Chapter 2: The Footage Karen Wanted Gone
Mark brought Karen back to the porch without touching her.
He did not need to.
The camera was still in her hands, and the realization on her face had already taken most of the fight out of her.
“Put it on the table,” he said.
Karen hesitated.
Then she placed it down.
Mark immediately checked the camera mount. The plastic bracket was cracked, but the camera itself appeared intact.
He picked up his phone.
The live feed showed the porch from an awkward angle.
But the recording from the previous few minutes was clear.
Mark rewound it.
Karen appeared on the screen.
She had entered his property from the side yard.
She had looked around.
Then she had walked toward the porch.
Mark watched silently.
Karen folded her arms.
“You’ve got no right to record me.”
Mark did not answer.
He kept watching.
The recording showed Karen stopping beneath the camera and staring directly into the lens.
Then she looked toward the street.
Then toward Mark’s front window.
Then she reached up.
Mark paused the video.
“What were you doing here?”
“I told you. That camera points at my house.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mark replayed the footage.
Karen looked increasingly uncomfortable.
The truth was not in what she said.
It was in what she did.
She had not simply walked onto the porch and removed the camera.
She had first examined it carefully.
She had checked the angle.
She had looked at the lens.
She had even stepped backward several feet and watched the camera again.
Mark stared at the screen.
She had come prepared.
Then the video showed something that made his stomach tighten.
Karen walked back toward the side of the house.
She stopped near the narrow passage between their properties.
There was a small wooden gate there.
Mark had never paid much attention to it.
But the camera had captured Karen reaching toward the gate.
She opened it.
Then she disappeared from view.
Mark stopped the recording again.
“Where does that go?”
Karen said nothing.
Mark looked at her.
“Karen.”
She finally answered.
“That’s none of your business.”
The words were quiet this time.
Mark felt a chill.
His neighbor’s strange behavior suddenly looked less like a dispute over privacy and more like an attempt to erase evidence.
He went inside and checked the older recordings.
There were hours of footage.
Days.
Weeks.
He searched through them.
At first, nothing seemed unusual.
Then, three nights earlier, the camera had captured a shadow moving beside his driveway.
The figure stopped near his garage.
The image was too dark to identify the person.
But the person had been carrying something.
Mark enlarged the image.
A small object hung from the figure’s hand.
A key.
He looked toward Karen.
She had gone pale.
“You know who that is,” he said.
Karen looked toward the door.
And this time, she did not deny it.
Instead, she asked the one question Mark had not expected.
“Did you save the footage?”
