I looked at my dashboard. Whitlock. We arm it Monday at midnight. Outside in the gathering December dusk, the wind moved through the bare branches of the burr oaks my father had planted along the bridge approach. 40 years ago.
The trap went live at 11:58 p.m. on Monday night. I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of black coffee and watched the dashboard come up green on my laptop. Tully had gone to bed an hour earlier in her usual ratty Smokeoky's hoodie and one mismatched sock. The kitchen smelled like the oatmeal cookies she had baked after her math homework. Outside, a January cold front was rolling down from the Smokies.
And somewhere on a highway south of Atlanta, a fully loaded 46,000-lb Hulcom paving dump truck was 8 hours and 22 minutes from arriving at the bridge. I went to bed at 1:14 a.m. I slept badly. By Tuesday morning at 6:00 a.m., I was at the bridge in the dark with a thermos of coffee, my laptop, and a Forest Service grade two-way radio Pernell had given me. Pernell was already there in his Forest Service jacket with his own radio. Jasper Whitllo was already at the drone hanger half a mile up the slope.
Whitlock Trit was at his office in Asheville monitoring the dashboard remotely. Granger Pelum at NC DOT was monitoring. Special Agent Larkin Boswell at EPA Region 4 had been briefed and had two agents in route from Atlanta. Sheriff Carmine Doyle had two cruisers parked at the gas station two miles down Highway 209, close enough to respond far enough not to spook the operation. Tessa Hulkcom made her last desperate move at 7:14 a.m. Her white Range Rover pulled into my driveway.
She walked up to my porch in tennis whites and a pink visor with her phone in her hand and her smile firmly back in place. She did not know I was at the bridge. She knocked on my door for 2 minutes. When Tully opened the door, Tully in her hoodie with cereal in her hand, Tessa knelt down to eye level the way an adult does when she wants a child to think the adult is on her team. Sweetie, is your daddy home?
I have a really wonderful surprise for him. Tully looked at Tessa for a long moment. She did not smile. Ma'am, my dad said to tell you that if you ever come within 20 ft of me again, he is going to read your name into the record at his next court hearing. He also said you can wait on the porch.
He'll be home in 3 hours." Tessa's smile did not move, but her eyes did. She got back in her Range Rover. She did not drive home. She drove to the bridge.
I had been watching the LPR system the whole time. I saw her plate ping at 7:42 a.m. The dashboard logged her vehicle at 4,400 lb, well under the 5ton limit. She crossed legally. She drove up to lot 28 where her husband Roland was already on site in a high viz vest with a clipboard. They were waiting for the truck.