by Bill Bernico
Matt was going for the initial meeting this morning, but the actual stakeout most likely wouldn’t begin until the following day after the client had left for work. Matt found the house after winding up the mountainside for a few minutes. It was a light-colored ranch house with a circular driveway and a pool in the back yard. A three year old Chevy sedan sat in the driveway and Matt parked behind it. He hadn’t even had a chance to ring the doorbell when the front door opened and the homeowner greeted him and invited him inside, quickly closing the door behind them.
“Mr. Jacobs?” Matt said.
“That’s right,” Jacobs said. “Mr. Cooper, I presume.”
Matt agreed that he was and extended his hand. Jacobs gave it the briefest of shakes before releasing it and leading Matt into the living room. He gestured toward the sofa and Matt sat. Jacobs sat across from him in a leather recliner, a coffee table separating the two men.
“All right, Mr. Jacobs,” Matt began. “Suppose you tell me about the problems you’ve been having. Do you suspect anyone in particular of doing these things to your house?”
“Anything that happens to my house, generally happens in the afternoon, after I’m already at work,” Jacobs explained. “And I have a feeling that it might be my back yard neighbor to the south.” Jacobs gestured with his chin in the general direction.
“What kind of damage is being done?” Matt said. “And what are you basing your suspicions about your neighbor on?”
Jacobs rose from the chair and motioned for Matt to follow him. The two men walked through Jacobs’ kitchen and out the back door into the pool area. Jacobs pointed to the pool. “Just look at that, would you. That’s disgusting.”
Matt looked toward the pool and noticed clumps of grass and dirt floating on the surface of the pool. He could see clear down to the bottom of the pool where the looser dirt had settled. And there was lots of dirt, too. Jacobs turned back toward the house and pointed up to the roof, where several more clumps of dirt and grass lay scattered on the roof tiles and in the gutters.
“This may sound elementary,” Matt said, “But have you called the police about this?”
Jacobs nodded. “They were here a couple of different times. They looked at pretty much the same things you’re looking at now. They talked to my neighbor, who denied any involvement, naturally. Then they came back over here and said it was impossible to get fingerprints from grass clumps so what could they do?”
“What did they do?”
“Nothing, and now they won’t come back here when I call. I’m at my wit’s end, Mr. Cooper. I don’t know what else to do.”
Matt thought about it for a moment and then said, “Did the police bother to check the neighbor’s yard for any loose dirt or snippets of grass? If that neighbor is throwing grass clumps, loose dirt and bits and pieces of those clumps are bound to break off as he throws them and there’d be traces of that on his lawn.”
“I don’t think it had occurred to them,” Jacobs said. “Hell, I didn’t even think of that. What are your thoughts on all this?”
“Unless I can catch him in the act,” Matt said, “It looks like you’re out of luck. And with the way this neighborhood is laid out, I’m afraid whoever is doing this would notice me parked anywhere around here and they’d probably stay away until I had left before trying anything. If you have any ideas, I’m listening.”
Jacobs paused momentarily, looking at the floor. When he looked up again he said, “What if you were to stay inside my house while I’m at work? You could watch from in here.”
“Wouldn’t your wife object to me being here all day?” Matt said.
“I’m divorced,” Jacobs said. “I live here alone.
“And what about my car?” Matt said.
“You could park it in my garage,” Jacobs offered.
“Don’t you think any neighbors would notice something like that?” Matt said. “I mean, two cars trading places in broad daylight is not something that would go unnoticed, especially by the neighbor you suspect of doing this.”
Jacobs thought some more. “How about this? After you leave here, I give you half an hour and then I drive to your office and pick you up. You can ride back here with me and stay down in the back seat. I drive into the garage and you can come in through the garage door.”
“What hours do you work, Mr. Jacobs?” Matt said, trying to work the whole thing out in his mind.
“I work noon to eight-thirty Monday through Friday. So you’d be here nine hours, give or take. How does that work for you?”
“You realize nothing may happen all day and that I get two-fifty a day?” Matt said. “This could take several days before he does it again, assuming he will do it at all.”
“Mr. Cooper,” Jacobs said. “Even if it takes a week, I’ve already spent that much having the pool cleaned out twice and the roof swept and the house washed down. If you can get the evidence I need, I can get those expenses back from him in court and maybe even more.”
“All right,” Matt said. “Just so you know ahead of time that this stakeout could run into a few bucks.”
“Could you give me the address of your office?” Jacobs said.
Matt handed him one of his cards. “You know where that is?”
“Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga,” Jacobs said. “You get going now and I’ll swing by in half an hour. I can drop you back here and still make it to work on time.”
Matt walked out the front door, got into his car and drove back to the office. Benny was sitting at his desk when Matt walked in. “Did you pick up another client?” Benny asked.
Matt nodded. “He’s coming here in half an hour to pick me up?”
“Huh?” Benny said, puzzled. “Didn’t you just drive to his house to meet with him?”
