I called Hol. I called Cassandra. I called Sheriff Thrasher. The warrant package was filed at 4:00 in the morning. The trap was set for 1:47 the next afternoon.
Saturday morning came in soft and cool, the way an October morning in North Georgia comes when the front has just pushed through. The light was the color of honey. The long leaf pine smelled clean. A cardinal sat on the mailbox at the end of the driveway and did not move when I walked out for the paper. I had been up since 5.
Tate came downstairs at 7:30 in pajama pants and a UG hoodie. He poured himself a glass of orange juice. He sat at the kitchen island where his mother used to grade her chemistry homework. He looked at me. Dad, you sleep at all?
Not really. You okay? Yeah, bud. I'm okay. He chewed his thumbnail the way Margarite used to.
He looked through the kitchen window into the garage where the Mustang sat in the pearl white light. He took a long breath. Mom would have loved today. I had to look away for a second. I drank my coffee.
I cleared my throat. She would have made biscuits with sausage gravy with too much pepper. He smiled. He went back upstairs to shower. I spent the morning doing exactly what I would have done on a normal Saturday.
I drank coffee. I read the paper. I checked my email. I texted Holt at 9:00. He confirmed Caspian's sworn statement had been notorized at 8:15 and added to the warrant.
He confirmed Sheriff Thrasher's deputies were posted three streets over starting at noon. He confirmed Win Mercer would be parked in an unmarked Crown Victoria on the corner of Brierwood Glenn Drive and Magnolia Trace from 1:30 onward. He confirmed my body camera was paired with the central server at the station. He confirmed two officers from the dayshift. Tucker Brennan, sergeant, and Lane Merchesen, rookie, were the next two units in the dispatch queue for vehicle recovery calls within the Brierwood Glenn zip code.
He confirmed they did not know anything. At 11:00, I went into the garage. I lifted the bay door. I rolled the Mustang halfway out into the driveway, front end pointed at the culde-sac, the way I'd been doing once a month for 2 years. I connected the battery.
I cranked the engine. I let it warm for 6 minutes. I shut it down. I left the hood open. I got a clean shammy and a bottle of detail spray.
I knelt at the front bumper and started polishing the grill. I wore jeans, a faded UG cap, a worn navy t-shirt with a small bleach stain on the left collar from a load of laundry I'd done wrong in 2020. I clipped my body camera into the inside breast pocket of my t-shirt, so the lens peaked out at the top of the fabric. I activated it at 1:30. The red light blinked twice and went solid.
Tate came down at 12:45 and went upstairs to his bedroom on the second floor. He opened the window that overlooked the driveway. He set his iPhone on a small tripod his mother had bought him for his 14th birthday. He hit record on the camera. He gave me a thumbs up from the window.
I gave him one back. At 1:42, Hadley Lockwood walked out her front door across the culdesac. She wore a coral blouse, white capries, gold sandals, same outfit as the pound cake day. She had a Manila folder in her left hand. Bryson followed her, taller than her by half a foot, wearing tennis shorts and a polo.
He had a print out in his hands. Hadley walked to the foot of her own driveway. She stopped. She crossed her arms. She was facing my driveway directly.
She wanted to be seen. At 1:45, I saw the dispatch ping on my phone over my wristband notification. I had cloned the feed. I watched a single line of text scroll across. CVDSP vehicle recovery 4815 Brierwood Glenn.
Caller reports stolen Mustang. At 147, two units acknowledged. C12 Brennan C19 Merchesen on route. I went back to polishing the grill. I did not look up at Hadley.
I did not look up at her son. I did not look at the upstairs window where my own son was filming. I just polished the chrome the way my wife had taught me to polish the chrome in long, slow circles from the center outward, the way she'd shown me on her father's 1957 Chevy in the summer of 1996. At 154, a Cedar Veil patrol unit turned into the culdesac. The patrol unit was a 2022 Ford Explorer with the new Cedar Veil PD blue and silver livery.
Sergeant Tucker Brennan was driving. He's 34, 6 years on the force. Good cop. Lane Merchesen was in the passenger seat, 23, out of the academy 14 months. The unit rolled at 5 m an hour up the culde-sac and stopped 20 ft from my driveway.
Hadley Lockwood across the street smiled. Brennan stepped out first. He adjusted his utility belt. He looked at the Mustang. He looked at the man in jeans and a UG cap kneeling at the grill.
He started up the driveway. Merchesen followed two paces behind him with his thumbs hooked in his belt. Sir, Cedarvil PD, we have a report of a stolen vehicle at this address. Can you stand up and identify yourself? I sat down the shammy.
I stood up. I turned around. I took off my cap. Tucker Brennan stopped walking. He stopped twothirds of the way up the driveway with his right hand floating 6 in off his sidearm.
His face did the thing that faces do when the brain has not yet given the rest of the body new instructions. Then he snapped to attention. Lane Merchesen snapped a half second behind him. Both of them threw a textbook salute. Chief Howlerin, sir.