Five long minutes passed as I waited for the cops to arrive. Usually, if I was sitting in my van for a while, I would have reviewed notes or otherwise tried to be productive. Not this time. Instead, I sat in the darkness of my van under gloomy November skies, my arms wrapped around me. The wind blew past, and I jumped at every leaf or piece of trash that moved.
Three sheriff SUVs rolled up at about the same time. One parked directly in line with my front door. The second parked a couple of car lengths up the street from there. The third pulled in behind me.
I got out of my van as they showed up, careful to keep my hands in plain sight the whole time.
Two of the deputies wore the regular uniforms, but the third guy, the one parked behind me, was in a suit. The one in the suit asked, “Are you Mr. Hunt?”
“Yes, sir.”
He walked over to me while the others walked toward my building. I hadn’t seen him before at the sheriff’s office. He was just a little taller than me, but a lot more muscular. His dark hair was neatly trimmed, so he definitely looked like a cop. It was odd that the wind didn’t move his hair; maybe he had something in it. “Have you seen anyone?” he asked.
I shook my head in the negative. “No, I saw that the lock was broken and ran to my van to call you guys. I haven’t seen anything else.”
He nodded an acknowledgment and held his hand up in a sort of blocking motion. “Okay, you just wait here while we take a look.”
By “we” he seemed to mean the uniformed deputies. One checked out the door while the other walked around the exterior, presumably looking for signs of crime. Once the outside checker made a complete circuit, both drew their sidearms and slowly entered.
Having strangers enter my home rattled my sense of safety and my place in the world. Trying to fix the issue by having more strangers go inside, even if I called them, really cemented the issue. Sure, the new batch were deputies, and they looked a little familiar, but I didn’t really know them. Acid filled my guts and I felt like I could puke at any moment.
I also knew that not everyone approved of my hobby and all the accoutrements involved. Many of the books on my shelves covered strange occult topics as well as gore, mental illness, and some of history’s more disturbing killings. Add that to the odd artwork and various trinkets I had collected over the years, I could only assume the deputies were building a mighty worrisome mental image of me.
In a few tense minutes, they came back out and joined the suited guy and me. The taller one, I thought I had seen him at the station before, said, “The house is clear. Other than the front door lock, there wasn’t any sign of damage.”
“Thanks, Barry,” said the suited guy.
The deputies headed back toward their SUVs. The suited guy turned back to me and handed me a business card. “I’m Sergeant Bill Beringer. Do you have any idea who might want to break into your house?”
“Maybe,” I said. “There’s a guy named Johnny Franks. We worked for Mary Seiferts who owns an apartment building over on Field Street. He was breaking locks when he forgot his key. The one lock I saw was broken like the one on my door. Anyway, I found him behind her building when he was very drunk. Worried that he would freeze to death, I called nine-one-one to get him some help. When they picked him up, it turned out he may have been involved in crimes elsewhere.”
Unlike Sergeant Hargrave, Sergeant Beringer didn’t write anything in a notebook. Instead, he stared intently like he was memorizing every aspect of the scene. He could probably play back the memory later, looking over the detail of every blade of grass. At least, that’s how it felt.
“Do you think Franks might blame you for his arrest and could have been trying to get revenge?”
That had definitely been my thought. As I sat in my van waiting for law enforcement to show up, that was about the only thing going through my mind. “It’s a possibility, I guess. I just thought the broken lock looked familiar. For all I know, maybe everybody breaks locks like that these days.”
“Have you seen Franks since that night?”
I thought for a moment just to be sure. “Not that I can think of.”
“I see,” Beringer responded in a tone that told me nothing about how he took my statements. “It’s my understanding that you are helping Sergeant Hargrave on another case involving a drug lab and arson. Is there anything about this entry into your home that might be connected to that investigation?”
That was a new take. I had spent so much time obsessing over the danger of Johnny Franks that I hadn’t given any thought to any other threats. “I suppose so, but I don’t know of anything specific,” I said. “Honestly, I’m new to the idea of guessing what a criminal thinks about. I’m really out of my element with that stuff.”
He stood, as though waiting for something else from me. With nothing else coming, he turned and motioned toward the deputies. The shorter one headed toward us.
Beringer pointed toward my front door and said to me, “Let’s go inside. You can look the place over and tell us if anything is missing or damaged.”
As we walked in, Beringer instructed, “If you see something out of place or questionable, don’t touch it. Just point it out and we’ll record it and see if we can get any evidence.”
Up until then, I hadn’t noticed that the uniformed deputies wore cameras. The microphone for their radio, I thought that’s what it was, hung from their shoulder, stopping before it reached the badge. Just below that, a small digital camera hung, taking in everything. That made me feel both safer and more paranoid.
The deputy that followed us also carried a small, black plastic toolbox. I assumed it was for evidence gathering. I had seen things like that in movies.
I expected a disaster, with everything in the house thrown around and smashed. Instead, it was like nothing had happened at all. That was almost creepier. Still, just inside the door, I took a deep breath. The place smelled like home, and that helped. It’s funny how you don’t notice what your home smells like all the time, until you come home after too long away. I hadn’t been gone that long, but waiting in the van felt like forever.
Being methodical, I looked over every artifact and art piece. It wasn’t until I got to the books that something jumped out as wrong. Three of the books, about zombie-style rituals from Polynesia, were not lined up straight.
Lining up my books was a personality quirk of mine. I was kind of a nut about it. I read once that it kept the lateral pressures against the sides of the books even, thus prolonging their lives. Since then, I had been obsessed.
