Chapter 3
The cruiser came up the cul-de-sac slowly, the way law enforcement does when nobody is in immediate danger but somebody has used the word theft on the telephone. A second car followed, and the two of them parked nose to tail at the curb, blocking the easy way out of my driveway. I wiped my hands on my rag and stood up straight, the way a man does when he wants to look like he has nothing to hide, even when his heart is beating too fast for the hour.
The lead deputy was a woman, compact and alert, with her hair pulled back and a flashlight already in her hand though it was full daylight. "Mr. Calloway?" she said. "I am Deputy Elena Vasquez, county sheriff. This is Deputy Cole Bennett. Your neighbor called about some electrical work on a shared fence."
"Ray," I said. "And it is a panel swap, Deputy. The old sixty-amp panel rusted out. I am putting in a rainproof enclosure."
Marlene was already on her patio, and she came forward before Vasquez could ask another question. "He is not swapping a panel," she said. "He is pulling power off the mains and bypassing the meter seal. That box is wired into something, and it is not his house service. I want it opened and I want it looked at."
Vasquez looked at me, then at the enclosure, then back at Marlene. Her face gave nothing away. "Ma'am, let us take this one step at a time. Mr. Calloway, is this enclosure connected to your house service?"
"Yes," I said, too quickly. "It feeds from the main drop. The street pole. Standard service."
Bennett, the younger deputy, had his notebook out and was writing without looking up. He had the look of a man who had been trained to let his partner do the talking and to catch everything else. "And you pulled a permit for this work?" he asked, still writing.
"A panel swap does not need a permit," I said. "It is like-for-like maintenance."
Marlene made a sound that was not quite a laugh. "Like-for-like? Deputy, that box hums all night long. It hums through my foundation wall. My lights dim when it cycles. Ask him what it cycles for. Ask him why a panel swap needs a trench eight feet long along a shared fence."
Vasquez walked over to the enclosure and put her hand on it the way I had earlier, palm flat. She stood there a moment, feeling what I had felt. "It is warm," she said. "And it is vibrating."
"It is a live panel," I said. "Live panels hum. That is normal."
"Maybe," Vasquez said. "But I would like to see inside it. Mr. Calloway, open the box for us, please."
Down the street, curtains had begun to move. A neighbor I knew only by his truck stood on his porch with his arms folded, watching the cruisers the way people watch weather they cannot control. Another door opened and closed. Nobody came out to ask what was happening, but nobody went back inside either, and I understood that whatever happened next in my yard would be known up and down the cul-de-sac before noon, told and retold with whatever details each telling added.
Bennett had stopped writing and was looking at the enclosure now, not at me, and I recognized the look. It was the look of a young deputy who has been taught to let the scene speak before the people in it do. Vasquez, meanwhile, had not taken her eyes off my face, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was reading me the way I used to read a micrometer: carefully, without hurry, waiting for the needle to settle on a number I did not want to see.
I stood there with the rag in my hands and the whole morning narrowing down to a single choice. I could refuse, and they would come back with a warrant and a utility crew and a great deal more attention than I wanted. Or I could open it, and let them see what was inside, and hope that what they saw looked ordinary enough to send them away. I had spent five years believing that the best protection was to keep things quiet and keep things working. Quiet was over now.
"All right," I said. "I will open it."
I knelt beside the enclosure, worked the latch with fingers that I willed to stay steady, and swung the door open. Vasquez stepped closer with her flashlight, and the beam went in past the breakers and the neat rows of copper I had arranged to look respectable, down toward the bottom of the box where the real work was.