Entropy in Bloom

by Jeremy Robert Johnson

  What?

  The cop’s disturbing lack of affect reminded Roger of the strange voice he’d heard on the 911 call. Is he even really saying this?

  Then, just as quickly as his demeanor had changed, Hayhurst smiled, and the light returned to his eyes. “Yeah, I’m surprised too,” he said, as if he hadn’t already replied. “This neighborhood has very low crime. I can’t remember the last time I was called out here, honestly.”

  Roger decided—especially with his sobriety already in question—to let the moment pass.

  It’s all the adrenaline. My head’s just a mess right now.

  The officer crossed the room and pulled out a smaller flashlight which emitted a soft purple light. He shone it on the jewelry box while running what looked like a tiny shave brush over the surface.

  “That’s what I expected—jack shit for prints. Burglary’s a hell of a tough case to crack, most of the time. Last year we only caught folks in about twelve percent of cases, and most of those were tweakers too dumb to recognize tagged or LoJacked gear. I mean, if you have to get into a career in crime, burglary’s probably the safest bet you’ve got.”

  Roger stared at the cop and wondered if he had ever passed any form of sensitivity training. Hayhurst spotted his bewilderment.

  “Sorry, man. Facts are facts. Anyway, let’s check your medicine cabinets and then take a look around back.”

  THEY SCANNED BOTH BATHROOMS and their cabinets and Roger ran an internal monologue matching meds to maladies. All was accounted for, aside from a small bottle of Valium which he occasionally used when his lower back went out. But Roger said nothing of the pilfered blue V’s, as he used them to treat a pain caused by the risk and impetuousness of his youth, and Hayhurst might ask too many questions about mistakes in Roger’s past he felt lucky to have escaped.

  THEIR OUTDOOR ADVENTURE CONSISTED primarily of Hayhurst pointing out many of the house’s additional unsecured areas—”This place is a burglar’s dream, Roger. You could hide in a yard like this all day and strip the house at your leisure with a truck in the alley.”—and then acknowledging that the rained-on grass would yield no useful shoe prints.

  It wasn’t until they stopped scanning the exit route and Hayhurst brought the flashlight up to the outside surface of the bedroom window that they found their first real clue.

  There, in the caked dust on the window glass, they saw the shape of the two massive hands which had so easily pushed the window out of the way.

  Hayhurst lifted his own gloved hands up to the window. The outline of the fingers on the glass was easily an inch wider and two inches longer than the officer’s.

  And most notably, the imprint of the left hand appeared to be missing its pinkie finger.

  “Will you look at that, Roger? Big guy! And that missing digit means we just might find out who burgled your house after all. Let me dust for prints.”

  But Roger—whose mind was awash in red X’s and low growls and flat voices telling him about hunger—wasn’t so sure that even solid evidence and well-applied laws offered any kind of comfort anymore.

  “Nope. Gloved up. No prints. Pros for sure. Not that this was a hard nut to crack, mind you. Truth is you made it easy for them. You were so easily penetrated.” It almost sounded like Hayhurst was admiring them. “Not your fault, not really. These days it’s not as clear cut as it used to be. Back in my father’s day a man knew where he stood. You prepared and you protected. You kept a shotgun near your bed if trouble came calling, and you knew it was on you to provide your wife and child with a sense of security. You get that, right?”

  Hayhurst’s earlier comment was still echoing in his head—You were so easily penetrated. Something about the way the cop said it sat in Roger’s guts and made him feel like he was shrinking away and furious at the same time. He crossed his arms over his chest and wondered what it would feel like to drive a fist into Hayhurst’s nose.

  “Yeah, I can tell you know what I’m talking about, Roger. You’ll do the right thing, going forward. Maybe you could use a new fence back here. Something more serious than that chicken wire. City code will let you go up to six feet now, plus trellis on top. Anyway, let’s head in.”

  IN THE END OFFICER Hayhurst left him with only a floppy, computer-printed business card with his police department info on the front and a case number jotted on the back.

