1106 The Rest of the Story

Monday, February 05, 2007

I found the urban legends book I mentioned in the previous entry: It's Too Good to Be True, The Colossal Book of Urban Legends, by Jan Harold Brunvand. When I took it out of the tote bag, I had put it on top of the pillow on the other (lonely) side of my bed, under the comforter, so it would be there for reading in bed. When I went looking for it, I did look on, around, and under the pillow, looked everywhere around the head of the bed, but it wasn't there.

I found it way down deep IN the bed, when I swung a leg over to that side last night. Miss Thunderfoot had probably been bouncing on the bed and it slid off the pillow and kept sliding on feather fluff and cat pushes. My edition is a big book (7" x 9.25" x 1.25"), but it was buried in so much feather fluff it made no noticeable lump.

I found the other book I had lost, the novel, on the kitchen peninsula, right out in plain sight (well, between stacks of magazines). I thought I'd looked there, but maybe not.

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Continuing the story of the guy who stole my purse:

As detailed in the previous entry, just like the urban legend, he had called me claiming to have found my purse, and then went to my house while I was out "picking up my purse". We were not robbed only because I'd left the dog in the house and her barking alerted the neighbor.

When I got home, I called the police, who interviewed the neighbor, and the description of the car matched that of one stolen two days before. Mr. Brunvand can say this urban legend is untrue all he wants, but the police told me then that it's a common ruse, that the thief will try to get you out of the house so he can rob you.

I had already stopped the credit cards, and luckily I knew the exact number of the last check I'd written, so the bank put an alert on my account, and would not pay and would turn over to the police all checks presented past that number.

A few hours after I had gone to DOE and discovered I'd been rooked, he called again. He tried to convince me that he was genuine, and had merely been out of the office, but I said I knew that he had visited the house, and he could forget that because I changed the locks this afternoon. I then did something I knew I shouldn't have done, but I couldn't resist.

The pocket watch in the purse had great sentimental value to me. It was a beautiful little thing, 14K, small, with the usual snap-open cover, case beautifully incised, and the face inside was painted with pink roses. That watch had been used to time contractions when Daughter was born, and to time breastfeeding after. I intended to give it to her for her first baby.

I begged the guy for the watch. I told him I'd buy it from him. All he had to do was come up with some safe way to make the transaction. Or maybe he could pawn it, and then tell me which pawnshop and send me the ticket, so I could redeem it.

This was bad, because it gave him a hook to jerk me around on. He started calling, just to chat, holding out the watch as a lure.

They put a thingy on my phone to trace and record calls, so even though I knew he'd never return the watch, I had to talk to him when he called, to keep him on the line. The calls all came from pay phones, so it wasn't much help, except for general location. He scared me, because he often knew where I'd been that morning, what I'd been wearing. I started taking the dog with me everywhere. Remember, I didn't know what he looked like. The police had descriptions, but no photo, and he sounded like half the young men I saw every day.

It didn't take long before forged checks started pouring in. From the first check, the cops had known who the guy was. He was a local "most wanted". Among other crimes, he had recently mugged a woman and her son at gunpoint, taking her purse, the young man's wallet, and their car. He was writing the checks payable to the name on the stolen driver's license, and using the license to cash them. As he stole more licenses, the names changed, connecting him to a series of muggings and burglaries.

There was a young detective assigned to the case, let's call him Officer Joe Goodguy, and I talked with him almost every day. By the way, this was maybe 1979 or so, no cell phones, and driver's licenses had descriptions, but no photos.

One day I got a call from a deskclerk at a motel on the east side of the beltway. He said he wanted to verify a check. He said that a man had stayed at the motel, but didn't have enough money to pay the bill when he checked out. The man had a check from me, made out to him , payment for some yardwork, and he wanted to cash it. That was against motel policy, so the man had endorsed the check anyway, and had left the check and his driver's license as security, and was going to return later with cash, to redeem them.

I told the clerk that I was going to look up the motel in the phone book and call him back, just to make sure who I was taking to. I called him back, and told him that this guy was wanted by the police, was considered armed and dangerous, that the check was stolen and forged. I told him to immediately call Officer Joe Goodguy at (telephone number). And I immediately called Officer Goodguy.

Officer Goodguy sent cars to the motel, and when they talked to the deskclerk, the clerk verified the story, but, and this is absolutely unbelievable to me, the clerk said the guy had already been there, had paid his bill in cash, and had left with the check and driver's license. (Again, late '70s. No security cameras.)

Officer Goodguy's theory was that the thief had done another "job", and scored cash, but not a suitable replacement license. Otherwise, he would not have returned. The motel clerk was more concerned about getting the money than catching a crook.

A few more days, more calls, more checks written, another mugging, a carjack. Other victims going through a lot of the same stuff. Officer Goodguy has developed some intellectual respect for me, and has become very protective (not so with Ex#2. He's mostly out of town on business throughout all this). We change my phone number, and make it unlisted. End of phone calls.

One day I got a call from Officer Goodguy. His voice was strained. I could see big eyes and raised eyebrows even over the phone. A check had been cashed and turned over to him by the bank, and when he looked at the back of the check, written on the back is "Officer Joe Goodguy", and his phone number! Officer Goodguy is completely freaked out! How did this guy get his name?! How did he know?! Did he write it on the back of the check knowing that Officer Goodguy would see it? Was he taunting him?

I reminded him of the motel incident. I had told the clerk to call him, and the clerk had probably written his name and number on the check.

The whole thing petered out after about a month. They never caught the crook, but he seemed to have disappeared, moved on to somewhere else.

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Something else happened during that time. I didn't include it above because I wasn't sure it was him, but it was very scary.

The master bedroom was over the garage, and was set back a bit, so there was about five feet of sloping roof outside the bedroom windows. Ex#2 was away on business during most of the time all this nastiness was going on. He came home one day, and in the middle of that night, I was awakened by creaking on that piece of roof. I heard someone touching the window just above my head. I knelt on the bed and moved the curtain aside, but saw nothing on the roof. I tried to awaken Ex#2, but he objected to being disturbed, finally declared it was a cat or raccoon, refused to look into it, and went back to sleep. Having been away, he had no sense of how frightened I'd been, being stalked by an "armed and dangerous" felon.

The next morning, he got in his car in the garage to go to work, electronically raised the garage door, and backed out right into a metal extension ladder leaning over the door up to the roof.

The day before, he'd been doing some work outside that had involved the ladder, and had left the ladder lying on the ground along the side of the garage. Someone had put it up to the roof, and there really had been someone on the roof the night before.

I don't know if it was the crook. It could also have been neighborhood kids. I reported it to Officer Goodguy, and he was worried. Ex#2 was apparently not. He left the next day on another business trip. I locked the ladder away.
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