“Over here,” I said. “These three books aren’t lined up with the others the way I usually do it. It looks like someone pulled them out and didn’t put them back correctly.”
Beringer bent forward, hands clasped behind his back, to look at the books, peering at them from every angle without making physical contact. Once he seemed satisfied, he stood straight and motioned to the deputy.
The deputy sat his case on the floor near the books, opened it up, and started his work. He started by taking photos from several angles with a camera from the box. Then, it looked like he gathered finger prints, like they do in the movies, using a little brush and some powder.
While he did his work, I moved on, across the rest of my books. I checked the kitchen, the bathroom, and bedroom. Nothing stood out as wrong. Having read on the Internet about what people do to toothbrushes, I decided that I would replace mine to be on the safe side. I was going to have to go buy a new lock anyway, so I would already be shopping.
How I hadn’t noticed before was a mystery. I had been so focused on the little details that I hadn’t noticed the big one.
My computer was missing from the desk.
“Sergeant,” I called.
Beringer looked up at me and then followed my line of sight to my desk. “What is it?” he asked.
“My laptop computer is missing,” I said.
The sergeant walked to the desk and closely observed every part of it. He leaned and crouched, viewing the desk from every angle, all without touching it. Once satisfied, he rose straight up and called to the deputy.
The deputy had just finished where he was and was gathering his tools and a couple of bags containing my misaligned books. He came over to the desk.
Beringer turned to me and said, “Please describe the computer and anything else that was on the desk, to the best of your ability.”
If he hadn’t asked, I probably could have described everything in complete detail. As soon as I got the question, my mind went fuzzy. I could see a mental picture of the desk the way it was when I left it, but all the details were blurred out. I had to concentrate.
“I can’t remember all the details,” I said. “Those papers were there and it looks like they may have moved; I’m usually neater than that.” An idea popped into my head. “The laptop was just a normal laptop, but I have the model and serial number stored online.” Though he was my financial advisor, Rick also gave good tech advice, and he told me to store stuff online, including the serial numbers of all my stuff.
The deputy brushed dust all over the top and edges of my desk, looking for the elusive fingerprints. You would think that today’s crooks would be aware enough to not touch anything with the uncovered pads of their fingers. We’ve been taught that in movies and TV since childhood. Being late November, nobody would question someone wearing gloves.
“I can access the records with my phone,” I said. Slowly and deliberately, with no sudden moves, damn I was paranoid, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. After logging in, I swiped a couple of times to find the required app. The third item on the list was my laptop.
Holding up my cell phone screen so Beringer could see, I said, “There it is.”
He leaned forward and looked, again as though he was memorizing everything. Then he smiled slightly. “Could you please text that to the number on the card I gave you? Thank you.”
A wave of embarrassment swept over me as I realized that he probably couldn’t see the tiny print on the screen and definitely wasn’t going to remember all that data. Oops.
I pulled his card out of my pocket and composed the text while he turned his attention back to the deputy and the desk.
They finished getting everything they could from the outside of the desk. Using gloved hands, they opened the drawers one by one and asked me if anything looked out of place. Normally, the drawers only held office supplies and nothing of value. It all looked fine.
The crime scene investigation wrapped up and the sergeant and deputy gathered their things to leave. The thought of being alone in my recently violated home sent a tingle through my intestines. I wasn’t quite ready for them to leave yet.
“Sergeant?” I asked. “Do you think it will be safe here? I mean, are they likely to come back?”
Beringer looked at me as though he was summing up everything he could think of related to me and my place in the universe. “It’s hard to say. If they just wanted to break in and steal stuff or frighten you, they’re probably done. We will check the fingerprints as soon as we get back to the office, and if it is Franks or one of his associates, we will have them picked up soon enough. To be on the safe side, our regular patrols will include this area for a while, just to keep an eye on things.” He started to turn but stopped, “You will want to get your lock fixed as soon as you can.”
That was the very thing next on my list. “Any recommendations for a lock?”
He pursed his lips together and looked toward the floor, presumably in thought. When he looked back to me he said, “Quality has a price. Whatever you get, make sure it is good quality, maybe a high end brand and high end model. Maybe get the best you can get for now and then talk to a security expert to get optimal advice for your situation.”
He turned and left, taking his deputy with him.
I followed as far as my front door and then watched as they huddled for a couple of minutes before leaving in their individual vehicles.
Normally, being at home felt cozy and comfortable. That had changed. Now, the walls seemed imaginary, like any fiend could walk through whenever it wanted to. The urge to get out welled up in me. I fought the desire to run away, to run as fast as I could.
Taking some deep, calming breaths, I got myself together. The front door lock was broken. I needed to go buy a new lock. That would leave my place open. I came up with a solution.
Closing and latching the front door, I got some pennies and wedged them into the cracks between the door and the door frame. I heard somewhere that this would keep the door from opening. It was probably just an urban legend or something, but it was all I had and it gave me some sense of comfort, whether justified or not.
With the front door fastened, I exited through the back door, with its lock intact. I was very careful to exit quietly, looking around me for any sign of trouble. Trying to not look suspicious, I walked around the house toward my van. It’s hard to not look like you are up to no good when you are cautiously peering around the corner of your house before round that corner.
Buttoning up my home securely made me feel somewhat better. I think it was the sense of control. With my new-found confidence and sense of purpose, I headed for the store to buy a sturdy lock and a sanitary toothbrush.