By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Clean house or cleaned out?

On Dec. 5 and 6, a Broadview woman contacted a man about his house cleaning services. She found the man's number in an October edition of the Seattle Times' classified section. When she first called, the woman got only his answering machine, but the man returned her call after only a few minutes and they set up an appointment for Dec. 9.

On the scheduled day, the man showed up at the house and got to work cleaning the kitchen and bathroom. The woman said he did act strangely, seeming "paranoid about letting her know how honest he was." Despite the her new house cleaner's odd manner, the woman excepted an invitation a short while later from a friend to go on a walk. She left the man alone in her house for about 45 minutes after which she returned home to find the man gone and several valuable items, including cameras and jewelry, missing. She called the man's answering machine again, demanding he return her stolen belongings as well as those of her roommate, who was out of town. When the man failed to return the call, she phoned the police.

Uninvited guest

On Thanksgiving day, a man entered a Broadview home through an open back door. The resident, a woman in her 30s, was upstairs at the time and called out, "who's there?" She had left the door open so her dog could go out and wasn't expecting company. She yelled for the intruder to get out several times, but received no answer. Frightened, the woman called 9-1-1. While she was on the phone, she could hear the man softly talking to her dog. A detective arrived within seconds of the woman's call and saw the man walking out the back door, whom he immediately yelled at to stop. The man was carrying a bucket full of window-washing equipment and said he was just a window-washer looking for work. The detective read the man his rights and asked him if he understood them.

"Yeah, I understand all that. I know," the man said. He then added that he just went into the woman's house because he wanted to pet the dog

"I'm not a rapist, I'm not a burglar," the man said later in his statement to the police. "I'm just a 'Joe' trying to get a job and make an honest living."

Teen-age path hog

On Dec. 11 at 4 p.m., a man in his early 50s was rollerblading around Green Lake when he approached a group of males who were blocking the trail. Just as he was trying to skate though the group he felt someone, a teen-age boy, grab the back of his coat. He fell to the ground, hurting his ankle. The boy then told the man it was his own fault he had fallen because he had run over a stick. Both the victim and witnesses to the assault agreed that was not the case. Meanwhile, the bully and one of his companions had continued to walk around the lake. Officers checked the area but the suspect could not be located.

Building a bomb?

On Dec. 11, a manager at a Ballard shipping service arrived at work to find that the lock had been broken off the parking lot gate, apparently with a sledge hammer. Some older security cameras on the premises showed two suspects come into the facility at about 2:30 a.m. the previous day and steal two anhydrous ammonia bottles. The manager said those two bottles had been empty. He also said the the video taped footage of the crime was unclear and yielded no useful information.

The manager said the shipyard had been burglarized eight times in the last year and twice in the last two weeks. Each time, the only items taken were anhydrous ammonia bottles.

Taurus, the bully

On the evening of Dec. 7, a man was riding his bike on NW 75th Street in Crown Hill, a narrow corridor with cars parked on both sides. He pulled over near 7th Avenue NW to allow a man in a Ford Taurus to pass him, and, as he later told police, the driver passed him "very closely." The Taurus stopped at a stop sign when it reached 8th Avenue NW and the bicyclist approached the vehicle and tapped on the window. When the driver got out, the bicyclist told him he was being negligent. Then, according to the bicyclist's testimony, the man responded by getting out of the car, punching him three times, getting back in his vehicle and leaving the scene. A Metro bus driver whose coach happened to be passing by got out and gave the bicyclist his contact information, saying he had witnessed the altercation.

Police arrived at the scene a short time later and located the suspect driver at home via his license plate number. The man said he'd been following the bicyclist down the road at about 10 miles per hour and that he'd sped up to pass the cyclist at about 15 miles per hour after the bike rider pulled off to the side. Once he stopped at the stop sign, he said, the cyclist approached the vehicle, banged on the window with his fist, and started hollering. The driver, feeling intimidated, said he got out of his vehicle and pushed the cyclist away with both hands. Then he got back in the car and drove home. The man added that he felt he was driving cautiously.

The mysterious pool of blood

On Dec. 9 at around 4 a.m., some members of a U-District fraternity house heard what sounded like a loud bang downstairs. None of the sleepy brothers got up to check and see what the commotion was about. However, when the fellows awakened later that morning, they found a large amount of blood on the inside and outside of a downstairs window. A trail of blood led from the window into a study area and then up the staircase, where the boys said, it looked like blood had been "sprayed." The bloody trail continued to the third floor to a bathroom sink. Police were called but a check of the house failed to reveal the origin of the gory, red stains.