Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1)(30)

He pulled up to the address and stopped to scan the street. East Lafayette Avenue was a one-way with cars tightly lining both sides. No boarded-up windows. Nobody milling around porches. About a quarter of the street-level windows were protected by some variation of steel burglar bars. A lot of new or restored three-story redbrick facades—his mother’s building not included. She must have missed the restoration memo or decided to ignore it. His money was on the latter.

The bricks had been painted a light gray, which was chipped or faded in several spots. The look hovered between intentionally weathered or recently neglected. Three mailboxes, squeezed together vertically, adorned the wall to the left of the white door. A rust streak stretched several bricks below the lowest mailbox. Not the darkest of stains, but on its way to being an eyesore. His mom also didn’t share the same gentrified optimism about crime. The street-level windows featured decorative, but very sturdy-looking, black wrought iron gates.

Devin drove halfway down the block before finding a parking space, barely managing to squeeze the older-model sedan between two oversize luxury SUVs. He wondered what one of these apartments was worth now. His mother had probably bought here because it was cheap, and nobody would think to look for her in this neighborhood. She was most likely sitting on a tidy profit at this point. Or someone was sitting on it. Hopefully his sister.

Kari shared a place with two other social workers from her office—the only way any of them could afford housing within semireasonable commuting distance to work. It was only fair. He got the boat. She got to sell the apartment. Devin was getting ahead of himself. For all he knew, all this was going to his father, the most logical destination.

Devin and Berg got out of the car, both of them taking a long look up and down the street.

“What do you think?” asked Berg.

“Looks clear,” said Devin, and Berg nodded. Nothing.

Devin hadn’t expected anything. Even if his pursuers had managed to track either him or Berg to the Cantler’s parking lot, they most certainly didn’t follow him here. He’d made sure of that with his trip through the countryside. The SDR had been solid, and the car was untraceable to Helen, as far as Devin could tell. He couldn’t find the registration anywhere in the car and assumed she’d bought it in a private transaction, keeping it off the books.

The license plate renewal sticker reflected the current year, which led him to believe his mother had a junker in storage somewhere and kept its registration current for the express purpose of getting an updated renewal sticker. As long as he didn’t give the police a reason to run these plates, they should be fine.

He removed a black nylon duffel bag, containing the countersurveillance kit and his mother’s waterproof pouch, from the trunk and locked the car before heading to the apartment. Devin caught some movement through the ground-floor apartment windows as they approached the stoop. Berg must have noticed it, too.

“My name’s Fred,” said Berg. “For their safety and ours.”

“Fred doesn’t sound suspicious at all.”

When he got to the door, he started trying the keys, while Berg watched the street for signs of trouble. The keys hadn’t been marked, so he had no idea which one went to which door. The first one didn’t fit. Neither did the second. The door opened before he tried the third, startling him enough that he dropped the key chain. An elderly Black woman with white hair appeared in the open doorway. She looked around eighty years old, but stood like she was in her early fifties.

“Oh my god. I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

Devin scooped up the keys. “Just caught me off guard, ma’am.”

“You must be Helen’s boy, Devin,” she said, glancing between him and Berg.

“I am,” said Devin, giving her a puzzled look. “This is Fred. A friend of the family.”

“I’m Henrietta Silver. I live on the first floor with my son and daughter-in-law. My granddaughter lives on the second floor with my great-grandson, who’s at Johns Hopkins on a full scholarship. Pre-med,” she said.

“Must be a sharp young man,” he said. “I didn’t even bother applying to Hopkins. I considered myself lucky to get into Maryland.”

“He is a very sharp young man,” said Henrietta, smiling warmly. “You look just like your mother. Sound like her, too.”

He swallowed hard and nodded, worried that his voice would crack if he answered. He wasn’t able to hide the tears.

Henrietta’s smile faded into a mournful, sympathetic look. “I assume something happened to your Helen?”

“She passed away about a week ago,” said Devin. “Unexpectedly.”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” she said, giving him a hug and holding on to him. “She was a kind woman. A bit of a mystery, but warmhearted. I could tell. And she talked about you and Kari all the time. Helen loved the two of you. She never explained her situation or what she was doing here, but I got the feeling over the years that she’d want me to tell you that.”

“Thank you. That means a lot to me,” said Devin. “Things kind of got away from all of us.”

“It happens,” she said. “Sometimes there’s nothing we can do about it. Trust me, I know.”

“Are you headed out?” he asked.

“No. No. I saw you stop in your car and recognized you immediately. Got my old bones up to say hello,” she said.