Then I went inside and looked at my doorbell camera.
I'd had it installed when I moved in. Megan, my daughter, insisted, from Denver, on the grounds that her mother was a widow living alone with a dog who could no longer climb into the back of a car without help. It was a basic model with a wide-angle lens, and it saw my porch, my walkway, my driveway, and a slice of the sidewalk and street beyond, including, at the very left edge of the frame, the corner of the Brecks' lawn.
At 5:04 a.m. that Tuesday, according to the recording, a figure walked along the sidewalk from right to left. It was still full dark; the motion sensor had tripped on the edge of my driveway and the image was in that grainy, colorless night mode that makes everyone look like a ghost in a documentary. The figure wore a long rain shell with the hood up, though it hadn't rained in a week. It was carrying something in its right hand at its side, something small and squarish with a handle. It walked out of frame. Ninety seconds later the motion sensor tripped again, and the figure walked back the other way, right hand empty, swinging.
I watched it eleven times. I could not have told you if it was a man or a woman. I could not have told you how tall it was, except that it was not a giant and not a child. I could tell you that it was not me, because I was asleep, and because I don't own a rain shell that long, and because, frankly, at sixty-one my knees would not permit that brisk a walk at five in the morning.
I could also tell you that it was not walking a dog.
I posted it, which was my first mistake. Heron Bend had a neighborhood app, one of those community message boards where people report lost cats and suspicious vans and argue about the Fourth of July fireworks rule. I posted the clip with a short, careful note. I said that I believed someone was deliberately leaving waste on lawns in our neighborhood and blaming my dog. I said that my dog had a medical diet and did not use common areas. I asked if anyone else had a camera that might have caught the person in the rain jacket.
Within the hour there were sixty-four comments.
Some of them were kind. Mr. Bao Huynh, who lived across the pond and walked the perimeter path every morning at five sharp, wrote, I believe you, Bernie. Rook is a good boy. A woman named Trish on Kingfisher Lane said she'd been finding "weird piles" by the playground for weeks and thought it was a raccoon.
Most of them weren't. That could be anyone. That could literally be YOU, Bernie. Why would someone carry a bucket of dog poop around at 5 a.m., this is insane. My uncle had a shepherd that ate a whole rotisserie chicken bones and all, they'll eat anything, you can't know what it does on a "diet." I'm sorry but a child got sick. And then, near the bottom, a reply from Candace Vreeland herself.
Bernie, we understand that it's hard to accept when a beloved pet becomes a problem. Nobody is accusing you of anything except not cleaning up. But posting grainy footage of a neighbor out for a morning walk and implying they're some kind of criminal is not helpful and frankly a little frightening. Many of us walk early. I walk early. The Board is handling this through proper channels. Let's please keep this respectful.
It had forty-one likes by dinnertime.