The last piece was a small metal box with a stubborn lock. The officer looked at the inspector, then at the box, and made a careful choice. He set it on the table, slipped a thin tool in, and lifted the lid. Inside was a cloth pouch, a strip of negatives, and something wrapped in oil paper. Everyone leaned in. Even the dog held his breath.

The officer unrolled the paper. He paused, then matched a photo from the stack to a familiar face on his phone. He spoke quietly into his radio, using words like recovered and corroborates. The neighbor squeezed the leash and whispered that her granddad used to talk about a hidden spot where he stored things for the block, in case trouble came.

The reveal was simple and huge. The box held the missing evidence from a string of unsolved garage thefts last year, plus something much older. At the bottom lay a velvet case with two wedding rings and a Purple Heart medal, all reported lost in their neighborhood decades ago and never found. The photos and marked map matched each return address. Authorities had searched above ground, but the stash sat three feet under the fence line the whole time. The neighbor’s dog, trained to find hidden toys, had followed the faint metal scent and did what people could not. Families got their heirlooms back. Cases closed. And one muddy hero got a new tag that read, “Finder of Lost Things.”