The officers stayed behind for a few minutes, taking additional photos and asking follow-up questions. The tall one, Officer Daniels, pulled out a small notebook and flipped to a fresh page. “Sir, before we clear out, walk me through your timeline one more time.” So I did. From the strange electric bills to the spinning meter. From killing the breakers to planning the stakeout. All the way up to catching Karen with the orange extension cord in hand. Daniels wrote everything down carefully, nodding occasionally, his expression shifting from neutral professionalism to something a little more annoyed. Not at me. At her. At the nonsense they had been dragged into.
“Just so we’re clear,” he said after I finished, “you never gave her permission to be on your property or to use your utilities.” “I wouldn’t let a cousin borrow electricity,” I said, “let alone a stranger with a cord longer than most driveways.” The younger officer, Cole, I think his name was, snorted a laugh, but quickly pretended he had not. Daniels closed his notebook. “All right. We’ll file the initial report. The detective unit will follow up for formal statements. From what we saw, this is a pretty cut-and-dry case.” He hesitated. “She may try to spin more stories. People like her tend to double down before they give in.” “Trust me,” I said. “I already figured that out.”
They got into their cruiser and began reversing down the driveway. I watched the taillights fade through the trees until the mountain swallowed the sound completely. Then, for the first time that day, I exhaled. Silence. A real one. Not the Karen-enhanced, police-flavored chaos that had been dominating my morning. But that silence also made something else ring loud inside me. This was not over. Not yet.
I walked back toward the cabin, stepping over the imprint of Karen’s boots in the dirt. That damn orange cord still lay across the porch like the shed skin of some dead electric snake. I followed it back to the outlet and crouched beside it. There were scratches all around the plastic plate, tiny marks from repeated plugging and unplugging. She had not used it once or twice. She had used it often. I rubbed a thumb across the surface, trying to guess just how many weeks she had been leeching off me. My bill history told one story. But my gut told me something bigger was happening here. Something she was not clever enough to pull off alone. There was a thought lurking in the back of my mind, something I had brushed aside earlier but could not ignore anymore. What if she was not stealing just from me? What if she had been stealing from every cabin on this ridge that sat empty five days a week?