The Break-in.
When you live in a close-knit community like I do, news of any kind tends to travel fast. Sometimes it travels even faster when the town is on the rather small size, and currently the news in our small town was about the rash of break-ins that have been happening.
For the first 10-years that I had lived in the area, there was never a problem. People relied on their neighbors, and they didn't steal from one another. We left our cars and houses unlocked. If you happened to leave your garage door up one night, you didn't have to worry about finding the place empty in the morning. At least that's how it was in the past.
More recently, things have taken a turn for the worse. Our area has been growing. Everywhere that there was once a vacant field, construction has started. More and more houses popped up out of nowhere and soon enough, strangers seem to be everywhere.
At first it started with things missing from inside of vehicles. In the morning you could tell that someone had been rummaging through your stuff. Change was dropped on seats, the glovebox was left open, papers strewn about, things like that. We thought it was kids rummaging for pop money, but then bigger things went missing. Locks were cut and tools were gone from work truck boxes and car trunks, until the biggest invasion of privacy, the break and enters of homes started to happen.
One of my neighbors from down the street returned after a weekend camping trip to find his garage emptied. Gone was every single DeWalt power tool he owned, a lawn mower and bunch of booze. At that point, it was the ultimate indignity. Your home is your castle and for another person to break in and steal from it, is the worst kind of invasion.
From there it just didn't get any better. In fact, it went downhill.
A plan was made. Flyer were handed out door to door. As a group we tried to keep an eye on each-others stuff, but our yards are big, and our houses are far enough away that you aren't always able to see everything that is happening. So, we had to come up with alternative plan.
The problem was that we had a very good idea who was committing the crimes. But we had no actual proof.
You see, everything started happening within a month of a younger couple moving in a few streets over. They weren't hard to notice. A jacked up yellow pick-up truck with loud dual exhaust pipes. Dirt bikes and quads. And loud music. Always loud and always obnoxious. Not because it was loud, but because it was shitty music. They both had matching blonde hair, bleached to a yellow color that was almost the same as their truck. And they were tiny. Small elvish, slight frames. If they were stealing our shit, I'm not even sure how the little bastards carried some of the stuff they stole. Anyway, it couldn't have been a coincident that the thefts started shortly after they moved in. And other than the blond hair, they were transparent. No one seemed to know what they looked like up close, but someone knew that they were in their early 20's. Their next-door neighbor said that they were nocturnal animals.
Stealing from cars, trucks, and garages is bad enough, but the straw that broke the camels back was when a couple with two small children came home from work, to find that their house had been robbed and ransacked in the middle of the day. So much for nocturnal theory.
An emergency meeting was called by seven or so of us that lived the closest together. We met in my garage, and by the time everyone had finished their second beer, we had a true vigilante group on our hands. Hungry for blood and a good old-fashioned lynching. I tried to keep the gang civil, but it was a hard thing to do.
"Okay, we have to calm down a little bit here. It's not like we can just walk over there, kick their door down and shoot them. If we do that, then we'll be the one's that end up in jail, not them."
"Well, we can fuckin shoot if we catch um in the act." My neighbor from a couple doors to my right was throwing gasoline on an already raging fire.
"Look Joe, it's only a matter of time before they get caught. We have to be smart about what we do or else they'll get away with it."
"That's easy for you to say Shawn, you didn't have those assholes in your goddamn house." Rob, the guy with the two kids had a very valid point.
"I know Rob. I'm not trying to say that I know how you feel. I'm just saying if we want to stop it from happening again, we have to catch them in the act, and not shoot them"
"Well maybe we can borrow Chico from you." Chico is my Neapolitan Mastiff. He weighs in at just under 170lbs, and so far, has proven himself to be the best security system on the market. He never barks, but he doesn't have to. Everyone knows full well that he is here.
"Anytime." I made the offer knowing that no one would ever take me up on it. They liked Chico well enough, but they were scared shitless of him.
"I say that we just go over there and have a talk with the little bastard. Maybe we can gently persuade him and his bitch to move out of our neighborhood. Give him a couple of slaps if we need to. Maybe drag them behind one of our trucks for a few miles." Joe was the oldest, and apparently dumbest in the group.
"Look, I don't know how many times I have to tell you, we can't go to them. All they have to do is call the cops and open a file against us and we're screwed. We have to catch whoever it is, in the act or with some of our stuff. It's the only way that we will be able to make the charges stick."
"I'm against violence, but we tend to agree with Joe. That little prick has to pay. Plus, we got the law on our side." Mark and Steve, the gay couple that live three houses to my left were on the vigilante warpath also.
"Okay, listen. You have to give me until next weekend. If we haven't caught them by then, we'll do it your way."
Almost in unison the others in the group asked what I planned to do. I couldn't answer, because at that point, I didn't yet know yet, so I made shit up on the fly.
"I'm working on a trap. We can't all be in on it, because...well it's better that not everyone knows. That way you can deny it if the shit hits the fan."
Some nodded in agreement and others, like Joe left my garage cursing like a sailor. Rob wasn't far behind. He was pissed, but not spewing venom like Joe. Mark and Steve stayed for another beer.
"So, Shawn, if you catch them, what's the plan, turn them into dog food for Chico?" We all laughed at my poor dog. He looked up from licking his balls when he heard his name, but otherwise, he couldn't have cared less.
Time was of the essence. I had five days to pull together my plan and catch the cat burglar's causing havoc in our neighborhood. I didn't have a bunch of faith in my plan. It wasn't what anyone would call elaborate, but it was all that I could come up with, and with the weekend approaching, it would be the best time to put it into play.
I started by stringing up some motion sensors, infrared cameras that were equipped with full high-quality night vision. They were strategically placed in areas in my yard where they could go undetected. I was hoping to get close-ups on their faces, as evidence. Secondly, I went shopping.
I had been in the market for the past few years, I had wanted a new television, and there was no time like the present. I purchased a LG 65" 4K Smart TV from Costco. I put the packaging for the TV along with some other packaging that I had rummaged from the recycle bin at Home Depot roadside two days before my garbage day. I also took pictures of some of the higher valued things in my garage. My quad, my generator, my mitre and table saws, things like that and put them on Marketplace and a local Facebook page. I gave the reason for selling as having purchased new ones. The bait was out, and the trap was being set. Now all it would take was luck and time. The wait began.
Just before dusk on Saturday night, Steve drove past my house and waved. He was waving at his partner who was dressed in a ball cap and my coat. Carrying an overnight bag, Mark got into my truck, backed out of the driveway and drove away. Chico and I sat in complete darkness, still waiting.
The sting took a lot longer than I would have thought. At one point, I actually thought that they wouldn't show up. That all the planning and all the work that I had put into my plan, was not working. Maybe they hadn't taken the bait. But petty thieves have a thing about stealing "new" purchases. They are drawn to the temptation like a moth to the light, and just before midnight, I got an alert on my Iphone. The screen showed a single figure wearing all black, with a backpack slung over his shoulder. The would-be thief was standing outside the backdoor of my garage, with a pry bar in his hands.
Chico took my cue. Silence would be our friend. Sneaking through the house to the sliding backdoor on my deck, we would be able to flank our uninvited guest.
