Page 51 of Nothing Left

After a moment taking this in, while he was staring in equal surprise at them, Juliette asked, "Excuse me, senor, but we are FBI, looking for Mateo Lopez. Does he live here?"

The man shook his head. Slowly, deliberately, and in a way that provided no room for doubt.

"Did he used to live here? Has he moved?" Juliette now felt her heart sinking to her boots. How could yet more catastrophic twists plague this case?

"He has never lived here. I have been here forty years," the man said.

"And your name?" Wyatt pressed him.

"I am Andreas Rubio."

"Is Mateo your son? Do you know him at all?" Not wanting to give up, Juliette pressed on, even though she felt as if defeat was staring them down.

And suddenly, from inside, there was an annoyed shriek.

"Andreas! Be helpful!"

A woman with a cloud of graying hair and an annoyed expression stormed into the hallway. Wrapped in a pink dressing gown, she was holding a paperback book in her hand. She practically elbowed Andreas aside as she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him.

"You know as well as I do that Mateo lives next door!" she chastised him. "The photocopy paper makes the 9 look like an 8. Why do you always pretend you do not know him?"

"Because he is not a good neighbor," Andreas muttered, looking abashed.

"All the more reason to help the police if they are looking for him!" The woman gesticulated with her arm in a left-handed direction. "He is there! There! Next door!"

Thanking them, Juliette spun away and made for the next-door apartment. They had been lucky that the angry wife had intervened, extremely lucky. But she feared they might also have been unlucky because the walls in this apartment building were paper thin. She had heard conversations from outside as she’d passed. Mateo might easily have picked up that the police were looking for him and decided to make his getaway.

She rapped on the door. "Mateo! Mateo, are you in there?"

He wasn't. But Juliette now realized where he could be.

The steel fire escapes that ran behind the buildings would provide the perfect escape route for this accomplished climber. And if she ran to the end of the corridor, she could get a view of them. She could see if he was there.

Juliette sprinted that way, resolve flaring inside her, hearing the loud banging of feet on steel that indicated someone was using the fire escape. Was Mateo going down? Could she catch sight of him descending the fire escape to the main road below and direct the police car that way?

Now, the banging noise had stopped. Perplexed and frantic, Juliette stared from side to side, taking in every possible escape route, every fire escape, every set of stairs that wound their way down the back of this building.

But there was nothing to be seen. At least, not until she finally looked up.

To her surprise and consternation, Mateo was near the top of the fire escape, now walking quietly, glancing around him as if scoping out his getaway routes. It must be him. She recognized the slim build, the dark hair. From the angle, she couldn't see his arm.

"Mateo!" she shouted.

For just a moment, he froze. And then, he powered up with renewed speed and purpose.

He was heading for the roof of the building.

She had no idea what his plan was, up on the top of this eight-story building. But she knew her only hope was to follow.

"I'm going to go up. Go after him," she said. "Wyatt, you try to track him from ground level. I don't know where he's going. He may have another shortcut in mind. But I can't lose him. Not now."

"Right," Wyatt agreed. "Will do."

He gave an anxious glance at the route Juliette would have to take - along a narrow catwalk, over a railing, and then clambering onto the fire escape itself. But Juliette wasn't even considering the dangers.

She clambered onto the catwalk and stepped along it, feeling the metal vibrate and shift under her weight, walking fast to outpace her fear. And then she reached the railing, scrambled over, and then hurdled the fire escape's banister.

Her feet clanged on the steel treads.

---