A Close Encounter With Crime of an Unsettling Kind

Times staff writer Jerry Hicks, whose beat covering criminal courts in Orange County routinely brings him into contact with suspects, criminals, judges and lawyers, had a much more personal encounter with crime last week. His report:

It started out last Monday night as simple acid indigestion. The kind just strong enough to tell you that no matter how tired your eyes are, you won’t get to sleep until you take one of those little miracle tablets in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

Things only got worse.

When I walked out of the bedroom and looked into our 5-year-old son’s room, I saw that he had kicked all his blankets onto the floor. Then I found we were out of those little miracle tablets.

A return to the bedroom was unsettling. Sleep would not come, and my wife was gently complaining about the tossing and turning. That led to another trip to the bathroom on a second, fruitless pill search. And I noticed, looking into his room, that the boy was uncovered again.

I solved two problems at once by moving him into our bedroom and taking my tossing and turning to the living room couch. Who knows how far past midnight it was?

I was up again. Once it was a trip for more blankets. Once to the bathroom. Trying to force sleep through television meant getting up to turn it on. Up later to try the same thing with a book.

Then our cat, Louis, decided the couch should be shared. This actually didn’t require getting up--a shove was enough to rouse him. But it reminded me I should get up to turn off the reading light.

When did all these things happen? 1 a.m.? 2 a.m? 3? 4?

The only time I was sure about was 6:56 a.m.--four minutes before our household awoke. Guilt set in when I could not muster the necessary energy to get up and turn on my wife’s coffee. But her words, at 7:05 a.m., got me stirring.

“Did you get up and move my car out of the driveway last night? The car is missing, and so are my car keys.”

Our puzzlement was resolved rather quickly when we discovered that our wallets had been stripped of all their money.

We had been burglarized. And our best car was gone.

But the shock was laced with curiosity. When had the culprit found us all asleep?

The insurance people were understanding.

And the Anaheim police officer was nice enough. But she was bothered by a few things. There was no sign of forced entry. No windowsill dust had been disturbed. And we were sure--or we thought we were sure--that we had locked all doors, even that utility room door that we found unlocked when we awoke.

“This is baffling,” the police officer said. “Car thieves don’t burglarize houses. And burglars don’t steal cars. No forced entry. This is all very strange.”

Hey, how do I know?

Maybe the burglar saw the car keys on the wall rack next to the utility room and could not resist. Maybe this burglar decided to steal a car just to confuse the police.

When she left, my wife and I looked at each other.

“Did it sound to you like she suspected an inside job or something?” my wife asked.

Driving to work, I broke my glasses. The spring on the left frame popped like a strained guitar string. I rushed blindly through traffic to make it to an appointment, only to learn it had been canceled.

It was not a good day. The acid indigestion had been replaced by a severe headache.

Still, my son’s kindergarten teacher put it into perspective.

“Thank goodness,” she said, “you are all safe.”

The other good news was that later in the week the car was recovered. It had been abandoned in downtown Los Angeles.

And there was one note of smug satisfaction. My wife’s three Lotto tickets for Wednesday’s game were in the glove compartment of her car.

The burglar didn’t win a dime.