I had exchanged a glance with my mother before looking back at the officer. “So what do I do in the meantime?” I asked, trying to keep myself from becoming hysterical. “A man broke into my home. He walked right in. He knew the passcode.”
“I know,” he said. His eyes were sympathetic, which I appreciated. “I’m going to take down your report, ma’am. We’ll send an officer out to your home to have a look around. What I suggest you do is change the passcode on your garage door, as well as change the locks on your home. Have you considered installing your own video doorbell or security system?”
“Should I?” I asked.
“That’s up for you to decide. We’ve found that sometimes just having a camera is a deterrent for burglars. Was anything taken?”
“No. Not that I know of. I didn’t even know that someone had broken in until my neighbor showed me this.”
“Who knows the passcode to your garage?” he asked.
“My husband and me. My mother,” I said, looking at her. She sat in the chair beside me, never once speaking. “The house cleaner.” I tried to remember who else. There were more. Jake and I have never been too discriminating in who we give the passcode to, though we haven’t been negligent either. The people we’ve given the passcode to seemed safe. “We had painters in the house not too far back,” I remembered. “Neither my husband nor I could be home to let them in, so we gave them the code to the garage. We meant to change it later, but forgot.” It felt so stupid in retrospect. There were more painters than I could count in their crew. We were having practically the whole house painted, so there must have been at least ten of them. After I told the officer about the painters, I started to wonder if all of the men in their crew knew the passcode to the garage, or just one, whoever was in charge? Did someone see something they wanted and decided to come back later and get it? Why didn’t Jake and I change the passcode after they left?
“Don’t feel bad, Mrs. Hayes. It happens,” the officer assured me.
“Will they take fingerprints when they come?” I asked, assuming the answer would be yes.
But he shook his head. “No. It’s unlikely. That’s not something that’s typically done in situations like this.”
“Why not?” I asked, incredulous. How would they ever find this man if they didn’t take fingerprints?
“For fingerprints to yield any results, Mrs. Hayes, we have to have something to compare them to. It’s not as easy as one might think or like they make it look on TV. Any prints we lift are liable to belong to someone who has been in your home with your permission. Take these painters you mentioned, for example. If we were to find their fingerprints in your home, it doesn’t tell us if one of them broke into your house on Saturday morning or if they were there a month ago, painting. Additionally, we’d need to take elimination prints from every person who has ever had access to your home. It’s laborious and most of the time, doesn’t generate any reasonable leads to make it worthwhile. You see what I’m saying?”
I did, unfortunately. I thought through the vast number of people Jake and I had welcomed into our home. I couldn’t remember them all if I tried.
“But surely there’s something that can be done to find this man.”
From the look on his face, I knew there was little hope of them ever finding this man.
“Our tech guys will take a closer look at these videos and see what they can find. The other problem, Mrs. Hayes, is that days have passed since this break-in occurred. In that time, you’ve touched things in your home. You may have unknowingly destroyed evidence. Listen,” he said, “if any of your belongings have been taken or if there is damage to your home, you can call the insurance company. They’ll send out a claims adjuster.”
I nodded, feeling woozy and scared. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I still can’t. “Okay.”
“In the meantime, the best thing you can do is make sure your home is entirely secure. Take steps to protect yourself from future break-ins. As I said, change the passcode on the garage, replace the locks, consider installing a home security system.”
“How do I go about changing the code on the garage door?” I asked. It was the kind of thing that Jake would know how to do. Jake took care of things like this.
“They’re all different, Mrs. Hayes. Do you have an owners’ manual?”
I shook my head. If we did have an owner’s manual, I didn’t know where Jake would have kept it.
“You can call a garage door repair person. They should be able to help you out.” I also didn’t know a garage door repair person. I felt so miserably inadequate all of a sudden.
My mother spoke then. She knew how I was feeling. “I can help,” she said. “Don’t worry, Nina. We’ll figure it out.” My mother has been single most of her life. She raised me alone. She never relied on a man, but figured everything out on her own. I envy that about her. She’s resourceful.
“Okay,” I said again. My voice sounded faraway, like I had disassociated, like I was somewhere outside of my body, watching. I felt utterly dazed. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Future break-ins. Did that mean this man might come back? Of course it did. I thought then of that footprint in the mudroom and knew there was a chance this man had already been back. I told the officer this. I also told the officer, “The other day, last Thursday, I received anonymous flowers at work. I tried calling the florist to see who they were from, but she wouldn’t tell me, not without an order from the police. I’m scared, Officer Boone. What if the same person who broke into my home is the one who sent me flowers? What if someone is stalking me?” I asked. I could feel my mother’s eyes on me the whole time, because I’d neglected to tell her about the flowers.
He said, “If it would help, I can call the florist and see if she won’t give that information to me.”
“Thank you. I’d appreciate that. I’m worried about my husband too,” I said. “He’s still missing. It’s been over a week now since he’s been home. Nine days to be exact.”
“My understanding,” he said, “is that you canceled your missing person’s report. I was under the impression that you’d seen your husband since reporting him missing.”
I exchanged a look with my mother. I felt awful throwing her under the bus like this, but the officer had to know what happened. “My mother,” I said, reaching a hand for her knee, offering a sympathetic smile that she most likely couldn’t see, “has trouble with her vision.” I looked back to Officer Boone, who was looking at my mother. You wouldn’t necessarily know there was anything wrong just by looking at her. “Macular degeneration. She makes mistakes sometimes. She thought she’d seen Jake at our house the other day, but instead she saw this man,” I said, making a motion to my phone.
“I see,” he said. “So your husband is still missing.”
I nodded, remorseful. “Yes,” I said, thinking sadly of these last few wasted days when no one was looking for Jake.