Chapter 1: To Catch a Thief

Rolling out of bed, Dan Walker headed straight for the shower after turning the coffee maker on. Ten minutes later, he carried a cup of coffee as he walked out onto the patio at the back of his small house to enjoy the beautiful spring weather. However, the instant he set foot outside, he stopped, his smile disappeared and a frown took its place.

"Oh hell!" He swore, almost silently. " Someone stole another one."

The neat display of plants that sat on a small bench on his deck had another obvious empty space in the neat pattern of colourful pots. Another of his collection of small cacti was missing and this one had been in full flower. That was the fourth missing cactus in two weeks

Sighing deeply, he sat down on a deck chair and seethed. There wasn't much he could do about the petty thefts and he knew that he was simply a victim of opportunity, yet to him it felt that he was being targeted. He sat there in frustration, four separate thefts, four plants were gone and there wasn't much more he could do.

A glance at his back fence confirmed his suspicions that someone had once more managed to find a way to open the locked gate and enter his back yard. What good was a ten-foot high privacy fence that cost three-thousand dollars and an additional four-hundred dollar gate with a two-hundred dollar lock, if some creep could open it when they wanted and take what they pleased, then leave the gate partly open as if to flaunt the theft? Yet it wasn't the dollar value of his investment in the fence or even the loss of the plants that frustrated Dan; it was the idea that his personal space had been invaded with impunity which annoyed him most.

He'd already talked to the cops at the local police station and knew that they couldn't do anything other than increase the patrols in the area which seemed useless to Dan. Since he was away from the house for a twelve-hour stretch doing his job as a fireman and since he lived alone, there was plenty of opportunity for the thief, but surely there was something he could do.

Setting the empty coffee cup just inside the sliding door, Dan walked down across that back yard and looked at the outside of the lock on his backyard gate in the high fence. This time there were no scratches, no marks and the little strip of security tape over the keyhole wasn't damaged, yet the gate wasn't fully closed. That meant it had been opened from the inside. Since the interior of his house was fully alarmed, that meant the thief had to be climbing over the back yard fence, grabbing a plant, then letting themselves out through the gate.

A quick glance into the narrow alley behind his property proved his suspicions. The thief had moved one of the neighbour's garbage cans next to his fence, then had used it to climb over the fence. In fact the garbage can was still there. Dan stepped back inside his gate and closed it carefully, then he glanced around his yard and slowly his expression changed

All that day and into the late afternoon hours, the neighbourhood was disturbed by the sounds of hammer, saw and drill as Dan worked industriously in his back yard. When he was done, he stood on his deck and visually surveyed his small back yard. A satisfied look crossed his face, then a deep chuckle rose from his throat as he grinned almost maliciously. Spinning on his heel, he went inside, then carefully closed and locked the sliding door.

Not long later, some of his neighbours may have been watching as he loaded a duffle bag into his pickup truck like he always did when he went to work, then he hopped into the truck and drove away.

Many hours later a small hooded figure moved surreptitiously in the shadows of the alley. Making hardly any noise, the figure disappeared from view in the deep shadow near the fence, then as if by magic a hooded head appeared above the top boards of the fence itself. The head swung slowly and cautiously from side to side, taking in the changes that had been made that day as Dan had worked.

The supports for the deck were now enclosed by a solid wall. The sundial and birdbath that had stood in the lawn were now gone, so was the little enclosure that had held the garbage cans. There was no furniture of any kind on the back deck and now instead of sitting on a bench, the potted plants were lined up along the edge of the deck.

A quick glance at the dark house, then one more up and down the alley and the figure slipped to the top of the fence, swung around, then dropped down and scurried toward the edge of the deck and the plants that were displayed there. Just as a hand reached out toward one of the pots several things happened at once. A ringing sound could be heard inside the house as an alarm sounded, the lights along the back of the house came on and completely illuminated the back yard, then to top it off, the underground sprinkler system came on.

The hooded figure spun and looked around frantically, then dashed for the gate. However now, instead of the handle that had been there before, the gate seemed to be held solidly closed by several huge screws through a large metal plate. As a sprinkler swept toward it, the figure spun to dash one way, then the other. After being repeatedly doused by the sprinklers and finally realising that the only dry area in the yard was the raised patio behind the house, the figure leaped up there to escape from the cold spray.

Just then Dan's figure appeared behind the glass of the sliding door. As the sliding door rumbled open and his large frame stepped forward, the hooded figure seemed to shrink, slowly slumping down to sit dejectedly on the bare deck and staring up at him from under the hooded jacket.

The hood allowed enough of the face to be seen that Dan could see it was a kid. He calmly pulled a cell phone from his pocket and held it in front of him, one finger of his other hand poised over the keypad.

"There are two ways we can handle this." He said quietly, his voice a deep bass rumble. "I have the local police station's phone number on speed dial. If I press one button, I'll have them online and they will be here inside of ten minutes. You will be charged with forced entry because you had to use an object of some sort to get over the fence and probably with attempt breaking and entry because I have you on videotape as you leaped upward to get into my house. If they investigate, and they will, and if they discover any of my plants in your possession, you will be charged with theft.

