I hadn’t even been projecting my words to him. Something told me he was gifted. He seemed to have seen us even though I knew he shouldn’t have been able to hear or see us. He was looking directly at us moments ago.
“Bye, officer,” the man called jovially.
I looked around and found a little pile of bricks next to the stairs.
“Um, you’re not going to able to throw it that far,” Lincoln gently ribbed me.
“Bet me,” I muttered as I picked one up. I pulled from my inner strength and imagined the brick sailing through the window just before I released it. The satisfying sound of glass breaking filled our ears.
“I should have put money on it,” I said smugly.
“You shouldn’t have been able to make that,” Lincoln grumbled.
“Strength,” I told him with a wink.
The officer turned back around. “I’m sorry sir, but I’m going to have to insist on searching your-.”
I saw panic enter the man's eyes before he went to lunge back into his garage apartment. I knew if he made it in there bad things were going to happen. I reacted without thinking as I grabbed one of the support posts to the stairs and pulled with all my might. The whole structure pulled away from the side of the garage causing the ma
n to stumble back and brace himself against his railing. The entire structure was now at a forty-five-degree angle, and he would have fallen if he hadn’t had the railings and ballisters. He had no choice but to hold on or fall twelve or so feet to the ground.
“Perry, you need to call an ambulance and back up,” Lincoln told the officer.
I’m sure Lincoln had come to the same conclusions that I had, that the officer was more than aware of our presence. Lincoln had also taken the time to read the officer's name tag.
Perry confirmed our beliefs as he spoke into his walkie on his shoulder.
“I’m suing you,” the man yelled from the top of his lungs. “You had no right demanding to search my garage!”
“Sir,” the officer replied. “I never entered your garage. Don’t worry, though, I called back up to help you get down.”
“What did you do to my stairs?” the man cried in outrage.
“What is going on?” the woman came back out of the house onto her back deck. The lighting got better as she turned on the lights in the back. “Hale? What happened?” she cried out in surprise.
I looked back and noticed that some neighbors had gathered at the end of the driveway. I looked over to the playset, making sure Harry and Alex were still okay. They didn’t seem disturbed by the commotion. They were currently climbing up a ladder and sliding down the slide. Harry followed his brother with no fear.
“Call our lawyer,” Hale cried out, bringing me back to the situation at hand. “This officer did something to our stairs. If someone so much as steps foot in the apartment or the house without a warrant, I’m suing them.”
“He didn’t touch those stairs,” the man who had been walking his dog stated as he came out on his back deck from next door. Only a row of head-high hedges and fence separated the two yards. “I’ll be your witness, officer.”
“Thanks, sir,” the officer stated. “Someone will be collecting a statement from you later.”
“I guess even Ward Cleaver could be a horrible neighbor,” Lincoln joked dryly. “Maybe his kids keep throwing balls over his fence, or they play basketball too early in the morning,” he pointed to the basketball hoop attached to the front of the garage.
I gave him a look of confusion. “Ward Cleaver?”
Lincoln laughed. “Leave it to Beaver. Old sitcom made in the late fifties early sixties,” he said expectantly.
I shook my head. “Nope, not a clue. My dad didn’t watch much television, and my stepmother and her mom like soap operas, the trashy reality shows- not the good ones- and other shows I couldn’t get into.”
“Now, is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” Perry asked quietly as the wife was yelling up at her husband. They were both well distracted.
“He’s a serial killer,” Lincoln replied. “Upstairs is a woman in her early twenties tied up to a table. She looks like-” he looked over at me hesitantly. I nodded at him to continue and allowed him to put his arms around my shoulders. “He sexually violated her, and we think he was going to kill her tonight. Before you came, he was pulling out power equipment.”
“Inside his office, he has a bookshelf,” I added. “If you pull down the red book with gold lettering, the wall slides back. He’s been stalking this girl for some time. In his locked drawer… in his office,” I swallowed past the lump that formed in my throat, remembering those photos, “…there's an album of women he killed.”
“Redheads?” the man asked quietly.