Empty Briefcase Found on Traffic Island

A story about stealing surveillance footage.

Date night – Outside, in the wind – 2005:

I like to steal surveillance footage. I’ve been doing it for years. It’s a lot easier than you would think. At most of the big box stores, you can just walk in and take it. No one’s ever tried to stop me. No one is really paying attention, not for minimum wage. If you act like you belong there they won’t question it. They’ll just figure you’re new, if they even notice you. And that’s not a sure thing – I’ve found there are some people that can only see things they’ve seen before. If something doesn’t match it gets smoothed into something that does. They take my face in their mind and twist it into a shape they think they know, without even realizing they’ve done it. I’ve kept up conversations for hours, sometimes, on the basis of this quirk. That’s something else I like to do. I go up to strangers at the mall food court, or the public park, or outside the high school, and try to get them talking. I act like I know them, without getting specific. I let them fill in the blanks. I try to see how long I can keep the conversation going. I always know I’ve got them if they start treating me like they know me. If they try to excuse themselves, I don’t let them. I trap them in the conversation like a chained dog. I make it impossible for them to walk away politely. If they try anyway, I imply they owe some sort of debt to me, that weather they know it or not, I’ve helped them conceal some secret guilt. I keep going like this. It can get pretty intense sometimes. Most people have done things they’re ashamed of, and they’re liable to start talking about them, if they think you already know. Usually it’s just some low-grade fraud – skimming off the company account, cashing a dead relatives’ Social Security checks, scamming someone with a sob story. Maybe an addiction they’re trying to keep hidden, or an infidelity. At least a few rapes. I met one guy who I think raped his own daughter, but I’m not totally sure. It’s hard to get all the details without giving the game away. No murder confessions yet. I think murderers, at least the ones who haven’t gotten caught, probably have something in their character that makes my techniques ineffective. It’s certainly possible; I’m not some master manipulator, I just like seeing how long I can keep people talking. And usually that’s not more than, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty minutes, but there are some people that just can’t say no. They don’t know how to be impolite. You can hammer and hammer them and they’ll sweat and squirm but they won’t get up and walk away. Those are the ones I really look for. I once kept a girl on a bench at a bus stop so long the sun went down and the buses stopped running and she had to walk five miles home. I know how far it was because I made her tell me her address, and I looked it up later. I could tell she didn’t want to, but I said I needed it to mail her postcards from my travels. She had a lot of guilt in her. I guess you can’t have that sort of guilt if you’ve killed someone, not if you want to get away with it. You just can’t be vulnerable like that. In case you’re wondering, I never actually went to her house or anything. I’m not a psycho. It’s just a way to pass the time.

Anyway, pretty often I can just walk into whatever back office they run the feeds to and take the tape out of the VCR. You wouldn’t believe how many places are still running on video tape. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, I guess. The newer systems are all computer-based, of course. I always bring a blank CD for those, burn what I can and delete the rest. Usually it’s just that day’s footage, but I’ve found and wiped archives going back months. I can’t imagine what good they think it does saving it all. More storage space than they know what to do with, I guess. I’ve been noticing that a lot lately. That images just pile up now. When I was younger, I tried to burn a photo of my grandmother. No particular reason; I just thought it might be interesting. My mother caught me first and when grabbed me she pulled so hard it dislocated my arm. I don’t hold it against her. It was an instinctual sort of thing. Later, I found out that was the only picture of my grandmother she had. To her, it was like I was trying to kill her mother, and she’d already died once. Horrible, slow. I was very young, but I remember being forced to visit her in the hospital, towards the end. I’m not sure she knew I was there. There was a horrible smell coming from between her legs. My mother found out later the hospital had been neglecting her. They’d left her so long one of her bedsores had necrotized. Ultimate cause of death was sepsis. There was a whole lawsuit. My mother never told me about any of this, but obviously it wasn’t something she could just let go of. So, you can understand why she did what she did to me. She knew what that picture was worth, is my point. She knew its weight. But no one even thinks about those things anymore. It all just accumulates, all the time, and no one even notices. Not until it’s gone.