Free The Yoga Store Murder by Dan Morse

to do with that?” Keith asked.
    “Yup.”
    “Check my blood!” Keith yelled. “Check my blood! And you’re going to be wrong!”
    More ramblings, more assertions about the skateboard kids. Drewry tried again.
    “This woman that got killed inside the store. Did you do it?”
    “No. No. Hell no! Nah. Nah.”
    “And this woman that got raped inside the store, did you do it?”
    “No, no, no. I swear to God no!”
    “Because that’s what people are thinking: that you’re playing all these silly games because you killed this woman and raped this woman inside this store.”
    “Why would I do that? I would never do no shit like that, man. I got a woman,” Keith said. “The blood on my jacket came from me. The guy hit me in my nose.”
    Drewry and Ruvin wanted to get a sample of Keith’s DNA by drawing a cotton swab from the inside of his cheeks. Legally, they could do so if they asked him and he said yes, but the two worried the evidence wouldn’t be allowed into court because Keith hadn’t understood their request. They decided that they had better do this the more deliberate way, by getting a court order. Drewry retrieved the jumpsuit and told Keith he was taking him to jail. “Put this on. That way you’ll stay good and warm.”
    This time Keith accepted the garment. But he was concerned about how he’d get to the jail.
    “I can’t be in the back of no paddy wagon.”
    “You’re not going to be in the back of a paddy wagon. You’re going to be in the front seat of my car like you were when we came up here.”
    As they walked out, Wittenberger approached, still hoping to garner something from Keith. “I think you could have helped us out. Because I think you know who killed that woman.”
    “I don’t know,” Keith said. “I am being straight up on my mother’s grave and my father’s grave, man. I don’t know who done that.”
    Drewry drove Keith to the county’s jail in Rockville, three miles away. Ruvin followed. They booked Keith on the relatively minor alcohol charge, hardly what they were hoping for. It was 2:45 A.M. If the detectives were lucky, they could get three hours of sleep before starting up again on the case.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Bit of Magic
    By Monday morning, residents in and around Bethesda were growing alarmed. The masked killer-rapists were still on the loose. And they hadn’t struck in a distant ghetto or the closed-off home of a nearby neighborhood. They’d invaded a carefully designed “Urban Village,” where thousands gathered daily to decompress a little from the hectic, high-pressure lives they led in the shadow of the nation’s capital.
    The five-block area hadn’t always been such a draw. Until the 1990s, it was home to car-repair shops, drab government buildings, and a concrete plant, where drivers who lined up to get their trucks loaded were known to put the truck in park and run into a nearby tavern for a quick cold one. Detective Jim Drewry knew the area well; it had been part of his route when he’d been a mailman, and he’d enjoyed the laid-back feel of the place, even if it had fallen further behind the ever-more-prosperous neighborhoods stretching for miles in other directions.
    But a smart local company named Federal Realty Investment Trust had smelled opportunity. Its planners studied the neighborhoods, whose residents were described in adjective-laden and affirmative terms: I look at the work I do as a career, not just a job . . . It’s important to continue learning new things . . . I am interested in other cultures . . . I make a conscious effort to recycle . . . It’s important to feel respected by my peers . . . Store environment makes a difference where I shop . . . I prefer food presented as an art form. They had a lot of money, were eager to spend it, and they wanted to do so in a safe, walkable area.
    Federal Realty began buying up the aging properties, pouring more than $190 million into a project designed around principles called