Most devices have some form of emulated storage. if they support sd cards they are usually mounted to /sdcard (or some variation of that name) which is usually symlinked to to a directory in /storage like /storage/sdcard0 or /storage/0 sometimes the emulated storage is mounted to /sdcard and the actual path is something like /storage/emulated/legacy. You should be able to use to get the downloads directory. You are best off using the api calls to get directories.
Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_DOWNLOADS);
Since the filesystems and sdcard support varies among devices.
see similar question for more info how to access downloads folder in android?
Usually the DownloadManager handles downloads and the files are then accessed by requesting the file's uri fromthe download manager using a file id to get where file was places which would usually be somewhere in the sdcard/ real or emulated since apps can only read data from certain places on the filesystem outside of their data directory like the sdcard