Chapter 2: The Man Who Wanted a Witness

The responding officer arrived while Grant was still outside my fence.
Officer Leona Brooks asked each of us to remain apart.
Judith sat on the curb holding a small paper bag against her chest.
Grant greeted Brooks as though he had invited her to a neighborhood meeting.
“I have the whole thing recorded,” he announced.
Brooks asked him to preserve the original file and not edit or distribute it.
Grant immediately offered to send her a clip.
“The original,” Brooks repeated.
I explained that Judith had entered through my unlatched side gate and approached the pool with an unfamiliar illuminated cable.


I told Brooks that I had no idea what the device was.
Brooks looked at the cord without touching it and requested someone qualified to inspect it.
She kept the pool area clear.
Grant objected when she asked him to step farther away.
“You’re treating the witness like the suspect,” he complained.
“I’m asking everyone to leave the area undisturbed,” Brooks said.
Judith lifted her head.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she whispered.
Grant spoke immediately.
“She was trying to protect the neighborhood.”
Brooks turned toward him.
“I asked her a question, Mr. Mercer.”
He gave a small smile and stepped back.


Judith stared at the paper bag.
I noticed that she had a dark bruise near her wrist, partly concealed by the cuff of her cardigan.
I had met her only twice before that afternoon.
At our first meeting, she had offered me a cutting from her rosebush.
At our second, she had asked whether my mother was feeling better after surgery.
She had never threatened me.
She had never complained about the pool.
I could not reconcile that quiet woman with the person I had just seen at the water.
The technician who arrived examined the object and confirmed that it was a battery-powered theatrical lighting prop.


Its amber tip contained a small enclosed light source.
The cord was not connected to household power, and the object was not capable of electrifying the pool in the condition found.
Relief flooded my chest so abruptly that I had to sit on a patio chair.
Then anger followed.
“You made it look like someone was about to electrocute my pool,” I said to Grant.
He raised his eyebrows.
“I never said it was live.”
“You stood there filming instead of telling me it was harmless.”
“You assumed what you wanted to assume.”
Officer Brooks wrote down his exact words.


Judith stared at him with a look I did not understand.
Grant became interested in his phone again.
“People will see what really happened,” he said.
I looked at the little orange light lying on my concrete and understood that Grant had not been waiting for an accident.
He had been waiting for my reaction.