Matt explained their arrangement and told Benny he’d have to hold down the office by himself for the rest of the day. “This could be pretty boring,” Matt said. “I’ll have to be watching the window all day. No television, newspaper, magazines, nothing.” He stepped over to the closet and retrieved his carrying case with the surveillance equipment in it. Matt laid it on his desk, opened the cover and inspected the contents. It was all there; everything he’d need to catch a vandal in the act if he struck today. He closed the case and snapped the clasps closed. Matt also took a folding tripod out of the closet and set it next to the case.
“You think he’ll strike today?” Benny said.
“Hard to say,” Matt told him. “This could turn out to be an all week job. Gees, I’d better pack some sort of lunch. I’m sure Mr. Jacobs wouldn’t want me raiding his cupboards or refrigerator.” Matt pulled the half gallon jug of chocolate milk out of his refrigerator and set it on top of the surveillance case. He checked his watch. He still had twenty-five minutes before Jacobs was due to arrive. “I’m going down to the corner and pick up a few things to pack for a lunch. If Jacobs shows up early, tell him I’ll be right back.”
“Will do,” Benny said.
Matt was back in eighteen minutes with a brown paper bag with a few goodies in it. Jacobs showed up five minutes later at the office door. He and Matt rode the elevator to the lobby and then walked out to the parking lot, where Matt placed his tripod and surveillance case and then slid into the back seat. Jacobs drove back home. When they got within two blocks of Jacobs’ house, Matt laid down in the back seat, out of sight of any prying neighbors’ eyes. Jacobs pulled into his driveway and waited while the overhead door went up. He pulled the car in and closed the garage door again. He opened the back car door and Matt got out, following Jacobs into the house with all his equipment.
Matt stayed in the kitchen, against one of the walls and instructed Jacobs to close the curtains on the patio door that led to the pool. Matt set his surveillance case on the floor, leaned the tripod against the wall and then looked at Jacobs. “Is it all right if I put these things in your refrigerator?” he said, holding up the jug of chocolate milk and the brown paper bag.
“Sure,”
Jacobs said, gesturing toward the refrigerator. “And feel free to help yourself to anything in there you like.” He pointed to a cookie jar on the counter. “I’ve got cookies in there if you want any.”
“Maybe later,” Matt said, checking his watch. It was already eleven fifteen and Jacobs would be leaving for work soon. He opened his case and withdrew a small camera with a spring clip on it. Matt attached it to one end of the curtains over the patio door. The camera caught the pool area from that angle. He looked at Jacobs. “Do you have any other windows on this side of the house that looks out onto the pool or toward the neighbor’s house?”
Jacobs nodded and led Matt into a bedroom where Matt attached a second small camera and aimed it toward the back yard neighbor. Jacobs checked the wall clock in the kitchen and told Matt he’d have to be leaving now and that he’d be back around eight-thirty. The two men shook hands. “Good luck, Mr. Cooper. I hope this works.” Jacobs exited through the garage, opened the overhead door and backed out into the street. The door closed again and Jacobs was gone.
Now Matt waited. He set up his tripod at the patio door and screwed one of his full-size video cameras onto it. He positioned the camera and tripod at the far end of the curtains, pulling them back just far enough to let the camera peek around them. This camera would cover the pool and the neighbor’s property. Matt made minor adjustments to the camera in the kitchen and then checked the accompanying image on the monitor. It was perfectly centered. He did the same with the camera on the other side of the patio curtain and then finished up in the bedroom, making several adjustments until he had the image he wanted. Matt returned to the kitchen and set his monitor on the kitchen table and plugged it in. Images from the three cameras filled three of the four squares on the screen. He could see the pool and the neighbor’s house perfectly.
Matt still had several unused cameras in his case so he decided to fill that fourth square on the monitor with images out the front window, facing the street. He didn’t think any damage would occur from the front, but it would be nice to see who came and went past the front of the house as the day progressed. The next thing he did was to hook up the monitor to his recorder so he’d have a permanent record of anything that happened within the camera’s range. Lastly, Matt connected a small portable color printer to the recorder.
An hour and a half passed with no action on the monitor. Matt retrieved his lunch from the refrigerator and set the bag and milk jug on the kitchen table. He was able to eat his sandwich and drink his chocolate milk without taking his eyes off the monitor. He set his glass and sandwich down when he suddenly caught some activity in the upper right corner of the monitor. That was the image coming from the bedroom camera. Matt rushed into the bedroom and glanced out the window. The flutter of movement that the camera was catching came from a small shiny hummingbird on the patio. It simply got too close to the window. Matt returned to the kitchen to finish his sandwich and milk.
Another seventy-five minutes passed and Matt was worried he might fall asleep from boredom. He rubbed his eye sockets with the butts of his palms and looked again at the monitor. He thought he saw some slight movement in the upper left square on the monitor. That was the smaller of the two cameras positioned at the patio door. Matt switched his gaze to the lower left corner of the monitor that displayed the image that the full-size camera was capturing. He hit the zoom button and moved in on the figure and could make out the outline of a person on the other side of the hedge. Matt watched intently as the figure looked both ways before lifting something up and hurling it over the hedge. Whatever it was landed in the pool with a splash.
