The gravel crunched under Dan’s feet as he walked along the side of the road. Overhead, stars twinkled in the moonless sky. In another hour, it would be dawn. A long, trouble-filled night at work had culminated with the discovery that his car battery was dead and he had decided, in disgust, to leave it there until morning and just walk home.

After all of the difficulties he had experienced that night, the walk was peaceful and soothing. His home was three miles away from work, not much more than the two miles out of Sleepyside that had seemed such a long way when he and his friends were teenagers. He seldom took the opportunity to walk along this quiet road on the outskirts of a town even smaller than the one he had come to call home.

As he neared it, he began to make out the shape of his house. To his concern, he could also make out the shape of a parked car. His steps slowed as he tried to find out whose it could be. Walking off the gravel verge, he approached in near-silence. Movement showed him the location of at least one person. A moment later, a voice betrayed another.

“Are you sure he’s coming?”

Dan released the tension which had been building as he recognised Honey’s voice.

“Keep your voice down!” Trixie chastised. It sounded as though she was the one who had been moving. “And, yes, I’m sure. He should be here by now.”

A surge of mischief caused Dan to stand still and think for a moment. He eased his way closer, careful not to make a noise. When he was a few paces from Honey, he switched on his flashlight and shone it into the faces of both his friends, then around the clearing next to the house.

“This is private property.” He made sure to imitate the accent of one of his colleagues, whom they had both met. “I think you have some explaining to do.”

Honey squeaked in astonishment. “Oh! Officer! I’m sorry, it’s just that we’re–”

“Relax, Hon,” Trixie interrupted. “It’s him.”

“Him?” Honey repeated blankly. She stepped closer. “Oh! It’s you, Dan.”

“What are you doing, lurking in my yard at this time of night?”

“We could ask you the same thing,” Trixie retorted, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged in response and ushered them towards the front door. “Nice night for a walk.”

The look Trixie gave in response made it clear that she did not believe him. As he switched on the light and closed the door behind them, he could see uncertainty in Honey’s face and suspicion in Trixie’s. He chose not to say anything further, but gestured for them to make themselves at home while he changed out of his uniform. When he returned a few minutes later, it was clear that he had interrupted a whispered argument between the two. Honey wore a guilty expression, while Trixie exuded a spirit of defiance.

“So, why were you lurking in my yard?” he asked, seating himself on the end of the sofa. “You taking to a life of crime, Trix? I might have to arrest you if you are.”

“Very funny, Mangan,” she answered. “As it happens, we wanted to see you.”

“Regarding?”

Trixie rolled her eyes. “You’re not at work now.”

“Only just got off.” He shook his head. “Now, spill. You’re up to something; I can tell.”

“How would you like it if I could give you information on the town mystery?” Trixie asked, referring to a recent spate of unusual crimes.

Dan regarded her for a moment. “Why aren’t you down at the station? You know I can’t talk to you about that sort of thing here. I’m not in the business of taking the law into my own hands.”

Honey shook her head. “It’s not like that. If you’ll let us explain…”

“I’m waiting,” he prompted. His friends were engaging in another argument of sorts, this one conducted entirely with their facial expressions.

“We know, I mean, we’ve guessed, I mean, we think we’ve found out something,” Honey told him, her eyes pleading for him to understand, “only there’s a bit of a problem, that we can’t really go to the police about, only we thought that if we told you then it would almost be like telling the police, because you are a police officer, only since you’re not on duty, it wouldn’t be quite the same as telling the police and I think, since we’ve started telling you, that we’re going to have to finish, otherwise you’ll probably think we’ve done something wrong, which we haven’t.”

“I think you’d better start at the beginning,” he interrupted as Honey opened her mouth to speak some more. “No, you’d better start at the beginning, Trixie. I want to understand it the first time.”

A blush stained Honey’s cheeks, but she stayed silent. The two young women shared a look, then Trixie began her tale.

“I guess the beginning is when I heard about the trouble that you’ve been having here.” Dan stared at her, a muscle working in his jaw. She ignored him. “Mart told me about the break-ins and things and I thought it sounded very–”

“Mysterious? I’m not sure I agree. Bizarre, yes. Creepy, definitely.” He shook his head. “Are you sure you girls want to be involved in something like this? Whoever this perp is, he’s not the kind of guy you want to meet.”

“You want us to walk out of here?” Trixie asked, waving at the still-dark yard. “We could just go, if you like.”

Dan frowned. “Since I wasn’t happy to find you loitering out there in the first place, no.”

“And yet you walk home alone for no reason?” Trixie challenged.

“Fine. I had a flat battery and lost my temper, okay?” He scowled. “And I don’t think I’m his type, so I probably don’t have anything to worry about from him.”

“Yes, but that’s what we’re here to tell you about,” Honey objected, “and we don’t think he is a he.”

Dan stared at her. “Say again?”

Honey jumped at the chance. “Everyone keeps talking about the man who’s taking these things, but we’ve been thinking, and investigating and we think he’s really a she, though, of course, she never was a he, only people keep saying ‘he’ but that’s the wrong pronoun, because we’re sure the person doing this is female.”

