Chapter 6
The morning was brutal. The kind of July morning where the air has actual weight, where stepping outside feels like walking into someone else's exhale. By seven o'clock the kitchen thermometer read ninety-one. The thermostat screen was dark again, blank and accusing.
I opened the camera app with shaking hands.
The footage started at midnight: the side yard empty, the unit humming steadily, the fence line still. Nothing at one. Nothing at two, three, four, five. Just the gray-blue light of early morning slowly filling in, the way it does in summer when the night gives up all at once.
At 6:04 a.m., the side gate moved.
She slipped through it sideways, careful and practiced, like someone who had done this before. Gray jacket. Blue jeans. Hair pulled back off her face. In her right hand, a hammer β a real one, claw head, the kind you buy at a hardware store for actual work.
Gloria Hayes walked straight to my AC unit. No hesitation. No looking around to check if anyone was watching. She knew exactly where she was going and exactly what she was going to do.
She struck the side panel first. Three hard blows, overhand, like she was driving a nail. The camera had no sound, but I could see the jolt travel up her arm with each hit, see the panel buckle. Then she crouched at the electrical box, set the hammer down on the concrete pad, and reached in with both hands. She tugged at the wiring β I could see her shoulders working, pulling and twisting, yanking connections loose. Then she picked up the hammer and hit the fan housing twice more for good measure.
It took her maybe four minutes. Then she stood, brushed off her jacket, picked up the hammer, and walked back through the gate. She closed it softly behind her, the way you'd close a bedroom door so as not to wake someone.
I sat on the edge of my bed and watched the clip three more times. Each time I hoped I'd misread it, that it was a trick of the grainy light, that it was someone else. Each time the hammer came down the same way, and each time it was Gloria.
My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped the phone.
I saved the video to three places. My phone. My laptop. A cloud folder I'd never used before and had to look up how to create. My mother's voice was in my head, steady as ever: when something feels wrong, you watch. I'd watched. Now I had it β proof, timestamped, undeniable.
I thought about calling the police right then. I thought about marching next door and pounding on Gloria's door with the video playing on my screen. I thought about a dozen things, and did none of them, because the heat was climbing past ninety and my head was pounding and I needed to think straight before I did anything stupid.
Then my phone buzzed with an email notification.
The subject line read: EMERGENCY PROPERTY COMPLAINT β 14 MILLER LANE.
It was 8:00 in the morning. Two hours after the hammer.
I want to be honest about what I did in the hour after I watched that video, because it wasn't brave. I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the wall while the house climbed past eighty-seven, replaying four minutes of footage in my head.
Part of me wanted to pretend I hadn't seen it. That part was loud. It said: maybe there's an explanation. Maybe you're misunderstanding. That part had been running the show for months.
But Diego's voice was louder now. This isn't wear and tear. And my mother's voice was loudest of all. When something feels wrong, you watch. I'd watched. Now I had to act.
I saved the video to three places. My phone. My laptop. A cloud folder I'd never used before and had to look up how to create, squinting at tutorials while sweat ran down my back. Paranoid? Maybe. But I'd seen enough crime shows to know that evidence has a way of disappearing when you need it most.
Then I called in sick to work. First time in two years. My supervisor asked if I was okay, and I said the AC was out and the house was unlivable, which was true as far as it went. What I didn't say was that I was about to accuse the chair of the Property Preservation Committee of smashing my air conditioner with a hammer, and I needed to be home for it.
I thought about calling the police right then. I thought about marching next door and pounding on Gloria's door with the video playing on my screen. I thought about a dozen things, and did none of them, because the heat was climbing past ninety and my head was pounding and I needed to think straight before I did anything stupid.
Then my phone buzzed with an email notification.
The subject line read: EMERGENCY PROPERTY COMPLAINT β 14 MILLER LANE.
It was 8:00 in the morning. Two hours after the hammer. My stomach turned over, because I already knew who it was from before I opened it.