Matthew Dicks

by Something Missing (v5)

  Martin and Jim had met over a game of Chutes and Ladders a couple weeks into their kindergarten year, when it had become clear to both of them, even at their young age, that no one else was interested in playing with them. Alone in a new world of shiny linoleum, tiny chairs and desks, and inflatable letter people, the two were forced into a friendship that had lasted for almost their entire lives. Though Jim had escaped the isolation of kindergarten and gone on to a more normal life of marriage and children, he had always made room in his life for his friendship with Martin. And for Martin, Jim was one of the only people in the world, perhaps the only person in the world, with whom he was at ease. Therefore, as he solved Jim’s puzzle, he worried that he had slipped in some way. It’s difficult to bluff someone who has known you longer than you’ve been able to read. If anyone could uncover his secret, Martin reasoned, it would be Jim.

  After hearing Martin’s solution to the puzzle, Jim had quickly moved on to another, more difficult one, hoping to stump his friend and leaving Martin to believe that the choice of puzzle had been merely a coincidence. But it had also left Martin with a cautionary tale that he took very seriously. As he climbed the stairs to the second floor landing, he was exceptionally careful of his footing on each stair. Only an amateur would allow himself to get arrested by breaking a leg in the midst of a client visit.

  At the top of the stairs, Martin turned left, passing by a bathroom and guest room on his way to the end of the hall, where the master bedroom was located. He had been in this room many times, during each visit to the house in fact, but this time would be different. He wouldn’t simply be inventorying Sophie Pearl’s jewelry box as he had done for the last seven months. Today he would finally be taking something.

  Exactly seven months ago, Martin had acquired an earring from Sophie Pearl’s jewelry box, a 1.3-karat diamond stud, leaving its twin behind. He had chosen this earring after a yearlong inventory of the jewelry box that was based upon time-lapse digital photography. For a year, during each visit to the Pearls’ home, Martin would photograph Sophie’s jewelry box with his Cannon Sure Shot and download the photos onto his computer at home. After examining the chronological, photographic history of the jewelry box, Martin was able to identify the best item to procure.

  First, Martin noted that the diamond earrings were absent from the box only once during the entire year, which included at least one inspection each week. Other than their one disappearance, the earrings were always located in the same spot, the southeast corner of the bottom tray (based upon the jewelry box’s customary position on the bureau). This was not the case for many other items in Sophie’s box, a clear indication that certain items were being worn and returned quite often but this pair of earrings was not.

  There were also some items in Sophie’s box that were never missing, but Martin had no intention of touching these. A pair of infrequently worn diamond earrings might go missing without concern, but a family heirloom, put away for a future daughter’s wedding day, would probably be noticed immediately.

  The earrings in question were also frequently covered by Sophie’s string of black pearls, so as to not be visible by their owner. In fact, for a three-month stretch, the pearls had covered the earrings on every visit. This indicated that Sophie was unlikely to notice the disappearance of the earrings, since she rarely saw them for long stretches of time. Martin guessed that Sophie probably wore these earrings with a specific dress and otherwise forgot about them for the rest of the year.

  Two other items in Sophie Pearl’s jewelry box fit this criteria for potential targets: a heart-shaped gold locket worth very little and an antique diamond ring, more than three karats of diamonds in all, that was probably worth a lot. Martin chose the earrings because they were of substantial value to make the acquisition worthwhile but not so much as to cause great concern to a successful couple like the Pearls if their disappearance was discovered.

  On February 17 of this year, Martin had taken one of the earrings during a visit, and then he waited. When he returned to the home two days after the procurement, he looked for signs that the earring’s absence had been noticed. The jewelry box looked nearly identical to the picture taken on procurement day. A similar pair of gold hoops, smaller and slightly oval, had replaced a pair of large, gold hoop earrings, but otherwise there were no noticeable changes. There was no evidence that Sophie Pearl had emptied her jewelry box in search of the missing earring.

  The disappearance had gone unnoticed.

