The Shadow

Her house was marked in police tape, but the media had left. Rosie suspected they would be around later to get her account of the situation, but she didn’t want to give one. She had parked down the street and wasn’t planning on going inside, but her feet were on autopilot and she was heading for the front door.

“Ma’am, you can’t go in there. It’s a crime scene.”

Rosie had passed under the police tape and was headed up the brick walkway when an officer called out to her. He was standing with a small group of fellow police; one had a cell phone out and appeared to be making a call. Rosie wondered if he was leaving another message for her voicemail.

“This is my house,” she said. She didn’t want to talk to more police. She didn’t see the two men that had shown up last night in front of Carter’s house. But maybe they weren’t needed here, she thought.

The officer had followed her inside and began informing her of the details. She was only partially listening.

“And what about Carter?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, who?” the officer asked. It was now blatantly apparent that Rosie had not been listening to the officer at all. He seemed to be saying something about Rosie staying somewhere else when she interrupted him with her concerns for her note writer.

“Carter. Carter Jenkins. Last night two of your officers told me they found his truck abandoned on the side of the road. Did you find him?” She wasn’t so much requesting the information as she was demanding an answer.

“I wasn’t aware there was an abandoned vehicle last night,” the officer said. “You said there were two officers who spoke with you? What did they look like?” He seemed intrigued Rosie had spoken with his peers.

“I was up on Shooks Pond Lane. One was kind of tall and the other was a lot shorter. I couldn’t see their faces.”

The officer excused himself, which Rosie thought weird, but she didn’t mind being relieved of his presence and continued to look around her house.

The damage was obvious. Picture frames were shattered, lamps lay on their sides, and books were taken off shelves with pages ripped out. The debris of her life was scattered across the living room floor, leaving a trail that went upstairs. But nothing here seemed to be missing. She was devastated that her home had been the playground of an intruder. Her belongings were touched by hands she didn’t know, stomped on by feet that didn’t leave their shoes at the door.

There were muddy tracks that led up to her bedroom. She was careful not to smudge them with her own steps. The only room upstairs that showed a disturbance was hers. The bathroom and guest room were untouched.  Her bedroom window was open, or broken, and the curtain swayed with the wind. Her bed was unmade, but she never made it anyway. Rosie’s closet doors were open wide, half of her wardrobe missing. The picture frames on her desk were intact, but the photos were gone. Her make-up collection was strewn across the bathroom tile floor, open and spilt.

“Ms. Lawrence?”

A different officer had joined her upstairs and introduced himself as Chief Brown.

“Ms. Lawrence, the officers you told Officer Garcia you spoke to last night, did their uniforms fit?” Brown asked.

Well this investigation took an unexpected twist, Rosie thought.

“It was raining, I don’t know. What does this have to do with…?”

“We can’t share the details at the moment, but we might need you to answer some questions about it later,” Brown said.

Rosie was confused, but before she could ask again about Carter, Officer Garcia called up the stairs and said the press was back and wanted a word with her. She declined. When the news van had finally pulled away, Rosie waved Garcia and Brown out of her house, turning down their offers to stay for surveillance. She needed time to herself and a pair of watching cops was not going to help.

She sat down on the floor in the middle of her living room. After investigators had taken pictures of the break-in, they had it cleaned up. Her house still showed signs of a burglary, but the fragments were swept away.

But then Rosie thought she heard footsteps on her back patio. The media had left and the last squad car had sounded its siren in goodbye, so no one should be in the backyard, Rosie thought.

“Unless the thief didn’t get what he came for the first time,” she whispered to herself.

The footsteps were heavy and hadn’t stopped, as if the body they belonged to was pacing, indecisive on whether to attempt a second break-in. Rosie’s car was still parked down the block, so it might look like she wasn’t home because she hadn’t parked in the driveway.

Rosie crawled on her hands and knees from the living room to the back door in the kitchen. The glass in the door’s window was gone; the shattered remnants had been cleaned up by the police. The curtain billowed in the slight breeze, threatening to expose her loudly beating heart to whoever stood on the other side of the threshold. Her hands had begun to shake. Surely the thief couldn’t see her from such a low angle. But the footsteps outside had stopped.

Now would be a good time to have that gun, Rosie thought.

She reached the door and pulled the curtain enough to see what her intruder looked like. This time she’d at least be able to provide the police with a physical description so they could line up suspects.

Rosie saw the shadow first. Cast long across the cement patio, the dark silhouette concealed any weapons the intruder might be carrying. She visually connected the shadow to its shoes, dark pants, a black leather jacket and face. One quick look was all Rosie needed to identify the man in a crowd of criminals.

She gasped when she recognized his profile. It was Carter.

Rosie dropped the curtain, but was frozen to the spot. Carter had heard her gasp and he moved closer to the door.

“Rosie?” he whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Rosie found herself standing and turning the knob at the sound of Carter’s concerned insistence that she was out of harm’s way. But even still, she opened the door just a crack.

“I meant what I said in the note,” he said. “You’re not safe here anymore.”