Chapter 6 – END

Wednesday 05/13/2020

The end might seem sudden if you’ve been keeping up, but I think it’s for the best.

Since my last update two major things have happened. I’ll be discussing both below. Just know the results might not be what you might be expecting.

The first thing i’ll be talking about is what happened after I finally told my wife everything.

It happened earlier today. I waited for her to fully wake up, made her some breakfast and made sure that she was in best mood possible. She already knew something was up when breakfast was ready and waiting for her, but she didn’t say anything about it. After she was done, she patiently waited for me at the table. I chuckled when I saw her staring at me. She’d come to know me too well over the years.

With that, I sat down and told her everything starting with my first trip to the junkyard. I watched as my wife’s expression shifted from alarmed to shocked then scared, confused, and just down right bothered. When I finished, her eyes were shut and she told asked me to give her a minute to get it all together.

When she did, she opened her eyes slowly, brows furrowed sternly, which told me she was not in a good place. She asked me where the metal box was. I asked if she wanted to see the logs even telling her I hadn’t even made my way past the first few. She shook her head at me, told me she wanted nothing to do with them nor what was in them. I was confused.

She took the box and walked outside. She laid it down on the driveway by the trash bins. I asked her what she was doing and she said if someone was following me, if someone was watching us then they’d know the box was out there and they’d come to get it.

“It’s not our problem,” she said. “It wasn’t any of our business.” She walked back inside and said she doesn’t want to hear anything more about it. Not for now at least. And I understood.

My wife isn’t the person to pry on a thing like this. She likes her normalcy, her tranquility, her simpleness. Not to say she’s boring in the least, but anything paranormal or supernatural or anything along those lines was a big no for her.

I kept looking out the window every so often making sure the box was still there.Until it wasn’t. It was right before dinner, I walked up to the window like I’d done through the day and it was just gone. I didn’t see anyone around and nothing out of the ordinary had happened. No one knocked on our door, no one broke in. After that, it was as if the box had never been here at all.

I sat down on my couch for a few minutes, trying to accept that the box was really gone. All of its contents, all of the remaining secrets and logs, all gone with it. The wife would probably be happy to hear it, but I haven’t told her just yet. I wanted to write this first to share everything that happened today. Like I said in the beginning, two major things happened since my last update and this was the first.

The second was the visit by Officer Ramirez.

My wife was out, conveniently enough, when someone knocked on the door. I opened it and Officer Ramirez stood there, hand on his belt, large dark sunglasses covering half his face, just like when I’d first met him. I was surprised, to say the least. I expected a call from the investigators regarding the break in, but not a house visit.

The conversation wasn’t a long one. I asked him to come in, but he refused. He said he just stopped by to update me on the situation. When I asked him what situation, he lowered his glasses and sai, “Your break in, dumbass.”

His sudden insult took me aback, but I didn’t say anything about it, just allowing him to explain.

According to Ramirez, they had questioned the two individuals. They admitted to being to breaking into my house, holding the knife against my wife’s neck and even stalking her and I for around a week. While this wasn’t entirely news to me, the reason why they did this was far more wild.

Apparently, this all had to do with the black SUV that had been brought to the junkyard. They claimed the vehicle had once belonged to their son, although for a very short time. They didn’t go into the details, but basically the son had taken his own life inside the SUV and they were never able to get past this. The vehicle remained parked, unused for months until it was repossessed after payments weren’t met.

The owners of the vehicle after them hadn’t had it for more than a few days when they stole the car back and drove it into a lake so no one else could have it. It seems that they weren’t sure the car would stay there though, because they had kept watching the lake until the day the tow truck pulled it out, then they followed it to the junkyard.

He looked at me at this point and said, “That’s where you come in.”

Ramirez said that these people admitted to spying on the place until I showed up. They had somehow seen me roam around the car and take “things” from it. He asked me what I had taken.

I kept my cool here and told him about the car parts that I’d been needing for a project, but didn’t mention anything about the box. I even offered showing him the parts and the project, but he refused to come in again. It was hard to read his expression under those glasses so I wasn’t sure if he believed me or not. Either way, he continued.

The couple had followed us around from that point forward, even disguising themselves on one particular outing to the park. That’s right. That jogger and the lady with the dog stroller. I hadn’t been crazy after all.

They told the officials that once they knew enough about us, whatever that meant, that they’d broken into our home with the intention to take back the parts and admit that we weren’t trying to tarnish their son’s memory by defiling the car. That it had all been an accident.

Somehow, it all seemed to fit together, at least in the way that Ramirez had told it. Everything connected. And yet, even then, something felt off. I didn’t pay it much attention though, as Ramirez was still there. He asked if there was anything else I wanted to add as a final statement. I thought about it for moment, but declined in the end. He paused, glasses inched down again as his eyes gleaned at me, before accepting that I wouldn’t be anything else. He scoffed then, and told me if I remembered anything else, to let him know. He turned around and waved goodbye.

And that was it.

I haven’t seen or heard anything from Ramirez since. That short conversation with him was what led me to finally telling my wife everything though. I figured, what more could there be to tell than the whole “official” story. And I say “official” because if you’re anything like me you’ve probably realized that there are still things that don’t add up.

To start, the most obvious thing that wasn’t adding up: Where did the logs fit into this? The couple hadn’t mention them at all. At least, not according to Ramirez. He seemed really suspicious of me, but he didn’t bother to check my home, even after I invited him in, twice. And that was only one thing.

Where was Arthur? Who had paid the tow truck to have the car destroyed? If the couple had seen me in the SUV how had they not seen me taking out the metal box? In the park, it wasn’t just the jogger and the lady with the dog stroller, there had been a park ranger with the lady as we were leaving. So many questions.

That’s why after I had told my wife, after the metal box disappeared off our driveway, I took out the card he’d given me the first time we’d met and dialed the number. It rang less than twice before a female voice answered, confirming it was the police department. I asked her to speak to Officer Ramirez and there was a pause before she came back.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have an Officer Ramirez here, are you calling the right department?”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, this is the card he gave me. He’s the one that was stationed by the junkyard off Kramer Road? He recently apprehended a couple that broke into my house.”

“You said Kramer Road? And what is your address, sir, I can check which officers were assigned to the case.”

I gave her my address then explained about the junkyard and Arthur.

“I do see the break in, and the missing person’s report, however, we never had an officer out on that road because of it and there was no officer by the name of Ramirez involved in the break in. Maybe you read the name wrong?”

“I’m staring at the card he gave me right now.”

“I’m sorry, sir, if you want I can connect you with the detective in charge of the case?”

“That…that won’t be necessary. Thanks.” And I hung up.

It was right after the call that I started writing this. Hopefully now you understand why this is the end. Frankly, just looking back there’s so many things I’m still worried about. Arthur’s whereabouts. The missing people. What the contents of the box actually were. That secretary that answered from Arthur’s junkyard that one time. And, of course, who Officer Ramirez actually was. Like I said, I haven’t heard from him ever since and now that the box is gone, I feel like I won’t ever be.

So this leaves me with a blank, and maybe what’s just a fact of life. That sometimes, there are questions that you just don’t get to have an answer to.