The old saying goes, "you can leave the job, but the job never leaves you." That truth has been proven to many a retired copper through decades past, and I have the feeling it will always be true.
It held so on Christmas Day.
As was on Christmas Eve, a thick fog blanketed the landscape early Christmas morning here at Black Gold Homestead. The heavy mist left anything exposed to the elements with a glistening sheen; sporadic hissing cut through the gray curtain every time a vehicle passed by, which wasn't often at all.
This Christmas morning, as is our tradition every year, Stacy and I leisurely enjoyed our cups of steaming Tim Horton's coffee, or 'black gold', as I like to call it, while lounging in the living room of our modest home, recalling the family gathering of the night before and the laughter that is always the main thread of such events. We have some rather fun relatives, you see.
Afterwards we readied ourselves to visit the one family member missing the night before; Stacy's mother was hospitalized with a gastric issue that will require surgery.
Leaving the house and heading west up the hill, past a harvested field of corn on the left and woods across from it, I saw a big, gray box laying in the ditch on the south side of the roadway, probably three hundred yards from our home. Turning to my bride, I remarked, "that's a commercial safe. Somebody's business got burglarized."
Turning around in our neighbor's drive, we traveled partially down the hill to where the safe was located. I activated the emergency flashers on our Jeep and got out.
The large box was laying door side down, its door, having been removed, was on the wet leaves beside it, the long door handle and round, electronic dial facing up. I punched in the number for the Sheriff's Office on my cell phone and notified dispatch of what we'd found.
"We'll have a deputy en route shortly. Will you be standing by?"
I advised the dispatcher I would not, explaining about my mother-in-law. "You can't miss it, though", I laughed. "It's pretty big."
We left.
Stacy and I returned home around 1 PM, noticing the safe and its door were gone. "Wonder what they used to haul it out of the ditch", I mused. That, as they say, would be that.
Or so I thought until around two o'clock this afternoon, when Detective Joe Rotuno knocked on my door.
Det, Rotuno explained that he was investigating a business burglary in his jurisdiction, Perkins Township in Sandusky, and that the business' safe had been found not far from our place.
"Yeah, I'm the guy who found it." I explained what had transpired on Christmas morning, adding that I was a retired police officer. I shook his hand and introduced myself, Joe's face split by a grin. Knowing he was dealing with a fellow copper made things seem more...familiar, for lack of a better term. Law enforcement is, indeed, a brotherhood.
Joe explained that, through watching the business' security video, a Little Caesar's pizza franchise in Perkins Twp had been broken into....at 0600 hrs on Christmas morning, a mere four hours before Stacy and I found the safe! The culprits, who'd been wearing masks, entered through the shop's drive-through window; all told, from time of entry to wheeling the safe out a rear door on a dolly, the obviously experienced thieves spent six minutes on the job. Figuring an hour's drive from Sandusky to Mansfield, they'd had to have used a van or small box truck, at the very least, to haul the safe to Richland county, and had worked on its door while traveling.
"Apparently, when Richland County recovered it, the safe still had some paperwork from our Little Caesar's in it; they called us and, when we checked the business, discovered the break-in", the detective remarked. "Otherwise we'd never have known where the safe was from."
We passed a few more minutes chatting, then Det.Rotuno moved on to our neighbor Kay's house. to see if she'd noticed anything unusual Christmas morning. I reclaimed my spot in the recliner as Roscoe, our pit bull, continued to doze on the couch; he'd lost interest in the stranger who'd knocked on the door once it was apparent Joe Rotuno wasn't there to kill me.
Questions began running through my mind, along with a few scenarios.
Why would a safe crew travel from Sandusky to Mansfield after pulling a job? Were they local to this area? If so, why go all the way to Sandusky to snatch a safe? Could it be possible they were from somewhere south of Mansfield, and just found a remote spot on a foggy morning to dump the safe while passing through town? Why dump it where it would almost immediately be found, instead of, say, rolling it off a bridge into a river or creek?
My own personal conjecture? The mopes are professionals, definitely, though I can't imagine they'd get more than a few hundred bucks from a Little Caesar's. Why pick that spot? Had they scouted it beforehand? Could an ex-employee have been involved, maybe knowing how much might be in the safe in addition to knowing where it was located inside the store and that it wasn't secured to the floor? The criminals might be from this area; Lord knows Richland County has produced its fair share of safe-crackers...but why go all the way to Sandusky if that were true?
I caught myself halfway through trying to answer all those questions.
I'm retired. Let the next generation find those answers.
But I'll always have that cop's mindset, until the day I die...just like all my other retired brothers and sisters.
