“Don’t touch anything,” I say. “We document before we call the police.”
I take photos. Time stamps visible. Wide shots first, then details: the glass on the floor, the scuff at the hinge, the gouge by the talkback. Houston and Salem show up while I’m in the middle of it.
“Who the fuck would do this?” Salem growls under his breath.
Houston sighs as he looks around. “This wasn’t just vandals. This was personal.”
Salem finds the DVR under the desk. The power light is on, but the panel is tilted. He props it up with a wedge and taps the monitor awake. We have a picture. The cameras caught motion in the hall at 3:14 a.m. Hood up. Mask. Shoulders forward.
A gait I know. Boots I know too. The left sole drags a hair on the push-off, because he fell off a ladder and fucked up his growth plate in his left ankle when he was three.
My heart drops, but I don’t say it out loud. I pull out my phone and call the police. I give the address twice and the list of missing items as best I can. Then I call Quincy.
He picks up on the second ring and says, “Bad?”
“Bad.”
“Don’t move anything until your photos cover it. I’m ten out.”
I call the owner next. He’s half-asleep, reminding me how early it is. “Why didn’t Morty call me?”
“Jake, come on. Who’s here more these days? Me or you?”
He blows out a breath. “I’m still the owner.”
“You mind if I board up the window and change the locks today?”
“No.” His tone cools. “I appreciate it.”
The cops come and do their thing for the insurance company. We give statements. The officers ask if we recognize the person in the still. I say I can’t be sure. It’s true. A gait is not a face.
But I know.
They nod like they’ve heard that line before and haven’t stopped needing to hear it. They say they’ll pull adjacent cameras on the block and call if anything from traffic caught a plate. It won’t amount to anything; I’m sure of it.
Quincy comes in quietly and stands at the console like a man at a hospital bed. He doesn’t speak until the officers are done. Then he says, “How bad?”
I explain the situation, and considering us recording here was his big plan for months before we got the chance, he handles it well. We show him the break-in footage. He studies the still frame when we have the clearest view of the perp. He doesn’t say the name I’m not saying. He doesn’t have to. He squeezes my shoulder once and steps away to make calls.
When the room is clear and it’s just us, I look at my brothers. “We hoped we could pull him back. If this is him, that hope is over.”
Houston doesn’t argue. Salem doesn’t crack a joke. We stand with it.
Then I start a list because that’s how I keep from breaking things. Board the window. Replace the locks. Inventory all serial numbers. Audit cloud backups. Move the remaining drives off-site. Contract a guard for nights. Quote cameras that pipe to the cloud and my phone. Quote laminated glass and bars for the side windows. It’s a lot.
Jake, the owner, meets me at nine in his office above the garage two blocks over. He’s grayer than last year. He looks out at the lot and back at me and says, “You want it, don’t you? You boys have always loved the studio.”
“Yeah. I do. I can protect it, if it’s mine.”
We go back and forth on numbers and land fast because we both want to be done. He hands me a ring of keys I already have copies of. I don’t smile. I say thank you and go back to the building to install the first camera myself while the contractor schedules the rest. Too much to do to be nostalgic or sentimental today.
No time for feelings. They’ll just get in the way.
By three, most of my to-do list is done. I called a security company for a night guard, and they sent a few to interview. I like Chauncey. He’s big and mean-looking. Used to be a bouncer at some of the brothels outside of the city, and those guys do not put up with a damn thing. He’s perfect.
I call Lou from the lot because I don’t want to tell her this in the room where she just started breathing easier. She listens without interrupting. I say the part about the hooded figure and the gait last.
She knows that hint of a limp. “Damn. I didn’t think he’d go this far.”
