The Apartment Incident

Okay so first off this happened a few months ago. I had just moved into a apartment complex and had only a bed, a T.V, a rocking chair and an Xbox One. I work in a town that is an hour away and they didn’t have anything available that I could move into. So this big city that was the next closest place that was also in my price range. 

The first few weeks play out the same. I get up, shower, go to work for ten hours, come home, eat, watch a little Netflix, go to sleep, repeat. On my days off I  travel three hours away to see my wife and kids. Now we aren’t divorced or separated. I had to relocate from the town we lived to start my career in asset protection as an APM, or Asset Protection Manager. 

One night, as I was going through my evening routine, someone knocks on my door. It is a woman, maybe five foot seven, brown hair, skinny. She looked like she was methed out of her skull. Her eyes were barely even open. She asked to talk to someone named Jareth. I told her no one by that name lived here. She said he did. She said she was here last Thursday and he was here. She wanted to buy drugs from him and this was the address she was given.  I once again told her no one named Jareth lived here and shut the door on her.  She started banging on the door crying how she needed her fix. I told her to fuck off. After a few moments I heard someone yell at her to shut up or they were calling the cops. The banging stop. Never saw her again. 

I sat back down to continue watching the movie I had on. I started thinking about what the woman had said. She couldn’t have been here last Thursday. I was off work last Thursday and Friday, with my wife and children. I started to look around more closely. Nothing seemed out of place. I checked all the windows. Nothing was cracked or broken. All the security bars were locked in their places. There were no upper attic spaces nor crawl spaces. Nothing. I felt a little more secure and went about my night as usual. My next days off I made sure everything was locked and nothing was out of place. I went to see my wife as usual. Told her what had happened. She suggested I take the pellet gun. Now I know, what is a pellet gun going to do? Well, in her thinking, it looked like a real gun. In the dark no one can really tell the difference. Same for at a distance. Plus it had a CO2 cartridge in it and ten pellets. So I took it.

When I got back I looked around. Nothing was out of place. Nothing was missing. I put my stuff up as usual and and turned on my Xbox. This is where I noticed something was off. When it powers on, it takes you to the home screen. On this screen you can see the last thing you were on plus the previous things you have done. When I left it last the Netflix app should have been the first one on there. But it wasn’t. Instead it was Battlefield 1. The one before that was Mortal Kombat X. Someone had been using my Xbox. I once again did a thorough search of the apartment. Nothing. 

It was a couple of days after that the guy across from me approached me while I was getting out of my vehicle. He said that a lot of people were coming by the apartment on certain nights and were making a lot of noise and that it keeps his daughter up and if I could keep it down or just stop doing whatever it was that I was doing on those nights. I was confused. I must have shown it because his expression changed. He asked me if I was the one who was having people over at odd hours of the night. I told him no. I proceeded to tell him the things that were happening. I told him I’m two hundred mile away on my days off. We both came to the same conclusion that  someone was getting into my apartment when I wasn’t there.

I made the decision not to go see my family one week to see if the person using my apartment would show up. Of course no one came that week or the week after. It dawned on me at work one day during a conversation about how shoplifters would try to see what vehicle you drove to know if you there that it hit me. Whoever was using my apartment knew what I drove. With that in mind I waited til my next days off to set my trap. On the said day I parked my vehicle three complexes down and walked back. I unscrewed all my light bulbs and waited in the corner in the living room. I had let my neighbor know what I was doing in case any trouble occurred. I put my phone to its lowest brightness and had my camera ready, flash and all. I waited for six hours, which felt like forever, before it happened. I heard the front door knob jiggle. I got up, phone in one hand and pellet gun in the other. The door opened and someone entered, shutting it behind them. Then I heard a click, and then another. They were trying to switch on the lights. I then saw a light from the doorway. They had their phone out and were making their way into the room I was in. As soon as they entered the doorway I snapped a picture. The brightness of the flash caught him completely off guard. He was momentarily stunned, cursing at me trying to make his way back to the front door. I yelled at him to get the fuck out and never return. He had reached into his pocket, dropping something as he pulled out a small pocket knife. I immediately raised the pellet gun and cocked the hammer. That stopped him completely. He dropped the knife, opened the door and ran out.

My neighbor, who had heard me yelling, was waiting outside of his place when the man ran out. He saw me run out of my apartment gun and all and asked if I had shot him. I told him no and that it was a pellet gun but the man didn’t know. I went back to the door and retrieved the pocket knife and what he dropped. It was a key. A key to my door. Don’t know how he got it but he had it. I showed the picture to my neighbor. He thought he recognized him but wasn’t sure. I stayed up late that night, calling my wife and telling her what happened. The next day I went over to the complex office and told them what happened. I brought up the fact that he had a key to my door and I wanted to know why he did. They weren’t sure. Then I showed them the picture of the man. They new right then how he had a key.

Turns out the person who was going into my apartment complex was a maintenance worker for them. He had been one of the ones renovating my apartment before I moved in. They are given keys and he must have made a copy of one. Then for nights at a time he would use it to do whatever it was he did. I must have put a hamper in his nightly business when I moved in. That is, until he figured out my routine. 

The man was, of course, fired from his job and prohibited from entering the grounds again. I was given three months free rent. I never pressed charges and let it go. I have a real gun know just in case. My neighbor and I struck up a friendship and we now watch each others places when we are out of town. Hopefully this never happens again to anyone else. And yes I had the locks changed in case you were wondering.