Read Page 11

I was back at Charlie's single-wide mobile home. Or, rather, standing just outside it.

It was evening and the mobile home park was mostly quiet. I could smell fish frying and meats baking. TV sets glowed in many of the mobile homes. Outside the window in question, where the blinds were a little too narrow and the curtains were a little too thin, I paused and took in the scene.Advertisement

The area between Charlie's home and the home next to his was covered in white gravel and seemed to serve as a small parking lot. There was also a path that led between the two homes. The path seemed to connect one side of the park to the other. The path led just outside the window in question.

Amazingly, there were no flood lights here, and the whole space was blanketed in darkness. It would have been easy enough for someone to pause outside the window and watch Charlie with his safe.

A narrow road curved through the mobile home park, which cars occasionally sped along, heedless of children, pets, Santa's reindeer or vampires.

The question was: who had been watching Charlie?

Still standing next to Charlie's mobile home, listening to a cacophony of "It's a Holly, Jolly Christmas," TV news anchormen, video game explosions and the clanking of dishes, I closed my eyes and expanded my consciousness out through the park. A trick I had learned a few months ago. In my mind's eye, I saw glimpses of men in Christmas tree print boxers, women in tubs of vanilla bubbles, most of them shaving their legs, and even an older couple getting frisky under the covers. I saw teens playing Xbox and even grown men playing Xbox. I saw men and women talking excitedly, passionately, agitatedly. I saw children crying and playing, but mostly crying and being warned that Santa was still making his list of naughty and nice children. I saw sumptuous dinners being eaten in front of TVs tuned into Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart but rarely at dinner tables. Gather round the TV, all ye faithful.

I also saw four young men sitting together in the living room of one of the nearby double wide mobile homes. The young men were sitting around bags of weed and the occasional bag of crack cocaine. I saw guns in waistbands and a lot of bad attitudes. There was no sign of Christmas in their house, nor Hanukkah, nor Kwanzaa. A dead giveaway, for sure. No holiday cheer or spirit at all. Of any sort.

My consciousness snapped back, leaving me briefly discombobulated. What I hadn't seen was the stolen safe, but I figured the drug dealers' home was as good a place to start as any. pqdm.com