  An amateur would have taken Sophie’s other diamond stud at that point, but Martin knew that this operation would require more finesse. Sophie would eventually notice that the earring was missing. He knew this because she wore this pair on occasion, though infrequently, and if she found both gone, she might, just might, suspect theft. But if a single earring was missing, then Sophie would almost certainly assume that she had misplaced the other, since no conceivable thief would think of acquiring just one earring, and so she would begin a search. On a day in mid-June, Sophie had conducted just such a search.

  Martin was sure of this because on the Wednesday of that week, he had found Sophie’s jewelry box in disarray. Items that hadn’t been touched in months had been moved to new locations, and it appeared that the bottom tray of the box had actually been removed, probably in order for Sophie to inspect underneath. Martin knew this from the thin piece of tape that he had placed between the bottom tray of the jewelry box and the box itself on the initial day of procurement, a piece so thin that it would go virtually unnoticed if someone were to lift the tray, but quite noticeable to a professional like Martin. On that day, the sliver of tape was gone, and after a few moments of searching, Martin had actually managed to locate it, lying between Sophie’s clock radio and a stack of Real Simple magazines atop the bureau. This confirmed in his mind that Sophie had conducted her search and had found nothing.

  So Martin waited again, knowing that patience and professionalism would eventually win the day. He wanted to be sure that Sophie wasn’t taking measures to replace the earring, by taking it to the jewelry store where it was purchased, for example, and matching it up with a new twin. Martin waited three months for a new earring to appear in Sophie Pearl’s jewelry box before deciding that today, September 17, would be the day to acquire the second. After removing the earring from the jewelry box and sliding it into a small plastic bag, he placed the bag into a Velcro pouch sewn into the inside seam of his baseball cap. If he were arrested, he did not want to be caught with the earring, and after experimenting for years with false-bottomed shoes and hidden coat pockets, and considering the possibility of placing stolen jewelry in bodily cavities (a concept Martin could never stomach), he had settled on the baseball cap, deeming it the last place a police officer would look and the easiest item of clothing to ditch in the case of police pursuit.

  Pleased with his new acquisition, Martin photographed Sophie’s jewelry box again, scanned the bedroom for any recent changes, and then backtracked to the second floor bathroom, where he acquired two bars of Dove soap from the neat stack of eight in the cabinet underneath the sink. Martin also took a moment to photograph the inside of this cabinet after noticing a large supply of toilet paper and two new bottles of Scope mouthwash. Although the theft of either or both of these items would probably go unnoticed by the Pearls, and though he knew that his own supply of mouthwash was running low, Martin never acquired items that did not appear on his original shopping list. Instead, he would photograph the items while in the house and later use the digital photos to plan his next visit, calculating the value of the items taken from the home over the past month, as well as the time these items had spent on the shelf, before deciding which items were safe to acquire. After all, Martin had plenty of other clients, so if he wasn’t able to stock up on toilet paper at the Pearls’ house, there were always others available to meet his needs.

  Before the days of digital photography, Martin had used a pencil and notepad to keep track of the inventory in each o
f his clients’ homes, and this system had worked well. When the idea of taking digital photos first occurred to Martin, he immediately rejected it on the grounds that he was a professional, and professionals didn’t need fancy gadgets in order to be successful. Martin considered himself an old-school pro, as evidenced by his burlap sack and his cautious nature, and digital photography was anything but old school. However, after thinking about it some more (because Martin believed that professionals constantly reevaluated their decisions), he began to see the tremendous potential of digital photography for his business. And though there was nothing wrong with holding on to old-school beliefs, Martin also came to realize that professionals, old-school or otherwise, also kept abreast of the times, paid attention to new technology, and found ways of making their business better while adhering to traditional values. Digital photography was a way to make his business even better.

