Part 3 — Keys Come Home
The last driver on that bus was named Leland Kroft, and Leland Kroft did not exist. The officer from Warren PD told me so the next morning, standing in my driveway with a coffee in his hand and a look on his face like a man who had been up all night. The license was a good forgery, but the real person was somebody else entirely.
His true name was Randall Voss, forty-six, a man with a record from two other states for burglary. He had gotten hired by the district four years earlier under a made-up identity, with forged references and a license that passed the quick check. For three school years, he drove the early route, learned who left the house and when, and made notes in his spiral notebook.
The steel box was where he kept his keys. He copied them from the hooks and key bowls of houses where he picked up children, using a small silicone mold he carried in his coat. That was why the bus smelled of pencils and hand lotion. The times on the paper tags were the hours each house was empty. He chose the evenings with the longest windows.
The break-ins the paper had written up were all his work, spread over four years across a dozen neighborhoods, with no pattern anyone could see. The sheriffs department had tried everything but looking at the bus driver. He never took anything that could be traced to a family. Jewelry, cash, a few guns left in unlocked drawers.
He quit sudden, the spring before the bus was parked, because the district had finally started fingerprinting new drivers. He turned in his keys and never came back for his last check. The bus was left by the fuel pumps, and the box was still bolted under the rear bench, because he could not risk coming back for it.
For four years the safest thing on that route was the one place nobody thought to look, right under a row of school seats.
The police picked up Randall Voss two weeks later in a motel in Erie, Pennsylvania, using the same forged license. He was cooperative and pleaded guilty to burglary, forgery and identity fraud. The judge ordered a long sentence and full restitution to the families whose houses he had entered, and a substantial fine to be paid out of any future earnings.
Every key in that steel box was returned. An officer visited each address with a letter and a locksmith voucher, paid for by the district. My sisters old key was in there too, on its own paper tag. She cried a little when the officer handed it to her. It had been two years since the house was sold, and she said she would keep it as a souvenir.
The school board was embarrassed, and to their credit, they did something. Every driver, aide and custodian is now fingerprinted and verified through a state database, with a new check every two years. The superintendent came to my house with a thank-you card and a gift certificate for the lumber yard, which I spent on the shed.
I did get my backyard shed, though not in the shape of a bus. The district hauled the bus away for evidence, then offered me a substitute, a retired utility trailer. Kent and I framed in shelves and put up a pegboard. Rhonda painted a sign for the door. It says Denniss Workshop, Visitors Welcome, and the neighbors stop by on Saturdays.
