Nathan Checked the Wiring

The next afternoon, Nathan brought an electrician to the house.

Claire watched from across the street.

Several hours later, Nathan knocked on her door.

“The porch light isn’t automated.”

Claire stared at him.

“So somebody is turning it on.”

“Apparently.”

“From inside?”

“Yes.”

Claire asked the obvious question.

“How is someone getting inside?”

Nathan had no answer.

He had changed the locks after the police visits.

There were no broken windows.

No damaged doors.

Nothing obvious.

Until they checked the basement.

Behind a Storage Shelf Was Another Door

The basement contained old shelves, boxes and furniture.

One large wooden storage rack had been sitting against the far wall for decades.

Nathan remembered it from childhood.

He and the electrician moved it.

Behind the shelf was a narrow wooden door.

Nathan stared at it.

He claimed he had never noticed it before.

The door opened into a small underground utility passage.

The passage extended beneath the backyard.

It connected to an old storm-access tunnel built when the neighborhood was developed in the 1950s.

Most entrances had been sealed decades earlier.

This one hadn’t.

Someone could enter the tunnel from a drainage area behind several houses.

Then enter Number 417 through the basement.

Without touching a door or window upstairs.

Police Installed a Camera Inside

This time, investigators believed someone was genuinely trespassing.

A small camera was installed inside the basement.

Another faced the living room.

Another pointed toward the porch.

For four nights, nothing happened.

On the fifth night:

2:11 a.m.

Movement in the basement.

A person emerged through the hidden door.

It wasn’t Nathan.

It wasn’t an elderly woman.

It was a man.

Approximately thirty years old.

He walked upstairs carrying a backpack.

Then something strange happened.

He removed a pale sweater from the backpack.

Gray pants.

A gray wig.

And white sneakers.