The back stairs led to the garage behind my building. You could walk down those stairs and get out the door, but as I’d told Mayburn you couldn’t reenter. It was designed to be opened only from the inside, to protect against break-ins. This meant if there was someone behind that door and on that staircase, they didn’t get there from the outside. They would have come from my apartment. Or from one of my neighbors’. And I’d never known my neighbors to linger on the back stairwell.

So who was it?

Charlie and I stood frozen for a moment, listening for more sounds. None came.

Charlie bent down, whispered, “Maybe it’s mice?”

“They would have to be damn big mice, don’t you think?” I whispered fiercely.

He shrugged.

Some bodyguard.

We heard another scuffling sound, then a creak of stairs.

“Someone is on the stairs!”

Another slow creak. Then another. And another.

“Someone is going down the stairs,” I whispered.

Charlie blinked a few times, his expression hardened. His generous mouth formed a grim line, and he took a deep breath.

And then my brother, the one they called Sheets, charged toward the door, ripping it open and disappearing through it.

29

Everyone wonders how they’ll react in a crisis. When we hear a news story-like the one about the man lost in the wilderness who finally stumbled home after eating tree bark and moss for two weeks-we wonder if we could do the same. We think that maybe tree bark would be a healthy weight-loss plan.

Now my crisis was here. I’d finally get the opportunity to see what I was made of. My house had been broken into, my computer searched and my brother was chasing the likely intruder down the stairs.

I’d always been concerned that my usual unflappable self would crumble in times of crisis. It turned out I was wrong. I didn’t exactly spring into action, like a saucy rocket scientist in a Bond movie, but I did stand there and quickly sifted through the potential courses of action in my head.

First possibility-Run after Charlie. I rejected it as soon as I thought it. If he got into trouble, and I ran directly behind him, then whatever fate befell him would happen to me, too, and I wouldn’t be able to help him.

Second possibility-Call the cops. Earlier, when my poor apartment seemed violated but unharmed, it was easier to agree with Mayburn about not phoning the police. Now the possibility of cops crawling around my condo seemed a welcome image. But that would take too long.

Third choice-Call Mayburn.

Fourth-Get Sam’s bat and run down the front stairs.

I decided to go with number four. I raced to the front closet and grabbed Sam’s baseball bat. I hurtled myself down the front stairs.

I stopped and sucked in air when I got to the front door. I opened it gingerly, peering outside.

Nothing. Just a normal fall night, most of the houses lit up and happy looking. I peered to the right, toward the side of the house. Again nothing.

I stepped through the door and closed it softly behind me. I was still wearing my suit from the meeting with the FBI. I raised the bat at the ready. It struck me that I looked ridiculous, creeping around with a raised bat. I wasn’t entirely sure how to use the thing. I’d never even played softball. But then I thought about my brother, my kind, sweet brother, and I knew that if someone was hurting him, I’d turn into Sammy freaking Sosa.

I hurried around the side of the house, bat still raised. I heard heavy breathing when I was almost near the back.

I paused, listening more intently. Someone was panting, hard. And they were only a few feet from me, I could tell.

I raised the bat higher, tiptoeing now. I walked one, two feet, and finally I dashed around the side of the building, yelling like a banshee and racing with the bat.

“Whoa!” My sweet brother fell to his knees, hands raised over his head in a gesture of self-protection.

I dropped the bat and sank to my knees with him. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

He raised his face and looked at me with big eyes and a laugh starting to bubble up in his throat. “Remind me to take you next time I get into a street rumble.”

“I wasn’t sure if it was you or someone else.”

“Whoever was on your stairs…” He paused to pant some more. “They took off. When I chased after them, I heard them all the way down the stairs…” More panting. I’d never known my brother to exert himself this much. “When I got outside, I saw him running.”

“A guy?”

“Yeah, I think so. Jeans, jacket, baseball hat.”

“Tan jacket?”

“Uh…Not sure. It was dark in the stairwell.”

“Did he have black hair?”

“Couldn’t tell.”

“Was he short?”

“Not sure. He was below me, so I couldn’t tell, and then he got away so fast.”

“Did you see anything else about him?” I asked, although I knew the man on the stairs probably wasn’t the same guy I’d seen on the street outside Twin Anchors. He wouldn’t have been able to get in my apartment sooner than I did. How many people were following me?

“It was too dark on the stairs,” Charlie said, “and you don’t have many lights out here.”

We both looked around the small backyard. One weak light hung above the rear door, another over the entrance to the garage.

“I never noticed that before.” I felt how vulnerable we were out there in the dark.

I helped Charlie to his feet and dialed 9-1-1.

It went pretty much as Mayburn predicted. The cops were at my condo within five minutes of calling them. They poked around, radios squawking about DUIs and bar brawls.

“Is this a typical night for you?” Charlie asked one cop, a squat guy with a belly as wide as he was tall.

“Thursday night,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Charlie asked the cop, who was opening and closing the backdoor, looking at the door joints.

The cop glared at him.

“I’m curious,” Charlie said. “Seriously.”

The cop turned his attention back to the door. “Looking for signs of breaking and entering.”

“They must have broken in downstairs just to get in the building,” I said. I’d explained this all earlier.

“Got it.” He opened and closed the door a few more times, then turned to me with a bland expression. “You said you talked to Detective Vaughn this week?”

“And Detective Schneider.”

The officer unhooked his radio from his belt and spoke into it, asking whether Detective Schneider or Vaughn was on duty.

“Off duty,” came the response.

Twenty minutes later, an evidence tech and a different detective showed up. The detective was an older black man in a red fleece jacket. Sitting in the living room, Charlie and I once again went through the details of the night. The detective told us that the locks showed little damage, which meant they’d either been bumped, as Mayburn had said, or someone had left the front door open.

“We never leave the door open,” I said, “and it’s set to close and lock automatically.”

“Yes, ma’am, but nothing was stolen.” He looked at me with kindness. And obvious boredom.

“I explained to the other officers that it looks like someone had been on my computer and in my bank records.”

“Any idea why someone would want to do that?”

I told him the FBI had questioned me and were probably following me.

As soon as he heard “FBI,” he flipped his notebook closed. “You should have told me that earlier.”

“Why?”

“Sounds like they’ve got jurisdiction.” He asked a few questions about whom I’d spoken to. I gave him Andi Lippman’s name from the FBI. “I’ll contact the feds,” he said.

“And they’ll look into it?”

“Up to them.” He stood up, his tall frame looming over me.

“What should I do in the meantime?”