  By taking digital photos, Martin was able to reduce the overall number of minutes spent in each of his clients’ homes, a huge benefit in a profession where stealth and speed were of the utmost importance. Martin also found that digital photos were easier to rid himself of in the event of capture. The camera that Martin owned stored photographs on a memory stick that could be completely erased by pressing a combination of four buttons (a process that he practiced until it could be completed in less than seven seconds), or the memory stick could simply be broken in half, rendering it unreadable. With this new technology, Martin found that he was able to gather more information about his clients in far less time, and in Martin’s mind, information was invaluable.

  Exiting the bathroom, Martin made his way back down the stairs with equal care (if not more, since the thief in the lateral-thinking puzzle had broken his leg going down the stairs) and passed through the Pearls’ dining room into the hall that connected the kitchen with the home office, the family room (complete with a second unused fireplace), and another guest bedroom at the western end of the house. Directly in front of him was the first floor bathroom, a large teal-and-peach rectangle complete with a full shower and monogrammed towels. Martin entered, sliding aside the white louvered doors on his left to reveal a matching washer and dryer. He quickly scanned the laundry supplies on the shelf above the appliances, locating a bottle of Tide two-thirds full, and proceeded to pour half of the remaining laundry soap into a clear plastic container that he had stored in his burlap sack.

  Closing the bottle of Tide (now a little less than a third full) and returning it to its perch, Martin checked his watch, a black Seiko that was waterproof and reliable in three atmospheres. The digital display, counting down, read 1 minute and 43 seconds, giving him just enough time to exit the premises. Martin was uncompromising on his time limit. No more than fifteen minutes inside a client’s home, no matter what was left on his list. Longer than fifteen minutes and any newly installed silent alarm or nosy neighbor reporting his presence would give the police ample time to arrive.

  This, of course, would never happen. First, no homeowner with an ounce of sense would ever install a silent alarm in his or her home. The purpose of an alarm is to frighten off burglars. Silent alarms only served to trap burglars inside homes, oftentimes along with the unwitting homeowners. In these instances, dangerous hostage situations often occurred as the police surrounded the home, entrapping the burglar and the home’s occupants inside.

  Second, in the event that any alarm was installed, the homeowner would almost certainly place a sticker on the front of their home, alerting thieves to its presence. This was a signal that Martin had grown to adore. While these signs served as effective deterrents, protecting the homeowners who possessed them, they also served to exploit the neighboring homeowners who did not own a sign. After all, if your next-door neighbor’s home was protected by ADT, with its blue, octagonal sign posted prominently around the house, why would you install a similar alarm system in your home but keep it secret? Wouldn’t this be just inviting disaster? Martin thought so. In fact, in Martin’s many years on the job, he had yet to run into a house with an alarm that did not also have a sticker alerting him to its presence, but some of his best clients had been those living adjacent to homes protected by alarm systems.

  Nevertheless, Martin remained cautious and always left a client’s home in less than fifteen minutes. No sense in taking chances, as remote as they might be. This time limit was easy to abide with long-term clients like the Pearls, whose homes Martin knew almost better than his own. But in a new client’s home, the fifteen-minute restriction often left Martin unable to inventory rooms and complete assigned tasks. There’s always tomorrow, he would think to himself in these circumstances (because he also avoided speaking aloud while inside a client’s home), and he would force himself to leave no matter how much valuable information there might still be to collect. Unlike in many jobs, when Martin made a mistake, it might mean the end of his career.

  Though he had hoped to photograph the Pearls’ home office today (Martin was in need of printer paper and staples), his watch was telling him to leave, so he made his way to the back door in the mudroom adjacent to the kitchen. In many clients’ homes, 1 minute and 43 seconds would still be a world of time, but the Pearls’ home posed a special challenge for Martin. Though he considered them one of his best clients, the Pearls’ home was closer to the road and to their neighbors’ homes than any of his other clients, and this made exiting especially dangerous. Fortunately, the Pearls’ backyard, a nice quarter-acre slice of grass and bushes that was frightfully exposed to the neighbors’ adjacent backyards, also abutted Mill Pond Park, a large area of grass, trees, playground equipment, and a public swimming pool, spaced around a quaint little duck pond. If Martin could make his way across the backyard unnoticed and pass through the row of hedges that marked the end of the Pearls’ land, he could be walking in the park in seconds, free as a bird.

