"There was no sign of forced entry," I was told by the officer standing near the front window. He continued, "but I'm sorry to say..." He paused and nodded his head toward the house behind him.
By the time I got there, it looked as if a natural disaster or bar brawl had found its way into the living room. Everything was in disarray. What seemed like the work of some desperate axe left huge gashes in parts of the south wall and laid what looked like giant's teeth marks into all the cushions of the beige sectional. Vases, pictures, lamps all were shattered on the floor. An even larger chunk was hollowed out of the west wall so that you could see right into the newly destroyed study - which was a different story altogether.
What could have once been respected as a home version of a well-organized Barnes & Noble bookstore was now a disasterous literary pile - each novel cast aside like just-smoked-cigarettes into the center of the room, complete with the dying embers of Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad. Vandals would not have been so thoroughly destructive, and too many valuables remained for this to be the work of thieves. However, someone knew what the house potentially contained and arrived with purpose. But what had they been looking for?
I heard a tiny crash as I walked down the hallway to see what other destruction awaited. I turned around and stepped back over the broken endtable to see what had happened and noticed a gaudy, ceramic reproduction of the drama theater masks now broken in three pieces on the floor. "It's probably better off that way," I muttered.
The officer overheard me and asked, playfully, "What? Not one of your favorite purchases?"
"Oh," I answered, "That wasn't mine."
He laughed softly and said, "Yeah my wife buys some crazy things too."
"I'm not married," I said.
"You don't live all alone in this big house, do you?" he continued.
"No," I said.
Confused, he asked, "Well then who else lives here?"
"I'm not too sure," I replied
