…”the lock. I’m twenty minutes out. I just need to be the one standing in that doorway when she realizes she can’t get back in.”
I hung up without saying a word.
I’ve been a locksmith for nineteen years. I’ve changed a lot of locks for a lot of landlords. I’ve never had a landlord who needed to watch.
The woman was still holding her groceries, staring at the lease. I asked her name. “Erin,” she said. Then I asked her the only question that mattered. “Do you have anything that says you live here? Anything with your name and this address?”
She had her driver’s license, a utility bill on her phone, and a protective order in her purse. Against her ex-husband. The man on the phone. It said he couldn’t come within five hundred feet of this building.
I called the police. Then I finished the job, the right way. I put in a brand-new deadbolt, one he’d never touched, and handed Erin both keys. I kept the old cylinder in a bag for the police, because he’d sent me a photo of “his” ID and a forged lease, and I figured somebody should hold onto the evidence.
He pulled into the parking lot nineteen minutes later, exactly as promised. Two patrol cars pulled in right behind him. He was arrested for violating the order and charged with forgery. The officer told me later that he’d been planning to tell the court she’d “abandoned” the apartment, so he could ask for her things.
My company changed its rules that week. We now check every lockout and lock change against the county property records and call the actual tenant on file. It adds ten minutes to every job. Nobody complains.
Erin tried to pay me for the deadbolt. I wouldn’t take it. A month later, a box of homemade cookies arrived at my shop, with a key-shaped note on top: “Thank you for taking your time. Just not the way he wanted.”
