Fiction 2

The thefts went back more than a year and Roger realized he should have done something about them before. But the broken garage
window he discovered Saturday morning, revealing a degree of rage hitherto unsuspected, was an escalation he could not ignore, especially
after his wife called the police.

The police promised more frequent patrols of their cul-de-sac.

Roger took more direct action. Down to Radio Shack he went. He laid out his idea to the kid behind the counter and eventually waded back
to his car between shopping bags laden with cables, connectors, switches, camera, VCR and motion detector.

He spent the rest of the day in the garage.

When Angie, his wife, brought out some trash, he gave her an overview.

"Invisible," he boasted, pointing at a shelf. "I'll drill a little hole, he won't notice a thing. He'll trip it, star in my movie, and never know it."

Angie nodded, her face taut, and returned to the house. The garage was separate, and peculiarly Roger's domain. He refused to smoke in
front of the kids, so when he returned from the office in the evening, after walking the dogs before dinner, and again afterwards, he
repaired to the garage for a smoke and a beer or two. He kept his beer in the fridge there. Saved steps. Beer was of no importance to him.
He was happy to drink whatever the store had on special.

So, it seemed, was the thief. For a long time he made only an occasional visit, spiriting away but a can or two. Roger would report to Angie
that he'd struck again, and shake his head. Then, six months earlier, an entire twelve-pack of Keystone Light went missing. After that
Roger ran a bicycle lock from a leg of the workbench and wrapped it around the refrigerator's handle, making it impossible to open the
fridge. He started locking the garage, too. However, beer still vanished, if at a lesser rate. Sometimes he forgot to lock up. He sometimes
suspected the thief had a copy of the door key and figured out the bike lock's combination.

Who could be doing it? Roger suspected a sketchy kid from three houses away, the dropout only child of a divorced schoolteacher with a
drinking problem--a middle-aged woman too carefully put together, always walking as though on ice.

Sad. Roger wanted nothing to do with them, save to prevent the son from stealing his beer, but if in doing that he taught him a life lesson,
so much the better.

But this morning, he walked the dogs only to discover a shattered pane in the garage's side door. Shards of glass lay in an arc across the
concrete floor, frozen testimony to violence. Whether entry was made, Roger could not ascertain. The fridge was locked and no beer taken,
but possibly--Angie voiced the possibility-possibly the locks were inciting their thirsty thief to scarier action.

"My children are in that house," she reminded Roger.

"Mine, too," he answered, annoyed.

Hence Radio Shack.

Roger was no electronics whiz. He plugged in connectors, set switches, trailed wire along the wall, aimed the camera through a new-drilled
hole whose shavings he carefully gathered up. He set the little black motion detector among like objects--the Bakelight detritus of an old
garage--and tested his set-up, going out and coming in again.

Nothing.

He drank a beer, contemplating the situation, and made another trip to Radio Shack.

The kid sold him some additional items.

Roger returned home, fiddled away, and was rewarded at last with the VCR inaudibly coming to life as he reached for a beer.