Who Knew Who Lived Nearby

I was looking forward to having the house to myself for the day. It would be my chance to really get lost in working on A TANGLED YARN. When I came in the kitchen for my morning coffee, I noticed some noise from outside. It sounded like a plane or helicopter, which was nothing unusual. But then got louder and softer and louder again and I got that it was a helicopter circling. I looked out the window to see if it was overhead, but saw nothing. There was more noise, really loud this time.

I went outside and saw a helicopter hovering quite high. The ones that hover are usually news helicopters and they are really noisy. At the same time a police helicopter came into view, but I was surprised at how high it was flying. When they’re looking for someone, the cops usually fly pretty low.

The police helicopter was obviously circling and nosey me wanted to know what was going. I flipped through all the TV channels and there was nothing. Fine, that probably meant whatever it was going on wasn’t a big deal and the choppers would leave soon. By then I was rooting for them to go because the noise had become really annoying.

But it didn’t go away. The drone continued on getting louder, then softer over and over as the police helicopter circled something.

Undaunted I went to the computer and tried to work. The noise continued on and on and I couldn’t seem to tune it out. Concentrating became impossible and I went online hoping to find out what was going on.

I get local news stuff on something called the Patch and the story of what was going on began to unfold.

There’s a rather sad looking hill that I pass all the time. There was a time when it was covered with green grass, but now it is all brown. I remember seeing trucks going up and down a road next to it a long time ago and I had though someone was going to build a development on the side of the hill, but then it all stopped and I figured the plan had died. All that was left was a wall at the bottom that looked like it was intended to be a gateway to a development.

I had no idea there was a house on top of the hill or who lived there. As the story unfolded, I found out that it was singer Chris Brown. Hour after hour went by and the police helicopter kept circling and my nerves were getting frayed.

I thought it was leaving once, but I think they were just switching to a replacement. The Patch kept posting updates. Supposedly, the singer had threatened a party guest with a gun. She’d run off and called 911. But that had happened at 3 in the morning and now it was almost 3 in the afternoon. I found out the helicopter’s job was to keep an eye on things while they waited for a search warrant. In the meantime the singer threw a duffle bag out the window that had guns and drugs. Really? Did he think nobody would notice?

And then just after 3 in the afternoon, the police helicopter took off and another one didn’t replace it. The quiet was wonderful. But of course, the circus hadn’t ended. News media were all over the street that ran past the hill. They all did live reports on the 5 and 6 o’clock news. Good Morning America actually had a reporter standing out there at dawn the next day. Not that you could even see the house. Like I said, I never guessed there was anything on top of the hill.

By now, he’d been arrested and I’d seen the videos he put on Instagram too many times. The girl who been threatened was all over the news. I don’t think she minded the attention one bit. Then her rather sketchy background got reported. And all the neighbors complaints about him came out and his history of trouble. There were explanations why the police presence had been so big because it was a high profile situation. His power attorney gave out statements saying none of it was true. As if the attorney would say that it was.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much writing done, but I certainly got some ideas for the next Molly book.