Neighborhood Watch: After the EMP

by EE Isherwood

  “Where’s your gun?” I asked as she arrived.

  “It’s on my table. Do I need it?” She looked around for trouble.

  “No, not yet,” I said.

  Carmen came up a few moments later. She’d changed into a pair of jean shorts and a tight black T-shirt, and looked a lot more casual than the day before, though no less attractive.

  “Good morning, Carmen,” I announced to the Cuban woman, who, I’d noticed, still had perfect hair and makeup. “Did you leave your gun at home, too?”

  “I forgot it,” she said with a sheepish smile.

  We weren’t at war, so I couldn’t get mad at them, but I’d hoped they’d be a bit more concerned about safety than they were. I’d have to instill that mindset into them if the world continued the way it was going. By contrast, I still had my Springfield on my hip and my shotgun slung over my shoulder. I didn’t think I was being overly dramatic by carrying them around.

  Evelyn and Benjamin walked up last.

  “What’s this about?” Evelyn asked. “My Ben needs his sleep.”

  Ben’s eyes were almost closed, as if it had taken a huge effort to get him to walk up the street. After all the beers he’d flaunted the night before, I had no doubt the man was hung over. Belatedly, I noticed he hadn’t changed, and Evelyn remained in her same oversized white blouse, adding to my earlier observation about people’s apocalyptic dress code.

  “I’m f-fine,” Ben stuttered, obviously not great.

  I motioned for them to gather round.

  “Thanks for coming, everyone. Did any of you hear weird noises last night? Breaking glass? Pounding on doors? Anything like that?”

  No one did.

  “Well, I slept in my garage, so I’d hear anything unusual on our street. Someone got into Mr. Drummond’s place who shouldn’t have been there. I woke up when they broke the front window, so I was able to get over there before they took anything of value.”

  “Who was it?” Penny inquired.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “There were two of them, possibly young men, but they jumped in the canal before I could grab them.”

  “Shoulda shottem,” Ben remarked.

  “No, it would have been murder. I wasn’t defending my home, nor was I in any danger. If they were just kids, I wouldn’t want two deaths on my conscience. Besides, I stopped them before they took anything. They even left behind their goody bag filled with their break-in tools.”

  “Was it that asshole, Trevor?” Carmen spat toward the guy’s place.

  Tyler caught my eye after hearing Trevor called that name again, but he quickly turned to his dad, probably trying to get a similar acknowledgement from him.

  “Has he robbed people before?” I asked as I turned back to Carmen. “Luke suggested the same thing.”

  “I don’t have a clue if he’s robbed anyone in the past,” she shrugged. “It’s just a feeling. You did say he was lurking around in the woods yesterday. Maybe he was planning which house to hit.”

  Could it have been him? The woods were on the opposite side of the street from Drummond’s place, so it didn’t add up perfectly, but maybe they were watching from a distance to see who was home.

  Nobody stirred at Trevor’s, so there were no additional clues.

  “I don’t think we can make any accusations, yet,” I finally answered.

  Evelyn raised her hand.

  “Yes?” I said to her.

  “If you think the one house was hit, maybe that explains why the door is ajar on the Hamiltons’ place.”

  I had no idea who she meant.

  “That’s Levar, Frank,” Luke interrupted. “She means his house.”

  “His door is open?” I pressed.

  “Yes. We just walked by it. I was going to say something to Ben, but he was so tired. I’m sure it’s nothing—”

  “Wait here,” I ordered. “Luke, come with me.”

  Luke and I ran past the three standing flamingos and jumped over the fallen one as we headed to Levar’s front porch. As Evelyn had reported, the front door was wide open.

  “Shit, his house was hit, too,” I exclaimed.

  We went in, since I was confident no thief would still be inside after sunrise.

  “Wow,” Luke remarked as he followed.

  “This is way worse than the Drummond place. They took a bunch of stuff.” The inside looked like a stereotypical robbery scene you might find in a movie. Every shelf was knocked over. Every drawer opened. Even the TV had been pulled from the wall, leaving a hole where the wires had once been neatly hidden.

  I circled around and came back to Levar’s front porch. It troubled me that my new friend still wasn’t home from yesterday, which meant he’d spent the night somewhere out on the road. Since his wife wasn’t inside, I assumed she was also still out there.

  When they finally made it home, after whatever trials they suffered out on the road, how shitty would it be to find their own home had been violated? There were no clues about who’d done the breaking, but from my vantage point, I looked directly across the street to Trevor’s pad.

  “You think it was him?” Luke asked, as his feet crunched on glass from the broken front door.

  The sun peeked over the two-story mansion and teased the fronds of the high palm trees in his front yard. Maybe it was fitting the biggest asshole on the block lived in the house that looked the most like the home of a drug lord. The carefree parking job of the exotic cars were the icing for the cake.

  “I have no idea, but let me check something.” I jogged back inside Levar’s place and went to the back door. As with Drummond’s house, the glass of the hurricane door was partially cracked, suggesting the thieves had also tried to get through it in a similar manner.

