Complainant Dennis M. Carrow, 51, reports that on or about Sept. 26 his residence on Upland Road was entered through the rear door by unknown suspect(s) while complainant was out of town. Complainant reports missing: one ladies' diamond tennis bracelet, one pair gold earrings, one men's gold signet ring, one men's steel wristwatch with custom engraved dial. Complainant states watch was purchased by his late father in Geneva, Switzerland in 1968 and is of great sentimental and monetary value. Complainant provided appraisal (attached) and photograph (attached). Complainant states he will be canvassing local shops.
Then a supplement, two days ago: Complainant called to report he has located the watch in the front display window of Szabo & Son, 36th St. Requests officer respond.
Ray clicked on the appraisal. It was a scanned page on letterhead, Linden & Hale Fine Jewelers, York Road, Towson, and it read the way appraisals read, all adjectives and replacement values. Gentleman's wristwatch, stainless steel, 34mm, Swiss manual-wind movement, exceptional hand-engraved guilloché dial in tan, circa 1968. Replacement value for insurance purposes: $18,500. It was signed with a loose loopy signature over a typed name. R. Hale, G.G.
Then he clicked on the photograph.
He had looked at it this morning on the printout, on the patrol-car laptop, in the bad green light of the cheap printer. Now on the big monitor it was sharper. The watch lay on what he'd taken for dark cloth. It wasn't cloth. It was velvet, gray velvet, and the light on it came from above and slightly to the left, hard and flat, and the whole image had a faint haze across it, like something seen through a car windshield in the rain.
Ray leaned closer.
At the upper edge of the frame, where the photograph had been cropped tight, there was a thin band of something else. Red and white. Faint, ghostly, like a watermark. Ray zoomed. The pixels went soft and blocky. He zoomed back out and tilted his head.
Letters. Backward.
He took out his notebook and copied them down as best he could make them out. They were cut off at the top, only the lower halves showing, but there were enough of them.
ERAWDRAH SIL
He looked at it for a long time. Then he turned the notebook around and held it up to the dark glass of the switched-off second monitor on the desk next to his, and in the reflection, the way a shop window throws back the signs across the street when you take a picture through it from the sidewalk, the letters turned around and read the right way.
LIS HARDWARE.
He saw it as clearly as if he were standing there. A red-and-white sign over a door on 36th Street. A big woman in a smock in that door with a broom, glaring at him across the Avenue.
Ray Dombrowski sat back in his chair and said a word that would have gotten him sent to the principal's office at St. Casimir's, and Officer Bettina Grace at the next desk looked up and said, "You okay?"
"No," Ray said. "I'm really not."