The Case of the Wandering Laptop

INT. PUBLIC LIBRARY - DAY

A homeless dude was talking to me at my desk about an hour ago, which is totally fine except for the way his voice carried every time he used the f-word (funny how variable sound can be), when a patron--young, probably a student--approached me and said that someone had taken his laptop.

Well, that was the homeless dude's cue to leave*, as I stood up to help the guy out--or see if I could.  The young man (let's call him "the student" from this point on) explained that he'd been sitting in the northwest corner desk, typing on his laptop, then he got up and got lunch, and when he came back, his laptop was gone.

My immediate question was, "Why would you leave your laptop alone when you went to eat?" but people always do that--every single day, I see someone's phone left alone to charge, or their iPad left unattended, or worst of all (and it is rare), their keys or wallet just left on the desk while they walk away.**  However, I didn't have to.

The student explained that he had gotten up, put his laptop in his backpack, went to lunch, and when he came back, the laptop was gone from his backpack.  I checked the recording, and he had sat right under a security camera, so I told him I would look at the footage.  Sure enough, he got up, put the laptop in the bag, then left his books there while he walked offscreen.  He came back about half an hour later, his backpack still on his shoulder.  On the video, he sat down again, opened his bag, and then started looking around.  So if someone had stolen the laptop, it was when the student had been outside the view of the cameras.  

I asked him if he had put down his bag while he ordered or ate, and if someone might have taken it then.  He didn't know, all he knew was when he came back to the desk, his computer was gone.

Well, there wasn't much I could do.  I told him the story of the lady who had put her laptop on top of her truck and driven away with it on there, but this was nothing like that.  He said he had checked his car thoroughly and the laptop was not there.  It was a mystery.  He said, "You saw me put it in here, right?" and he patted his backpack.  Then, a look came over his face, and he unzipped the bag . . . revealing that the laptop was right there in the bag, and had been the whole time.

He apologized, he went red, and he tried to explain, but ultimately, he walked off to continue his homework where he'd been sitting before.  Embarrassing, isn't it?

Buy hey, I believe him.  I really do.  That sort of thing happens to me all the time.

So, all's well that ends well, no?

*I guess I would be suspicious about that had this story gone another way.  But it didn't.

**When I was first hired, I would grab people's wallets to take to the lost and found whenever I saw them just sitting there.  But one guy actually told me not to, that people around here just leave his stuff alone.  So my current rule is: I take any wallet or keys that seem abandoned to lost and found . . . except his.