  “Both houses were hit by the same robbers,” I remarked when I returned to the porch. “Same damage to the sliding doors. Same front door busted open. All clumsy. I overheard them talking about taking Drummond’s TV, as well. They obviously nabbed Levar’s television.”

  “But we were on guard last night,” he stated.

  “Yeah, they must have hit Levar’s first, then Drummond’s,” I reasoned. “Once you and I were on duty, and they’d taken their swim in the canal, they didn’t try to break in again.”

  “If that’s the case, it means they must have dumped off what they stole from here before they went over to the other house. That means—”

  “It had to be Trevor,” I finished. “No one could haul a huge TV for very long. They dumped their booty at his place, then went out again. They didn’t need to sneak around the woods to see who was home. They’ve been watching from their second-floor windows.”

  “We have our suspects,” Luke replied.

  I took a deep breath before speaking. “I’m going over there and putting an end to this shit before it really gets started.”

  Luke followed me across Levar’s front yard.

  “Are you sure?” He looked over to the folks standing on my driveway. “Should we get backup?”

  “Nah, you and I can handle this.” We both carried our shotguns, so I didn’t think anyone was going to mess with us. If I waited until we had another crowd, it would needlessly endanger my friends, and possibly escalate our encounter. Besides, if my run-in the previous night had taught me anything, we’d have a much better chance of surprise if it was only the two of us.

  I strode past Trevor’s Ferrari, the dead Lexus, and a couple of other exotic supercars. The garage door was open, so I chose to use that to get inside the house. As I went into the empty garage, I reminded myself it wasn’t trespassing if you were in pursuit of a criminal.

  The door to his house was unlocked, so I pushed through.

  “Stick close,” I whispered, “but keep your shotgun pointed down, so we don’t shoot each other by accident.”

  “Got it, boss,” he whispered.

  I only needed to take a few steps inside the ornate kitchen before I felt like I’d entered another crime scene. Numerous cabinet
s had been flung open, drawers pulled out, and the kitchen table had been flipped over.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  It wasn’t any better in the giant living room linked to the kitchen. China plates and silverware were scattered on the floor around the room. A coffee table had been turned on its side. Several large paintings had been torn from the wall and tossed on the carpet.

  “They were robbed, too?” Luke asked with disbelief in his voice.

  Something about the inside of his house didn’t feel right. In the other two homes, the robbers had acted violently in their quest to find loot, such as pulling junk out of drawers, yanking wires out of the wall, and breaking things all over the place. In Trevor’s place, nothing seemed smashed or broken.

  The framed artwork caught my eye since they were the largest items.

  “Do these paintings look like they’ve been ripped down?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he replied. “The hooks are still up there on the walls.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said.

  “What the hell are you doing in my house?” Trevor cried out from near the bottom of the wide staircase going to the second story. “What did you do down here?”

  I’d been expecting him, so I didn’t startle at his sudden arrival.

  “A couple of your neighbors were robbed last night, and the two of us are going around making sure everyone is alright. However, now that I’m here, I think I have a pretty good idea how all these robberies tie together.”

  Trevor was in his khaki shorts, like the day before. He wore a button-down shirt, but all the buttons were open, as if he’d thrown it on in a hurry. There was someone else near the top of the stairwell, but I couldn’t see who it was, since it was a bit dark on the upper floor.

  “I don’t see how you’re helping,” he said with anger. “It looks like you ripped my place apart.”

  “Nice try,” I laughed. “The whole street saw us come in just now, so they know we didn’t do this. However, after what I just told you, I’m sure you probably see who really did it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude,” Trevor said in a too-calm voice. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Who said anything about it being you? I meant that the same robbers from the other homes hit your place, too.”

  “Of course,” he replied, not sounding bothered. “That’s what I meant.”

  “Sure it was,” I chuckled.

  “Hey, I don’t know who you think you are, but get the hell out of my house. My dad’s a lawyer, and he can sue your ass into next year if you don’t get out.”

  I was holding a shotgun, though not in a threatening manner. I did note, however, Trevor didn’t have his pistol with him. He might have it hidden in his pocket, but I didn’t see an imprint. If he’d planned the whole thing to look like he was the victim, he might have thought being unarmed would look more believable.

  “We’re not going anywhere until we take a looky-loo around. If I find Levar’s television, even your dad isn’t going to be able to save you.”

  “There’s nothing here to find,” he insisted. “I was upstairs with Bonnie all night, wasn’t I?”

  Trevor had the girl come down the steps to reveal herself.

  “Tell him,” he insisted.

  “I was with Trevor last night, like he says.” Her monotone voice didn’t lend much credibility to her statement, and her words made me believe him less, not more.

  Each snowflake of evidence stuck together to make a larger snowball of truth about Trevor’s involvement. All I needed was to find the television or some other stolen item to complete my case.

  “Been swimming in any canals lately?” I asked. If he’d taken a swim, I suspected he’d probably smell like the brackish water, but I couldn’t take a chance he’d showered when he came home, so I didn’t accuse him directly.

  “I have a pool, asshole. Swimming in the toilet bowl is not what I do.”

  The girl behind him remained passive.

