Page 23
“You Lainey Locket, then?”
“These days,” she said.
“You were someone else before?”
“Wasn’t everyone?”
“You have identification?”
She sighed, dug in the folds of her skirt, and came up with a faded, expired Kentucky driver’s license with the name Elaine Locket and an address in Centerville. You could barely make out the face in the photo.
“Nothing more recent?”
She shook her head. “Lost my car a long time ago. How about your identification?”
When he held it out, she nodded. “Okay. What do you want?”
He noticed that behind Locket and down the slope, other denizens of the north side of the Bridge to Nowhere were coming out of their shelters, interested, watching, listening. He assumed there were more people behind him doing the same.
“Ms. Locket, is there somewhere we can go to talk privately, or do I need to bring the head high troll down to the station for a formal interrogation?”
Locket gave him an amused smile. “You are a detective, aren’t you?”
“It’s amazing what you can learn if you just shut up and listen.”
She thought about that, then said, “Ordinarily, I would take the ride downtown for the free meal involved. But I have things to do later. Let’s go topside. Can I have my shotgun back?”
“Later,” he said. “Once I’ve checked the barrel length.”
As she shrugged and moved by Sampson, Locket looked more irritated than angry, annoyed at his implication that she was incapable of measuring the length of a barrel. He followed her toward the rear of the upper ghost ramp, closer to the Anacostia River.
Roughly parallel to the far end of the stanchion, Locket climbed over several broken slabs of concrete to a hole in the underside of the ramp. Her arms, head, and then shoulders disappeared, leaving just her lace-up cracked leather hunting boots visible before she wriggled all the way up.
Sampson was at least a foot taller than her with shoulders twice as wide, so he had to carefully maneuver his head and upper body through the hole and then reach up and hoist himself onto the top of the ramp. He swatted dust from his hair and eyes as he stood.
Locket gazed at him, then nodded across the river. In the distance, the dome of the Capitol was shining in the early-morning light.
“Most underrated view in the city,” she said. “Best part about being here, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Come up here a lot?”
“Often enough,” she said. “Places like this keep me sane. Off the booze, drugs, and meds. And it’s free. What could be better?”
22
SAMPSON COULD NOT FIGURE Lainey Locket out. “What happened to you, Lainey?”
Locket hardened a little. “What do you mean?”
“You’re obviously smart,” Sampson said. “So how did you come to be living under the Bridge to Nowhere?”
Locket shrugged and looked away. “Some stories are best left untold.”
“You don’t have anyone to turn to, anyone who’d want to find you?” Sampson asked.
Locket snorted at that. “I haven’t had anyone to rely on in fifteen years, Detective, and at this point, I really don’t want to be found by anyone who might be looking for me.”
“You like being homeless?”
