…”because she went to the police too, and nobody believed her. I’d hate for you to waste your time like that.” He smiled and handed me the tomatoes.
I said thank you. I closed the door. I locked it, which suddenly felt like a joke.
The girl before me had left a few pieces of mail behind, and I’d kept one, meaning to forward it. Her name was Jess. I found her on Instagram in about two minutes and sent her the clip of him sitting on my couch in his socks.
She called me back within the hour. She was crying. “That’s exactly what he did to me,” she said. “I filed a report. The officer said he’s the landlord, he has a key, and I couldn’t prove anything. I moved out two weeks later.”
The difference was, I could prove it. I had video with a timestamp, on a day he never gave me notice, of him going through my things and reading my mom’s address off the back of a family photo.
I took it to the police with Jess on speakerphone. This time the detective watched it twice and said, “Oklahoma law says a landlord needs to give a day’s notice except in an emergency. Sitting on your couch is not an emergency.”
Jess’s report was still on file. Two complaints made a pattern. Then a third tenant, from his other building, came forward after the detective started making calls.
He was charged with unlawful entry. I used the police report to break my lease without a penalty, and a legal aid lawyer made sure I got my full deposit back.
My new place is managed by a company with an office and a front desk, and nobody there knows anything about me except my unit number. I still keep the little camera on my bookshelf. So far it has recorded nothing except my cat, asleep on the couch, exactly where she’s supposed to be.