  “That case number’s really all I can give you at this point. I got a photo of each room and the vandalized picture in your office. Besides that, all I found was a partial print that’s probably yours.”

  “Probably.”

  “Well, like I said, this guy or guys, it was a pro deal. And even if that partial is theirs, it doesn’t work like you see on the CSI. I’m not sending out a tech for what appears to be a standard-issue jewel theft. So what you do now is take inventory of what you lost and call the insurance company first thing in the morning. They’ll make it right. And remember, they have no way to verify how much cash was or wasn’t stolen from your property. So be certain to search through your house and figure out how much cash was stolen. It was probably quite a bit.”

  “What?”

  “I would never officially advise you to falsely report cash losses. But I can tell you that by the time this all sets in, you are going to find yourself spending a lot of money securing this joint. Trust me. So let the insurance company make that right, too. Take care, Mr. Stephenson.”

  There was a moment of silence after Roger closed the front door of the house. He was exhausted. He leaned his forehead against the cool of the door and wished that he could close his eyes and when he opened them he’d find out it was all just a bad dream, that everything was the way it had been before they’d left for the party. But that was bullshit, so he considered another option: set fire to the place. It wasn’t theirs any longer—the moment intruders opened the window and stepped inside it had ceased to be his family’s home. Even if he tidied up and offered reassurances, his family would always remember this night. How the only ones he yelled at that night were the ones he should have protected. How some stranger had walked through their home and taken everything they’d wanted. So he’d soak the damned place in gasoline and spark a match and watch all proof of the invasion turn to ashes, then drive two cities over to be with Claire and Julie and start afresh.

  This never happened. I did all the right things.

  But then his phone rang, and the world wasn’t a place which allowed such fantasies, and the screen said “CLAIRE” so he had to answer it and start lying to her about how everything was going to be okay.

  II.

  HE DECIDED TO TELL Claire as little as possible about the evening.

  Yes, we were burgled.

  I’m sorry, but they got your jewels. The diamonds. All of them. Sorry, babe.

  I’ll bring some clothes and supplies out to your mom’s house tomorrow afternoon. I need you and Julie to stay there for a few days until I get things cleaned up and safe around here.

  No, the officer says it was a standard-issue crime. In and out.

  They did get the laptop.

  I know. I know. It sucks. But I’m pretty sure I have most of our pictures and videos on a back-up drive. Or in that cloud account I keep forgetting to cancel.

  No, they don’t have any of those videos. Those are only on the camera card. I never moved them to the hard drive. I swear.

  No, you make sure Julie gets to school and then head to work. I’ll call in tomorrow, stay home and deal with all of it. Insurance. Banks. Credit agencies. Get this place locked down.

  I know, babe. It’s a fucking mess. It’s going to be okay though. I’ll handle it.

  I promise.

  Love you too.

  You guys get some rest, okay? I’m taking care of everything.

  I’ll make it right.

  HE WONDERED WHAT WOULD have happened if he’d told her everything. What if she knew about the strange voices and the ink-slashed photo and had some sense of who might have been
in their home? He imagined she’d demand that they put the house on the market and move somewhere, anywhere, else.

  But he’d hidden the truth, and the doubt and concern in her voice doubled his resolve.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Are you sure you can handle all this?”

  It ate at him. What did she think of him now?

  She’s just worried. She loves me.

  Or, maybe she doesn’t think I can fix this.

  He’d cleared his throat halfway through the call and shifted his voice into a lower register. He would show her he was the kind of guy who could handle any trouble that came his way.

  But are you, Rog?

  Are you really?

  DESPITE A FLOOD OF adrenaline from the night’s events, Roger knew the right thing to do was to get some rest and start as fresh as he could at daybreak. But when he walked back to his bedroom and felt the air blowing in through the open window and saw the huge footprint canyon in the middle of his wife’s pillow, he knew that this was a place which would offer no sleep until set right.

  So: TRIAGE.

  What was the worst of it? What had to be addressed to quell the rage and frustration he felt pressurizing in his chest?

