Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between real events or people is entirely coincidental. The portrayal of a particular action or belief does not imply the writer’s endorsement of said action or belief.
Why was my back door left open? I make it a point to lock all of my doors and windows prior to leaving the house, and yet here my back door was, having been left open.
My first thought, naturally, was that someone had stolen my belongings. After examining my dwelling, however, I had concluded that no such thing had occurred.
But as Edmond Locard said many years ago, every contact leaves a trace. While none of my possessions had been taken, something had been left behind – thus, I concluded that my house had been unlawfully entered into.
Upon my kitchen table, which was just ahead of my back door, there was a shiny little ring, silver in colour, and with a curious little diamond affixed to itself. It seemed genuine, and it looked rather expensive. I would assume that it was worth at least six thousand dollars at purchase, probably about four years ago.
I could tell that it had been worn regularly, but also that it had been very well looked after. The person whose finger had housed this ring must have been incredibly diligent, someone who valued the appearance of wealth and took great care of her material possessions. Her, because this ring was of a decidedly feminine nature. A man could have worn it, but I dismissed this proposition as unlikely.
It was placed there inconspicuously; most people would not have noticed it. But I have a keen eye for detail, and I saw it the very moment that I had entered into my home. This suggested to me that whomever the intruder was, she knew me well. She knew that no matter how obscure her placement of the ring was, I would find it.
I did not notice any other traces of entry. If I didn’t notice, it’s fair to say that there was nothing else that the intruder had left behind.
Thus, one could reasonably assume that the ring was left behind deliberately.
Given how expensive it was, I found it difficult to believe that the ring’s owner was not grieving her loss. She must surely be missing the ring, for anyone vain enough to spend six thousand on a tiny piece of diamond would be hopelessly addicted to the thing.
Unless it was an engagement or a wedding ring purchased for her. Perhaps it was from someone whom she is no longer with. In such a circumstance, it is not at all unlikely that she did not value the jewellery in the slightest – at least, not anymore. Look how well she had taken care of it before leaving it at my house! Indeed, I would go so far as to say that she hated the ring now, for it reminded her of her painful past with a fiancé or a husband whom she no longer loved.
But I still ask the question: why did she break into my home, and leave behind the ring? Who am I to her?
Perhaps I should discuss the matter with my own ex-wife, whom I left behind many years ago. Perhaps she’d understand why someone would do such a thing.
I cannot say that my meeting with her wasn’t awkward. We had not spoken since our divorce, and it was rather improper of me to reach out to her for the first time in years for the purpose of asking for a favour.
Nonetheless, she was surprisingly open to answering my questions. I had described the whole situation to her, and she seemed more terrified than amused, although she seemed more amused than interested.
I found the situation endlessly fascinating. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of psychological state a person would be in so as to break into another’s home and leave behind what is likely to be a wedding or engagement ring.
And why my home? And how did she know me so well? All questions that I was anxious to answer.
My ex-wife believed that the woman who had broken into my house was angry at her partner for leaving her, and had left behind the ring because she believed that I could save her. While this was a fascinating hypothesis, it seemed so incredibly unlikely. This was nonetheless valuable information. I presume that the reason my ex-wife assumed such a thing was because she herself felt angry at me for leaving her, and she healed by making symbolic gestures to remove me from her life and to introduce herself into another’s life – someone whom she believed would save her.
Perhaps my intruder had been working under a similar, but more obsessive, motivation. I say more obsessive because only an incredibly obsessive person would break into another’s home. In particular, my home. No one dared do such a thing under normal circumstances.
And it was obvious that she had been watching me. Perhaps this was someone whom I knew in person. It is not at all a secret that my attention to detail is superb. She knew this, hence why she left the ring in such an inconspicuous way. And yet, she herself had managed to escape from my sight. But how?
Perhaps I needed to meet with my brother. His fiancé had left him and, shortly thereafter, had confessed that she was in love with me. I remember that her engagement ring was starkly different from the one left on my counter, so it couldn’t have been her. But, to find my intruder, I must understand the motivations of potentially similar people.
My brother himself had deteriorated very quickly following his wedding being called off. When he discovered that his fiancé, whom he referred to as his darling – how foolishly and recklessly he loved her – was infatuated with me, he began to hate me. We had kept in touch, but he had become cold and distant towards me, because he felt that it was my fault that the girl of his dreams had disappeared from his life.
According to my brother, my intruder was someone who was obsessed with me. Someone who had known me – according to him, through someone else. I had caused pain for that someone else by causing pleasure to my intruder, and her obsession developed as a result of her desire for me.
This was nonsensical. My brother was just weaving stories based on his hatred of me. However, this was still helpful. Perhaps it was not the woman who was my intruder, but the man she had left.
Perhaps a discussion with my brother’s ex-fiancé would be in order. Although her beauty enthralled me, I had to reject her offer to marry me, because I am fairly confident that if I had not done so, my brother would have killed me. She spent the majority of our meeting attempting to seduce me with her soft voice, lovely smile, and decadent gaze, and did not seem to care at all that my home had been broken into by an intruder who had left behind an engagement ring.
Although she did not speak of the intruder, the meeting was nevertheless helpful. Just as she was attempting to seduce me, so too was my intruder. That was now certain.
So far, I have come to a variety of curiously rich conclusions about the nature of my intruder. She was a caring but obsessive woman. She had been following me for some time now. She found me intoxicating, and this was her way of seducing me.
She was very clever indeed. She knew that by evading me, she would capture my interest and my attention. She knew that she had inflamed my Ego and that I would want to meet her. I cannot help but admit that she was starting to succeed. I did not know who this woman was, what she looked like, or who her parents were, but I was already starting to fall for her.