  Making it across the backyard always made Martin nervous, principally because it was his only means of exiting the Pearls’ home. In every other client’s home, Martin had at least three means of egress and would use each on a random basis (rolling a ten-sided die that he kept in his pocket to determine each day’s exit, since Martin found that unconsciously falling into patterns was far too easy to do). The only thing that made this risk even remotely acceptable to Martin was his comprehensive knowledge of the Pearls’ two adjacent neighbors.

  To the east were the Goldmans, a couple very much like the Pearls, who might have made excellent clients had their home not been equipped with three ADT stickers, thank you very much. The Goldmans both worked dependable schedules and late hours. Their home was not equipped with a garage, so Martin could always tell if Mr. or Mrs. Goldman were home sick (which almost never occurred). Therefore, the chances of them witnessing Martin’s exit during the middle of the day were infinitesimal.

  To the west of the Pearls lived Noah Blake, a convicted sex offender who had been released from Walpole State Prison in Massachusetts more than ten years ago after doing six months on a third-degree sexual assault conviction, a fact to which Martin did not think the Pearls were privy. Martin had been unable to acquire the details of the arrest, but he did know that Noah Blake’s mother had passed away shortly after his release, and that her son had inherited the house free and clear, something Martin had done as well when his own mother passed away. Other than his one apparent indiscretion, Noah Blake was a hardworking, reliable mechanic at Mike & Son’s Automotive in Plainville, where he had recently become part-owner with Mike’s lackadaisical son, Darryl (Mike having retired from the business years ago). And Noah Blake’s home also did not come equipped with a garage. Therefore, as long as Martin’s visits to the Pearls’ home took place between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. (avoiding lunchtime in the event someone decided to come home), he felt sure that his exit was a safe one.

  Still, it made him nervous.

  Securing his burlap sack inside a black backpack that he had left just inside the door upon arriving, and making sure that his house key
was still on the chain around his neck (he had acquired a key to the Pearls’ home years ago, as he had for many of his clients), Martin removed the rubber moccasins that covered his sneakers (and thereby prevented footprints), placed them in the backpack as well, and exited the house, crossing the back lawn as casually as possible. In less than thirty seconds, he was walking across the expanse of field that led to the bicycle racks on the far side of the park.

  By the time Martin began pedaling, his appearance had changed dramatically. The blue baseball cap, emblazoned with its Northeast Utilities symbol, and the hairnet underneath had been replaced with a white and red cap declaring his allegiance to the St. Louis Cardinals. Martin, of course, cared little about the sluggers of St. Louis, and had chosen this cap as randomly as he had chosen his mode of transportation for the day. Patterns, he knew, were dangerous in his line of business, and were easy to fall into without even trying. A man who rode through the park on a mountain bike every Tuesday morning, wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap, might eventually become a fixture in the memory of one of the park’s regular inhabitants. An observant individual might even come to expect to see this mountain bike–riding man each week. Becoming a memorable part of any landscape was exactly what Martin wanted to avoid.

  Martin was riding his mountain bike today because of the roll of a 3 that he had made on his ten-sided die over breakfast earlier this morning. Had the die come up a 1 or a 2, Martin would be walking the mile or so to his car. A 3, 4, or 5 placed him on his mountain bike; a 6, 7, or 8 would have had Martin parking his Subaru Outback in the lot adjoining the swimming pool and basketball courts. A 9 or a 0 would’ve had Martin jogging back to his vehicle. Martin had experimented with other modes of transportation in the past, including Rollerblades, skateboards, and a brief flirtation with the possibility of a motorized wheelchair, but each of these, he’d realized, attracted more attention than necessary, so Martin had decided to stick with the ordinary. Ordinary, at least on the outside, was safest for someone trying to remain inconspicuous.