CHAPTER TEN
Paige could feel her sense of tension building as they drove to Isaac Coleridge’s home address to question him. If they were lucky, they would be able to catch him out in a lie, or spot evidence somewhere in his home that would tie him to the scenes.
They stopped outside the dingy apartment building that Isaac Coleridge lived in. Paige looked it over, taking in the broken window on the ground floor, the overflowing trashcan out front. There was a homeless looking guy sitting near the steps leading up to the door.
Paige and Christopher approached the building slowly, watching for trouble. Christopher hit the button on the intercom for Isaac Coleridge’s place. There was no answer. In a place like this, it might just mean that the intercom was broken. It could also mean that Isaac Coleridge had seen them coming and was keeping his head down.
Christopher seemed to be thinking the same thing. He turned to the homeless guy, reaching into his pocket. Paige thought that he might come out with his ID, but he got his wallet out instead, taking out a twenty.
“This is your regular spot, right?”
“I guess.”
“So you know the people who live here?”
That got a shrug from the homeless guy.
Christopher held out the bill, and also held up a photograph, taken from the DMV. It showed a flabby featured man with dark, lank hair and with something about him that just seemed… wrong, to Paige.
“Isaac Coleridge.”
The homeless guy took it and made a face. “I know him. What about him?”
“Is he here? Have you seen him leave?” Christopher asked.
The homeless guy shrugged again. “Left earlier this morning. Gone to work, I guess. Weird guy.”
“How is he weird?” Paige asked.
The homeless guy cocked his head to one side. “Just… weird.”
It wasn’t exactly a helpful description, but then, how much would this man really see of Isaac? At the same time though, he’d probably had to develop pretty good instincts about people while he was living on the streets, just to keep away from the ones who were dangerous.
“We need to find out where he works,” Paige said to Christopher, as the two of them started to make their way back to the car.
“I’m already on it,” Christopher said, typing something into his phone. “Got it. Apparently, he works at a local marketing firm.”
They drove over there, and Paige took the time to research Coleridge while Christopher picked their way through traffic. There were no arrest records for him that Paige could find, no sign that he’d been involved in anything shady. The public parts of his social media showed a love of extreme metal, artisanal beer, and horror movies, along with a knack for saying whatever seemed most controversial at the time, apparently just so that he could wade into the ensuing comment war.
The firm he worked at was in a nicer part of D.C. than his apartment, but only a little. This was apparently not a guy whose talents had taken him to one of the major D.C. companies. Instead, the firm he worked for was tucked away in an aging building on a side street, which looked as if they’d tried to update it without much success.
Paige and Christopher headed inside, walking up to a reception desk staffed by a young woman in her twenties, wearing a purple cashmere sweater and jeans. Apparently, this was a dress down kind of office. Christopher held out his ID.
“Agent Marriott, FBI. I’m looking for Isaac Coleridge. Is he in the building?”
The receptionist blinked at the sight of the ID for a second or two, then seemed to get over her surprise at having the FBI there.
“Him?” she said, with a note of disgust. “No, he’s not ‘in the building.’”
Something about the way she said that caught Paige’s attention. “Why? What happened?”
“He was let go,” the receptionist said. “About a week ago.”
Paige wanted more than that. “Why?”
The receptionist looked around as if she wasn’t sure that she should really say anything, but then looked back towards Christopher’s badge, as if trying to work out just how serious all of this was. Finally, she nodded, obviously making a decision.
“He was fired because of how weird he was being to the women who work here,” the receptionist said. “He’d hit on them, send them these creepy messages, try to bully them. He sent me a picture of my own front door. Like he was trying to say ‘I know where you live’ or something.”