Free Back Blast by Mark Greaney

to get out of Metro and into something higher profile, a position on the national desk or on an investigative team that wouldn’t necessitate him being a zombie every damn day, so he worked hard, he got along with his editor, and he didn’t bitch.
    All that taken into account, Andy still figured he must be doing something seriously wrong, because why else was he the one driving out to the shittiest ward in the District in the middle of this cold misty night to report on a double homicide?
    Tonight’s assignment didn’t sound terribly interesting—the Watergate break-in this wasn’t. From the info he picked up over the police scanner in his car it seemed to be a shooting at a crack house or something. Not anything new and exciting, as Andy had filed countless stories like this already, but there were bodies and there were injured and this was his job, so as soon as he finished a piece he was working on at his desk, he climbed into his Ford Festiva and headed out into the dreary night.
    With luck, he told himself, he could get six column inches out of this shooting.
    Now he followed the last instructions of his GPS and turned off 4th Street SE and onto Brandywine Street.
    Even though he knew the depressing crime statistics for Ward Eight, Andy never really felt unsafe around here. He was from Philly and had been raised lower middle class, so he was no stranger to rough streets. He’d been mugged once in D.C., but that was just three and a half blocks from the Capitol building, so he didn’t ascribe much more threat to the so-called bad parts of town.
    As Andy pulled into the neighborhood he heard over his police scanner the crime scene was a possible meth stash house run by the Aryan Brotherhood, and as he parked and looked around he thought that possibility to be highly likely. He couldn’t imagine this property in front of him being anything
other
than a drug house. It was basically a boarded-up ramshackle single-story with a pickup truck adorned with a rebel flag decal in the driveway out front. The front door was a big black iron monstrosity and the fence around the back of the property was high and ringed with barbed wire.
    The entire property was surrounded by police tape, and a few locals stood around in the rainy night. In the street a dozen squad cars idled, all with their headlights facing the home, and many with their lights flashing. A pair of fire trucks were parked end to end out front, and a single ambulance sat in the driveway, the EMTs leaning against their vehicle.
    Just another night.
    Other than Animal Control wrangling a big pit bull in the parking lot of an apartment building three doors down, there was no sense of urgency to the scene, which told Andy this ambulance was here to pick up dead bodies, not injured victims.
    As he parked he noticed a gray four-door Nissan that he knew belonged to a homicide detective he’d become friendly with during his time as a cops reporter. He grabbed his backpack, stuffed with a camera, notebooks, an iPad, and a digital recorder, and he climbed out of his car, locking it before heading across the street.
    He’d gotten less than halfway to the police tape when a patrolmanstanding at the perimeter shone a flashlight in his face. The light clicked off quickly, and Andy recognized the burly black officer.
    “How’s it going, Mike?”
    The cop held his hand up and said, “Not yet, Andy.”
    Andy stopped in the street. “What’s that?”
    “Can’t let you in just yet.”
    “Really?” They always let Andy in, or at least up to the porch to take a quick peek. “Why not?”
    “Dunno.”
    “Who’s the detective in charge? Is it Rauch? Tell him I’m here, he always lets me poke a head in. Won’t take but a minute.”
    “Rauch isn’t in there.”
    “Why are you breakin’ my balls tonight, Mike? I saw his Altima back there.”
    “Rauch is around, but not in the house. Hasn’t been inside yet. I think he’s on a canvass. Go talk to him.”
    “What’s