize. “What are we looking at?”

“We worked with the city to get video of bus 13, which runs along Clayton Avenue. The stop you were specifically interested in was Wake Street. And we’re pretty sure we got your boys jumping on there once but got them another time a little farther down the line on Poke Street.” She was pulling up video as she talked.

It was gray and a little grainy but there they were, about halfway back, slouched in a seat. “That’s Coyote,” A.L. said.

He looked as if he was sleeping. The guy next to him was awake but barely. He was just staring ahead. “Date and time, Louisa?”

The woman pointed to the bottom of the screen. That’s last Monday, about 16:20 hours.”

The kid had said that he’d seen them between 4:00 and 4:30. He was proving to be a good little witness.

“I’m going to fast-forward to where they get off,” Louisa said. “Here we are twenty minutes later and they’re getting off at the corner of Willow and Spring.”

“What’s at Willow and Spring?” Rena asked. She had a rough idea. There was a three-or four-block radius of manufacturing companies that had many decades back strategically located near the rail line. Trains no longer ran, however, and many of the businesses were closed up. A few had been turned into cool loft apartments, but it was a work in progress. The homeless liked to hang out there, especially under the Oaken Bridge.

“We picked them up on street cameras heading north,” Louisa said. “We lost them when they turned the corner, but perhaps they were headed here.”

Here was an old three-story brick factory. It was a long rectangular shape with a row of very small windows across the front. It would not have caught the eye of a developer looking to turn the property into upscale housing. Some of the glass appeared to have been knocked out. “Nice,” Rena said sarcastically.

“Yeah. The city is working to get this one torn down.”