“Fuck Aaron Judge.”

By this time my story had splashed down. Within minutes it had spread virally across the country. Almost instantly I had been hit by a social media tsunami that had washed over me and was done within an hour as other outlets added to it with their own reporting. I was still getting the last trickle of response; CNN wanted me to do a Zoom interview, but I turned it down. This was a developing story and we had a piece of it.

We were chasing at least twenty different threads. My story had led to a string of tips; from experience I knew that most of them would be worthless, the usual people next door with iridescent tattoos sitting in the dark playing Gothic rap while they barbecued rats, but we still checked out the most likely. Sitting in Mighty Chair at the front of the office, working my phones and computer, I felt a little like a buccaneer on the bow of his ship, one foot on the bowsprit, cutlass extended defiantly, ready to buckle some swash.

But I was in control. At least I was until Jeannie Lee shouted, “Check out six, everybody.”

I swiveled. In all caps, CNN was promising BREAKING NEWS (although in truth this time they might have added, “and this time we mean it!”). I dialed it up. Wolf Blitzer was holding a stack of loose papers. He reported with a tinge of excitement in his voice, “CNN has just learned that at this moment a joint task force of heavily armed state and federal officers have isolated a neighborhood in suburban Detroit. An unknown number of people suspected of having a connection to the recent attacks are believed to be inside a house in that area. No one in the White House will comment for the record, but sources have told CNN’s Jim Acosta that President Wrightman…”—Wolf glanced at the paper in his hands—“appeared to be ‘positively gleeful.’

“The entire area has been blockaded, no one is being allowed inside the perimeter, and residents are being escorted out and held for identification. People on the ground there describe the situation as a ‘lockdown.’ Stay tuned, and as soon as we can get our people near the site, we will take you there…”

I could visualize the chaos in newsrooms throughout the country as everybody scrambled to keep up. Within minutes, one by one other outlets began reporting their version of the story. Bits of new information leaked out drop by drop. We did our best to keep up. When a Detroit outlet, NewDetroit.org, reported the exact address of the house, 149 Stratford Road, I went on Google Earth to take a look at it.

It was a two-story stucco house. It looked like every other one of the twenty million affordable bungalows built in the 1950s for GIs coming home. This one had deteriorated. It was a chalk-white stucco with a green-shingled roof; several shingles were missing. There were faded red shutters on either side of two large front windows, separated by a two-level brick step. The front windows were partially obscured by bushes. One shutter was hanging askew. The stucco walls appeared pocked and rust-stained in places. A low white picket fence ran the entire length of the front yard, which was mostly dirt and weeds. The gate was closed. What I guessed were two or three motorcycles covered by an oil-stained tarp were parked in the yard. But the money that hadn’t been spent on repairs had been invested in security: I counted four surveillance cameras mounted along the front roof gutter. There also were several spotlights. But what caught my attention was the front door.