"I don't know the law well enough to even guess what else they will add to that list, but I assure you, they will find additional charges. You see, the cops like me, because I've saved some of their lives while I was on the job. They'll make sure that they charge you with something that will send you away and they'll make sure that the charges stick. On top of that, my sister is a lawyer, in fact, she's a local prosecutor. The judges like her and because I'm a fireman who risks my life and limb to protect people's lives and property, they like me as well. That's going to make defending you in court a very difficult job for any lawyer who might be forced into doing it."

"Oh God no." The hooded figure whispered. "B-but, you said there were two ways. What's the other way?"

"The other option is that you stay right there on the deck until tomorrow morning, while I go back to bed. When I wake up, I will sit right there at the table and have a nice breakfast. When I'm done, you will put on a label or a sign will proclaim you to be a thief, then we will march along the street to your home. There, in front of your family, you will apologise to me for stealing my plants. After that, carrying one plant at a time, we will walk back and forth between our homes until you have returned everything you stole. As we walk through the neighbourhood if any people ask what is going on, you will apologise for disturbing them, then you'll explain to them why you are wearing the sign that declares you to be a thief."

"Fuck. That's even worse!" The small voice whispered.

"Oh no it isn't and you will mind your language while you are on my property. There will be no further swearing. Now slide that hood off, I want to see who has been stealing my property. Don't do anything else though. Just take off the hood, but stay where you are."

The offender's hands slowly lifted, then the hood was slowly pushed back to reveal a very pretty teenage girl's face. Perhaps fourteen years old, she had rusty blonde hair, freckles and dimples, definitely not what Dan had been expecting. Tears were cascading down her face as she stared up at him and sobbed softly.

"Now to get back to our discussion, do you know what would happen to you if I called the police right now?" Dan said slowly and menacingly.

"No." She whimpered, shaking her head from side to side.

"You would be taken downtown, photographed, fingerprinted and charged. You would definitely be searched, perhaps you'd even be strip searched. Most of that sort of work is handled by women officers who really like pretty young girls and who love to do strip searches, if you understand what I mean. They often do a full cavity search if they have any excuse that a young woman is being uncooperative and I've heard that they are not exactly gentle about their job. After all that was done, you would be allowed to call your parents, who would have to arrange for bail before they could get you out of jail. Until they arrived, you would be placed in a cell.

"Now normally, you might be in a cell with only one or two inmates, but since there is a push on by the mayor and council to clean up the town, the police are out to crack down on youth prostitutes. They probably wouldn't have enough cells to treat you with kid gloves. Instead you would be placed in a cell with whatever other young women had been arrested tonight. Most of those young women and girls would likely be prostitutes who were drunk, on drugs, sick, injured and perhaps very horny.

"Unfortunately, you are a very pretty child. It's very possible that before your parents got there, one or more of the most aggressive of those prostitutes would decide that you looked like fresh meat that they'd like to try out. They might think they could score big points with their pimp by bringing you back to him as a new recruit or they might just decide that you would be a great toy to while away their time as they waited through the long hours of the night. Either way, you could end up with any of a variety of STD's. Some of the local ladies of the night have AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, vaginal warts and who knows what else. All it would take would be one tongue kiss or a little finger work to pass one or more of those things on to you.

"I doubt if you'd enjoy the experience, not even if you were treated with kid gloves."

Having said all that, Dan simply stopped speaking and the only sounds he could hear for several minutes were her quiet sobs. Several times he was almost ready to give up on maintaining his harsh act and simply reach out to cuddle the little kid, but somehow he managed to keep his resolution to scare hell out of her. Finally she managed to get control of herself enough to slow her sobs, then use her hands to wipe away some of the tears on her face.

"Oh please. I'll do almost anything." She whimpered as her pleading face looked up at him.

"Yeah! Sure!" He said sarcastically, managing to keep his voice in character. "You just stay right there and don't even think about moving or I press this button and the cops will be on the way to get you."

"But I can't be arrested. Mom would be devastated and we're all alone now since she and Dad split."

"Too bad. You should have thought of that before you started stealing things." Dan growled. "However, I have a soft spot in my heart for single mothers. They have a rough enough time of it as it is, without problems from their kids. She's probably worried about you already, so before we go any further, I need your name and a phone number to call your mother. That way I can let her know you're still alive."

"Oh Please! You can't call her!"

"Well, I guess it's the cops then." He lifted the phone and poised his finger over the button.

"Oh please, don't. Anything but that. I'll tell you her number, but she's at work."

"I'll need her work number and your full name."

"Oh God!"

"Language!" He barked.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She whimpered, then moaned. "Oh, I just peed myself."

"Too bad." He tried to make his voice as unemotional as possible as he stepped back just inside the door and picked up a pen and pad of paper from the table near the door. "Name?"

"Lisa Franklin." She whispered, shifting her bottom uneasily.

"Your home phone number and address?"

She gave it to him and he wrote that down.

"Your mother's work number?"

"I don't know it off by heart. Just call the reception desk at the General Hospital and ask for Dora Franklin." She sobbed loudly.

Since she was wet and it was cool out, she'd begun to shiver, but Dan knew that he had to leave her like that while he made the phone call, even though he didn't really want to.

"I want you to stay right where you are. I'm going to close this door so you can't get away by running through the house. I'll have to go into the other room to find the phone number for the hospital, but I'll still be able to see you through the door, so don't move. Don't even think about moving, not even one inch."

"Where could I go? I can't get out of the yard. The fence is too high." She moaned. "I know I'm sunk so I'll stay. But, please, can't I come inside, I'm freezing."