The first thing I heard was not the crash.
It was the sudden absence of the familiar click from the monitor beside my kitchen sink.
The little green light had been blinking every thirty seconds since I installed the camera over the side gate.
Now the screen showed a gray rectangle and the words CONNECTION LOST.
I set down my coffee and went outside.
My neighbor, Vera Lang, stood on a wooden stool beneath the eaves with a garden spade in her hands.
Fragments of my camera glittered around her shoes.
She was sixty-three, normally careful about her appearance, and wearing a blue raincoat over her nightdress.
She looked at me without surprise.
I asked her why she had destroyed my camera.
She said, ‘It was watching something it had no right to watch.

’
The words made me colder than the October air.
My husband, Jonah, came through the back door with our nine-year-old daughter, Lily, behind him.
I told Lily to stay inside.
Vera climbed down from the stool, still holding the spade.
Jonah stepped between her and the doorway.
‘Put that down,’ he said.
Vera lowered the blade to the ground.
She pointed toward the narrow alley that separated our garage from the vacant brick schoolhouse at the back of the block.
‘Your camera looks straight into that passage,’ she said.
‘It looks at my gate,’ I answered.
‘And everything beyond it.’
I glanced toward the schoolhouse.
The rear doors had been chained for years, but last week I had seen work lights inside.
I assumed contractors were inspecting the building before the city sold it.


Vera seemed to know what I was thinking.
‘People have a right to be unseen,’ she said.
‘Not while they’re smashing somebody else’s property,’ Jonah replied.
I took out my phone and photographed the camera housing, the stool, the spade, and the marks she had left on the siding.
Vera watched every movement.
I asked whether she intended to pay for a replacement.
She answered that she would, provided I did not install another lens facing the alley.
That was when I noticed the orange tape tied around her wrist.
It looked like the wristbands used at concerts or public events.
A black number had been written on it in thick marker.
The number was seventeen.
Vera tucked her hand into her raincoat pocket when she noticed my glance.
‘What happened back there?’ I asked.
‘Nothing that concerns your family.’
Then a vehicle engine started behind the schoolhouse.
Someone shouted a name.
Vera turned so sharply that her stool fell over.
The voice shouted again, and I heard the unmistakable terror beneath the words.
‘We cannot find Martin.’
Vera ran toward the alley.
Jonah and I exchanged one look and followed her.