Page 52 of Veiled in Brick

He scribbled on the paper and muttered to himself, “Between eighteen and forty years of age—”

I sneered, “Forty?”

“Between 170 and 250 pounds…between five-foot-ten and six-foot-six. Race?”

“Oh, um…” It was then that I realized that my descriptive abilities had been rather lacking. In the heat of the moment, I had asked Brenda shockingly little about the man who was attempting to thrust himself into my life. I would have called Brenda up right then and there to inquire of the details of this mystery man but for one, it was approaching 11:00 at night, and for two, I didn’t have her phone number with the interest of keeping my private life separate from work. I mumbled, “I, er—don’t know.”

“And a tall, average build man with black hair, brown eyes, and a crooked nose doesn’t ring a bell to you at all?”

“The woman said no, Randy,” Liam chimed in abruptly, squinting his eyes at the man who I just remembered was named Randy.

Randy sighed, ignoring Liam’s interjection. “No visible tattoos, piercings, nothing?”

“Like I already said,” I spoke through my teeth, “no. As far as I know, and I have never personally seen the man, there were no tattoos or piercings to speak of.”

“Right,” he muttered. “And it appears nothing was taken?”

“We’re not concerned about theft, Randy,” Liam sneered.

“I know, big guy,” Randy replied. “Just covering all my bases.”

Liam grumbled, clenching his fists that rested on the table in front of him briefly before releasing them.

“Ah—no, I don’t believe anything was taken,” I told him.

“Alright, well,” Randy closed his notebook, rotating the cover on the spiral that was attached at the top of the pages with a smack, “if there’s anything else that comes to light, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’ll keep this on record and be in contact with a case number for you to reference and—”

“Wait, that’s it?” Liam interrupted, his gaze unnaturally judgmental. “We get a case number? You can’t try to…to find this guy? Or at least say what we can do until then?”

“I understand the concern,” Randy responded, though it did not appear that he understood the concern, “but without an ID on this man or some more detail on his appearance, we can’t do much more. There are thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, of males in Virginia—maybe even in this zip code—that could fit the description that you gave me. We don’t have a name, we don’t know if he drives a particular kind of car…we don’t even know if he’s from this area. We can’t exactly put out an APB—”

“APB?” Liam questioned.

“All-points bulletin,” Randy answered him swiftly. “Gets other officers on the lookout for a person of interest.”

“That would be great—”

I had begun to speak, but Randy cut off my words by waving a hand about once again.

“There isn’t enough of a description here,” he said bluntly. “And this is just too little of a crime to—”

“Too little of a crime?” I retorted. “He assaulted me and broke into my home; should that not warrant any sort of concern?”

“As I said before,” Randy remarked, “we can’t be certain that your assailant and the man who forced his way in here are one and the same.”

I began, “It has to be the same guy,” but when Randy inhaled a long breath through his nostrils at my words and let it out slowly, I let my sentence trail off.

“I wish I could do more,” he stated. “Please be back in contact if anything progresses.”

He then walked out of the front door, and the moment that he appeared to be out of earshot, Liam snapped:

“I’m gonna progress my fist into that guy’s face. I fuckin’ guarantee that he could put out an APB with that little description of the guy if he wanted to. Jesus Christ.”

“So, I just have to wait until this guy catches me, does with me what he will, and then I can go to the police,” I said sardonically.

Liam grimaced. “Fuck that…look, I dunno what you should do yet, but ya can’t stay here tonight. Even if your door wasn’t all jacked up, there’s no telling if the guy’s just gonna come back.”

I sighed heavily. “Shit, I have to call Claire—and maintenance for the door. Figure out a place to stay…”

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