I have always been rather unfortunate when it comes to romance. My first crush was a girl in primary school – I believe I was in the sixth grade. I never spoke to her even once; her beauty was terrifying. When I was fifteen, I worked a part-time job at a convenience store after school, and I fell madly in love with a girl who worked the same shift. We used to spend lots of time together, and she was even my first kiss, but she left me rather abruptly and began to date her best friend instead.
I have attempted to court numerous women since then and have even been successful from time to time.
However, my success would always be short-lived. About three years ago, I met a beautiful woman at the local park. At first, she seemed rather uninteresting to me. Although she was gorgeous, her personality was bland, like a blank sheet of paper that one could only write on with white ink.
However, one day, she invited me to her home and told me of her childhood. Another child mercilessly bullied her at school, and therefore she killed him. From that day on, she became supremely interesting to me, and I decided to seriously date her. With every interaction I had with her, I was given the marvellous opportunity to analyse the motivations of a killer – albeit one, it seems to me, who killed in self-defence.
How wonderfully fascinating she was! She was like an onion that one could peel, gradually tearing back layers upon layers of depth and interest to eventually reveal the very core of her Being. However, when one peels an onion using a blunt knife, one cries.
As I examined her, I discovered that her first victim – whom she had killed in self-defence – was not her last. She found murder to be tremendously thrilling, and she confessed to me – while we were walking hand in hand at midnight down a deserted alleyway near a supposedly haunted cemetery – that the dead bodies of all her previous partners were buried in that very cemetery.
I did not convey my fear to her. Instead, I confidently told her I could no longer be in a relationship with her. Strangely enough, she let me live. I remember reading in the next morning’s paper that she had been arrested for her crimes. I wonder how they had detected her, for it was not I who had reported her.
Was she the strange intruder? I think not. She’d still be in prison, so she couldn’t have done it.
But someone was trying to seduce me. That was for certain. I must admit that this feels marvellous. For someone so unlucky in romance as I am, it is a great thrill to know that I have a secret admirer who is so obsessed with me that she has gone to great lengths to enter my home and leave behind a ring for me, just so that I would notice her. How clever she was.
As I sat there pondering these things, a knock came to my door. As I opened, I saw a young woman in uniform, an officer of the police. She was wearing a ring that looked exactly like the one left on my kitchen table. Could she be my secret admirer?
She greeted me and proceeded to inform me that her rings had been stolen. She said that the police had received hundreds of reports in recent months from women who had had their rings stolen from their very own homes. Then, all but one of the rings would be returned within a week of being stolen. She pointed at her own ring and said that rings of that kind would not be returned.
I remembered that the ring was still on my kitchen table. I needed to hide it, lest she think I was the thief. But just before I could, she told me that she had a search warrant for my home. In a state of confusion, I asked her why.
The police had found footage, she said, of my selling rings – silver rings with diamonds – to local jewellers. They had also received reports from a woman that she saw a man matching my profile stealing and returning her rings.
The girl that I worked with when I was fifteen wore that same kind of ring. I don’t know how she acquired it; to my knowledge, her parents were not wealthy, so she must have stolen it.
When she allowed herself to be stolen from me, I felt so incredibly angry at her. I needed to keep at least a piece of her with me still. Everything else, I could surrender; I was more than willing to return the girl to he who had loved her for all those years. But I needed a part of her to stay with me, so I stole her ring.
When questioned by the police, I answered honestly. I told them that an intruder had left behind the ring. Of that I was certain. Why would I go to such great lengths to leave behind a ring I had stolen, only to go on a wild goose chase attempting to figure out who it was that left it there?
But there was one thing that still confused me. Had I really been selling rings to local jewellers? That made no sense! I was certain that they were lying about the footage so that they could extract a confession from me. However, I was speechless when I saw the video with my own eyes.
There I was, clear as day, selling rings to jewellers. But how? I knew I had not stolen any rings from anyone other than my old girlfriend.
Of course! She was trying to win me back; she was the intruder! How did I miss that before?
I recited the entire story to the police, desperately trying to prove my innocence. They informed me that I had only moved to the town a few years ago, and that when I was a teenager, I lived in another part of the country, in a juvenile detention centre. My crime? Stealing.
This was unbelievable. None of this was true. I always lived here.
I told them the name of the convenience store where I worked. They said that no such place existed.
I told them the name of my first girlfriend. No such person existed.
I told them about the news article reporting my second girlfriend’s arrest. No such article existed.
I told them about the cemetery. Didn’t exist.
I told them about my brother. He did exist but was still in jail for murdering his fiancé.
To them, the only thing that was real was that I was stealing rings, returning them back, keeping the silver ones with diamonds on them, and then selling them to local jewellers.
But I am not that illogical! If I were to steal – hypothetically, of course – I would only steal what I wanted, and then keep it. I wouldn’t steal all of the rings, only to return most of them back to the home. That would increase the likelihood of being caught and would be a useless waste of time.
I kept telling them that I didn’t do it.
But all the evidence suggested that I did. I could not remember ever having done it. I could not fathom the idea of such a detail-focused person as myself acting in such a careless way. But the proof that I had done it was there.
Even though I had no recollection of doing any such thing, I had no choice but to believe it. It couldn’t have been true, but it had to be true. I had acted unethically, illogically, emotionally. I had done everything that a person I am not would do.
It couldn’t have been me. And yet it had to have been me. I believed them. I had no choice but to believe them! I acted contrary to my nature and could not even remember it.
But it was true. I had stolen that ring. I could no longer deny it, though I couldn’t remember it.
After all, as Edmond Locard said many years ago, every contact leaves a trace.