Matt smiled, knowing he had some proof of vandalism. He’d just stay put and see what else happened, if anything. As he watched, the figure outside hurled another chunk of something even higher. Whatever it was landed with an audible thump somewhere over Matt’s head. Another chunk of grass and dirt on the roof. Matt continued watching for another ten minutes as this same person hurled half a dozen more dirt clumps into the pool. The dirt from these clumps slowly sank to the bottom of the pool while the grassy portions floated on the surface. Three more grassy clumps landed on the roof. One of them rolled off the end and landed just outside the patio door, not three feet from where Matt sat watching the video monitor.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the noise and motion stopped and the figure disappeared from the camera’s view. Matt watched as the figure turned and walked away, disappearing into the house that backed up to Jacobs’ back yard. Matt waited a few more minutes to make sure round two of the dirt throwing wouldn’t begin. When he was sure that was it for now, Matt rewound the surveillance video and then zoomed in on the vandal’s face as best he could. The perpetrator’s face came into plain view and Matt froze the screen, printing the image out on his portable printer. Now he was armed with real evidence that Jacobs could use to get the justice he’d been denied through conventional methods.
Matt decided to leave the video equipment set up until Jacobs returned home from work, which wouldn’t be for another five hours at least. He had what he needed and decided that he didn’t have to sit watching the monitor non-stop anymore. His curiosity got the best of him and Matt began to wander around through Jacobs’ house. He didn’t want to take anything. He just wanted to satisfy his curiosity and see for himself where everything was.
Matt started in the bedroom where one of the surveillance cameras was clipped to the curtain. It was a regular twelve by twelve room with nothing more than a bed, a dresser, a night stand with a lamp and a small closet in one corner. It was just about the dullest room he’d ever been in. He left the room and walked down the hall to another bedroom. This one had a master bathroom off of it. It had a shower stall situated in one corner. This had to be Jacobs’ bedroom. It had no female touches and was totally utilitarian in design. This room at least had one framed picture hanging on one of the walls. It was one of those cheap department store paintings that usually sold for less than thirty dollars.
Matt left that room and padded down the hall to the bathroom that was accessed down a very short hall that contained a pair of folding doors that opened to a water heater. The bathroom had no shower; just a bathtub, sink and toilet. Matt looked around him quickly before opening the medicine cabinet to see what was in there. He could tell a lot about a person by the items in their medicine cabinet. This one held nothing more than a small box of adhesive bandages, a comb, scissors, tweezers and a small amber medicine bottle with a prescription label on it. It was a sleep aid. Matt closed the cabinet and left the bathroom.
He was already pretty familiar with the kitchen, having spent the last couple of hours in there so he moved on to the living room. It held a man-sized television set, a sofa, one recliner and a coffee table with a built-in lamp sticking up in the middle. He decided Jacobs must lead a pretty dull life. Matt plopped down in the recliner, found the remote for the television and turned it on. He flipped through the channels but couldn’t settle on anything he wanted to watch. Maybe part of it was knowing he was charging Mr. Jacobs two hundred and fifty dollars a day for his being there and this somehow felt like stealing. He turned off the television and returned to the kitchen.
As he sat there waiting for Jacobs to come home, something occurred to Matt. What if he was to pay Jacobs’ back yard neighbor a visit? But for what purpose? Matt was curious enough to want to see the kind of person who would vandalize his neighbor’s property and he wanted to know the reason behind his acts. Matt decided it was worth the trip and picked up his camera case, setting it on the kitchen table again. He opened it and pulled a false bottom tray out, exposing a compartment beneath the camera equipment. There sat a baseball cap with the logo for some non-existent power company as well as a matching name tag with the same logo on it. At the bottom of the case sat a plain clipboard with several papers clipped to it. A pen poked out from under the clip.
Matt pulled these items out of the case and placed the cap on his head before pinning the I.D. t
ag to his shirt. He carried the clipboard with him back to the bathroom and examined his image in the mirror. He could pass for a meter reader at a quick glance. As he stood there checking his reflection he heard a scratching sound coming from the living room. He froze in position and listened. Matt quietly padded out to the living room and could see the front door knob moving back and forth along with the scratching sound. Jacobs wasn’t due home for hours and would have come in through the garage.
Matt shot a quick glance at the monitor and could see a person on the front stoop, bent over working on the lock. Matt soft footed it back to the kitchen and stood quietly behind the patio curtain, listening. A moment later the front door opened and Matt could hear footsteps walking in. He heard the door close and held his breath. The footsteps came closer and stopped perhaps ten feet from where Matt stood motionless.
“What the hell?” a deep voice said. The footsteps picked up again and stopped three feet from the patio curtain. The curtains were porous enough so that Matt could see through them without being seen himself. The man in the kitchen examined the monitor on the table and correlated the pictures with the approximate position of where the camera would have to be set up to get that picture. He stepped over to the opposite end of the patio door and pulled the curtain back revealing the camera on the tripod. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said when he realized that his yard was being video recorded. He grabbed the tripod and pulled it back into the room.
At that exact moment, Matt stepped out from behind the other end of the curtain and stared at the man with the tripod in his hand. “You want to set that down, carefully?” Matt said, pulling his jacket open to reveal his underarm holster and the .38 nested in its leather folds.