Part 3 — Brianna Lives Nearby
The address on the detectives laptop was a gray house on Elm Street, four blocks from my front door. I had walked past it a hundred times on the way to bingo. There was a flower box in the window and a cheerful wreath on the door.
The woman who lived there was Kayla Mercer, thirty-one, and she had gone by Brianna for a year. Her late father-in-law had installed garage door openers around Idaho Falls for thirty years and kept every customers code in a spiral notebook. She found it in a box after he passed.
My code was in that notebook. He had put in my opener in 1998 and jotted the four numbers beside my name in blue ink. I never wrote them down, but he did, and that is how they traveled.
Detective Alvarez let Hal and me sit in a neighbors kitchen while she planned the next step. Thursday was bingo night, and Kayla expected the box to be opened. Trevor texted her, Got it. Grandma just left for bingo.
I never went to bingo. I sat with Hal and a pot of coffee at my neighbor Dorothys window. A little after seven, a woman in a dark coat came down the alley with a small flashlight and typed four numbers into my keypad.
The door rose, and three officers stepped out from behind my car. Kayla did not run. She sat down on the garage step and put her face in her hands. Her pockets held a glove, a flashlight, and the flip phone from the box.
At the station she told the detective she was behind on rent and found the notebook. Needing money is a reason, but it is never a permission.
She was charged with burglary, fraud, identity theft, and exploiting elderly victims. All three break-ins since June were traced to her. A judge ordered restitution, and the notebook went into the evidence room for good.
Trevor was cleared within the week. The gift cards he had bought were traced as part of the scam, and he had never kept a cent. The detective said she wished every young man would hand over his phone the way he did. He testified at the hearing.
Hal and the detective visited everyone on the list, Mrs. Hadley, the Navarros, Ruth Gamble, and the rest. They changed locks, installed cameras, and sat with each one to say it was not their fault.
We changed my code that night. Trevor picked the new numbers and wrote them down nowhere. Then he made pancakes at ten oclock, because he said it was how he wanted to say sorry. We ate on the porch and watched Elm Street light up, one window at a time.
