By the time Morgan Holmes and Gerald Brevard III crossed paths on a scrubby strip of highway behind an animal shelter in Washington, DC, they had spent years following each other's erratic footsteps, tracing zigzag paths through the courts and jails and mental hospitals of the nation's capital and its suburbs.
Before their lives violently intersected, two men who were shot to death and the man the police believe killed them had all fought the same scourge: severe mental illness.