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Early this morning around two, a black car pulls along the road near the property and a hooded dark figure with a backpack gets out with a baseball bat. He rushes the fence, scaling it easily, and jumps to the ground on the other side. He races to the trailer and starts beating on the door with the bat till it busts open. He disappears inside for some time before reemerging. We all know the destruction he did in there.
The vandal takes off across the property toward the shop, and bangs the shit out of the one garage door till he’s able to yank it up enough to roll underneath it. Again, we know the damage he did in there as well. He emerges through the shop door as opposed to crawling under the garage door again. He jogs over to the house, but can’t find an easy way in the steel and stone structure.
As if admiring it, he runs a gloved hand over one of the windows and peers inside. He backs off and assesses the building, almost like he’s debating if it’s worth the effort. He obviously can tell the windows are bullet resistant. A baseball bat would bounce off and probably hurt the vandal in the process.
He pulls off his backpack and yanks out what looks like a can of spray paint. He shakes the can but duck’s down when headlights sweep across the house—a car must have driven by on the road. It’s enough to spook the intruder, and he takes off up the hill to the fence along the road and climbs back over.
I blow out a sigh of relief. “This could have been much worse. He could have destroyed the house. Thank God I take my computer and flash drive home with me. I have backups to all the work in the trailer. We’re set back ten grand and at minimum two weeks with the shop, but we can move forward with everything else.”
“Did you see how he was analyzing the buildings? He knew all the weak spots to gain excess to them. He either knows construction sites or is a construction worker,” Punk says to Maceo.
“He’s not a crew member of mine,” I say, matter of fact.
Maceo turns to me. “Why do you say that?”
“My crew was all here when your crew came in and set up the security cameras. My workers know where all the check points are and avoid them when they want to slack on the job or piss somewhere in a corner. If it was one of my crew, they would have used the spray paint to obstruct the camera lenses.”
“This was an outsider or at the very least someone who may have been on the build site and was familiar with it, but unaware of the cameras,” Maceo says.
“Can you play it again?” I ask. Maceo hits the button and the videos pop up. I watch closely as the guy runs between the structures.Hmm…
“What is it? What do you see?” Punk asks.
I cock my head. “I’m watching his running form. It’s kind of like a fingerprint, allowing you to know runners based on their stride patterns. This guy keeps his gait real short, like he’s marching, and he holds his arms high, meaning they can get stiff quickly if not stretched out. It explains why after he took out the trailer and shop, he backed off from the beating on the outside of the house. He was already too worn out,” I say, watching the video.
Maceo looks over at me with something resembling pride. He likes how I’m observant.
My face puckers watching the video. “His form looks familiar to me, like I’ve seen this person before. He’s definitely got the build of a runner, long and lean. The upper body on an average noncompetitive runner is typically shit, because the upper body is not given the same attention as the lower body.
“Competitive runners work their upper bodies too. He had enough to scale the fence no problem. And the damage he did in the trailer and shop was significant. He had a hard time scaling back over the fence, but this could be because his upper body is tighter.
“He definitely is a competitive runner or was a competitive runner who’s still committed to the exercise. But his gait…the marching form is similar too—” I stop, my stomach falls.
“Pixie?” Maceo asks, watching me intently.
I close my eyes and sigh heavily. I should have known who it was from what was written on the inside of the trailer. I’ve seen it written a lot lately from one particular source.
What was he thinking?I open my eyes and glare at the computer.
Maceo bends down to me and lightly turns my face to him. “Who is it?”
“It’s Jacob,” I whisper. “It took me a moment to recognize his form; it’s been over a year since I watched him run. We ran track together at USC, we didn’t stop with our workout routines after graduation. He’s done more road races than me, but he never did like how I was a more successful racer than him. Everything was a fucking competition with him. I cannot believe this shit.”
Maceo’s dark eyes grow darker. “The way he scales the fence in the video is the same way the perp who broke into your condo scaled the back fence of your yard. It had to be him that night, too.”
“That’s why you couldn’t catch him when you pursued him. He’s a middle distance runner. He’s got the speed and the endurance to make a quick get away,” I explain, shaking my head.
“We got him!” Punk cheers, his fists flying above his head. I wish I felt his enthusiasm, instead I feel cold.
Maceo shakes his head. “We’ve got nothing. We have a video showingsomeonedoing this shit, but we’ve got no smoking gun. There’s nothing to connect Jacob to this. He wore gloves and was completely covered head to foot. The fucker was wearing a mask, for Christ’s sake. The police are going to see this and say this could be Jacob or anyone else who fits his build,” Maceo says clinically, pacing back and forth. He paces a lot when he’s thinking, or stressed, or both.
I rub my temples. “Speaking of police, we need to contact them and report this. I have to file a police report to see if we can reclaim anything through insurance.”
“Already done,” Gauge says, walking toward us with Jared. “They should be here any minute.”
Overwhelmed and feeling pretty shitty about myself, I pull away from the group. I walk toward the outer edge of the construction zone where there’s only acres upon acres of wilderness. It’s here I break down, again.
Maceo must have followed me, because as soon as the tears start falling, his arms are lacing around me from behind. He spins me around and holds me to his broad chest. “Pixie, what’s going on?”
