This week, some asshole picked my MacBook up off a table at a Starbucks and walked out the door with it.

I’d stepped outside to take a call – not a smart move in retrospect – but I didn’t want to be that guy shouting into a cell phone. As I was standing in the doorway talking on my phone, whoever stole my computer probably walked right past me.

Logic suggests this would be a high-risk crime.

The shop was crowded – packed even – with dozens of customers. All it would take would be one person saying “Hey, wait a minute …”

The store has several cameras monitoring both front doors, so the crime and the criminal were sure to be caught on video. He had to have known that.

In addition, my computer was running Find My Mac, which would immediately ping me if the machine was connected to the Internet and show me its location on a map.

Despite all this, what has happened since has given me a sinking feeling that the computer will never be found again.

This is how we imagine we will be if a crime is ever perpetrated against us.

What I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long IT career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my laptop go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

As much as I’d like to run around punching members of an international laptop-stealing ring in the throat like Liam Neeson, I really just sat down at my table and wondered if I was going to be fired.

I texted my friend

um, so my work laptop was just stolen.

What?!

I’m so screwed.

It was/is a $2,500 machine, only a month old, which is how long I’d been at my job. It was a job that I loved. I hoped they’d understand.

I was now going to be “that guy” the one they told stories about after getting drunk at the office Christmas party. “Remember that guy we hired and then like three weeks later he let his new laptop get stolen … “

I called 911, and the dispatcher told me to come down to the station and fill out a report. I told her I had two witnesses and video, so could she send an officer? She said one would be by, but she didn’t know when.

“An hour? Two hours? Tonight?” I asked.

“One will be by sometime.”

The officer who did show up was a jovial fellow who told me a hilarious story about a hooker trying to pick him up when he was on plainclothes patrol. He also told me that he could only take a report.

Only a detective can view the video and interview witnesses, he explained. “It’s a union thing. In other states police can investigate, but in Boston it has to be a detective.”

I’d pictured a valiant cop showing up and tracking the perp through the freshly fallen snow and and then sweating a confession out of him. “You’re going up the river,” he’d say, before muttering, “Filthy criminal.”

Clearly this wasn’t going to happen. He gave me a case number and left.

A detective has yet to call me. My case likely landed on his desk with a few dozen others that day. The laptop is worth enough that it is felony theft, but it’s still not important enough to be treated as a priority. Or even hardly at all.

What would seem to be a risky crime with solid evidence against the perpetrator is in reality a fairly safe one.

My employers took the theft in stride. They’re filing an insurance claim and I’m taking some ribbing. I’ve set up Find My Mac to ping me if it should be connected to the Internet. But there’s something deeply angering just picturing some guy doing what he did and getting away with it. Or even thinking he got away with it for a few days.

I’m still hopeful. The officer said they enjoy pulling up to people’s houses, knocking on the door and asking “Where did you get that laptop?”

And then throat-punch them like Liam Neeson.