Caspian Wells was a sixteen-year-old boy with a wavering voice and a steady moral compass. He told me, in pieces, that Bryson Lockwood and Hadley had sat him down at the Lockwood kitchen island that afternoon and asked him to sign a witness statement on a typed document that said he had been present when Sterling Halloran sold the Mustang to Bryson Lockwood for thirty-five thousand dollars in cash on August 14th of this year. There had been no such sale. Bryson had not paid for anything. The signature on the document was a forgery of mine. Caspian recognized it because his father had been a notary in Cumming for twenty-two years, and Caspian had grown up looking at signatures. Caspian had refused to sign. He had told Hadley he had to go home for dinner. He had called Tate the moment he got into his car.
I asked him three things. Was he willing to come to the station tomorrow morning to make a sworn statement to Detective Holt Bramwell? He said yes. Did he know if anyone else had signed the document? He said yes. Bryson had signed. Bryson’s girlfriend Cassidy had signed. Did he know what Hadley was planning to do with the document? He said Mrs. Lockwood said she was filing a stolen-vehicle report tomorrow afternoon. I thanked him. I hung up. I looked at Tate. He looked at me. I said one sentence. “She just gave us the exact time.” I called Holt. I called Cassandra. I called Sheriff Thrasher. The warrant package was filed at four 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 longleaf 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 five. Tate came downstairs at 7:30 in pajama pants and a UGA 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 Margaret 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 nine. He confirmed Caspian’s sworn statement had been notarized at 8:15 and added to the warrant. He confirmed Sheriff Thrasher’s deputies were posted three streets over starting at noon. He confirmed Wynn Mercer would be parked in an unmarked Crown Victoria on the corner of Briarwood Glen 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 day shift, Tucker Brennan, sergeant, and Lane Murchison, rookie, were the next two units in the dispatch queue for vehicle-recovery calls within the Briarwood Glen zip code. He confirmed they did not know anything.