He stood up and followed the trail with his eyes. “Coming from the gate…”
He slowly traced the entire chain of tracks with an attentive gaze from beginning to end. From the gate straight to the living-room windows, then methodically along the entire wall of the house to the back, then back the same way to the gate.
“Very strange,” he said, his voice low. “Who could it even be?”
I hugged myself tightly, wrapping up in the old jacket I had hastily thrown over my shoulders, shivering not only from the cold but from the violation of my space.
“That is indeed a very good and important question,” Gareth said, heavily rising from his squat and brushing snow off his knees. “Tell me, Mrs. Vance, do you have any serious conflicts with neighbors? Maybe someone took offense at something? Holds a grudge?”
“No, what do you mean?” I shook my head violently. “We speak absolutely normally with all the neighbors. We live quietly, peacefully. We don’t bother anyone. We don’t quarrel with anyone.”
“And your husband,” Gareth asked, turning to face me, “when exactly did he leave for his trip?”
“Yesterday evening, around seven o’clock,” I replied. “He left for a long haul, at least for a week, maybe even longer.”
The officer slowly nodded, pulling out a small battered notebook and recording something intently. “So, this person knew for sure that you remained in the house completely alone. That is very interesting and concerning.”
He looked back at the gate. “Opened the gate carefully, walked through calmly, then just as calmly closed the gate back and left. Didn’t hurry at all. Behaved confidently.”
“Officer, what do you think he was doing here at all?” My voice cracked. “Why come at night, walk around the house, and then just leave?”
“That is exactly what we have to find out.” The officer looked at me with a very serious, heavy gaze. “There are several possible options. Maybe he was scoping out what exactly is valuable in the house, preparing for a robbery. Maybe he was checking thoroughly to see if anyone lives in the house, if it is empty.”
He paused, and the silence hung heavy between us. “Or maybe…”
He significantly didn’t finish the sentence, but I understood perfectly well without words. Maybe this person was preparing for something much worse than a simple robbery. An attack. Violence.
“Do any of your neighbors have security cameras installed?” Purnell asked in a business-like manner, looking around at the neighboring houses, shielding his eyes from the glare of the snow.
I thought tensely, racking my brain. “Mrs. Higgins across the street… I think she has a camera. She installed a system last year after the Peterson’s garage got broken into.”
“Excellent!” Gareth’s face brightened. “That can help a lot. Let’s go to her right now. Ask to see the footage. Possibly the camera captured who exactly came, and what car they arrived in.”
We quickly walked out the gate, crossing the empty, snowy road. Mrs. Higgins’s house stood directly opposite mine. It was a neat, well-kept place, painted a pleasant light blue that stood out against the winter white, with nice wooden shutters.
I rang the doorbell at the gate.
About a minute and a half later, the front door of the house swung open. The hostess herself appeared on the porch—a plump, good-natured woman of about seventy, wrapped in a bright floral housecoat, with gray hair neatly gathered in a small bun at the back of her head.
“Alara, honey, what happened?” Mrs. Higgins squinted anxiously, looking with curiosity at the uniformed officer standing beside me. “Is something wrong?”
“Mrs. Higgins, hello,” I managed to say, trying to keep my voice steady. “You see, someone strange walked in my yard last night. There are clear tracks left in the snow. Officer Purnell came to sort it out. Can we look at the recording from your security camera? Maybe something important is visible on it.”
“Oh, Lord have mercy!” The neighbor threw up her hands sincerely. “Someone strange walked around at night? And you were alone?”
“Vernon is on a long haul,” I nodded.
“My God, how scary! Yes, come in quickly. Of course, come in. We will definitely look.”
We walked inside the cozy house, stepping into a small but very clean and tidy living room that was densely packed with old, sturdy furniture made of dark wood. A modern flat-screen TV hung on the wall—a stark contrast to the doilies and porcelain figurines—and beneath it stood a black box for the video recorder with blinking green and red lights.
Mrs. Higgins fussily, a little confusedly, turned on the TV, fiddling for a long time with several remotes.
“Here, it seems to be working and showing,” she muttered, pressing buttons. “Officer Purnell, you figure out this technology yourself because I don’t understand it very well. My grandson set it up.”
The officer silently nodded, took the remote control with practiced ease, and began quickly rewinding the recording. I froze nearby, my eyes glued to the screen, afraid to blink, afraid to miss even a single shadow.
“You say your husband left the house around seven in the evening?” Gareth clarified, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“Yes, around seven, maybe a little later,” I whispered, my hands clasped so tightly together that my knuckles turned white.
He quickly rewound the recording to eight o’clock in the evening and set the playback to normal speed. The picture wasn’t exactly high-definition—it was grainy, black-and-white, and blurred in places due to the falling snow—but on the whole, it was quite possible to distinguish what was happening. The street was completely empty, deserted, with snow falling in a thick, relentless veil that made visibility poor.
Time on the recording crawled slowly forward. Nine p.m. Ten. Eleven.
“Here, look closely. Right here.” Purnell poked a thick finger intensely right at the screen. “A quarter to midnight.”
On the deserted street, an unfamiliar car unexpectedly appeared—a regular dark sedan. It drove up slowly, leisurely, and neatly stopped right opposite my house. A tall man in a dark, bulky jacket and a knit cap pulled low over his forehead got out of the car. It was absolutely impossible to make out a face on such a recording; he was just a shadow against the snow.
He calmly looked around, scanning the street as if checking for witnesses, then confidently opened my gate and disappeared behind it, dissolving into the darkness of my yard.
“Lord have mercy,” I whispered, feeling my insides turn traitorously cold. My legs went weak, and I had to lean against the back of Mrs. Higgins’ heavy armchair.
About ten minutes later—maybe twelve—the man appeared in the frame again. He walked out of my yard completely calmly. He just as methodically closed the gate behind him on the latch, got into his car, and slowly, without rushing, drove away, disappearing around the bend.
“Pause,” Officer Purnell commanded shortly, hitting the button on the remote.