“The beginning,” Dan muttered. “I really want this from the beginning.”

“Fine,” Trixie snapped. “You want the beginning? I’ll tell you. First, you have a series of incidents where female undergarments are stolen. Nice ones, too. Second, you have a case where a house is broken into, but nothing seems to have been taken and the bathroom is cleaner afterwards than it was before.”

“That’s the one that bothers me,” Dan put in. “This guy is sick. I don’t know what he was doing in there, but to clean it afterwards? Sick.”

Trixie ignored the interruption. “Third, some of the stolen underwear starts turning up in strange places.”

“The bra on the statue outside the courthouse was kind of amusing,” Dan admitted. “The one in the windscreen wipers of the High School principal’s car kind of disturbed me, though. The man must be sixty and weighs about 350 pounds. Makes me wonder what kind of message that was supposed to send.”

“See, this is the trouble you’re having,” Trixie cried, rounding on him. “You and your colleagues are all taking this the wrong way. Why can you not look at this without thinking about sex? As soon as I heard that all the bras were the same size–”

“Wait!” Dan snapped. “That’s not public knowledge and I never said that to Mart, so where did you get that?”

She glared back at him in defiance. “I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Yes, I think you do.” He gave her his best authoritative look, which had no effect at all.

“Anyway,” Trixie continued, “as soon as I found that out, I thought that the idea of stealing these things was to wear them–”

“Which just shows he’s sick,” Dan added.

“Which just shows that it’s not a man,” Trixie countered. “A cup size wouldn’t have much effect for a man, but it would for a woman. They’re all exactly the same size. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”

“You still haven’t told me how you know that.”

“You still don’t need to know.”

The two stared at each other for a long moment, then Dan looked away. He knew that he was not going to win this battle and decided that it was not worth his trouble fighting her.

“Okay, then, if you know so much about this, who is she?” he asked.

Trixie rolled her eyes. “I’ve practically told you the solution and you still want more? You can yourself an investigator?”

“I call myself a first year on the job cop at the bottom of the heap.” He frowned. “I’m also starting to feel a whole lot of sympathy for Sergeant Molinson.”

Both girls smiled at that, but it was Honey who spoke. “You see our point, though, don’t you? It makes so much more sense to think that it’s a woman, down on her luck, who just wants some pretty things and to indulge herself a little.”

“Then what was the business with the clean bathroom?”

“She wanted a bath,” Trixie explained. “She cleaned the bath so she could use it, then afterwards, she cleaned away any traces that she’d used it. It’s all really straightforward if you only look at it from the right direction.”

“And what about leaving the underwear in public places?” he asked. “That still makes no sense.”

“I don’t imagine she tried all those bras on before she stole them. Some of them might not have fitted right, or been really uncomfortable.” Trixie screwed up her nose. “Obviously, Mangan, you haven’t spent a lot of time wearing bras.”

“None at all, actually.” He shook his head. “So, you’re saying that my inability to solve this case hinges on my lack of knowledge of female undergarments? I never thought I’d have that trouble.”

“It’s your lack of knowledge of wearing female undergarments,” Honey corrected, giggling. “Your manly reputation can stay intact, if you emphasise that point.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.” He shook his head. “So, I’m looking for a woman who hasn’t got much, and all I really know about her is the size of her bras. I don’t know that I’m all that much closer to solving this.”

“At least you’ll be looking for someone of the correct gender,” Trixie answered. She reached into her pocket and took out a piece of paper. “If you promise to go easy on her, I’ll give you this.”

He shook his head. “Bottom of the heap, Trixie. I’m not in a position to make any promises.”

“I don’t mean that.” She glared at him in frustration. “I meant, don’t laugh at her and don’t humiliate her any more than she already will be. You, personally.”

Dan nodded his agreement and held out his hand. Taking the paper from her, he read on it a name and address. It did not take much thought to place the address in the poorest part of town. He stared at it for a moment, the put it in his own pocket.

“Thanks,” he told his two friends, in a quiet voice. “I’ll do my best.”

Hours later, Dan stood outside the address with one of his colleagues, both of them in uniform. The other man rapped on the door, which was answered by a harried-looking young woman. Dan glanced down and saw several small children around her legs.

“Oh.” Seeing who was at her door, her face fell. “I was wondering when you’d be here.”

As they conducted their interview – and received a full confession – Dan could not help but wonder how his friends had picked out this one woman from all of the others who lived nearby, in just as much despair. He had a feeling that he would never know.

Author’s notes: A big thank you to Mary N. for editing and to the CWE team for issuing the challenge.

This story is a submission for CWE 3, A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words. For those unfamiliar with the challenge, participants choose a picture and write one thousand words inspired by it. As I could not think of a story that was limited to just one thousand words, I chose two pictures and wrote one thousand words on each. They were, in order, pictures 20 and 30, which you can view on the CWE page at Jix. The first picture is of a starry sky over a country road, which inspired the peaceful walk home that Dan experienced and the location of his home. The second picture is the inspiration for the perpetrator and it is an image of a woman and two children, strongly evocative of the Great Depression (at least, that is how I saw it).

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