  He thought back to Oakland, when things had gone bad there. You had to work fast to reshape reality before it became the thing that swallowed you whole.

  Roger hit the kitchen and brewed a whole pot of jet-black coffee.

  Get some rest?

  Nope. Not tonight.

  First: undoing the things he didn’t want Claire to ever know. A Windex wipe down for their rear window erased the outline of the printless four-fingered hand. Screen reinserted, window closed.

  But nothing locking that window in place. God, we were so vulnerable.

  The comforter and pillows went in the laundry. If Claire ever found out the burglar had stepped on her pillow, she’d throw it in the fire before sleeping on it again.

  The X’ed out picture frame was stuck in a trash can two houses over, and the photo of him and Julie tucked away in a family album. Couldn’t risk Claire asking about the absence of the frame or spotting it in their own trash.

  Roger would have to ensure any and all follow-up cop conversations rolled through him.

  The knife he’d been unable to wield found its home in the chopping block.

  The worst and most unsettling evidence of the burglary addressed, Roger worked the rest of the night on restoring order, feeling like a lonely ant tasked with rebuilding an entire hill after some kid had kicked it to pieces for cheap thrills.

  He dusted his desk to de-emphasize the absence of their computer. He pushed his bookshelf back up and tried to remember in what order he’d organized his books, back when they’d first moved in. He hit the hole in the living room wall with a patch-and-paint kit, and since there was more coffee in the pot he drained that and then stayed in motion until sunrise so that he could perfect the illusion that nothing bad had ever happened here.

  HE HADN’T FALLEN ASLEEP so much as he’d just stopped being conscious right there in his chair at the kitchen table. He woke to a puddle of drool on the dark wood table and too-bright sunlight beaming in through the sliding glass doors to their patio.

  The table had become the central workstation for Operation: Un-Fuck This. Roger reoriented himself, poring over the insurance docs and jewelry receipts and current bank statements and even the laptop manual, where he’d actually had the rare foresight to jot down the serial number. He checked his phone and saw nothing from Claire and hoped that she was about her usual routine. That gave him nine more hours to lock things down.

  He used his phone to shoot an email to his supervisor at the mill. They were still a month out from quarter end, so if Roger had to be gone, now was the time. He’d miss a few droning meetings about the implementation plans for the new safety regs. That was fine by him.

  “Stomach flu knocked me sideways. Trust me, you don’t want me there. Might be sick for a day or two. Lance has access to my Q3 folder for the morning reports.”

  Roger had figured out a while back that a stomach flu was the best illness to fake when you needed an excuse to take a day off. Everybody sympathized and nobody asked questions, for fear that they might get answers involving shit and/or vomit. Plus, if you stayed out for a fake cold, you had to spend that whole first day back putting on theatrics, making little dry coughs and sniffling back imaginary snot. The flu would get him to the weekend without having to worry about anything other than the house and how this was going to affect his family.

  Even after all the clean-up, she might still think it’s blowback from Oakland. But it’s not. It can’t be. That was sealed up tight. Anybody who would give a damn is still in jail.

  And normally those thoughts would have given Roger comfort— it was true, he knew it in his bones. No matter how much Claire fretted, it would be pure paranoia at play. Oakland was behind them, so long ago, and even if it wasn’t, then at least he knew what kind of folks he was dealing with. This, though . . . he had no idea. And even in the light of day and the heat of work, he still found himself plagued by cold sweats and a fluttering heart.

  I’m exhausted—that’s all. I’ll get the house together, get one night of good sleep, and then things won’t all seem so out of joint.

  He nodded his head at the thought, trying to drive the affirmation down, to make it feel true.

  HE’D HAD NO IDEA how hard it would be to leave the house.

  I need to leave to pick up supplies and get the place locked down. But if I leave and it’s still unsecured they might strike again, and this time they’ll take everything. They know the layout now. They think I’m a mark.

  They’d been watching this place, right?

  They’d hit us at night, when we’d have normally been home. Your average burglar shows up during working hours because they know everyone is off on their grind. But we were hit at prime time. They had to have been watching. Waiting.

