This is my winning entry in the July/August 2023 Mysterious Photograph Contest, which AHMM published in their November/December 2023 issue.
The photo shows a chain-link fence with a sign "Lot Full." But a look through the fence does not show any cars or anything else within the lot. Why would that be? That's really two questions: Why are there no cars visible in the lot? And, if the lot is empty, why put up that sign? After all, the whole idea of a parking lot is to have people park their cars there.
I decided the sign was there to prevent random people from trying to park their cars in the lot. This has two results: The owners know that only the cars they want would be there, and nobody looking at the lot would see anything suspicious, just a bunch of cars parked where you would expect cars to be.
Only some "pesky kids" would take the trouble to track the comings and goings of the cars, and realize that something strange was going on. Stealing cars and disposing of the evidence was a valid crime to include, but I wanted something beyond that. Hence the twist at the end.
Something was off about the parking lot. It used to be pretty busy, every morning filling up with people coming to work, emptying out in the late afternoon, filling again with people coming home or eating at the local restaurants. That changed when new owners bought the lot and the machine shop next-door.
When we kids noticed there was always a "Lot Full" sign on the gate, even though there were empty spaces, we started tracking the comings and goings. We realized that cars were driving in but almost never leaving. Yet the lot never filled up. Ghosts? Aliens? We tried telling our parents, but they just laughed. So Jimmy, Suzie, and I decided to investigate.
One night we climbed the fence and snuck in the side door of the shop. Workers were disassembling cars and loading the pieces into crates. Making bucks by selling parts.
Hey, we thought, what're those?
Suddenly, someone yelled, "Get those kids!" We ran; Jimmy almost got caught but dropped the evidence; we hauled him over the fence just in time.
TV news had been reporting a rash of disappearances and car thefts. The police were baffled; it was like both had dissolved into thin air. We put two and two together, and got five.
The next day the headlines read "Hero Kids Catch Car Theft Ring: Chop Shop Busted." The police only laughed when we told them that more than cars were being chopped. Too bad Jimmy had dropped the severed head.