…the second Friday in November. The date of his next “inspection.” I didn’t sleep that night. I sent the video to my sister, then to my email, then to a cloud folder, then to a friend whose husband is a sheriff’s deputy. I’ve seen enough true crime to know: you never keep the only copy.
The deputy called me at six the next morning. “Don’t go home,” he said. “Don’t tell him anything. Act normal. We’ll handle it.” I stayed with my sister. On Monday, two detectives came to see me. They had already found both women from the notebook. Megan was living in Tucson. Priya was in Seattle. Both alive. Both had moved out in the middle of their leases, without their deposits, because they’d been too frightened to stay and too frightened to tell anyone.
Megan told the detectives she’d found her bedroom drawers rearranged three times. Priya said her shirts kept disappearing. Both said he’d asked them to dinner over and over and turned cold when they said no. Neither had any proof. My camera was the proof.
On the second Friday in November, the landlord let himself into my apartment at 1:05 p.m. with his key and his bag. Two detectives were sitting on my couch. He was arrested for burglary and stalking. When police searched his house, they found boxes in his garage, each one labeled with a unit number and a woman’s name. Eleven boxes. Shirts, hairbrushes, letters. They went back twenty years.
Megan and Priya both flew in to testify. The three of us had dinner together the night before court. Our first real conversation was about how we’d all blamed ourselves for being “paranoid.”
He took a plea deal. Seven years. The building was sold, and the new owner changed every lock. I moved out anyway, but I left a note for the next tenant in unit 3B, taped inside the closet door. It says: “If something feels wrong, it is. Trust yourself. Leave a camera on.”