  They could be out there right now.

  So Roger walked the perimeter of the house three times with an aluminum baseball bat slung over his shoulder. He poked around in the bushes and high hedgerows that surrounded his backyard and made it so thief friendly.

  He walked the street in front of their house, the bat now slung at his hip. He covered the whole block, doing his best to memorize the neighbors’ cars and minivans so it’d be easier to identify any intruders.

  The street was sedate. Only squirrels, birds, and Roger and his bat were in motion.

  It’s morning. They’re working. I could rob all these places right now. Hell, the guy across the street left his fucking garage door open again. I could walk right in and help myself to some pie and jewelry.

  Spotting nothing obvious or out of the ordinary, Roger returned to the house, turned on every light, and then locked the front door and started to leave.

  Wait. What if they are watching? Once they see me drive off. . .

  BY THE TIME HE had the hammer and nails in hand, he knew this was what Claire had been nervous about. That this would turn him manic. That his more questionable impulses would surface.

  He put up the hand-printed note anyway, nailed it to the forest green siding beneath their bedroom window.

  HEY, FUCKFACE,

  FIRST OF ALL, NOW YOU KNOW THERE’S NOTHING LEFT INSIDE BUT AN OLD-ASS TV SOME MISMATCHED DISHES, AND SOME PLUSH TOYS. SO STAY THE FUCK OUT.

  SECOND, HOW DO YOU KNOW I REALLY LEFT? HOW DO YOU KNOW I’M NOT THE KIND OF GUY WHO PARKS FIVE BLOCKS AWAY AND THEN SNEAKS HOME TO WAIT FOR YOU TO COME BACK IN? HOW DO YOU KNOW I’M NOT IN THERE RIGHT NOW, WAITING BEHIND THAT CLOSED BATHROOM DOOR, HOLDING ON TO A HUGE KNIFE?

  MAYBE I WANT YOU TO COME IN. MAYBE I WANT YOU ON MY PRIVATE PROPERTY SO I CAN ASSERT A FEW OF MY RIGHTS. THAT MIGHT BE ALL I WANT IN THE WORLD. TO HAVE A LITTLE FUN WITH YOU BEFORE THE COPS COME TO HAUL YOUR DUMB TWEAKER ASS OFF TO A TWENTY YEAR JAIL TERM.

  YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH.r />
  SO THINK ABOUT IT, BUDDY. IS IT WORTH IT?

  SINCERELY,

  THE OWNER

  P.S. BRING THE LAPTOP BACK. IT’S LOJACKED. PUT IT ON THE FRONT PORCH BEFORE THEY CATCH YOU WITH IT.

  Roger pictured Claire coming home to find that note. Another wave of sweat popped on his skin.

  HE DROVE THREE SLOW laps around his block before he finally felt comfortable driving away from the house. Saw nothing which caused alarm. It was a quiet neighborhood. He’d loved it, until last night. He resolved to do everything he could to make it so he could love it again someday.

  Every second he was away, someone was robbing the house.

  THAT’S HOW IT FELT.

  He drove accordingly. If he happened to run a red or two, he put his hand up in front of his face in case the intersection had one of those automated photo ticket systems. He rode a few bumpers to induce a sense of fucking urgency. Speed limits were suggestions for people who weren’t trying to protect their homes from giant four-fingered professional thieves.

  He hit the home supply and electronic stores in turbo mode. His cart tilted to two wheels when he rounded corners. He almost clipped a gray-haired old lady who was indecisive about which pruning shears she wanted.

  Why is everyone in goddamned slow motion?

  Fatted fucking cows, man. It’s like they can’t see it.

  Something’s coming. I can feel it.

  It didn’t feel like mania to Roger. It felt like clarity.

  It felt like purpose.

  I can make things right.

  HE EXPECTED TO FIND the house gutted upon his return, instead of locked tight and smelling like burnt coffee.

  Shit. I left the burner on.

  Time to lock it all down: toolbox opened on the table, drill on the charger. Credit card receipts and open boxes strewn across the control center/kitchen table.