We pulled Karen and our son into the hallway, away from every window, while Gerald spoke fast. Three weeks earlier, he had come home from his night shift and caught a stranger crouched beneath our bedroom window. He called the sheriff’s office, and a detective named Ray Holt explained that my former business partner, Victor Hale, was under investigation for fraud. I was the witness who had reported him, and Victor was paying someone to listen to my family and find anything to discredit me before the trial.

The detective had asked Gerald to stay quiet, because telling us might have sent Victor’s man running. Each Wednesday at 3:11 a.m., Holt’s dark sedan pulled up and handed Gerald a fresh battery. Gerald swapped it into the device so Victor would think everything worked. The garbage cans blocked the view from the street, because Victor’s man drove past every week to check. That was the object in my footage, and that was why Gerald kept glancing at our window.

Tonight, Gerald had found a second device taped under our porch rail, one the detective had never placed. Victor had grown bolder, and the white van outside was his man coming to collect it. Gerald had run to my door because he knew the sheriff could not arrive in time. I called Holt while we all stayed low and silent. Four minutes later, patrol cars blocked both ends of the street. Officers pulled a man from the van with a laptop, a recorder, and a bag of cash.

Victor pleaded guilty two months later, and my testimony helped close the case. The next morning I walked next door and apologized to Gerald for ever suspecting him. He only smiled and said that was what neighbors were for. We became real friends that fall. Now every Wednesday at 3 a.m. our cans stay by the garage, and Gerald and I check the cameras together over coffee.