There was a young man who was accused of stealing a bicycle. FedEx made a mistake and delivered it to his house. He was accused of theft when his neighbor complained and the police did a search of his home.

His situation became a national news story and he was cleared of the charges, with the help of the FedEx driver who’d gone missing right after the theft, but was eventually tracked down, and who testified to the alleged thief’s innocence due to his own mistake.

The former accused became a mini-celebrity and made the rounds of talk shows. Although he’d been cleared, and the public saw him as some sort of hero because of his former victimization, there was something that didn’t ring quite true about him and his story.

I was a retired reporter who still retained a following with my internet writings. I was asked by a small group of independent cops/spooks to investigate the guy. I figured he’d been pretty well vetted as innocent by the press and judicial system, but still I had nagging doubts at the back of my mind so I agreed.

The setup was that I was going to write a book about miscarriages of justice, with an emphasis on him, his personal vindication, and his current advocacy of the wrongly accused and mis-judged innocents snared in a broken down justice system. He bit and bit big.

We were to spend several days together so that I could immerse myself in his gloriousness.

He’d rather quickly reached the stage of success that allowed him cauffeurred limousines and a comfortable lifestyle. We met at a luxury lodge and spent all our waking hours together. He was smooth and slick. Which was at odds with his background as a poor victim in a slum.

I kept wondering what had brought this calm, erudite man to one of the most grim poverty pits of the 21st century. I wanted to know what made a classic example of American success get stuck in hopeless poverty and squalor.

And, finally, I wanted to know what had gotten him unstuck.

I had access to every cop and spook file on the man. I had days of close contact. Still I couldn’t crack him or his story. I couldn’t even explain him. But the subtle odor of deception still wafted around him. Were my perceptions skewed? If so, why?

Then my background in reporting, my former informants, my continued contacts in a shadowy world never seen by the public, paid off. I was sent a video, similar to a Google street view, except much better, of his former home as it sat desolately at the end of a block of hopelessness.

A frisson made me sit up straight. This was not the place he’d described, not at all. There were his neighbors, and after a time there he was, out on bail. Oddly, he was dressed in the same type of blazer and slacks he wore today, but he looked shabbier, dirtier. He almost blended in. I watched as he enter his former home.

I asked my contact to continue surveillance of the house, to get what he could, including audio, despite the plywood covered windows. The informant asked if I’d like to see video of the scene as it looked at the time of the alleged crime. Oh boy, did I!

I kicked myself for originally requesting post crime views of his house. I knew better. Was his apparent “innocence” wearing down my reporter’s experience and objectivity? I requested a conference with the people who’d hired me for this gig and explained that I thought I’d lost my ability to be of use to them. They said to at least stick out the next two scheduled days with him.

That evening I questioned him again about his former home, where the alleged crime had taken place.

“Was it a two up two down?” Curious to see if he’d contradict what he’d told me earlier.

A moment’s silence, then, “Yes, it was. Why?”

He stared at me and I wondered if he was waiting for me to say, “You lied.”

Then my phone rang. It was my informant. He had video from the very day of the crime. He had uploaded it to me. I called it a day with my interviewee, and took my laptop and cell phone back to my cabin.

I watched the video, not as good quality as the first. I was trying to place it in some sort of context that could confirm it as what it was purported to be: candidly shot the day of the crime for some purpose other than recording a crime. You know, like was it a birthday party or some other event in which the relevant house appeared in the background. And there it was. The smoking gun.

I whispered out loud, “Gotcha!

There, viewed from across the street, grainy and washed out in the sun, was what looked like our boy carrying a big box out of his neighbor’s enclosed porch. He carried it to his place, where he knocked on the door and his wife answered. Then they disappeared inside. I watched a few more minutes, wondering if this was all a setup and I was the patsy.

Then I hit the pause button and called my cop/spook employers. “I have some video for your guys to clean up and analyze.”

“What have you got?”

“It looks like a smoking gun, but that’s for the experts to determine.”

“We’re sending someone over right now.”

I made a copy of the video and waited. After they picked up my laptop, I ordered a rental from room service and ran the video again, while wondering what was really going on. After the video came again to the point where the “hero” stole his neighbor’s bike, I watched the rest of the story fade as my eyes dimmed the light, then closed.

Then I woke up.

All I know about the dream is that the young man seemed to be some sort of combination of the disappearing Governor Sanford and a young man I’d encountered earlier in the day. He was young man so ignorant of history that he couldn’t see what was right in front of him, and he left the impression that he wouldn’t be caught dead in a navy blue blazer. And I know that the dream wasn’t about a stolen bicycle.

In 80% of my dreams I’m trying to solve a mystery. And, yes, my dreams are usually that cinematic and highly scripted. But, it’s extremely infrequently that I’ve been any character other than myself, and I was in this one. Which is why I’m writing publicly about the dream.

This felt like the few dreams I’ve had in my life where I was in someone else’s head, living their life, except overlaid with enough of me to confuse myself. If anyone has any ideas, I’d really like to hear them.

It’s difficult to explain, but this dream wasn’t just V’s subconscious speaking.