But the real blow came from the district attorney’s office. The criminal-trespass charges I had filed months earlier had been working their way through the system quietly. The ones based on the surveyor’s report and the bollard installation. On a Thursday morning, Shelley Bancroft was formally charged with criminal trespass under O.C.G.A. section 16-7-21. Misdemeanor. Possible penalty up to twelve months. She was served at her home on Sycamore Lane by a Forsyth County process server who rang the doorbell at eight in the morning. I know this because Hank was watering his lawn across the street and watched the whole thing. She read the papers on her porch, Hank told me that afternoon. Stood there for about two minutes. Then she went inside and did not come out for the rest of the day.
Now it was time. Every piece was in place. The survey. The police reports. The financial records. The flipped board members. The reporter. The attorney. The criminal charges. Shelley had spent eight months trying to take my driveway, my business, and my father’s legacy. She had used fines, bollards, smear campaigns, liens, and a county inspection. She had covered my dad’s handprint in yellow paint while I was holding his flag. And now every single move she had made was about to come back on her at once.
I sat at the kitchen table with Tommy and walked him through the operation. Three trucks. Flatbed for the driveway vehicles. Wheel-lift for the curb cars. Wrecker on standby for anything heavy. Written authorization from the property owner, me, for each tow. Georgia law is clear on this point. A property owner may remove unauthorized vehicles from private property without prior notice. No waiting period. No warning sticker. No courtesy call. Tommy loaded receipt paper into the handheld printer. The paper fed through with a thin mechanical whir. Outside, the sky was still dark. Pre-dawn chill sat on the grass. Diesel engines idled in the storage lot six miles away, warming up. “Saturday morning,” I said. “6:45. Before the HOA annual meeting at ten.” Tommy grinned. “Three trucks. One street.” “All of them.” “All of them.”
Saturday. 6:45 in the morning. The sky over Ridgewood Estates was the color of a bruised peach. Dew sat heavy on the lawns. Sprinklers hissed somewhere down the block. The street was quiet. Three tow trucks turned onto Sycamore Lane in formation. The flatbed first. Then the wheel-lift. Then the wrecker. Tommy drove the flatbed. I was in the wheel-lift. My third driver, a quiet kid named Colby who never asked unnecessary questions, brought up the rear. Pam Lockhart and her cameraman were parked on the public road at the end of the block, camera already rolling. Deputy Clayton Voss sat in his cruiser at the opposite corner, engine running, window down. He gave me a nod as I passed. I had coordinated with the sheriff’s office the day before. This was a lawful tow operation on private property. Voss was there to keep the peace, not to stop it.
Tommy backed the flatbed up to my driveway. The first car was the silver Hyundai Tucson, still parked where it had been since the day I came home from Earl’s funeral. Tommy worked the controls. The hydraulic bed tilted with a deep mechanical whine. Chains clinked against the deck. The wheel cradles locked. The Tucson slid onto the flatbed like it had been waiting to leave. He pulled forward. I backed the wheel-lift to the black Nissan Altima. Boom down. J-hooks under the front axle. Lift. The rear tires stayed on the ground. The car rose off my driveway. Yellow paint chips scattered across the concrete.