Good Cops, Good Neighbors

Somehow when you're laying awake at 1:30 in the morning cycling through your overdue to-do list and/or your various failings, you don't really expect to be interrupted by a knock on your front door. It seemed unlikely that anyone we knew would drop by at that hour, but I figured I should investigate. By the time had I pulled on my bathrobe, the knocking had escalated to downright pounding. I scurried downstairs.

There on my porch, looking slightly apologetic, stood Officer D'Ambrosio of the Seattle Police Department. "Is this your vehicle, Ma'm?" he asked, gesturing with his flashlight toward my car, parked in front of the house with the passenger door wide open. I nodded. "It looks like you were broken into, Ma'm. Did you have a briefcase or something in there?"

I followed him down the stairs, fairly sure I hadn't left anything particularly valuable in the car, but slightly nervous all the same.

"Can you tell us if anything's missing?" he asked. I looked in the car and winced. It certainly looked like it had been ransacked -- but then, it always does. Still, I knew I hadn't left the glove compartment open, and there were several items on the seat (including a device that had once allowed me to play a CD walkman off my car's tape deck, before the CD player got jacked) that I hadn't seen in years -- someone must have extracted them from under the front seat during a hurried search for valuables.

"I don't know. Somebody went through it all right. But I don't think anything's missing. Certainly nothing I care too much about. I gave a friend a ride home last night, and I guess I forgot to lock the passenger door after I dropped him off."

"Well, your neighbors called us when they saw this guy snooping around your car, and we were close enough that we got here before he was finished."

"The neighbors?" I looked across the street; Tashi and a couple of her friends were standing in their driveway talking to another police officer. "Thanks!" I called over to them. "You're welcome!" they replied.

"Why don't you go inside and I'll come give you a case number when we get it written up."

So I went back in and made myself some hot milk with vanilla in it. Soon Officer D'Ambrosio was back on my porch. "Well, we caught him," he announced as he handed me a South Precinct card with a case number scrawled on it. This was pretty much the last thing I was expecting him to say. "No way! That never happens!"

"Do you mind coming down to see if any of the stuff he had was yours?" This time I put on shoes before following him down to the dark street, still shaking my head in amazement. He and his partner had dumped a bizarre collection of artifacts out of a blue duffel bag onto the trunk of their patrol car. Clearly mine was not the only vehicle the thief had found unlocked that evening. I immediately recognized a tube of St. Ives facial cream that had been in my glove compartment since -- well, since before Simon was born. Next to it were my yellow flashlight and black umbrella. I claimed these items, along with a 12-pack of black Sharpies I vaguely remembered buying in the last two weeks.

"What about these glue sticks?" asked Officer D'Ambrosio's partner, handing me a shrink-wrapped pack.

"Maybe..." I considered. "I don't know. It's the kind of thing I might have bought, I guess."

"Wait, here's a receipt -- did you go to the Office Depot in -- wait, hang on," he said, pulling out his flashlight and peering at the crumpled paper. "Did you go to the Office Depot in Lacey on October 27th?"

"Lacey? No."

"Well, the Sharpies and the glue sticks were bought there."

"Oh. I guess they're not mine, then." I reluctantly removed them from my pile.

Meanwhile Officer D'Ambrosio had lined up a bottle of hand sanitizer, three tape measures, and a can of Coke next to the duffel bag. "Can of soda, now that's the kind of thing you'd find in my car," said the partner. They both looked at me questioningly.

"Nope, not mine."

"Are you sure?" Officer D'Ambrosio's faith in my mental catalog of personal possessions had clearly been shaken by the Sharpie incident.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"Okay. We just have to photograph your stuff, and then you can have it back." So I stood in the street, shivering in my bathrobe, as Officer D'Ambrosio took my tube of lotion, my flashlight, and my umbrella, arranged them in a sort of nocturnal still life on the hood of the patrol car, and clambered into the driver's seat to snap a picture of them with his groovy built-in dashboard camera.

"Man, the detective is gonna laugh at this," he said as he carefully copied the brand name off the face cream onto his report.

"Why wouldn't he?" his partner said, "We're laughing at it right now!"

It did seem ridiculous. But I suppose the rules of evidence require some documentation that the items in the duffel bag, however worthless, had in fact come from my car.

As I stood waiting, I remembered how for three weeks last month, off-duty cops had been parked at the end of our street night and day, keeping vigil outside the house of the rookie officer who was wounded Halloween night in the attack that killed Officer Tim Brenton. (I had stopped by one rainy evening to offer my respects, along with some homemade chocolate chip cookies. They accepted the former, but refused the latter.) Since then, more horrors: four more police officers were gunned down in a coffee shop in Lakewood last week, and the culprit was shot dead on Tuesday after a two-day manhunt.

I wanted to acknowledge all of this, to somehow express my deep appreciation that these gentlemen were still out on patrol, chasing down small-time car-prowlers, doing their best to restore stolen flashlights and glue sticks to their rightful owners, and laughing about it. The right words wouldn't come, though, so I just said, "You stay safe out there, guys," and headed back inside with my face cream, flashlight, and umbrella.

(Where I found, on the floor next to the coat rack, my black umbrella. Oops.)