The second page was not part of the deed.
It was a sworn statement from the woman who had owned the vacant house before the biker bought it.
Attached behind it was an incident log covering the eight months the property had been on the market.
The older officer held the folder in both hands and read the first entry aloud.
A couple had arrived for a scheduled viewing on a Saturday afternoon.
Before their real estate agent could unlock the front door, police had appeared in response to a report of people forcing their way into an abandoned house.
The caller’s address was mine.
The second entry described a father and adult son who had stopped beside the property to photograph the exterior.
I had reported two suspicious men checking windows and license plates.
The third involved a woman waiting in her car for an agent who was running late.
I had told dispatch that she might be preparing to steal packages.
There were more.
The dates continued down the page in neat chronological order.
Some incidents had resulted in police visits.
Others involved complaints to the city about noise, parking, lawn maintenance, or imagined code violations.
Every person I had reported had come to the house for a legitimate reason.
Most of them were Black.
The officer lowered the folder.
“Were these calls yours?” he asked.
I looked past him toward the neighbors gathering at the edges of their lawns.
Some stared at me openly.
Others pretended to study the police cars while keeping their phones raised.
“I report suspicious behavior,” I said.
“That’s what responsible residents do.”
The biker had opened the front door of his house, but he had not entered.
He stood beneath the porch light with one hand on the doorknob, listening.
The officer asked again.
“Did you make these calls?”
“I may have made some of them.”
“All of them came from your number.”
That detail was not in the pages I could see.
The biker answered the question forming on my face.
“The seller requested the police records after the fourth interrupted showing,” he said.
“She started documenting everything.”
I told him to stay out of the conversation.
He did not move.
“This is my property,” he said.
“You brought the conversation to my front yard.”
The younger officer walked to the vacant house and examined the doorbell camera mounted beside the entrance.
A small blue light blinked beneath the lens.
The previous owner had installed the camera after someone repeatedly entered the yard, moved real estate signs, and left anonymous notes beneath the front door.
When the biker purchased the house, the video archive had transferred with the security system.
The older officer asked whether I had ever crossed onto the property.
“No.”
The biker looked at the folder.
The officer turned another page.
There I was in a still image, standing beside the For Sale sign with a pair of garden shears.
The photograph showed the sign leaning against my leg while I cut the plastic ties holding it to the post.
I remembered the morning immediately.
The sign had looked cheap.
The grass beneath it had turned yellow.
I had told myself I was improving the street.
“You removed the sign?” the officer asked.
“It had fallen.”
The biker spoke for the first time with something sharper than calm in his voice.
“The video shows you cutting it down.”