  I looked around the room, again noting how most of the damage seemed to be superficial. While it was certainly messy, nothing obvious was broken. Even the china plates and bowls spread out randomly on the carpet were intact. A crystal serving pitcher rested on a black duffel bag on the floor near the back window. There’s no way it bounced there.

  Would he stage a robbery in his own home?

  “You don’t mind if I look in that bag, do you?” I asked, already walking.

  “Why? I told you, I’m the victim in all this. Just leave me alone.”

  “If you really got robbed last night, you can understand why I’m investigating everyone’s house on the street. We want to make sure everyone is safe, as are their possessions. You’ll probably want to cooperate with us on security, too, right?”

  Trevor’s eyes kept going to the black duffel bag, so I figured I was onto something.

  Upon closer inspection, the duffel had a sports logo with a shark holding a hockey stick. When I crouched next to it and began unzipping the top, I worried I was going to find a bag full of jock straps.

  “Dammit, this is an illegal search. First, I get robbed, then I get my privacy invaded. Pike, are you seeing this?” He’d turned to talk to someone higher on the stairs.

  “Yuh-huh,” the kid answered in a deep voice.

  I pulled the zipper a short way and saw a pair of skates inside, striking down my hope of finding a bag full of hundred-dollar bills, which would then lead me to a grand reveal of the guilty party. However, as I slapped the top back, my eyes fell once again on the logo.

  I stood back up.

  “Luke, will you do me a favor and head over to Mr. Drummond’s place and bring me what’s sitting on his kitchen table?”

  “Are you sure you want to be alone with him?” he replied.

  “Oh, I’ll be fine. We’re just having a chat. Besides, he says he’s innocent, so I’ll believe him until you return. Then we’ll see.”

  Luke took off.

  Trevor sat on the steps. By the look of him, he wasn’t happy playing his role as the victim, but he’d committed to it when he destroyed his living room.

  “How many people were upstairs last night, Trevor?” I asked, in a polite voice.

  “How many do you think,” he snarked.

  “By my count you’ve got at least three, including yourself. Probably more. How is it none of you heard robbers tearing up your ground floor? It was dead quiet last night. I’m sure you would have heard two guys throwing china all around.”

  “I didn’t hear jack, dude. I was banging this dime all night, so I only heard what was taking place inside my sheets.” He laughed as if he’d hammered me with a joke, but I took care to gauge the reaction of the young lady behind him. Her expression was blank, even more so than the typical young adults I’d been hanging around. It was as if she was tuned out completely.

  His glib attitude about the state of his home reinforced my suspicions about who’d wrecked the place.

  “If you confess before Luke gets back, it will help your case. I know you don’t believe me, but we need you. We want you to rejoin our neighborhood. A young strapping lad like you would make a great guard to defend the younger and older folks on the street. I keep offering you the position of being a hero, but you refuse to take me up on it.”

  “Pfft,” he spat out. “I keep telling you I’m not interested in what lame ass shit you’re selling. The sooner you get out of my house, the better. If you don’t take the hint, I might have to get my gun.”

  “Whoa, fella,” I replied. “You don’t need one to get me to leave. I’ll be out of your hair in five seconds if you just tell me where to find the shit from Levar’s house…”

  “Or what?” Trevor hopped up. “You aren’t going to shoot me.”

  He was right, but he couldn’t be certain about my intentions. I kept my shotgun at the low ready, aimed toward the floor. I figured it was more effective to appear as if I’d interrogated assholes a thousand t
imes rather than point the shotgun at him and beg his compliance.

  “Here’s something funny,” I chuckled. “Right now, nobody can call 9-1-1, not even the robbers. If I did find one of them, I could shoot him dead and burn his house to the ground, and no one would come to arrest me. That would suck for him, right?”

  Trevor sat back on the step.

  “The thief would have to decide if a painful death was worth a television that won’t even plug in anymore. If it were me, I wouldn’t take that route.”

  Trevor’s face glowed with anger, but his eyes conveyed defeat. The inner workings of his mind were likely searching frantically for an escape, though I’d explained it so even a child could understand the situation.

  “You can’t force me to confess with a gun in my face.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “This whole thing isn’t fair.”

  “Gun in your face? Who was the guy who waved the pistol at me and my friends while I stood in a public street? There were about fifty witnesses to your display. It might have impressed your friends, but now no one with a brain will take your word over mine.”

  He scoffed.

  “I’m holding this gun for my safety, not to threaten,” I said in a dry voice. “I keep telling you there are thieves running around our neighborhood, and they could do harm to any of us. I really hope it’s not you, Trevor, because that would be a shitty thing to do to the very people looking to help you and your friends survive.”

  “I told you, it wasn’t me.”

  “Yeah, we’re about to find out,” I replied.

  “What’s your deal?” he pouted. “Why can’t you just leave us alone? Those neighbors you talk about are the ones always giving me dirty looks. They have ever since I moved into this crappy place. I’m really sick of it.”

  “Every person I’ve talked to has said the same thing about you. Likes to party and has no regard for loud music, revving engines, and screaming house guests, even if it’s three-thirty in the morning. I don’t know how it is where you come from, but that isn’t the kind of neighbor I’d like to live around.”