“Of whoever did this?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Her expression did not change.
Then she tapped the screen.
A figure appeared walking down the narrow side path beside my garage.
Baseball cap.
Brown canvas jacket.
Dark jeans.
Heavy work boots.
My work boots.
My jacket.
My cap.
From the angle of the camera, the man even moved a little like me.
Same height.
Same general build.
Same slow left-shoulder dip I had developed after a warehouse accident years earlier.
The figure entered my backyard.
Thirty seconds later, the camera shook.
Then went dark.
I stared at the screen.
“That’s not me.”
Officer Brooks said nothing.
“That is not me.”
“I hear you.”
“I was at work.”
“We’re confirming that.”
I looked across the street.
Claire was still watching.
Brooks followed my gaze.
“Ms. Dawson says she saw you outside shortly before the damage occurred.”
My head turned.
“She said what?”
“That she saw you in your yard.”
“That’s impossible.”
“She was specific.”
I stared at Claire.
For almost four years, that woman had complained about my greenhouse.
She complained about the reflection from the glass.
The smell of compost.
The delivery van that once blocked her driveway for nine minutes.
She complained when I installed a rain barrel.
She complained when I added shade cloth.
She complained that the greenhouse “lowered the uniform appearance” of our block, even though our neighborhood had no HOA.
And now she was telling police she had seen me destroy it.
Officer Brooks touched the tablet.
“I want you to watch again.”
The video replayed.
The figure crossed the yard.
This time Brooks paused it.
“See his left arm?”
I leaned closer.
The sleeve had pulled back slightly.
Something dark showed above the wrist.
A tattoo.
Small.
Black.
Three narrow lines forming a triangular shape.
I had never seen it before.
Officer Brooks zoomed in.
Claire had been watching from across the street.
Suddenly, she took off her sunglasses.
Her face changed.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Pure recognition.
And I knew immediately that she had seen that tattoo before.
Officer Brooks noticed too.
“Ms. Dawson?”
Claire looked away.
Brooks stepped toward her.
“You recognize that mark?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Brooks stopped.
“Are you sure?”
Claire folded her arms tighter.
“It’s blurry.”
“You reacted to it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yes, ma’am. You did.”
Claire glanced at me.
For the first time that morning, she looked scared.
Not because her neighbor’s greenhouse had been destroyed.
Because the wrong detail had survived the recording.
That was the moment I realized something much worse than vandalism had happened.
The person wearing my clothes had not dressed like me by accident.
Someone had constructed a version of me for the cameras.
And Claire Dawson already knew who was inside the costume.
My problems with Claire had started fourteen months earlier.
Before that, we had been ordinary neighbors.
Not friends.
Not enemies.
She lived across the street with her twenty-six-year-old son, Derek.
Claire was divorced.
Derek came and went.
He worked construction jobs when he had them and spent long stretches between jobs doing whatever Claire described as “freelance work.”
I never asked what that meant.
Our interactions were basic.
Morning.
Nice weather.
Package came to my house.
Your dog got loose.