Your mother Denise works at Holloway Development. Your father owes $47,000 in back child support to his first wife. He tried to hide it by transferring assets into your name last year. Interesting, right?" Chad went white.
His mouth fell open. He looked at Preston like Preston was supposed to know what to do about a stranger who knew the balance of his father's court-ordered debt. Preston, to his credit, doubled down. He always doubled down. That was his tell.
He puffed out his chest and said, " off, widower loser. My mom owns this place." I stood up, brushed the front of my jeans, nodded once. "Yeah, she does. For now."
I walked back to my car without looking back. Behind me, I could hear Preston already reaching for his phone. Within 2 minutes, his Instagram was live, telling his followers that the widower next door was losing it. Thought he was Sherlock or something. LOL.
I let him post. Every word he spoke was going to appear on a courtroom screen in 6 weeks. Every viewer he tagged was going to be a subpoenaed witness. When I got home, I called Detective Owen Ashcroft. "Man, are you okay?"
Owen said. "You sound like you enjoyed that." "Owen, this kid harassed my son. He didn't just target a widower. He targeted the widower's kid.
He's going to prison and his mother is going with him." "How close to arrest?" "Seven to 10 days." I want it done publicly. HOA quarterly town hall is next Thursday.
She's already planning to impeach me at the meeting. "Perfect stage." "You cold bastard. I love it." DA on board.
Whitfield says it's her career story. I hung up, opened the file, added the note, public arrest planned, HOA quarterly Thursday 7:00 p.m. Coordinate with Ashcroft, DA Whitfield, media contact Sutter. Suspect emotionally destabilized following pool confrontation, likely to escalate before Thursday. I closed the laptop, went upstairs. Cooper was asleep with the book still on his chest.
I lifted it off, marked the page, and set it on the nightstand. Monday morning at the county lab, forensic technician Dr. Nora Wexler handed me a yellow folder. She didn't smile. She never smiled. She'd been doing this work for 22 years and smiling wasn't in the job description.
"Detective, your DNA report." The transfer material from the spray can nozzles pulled from the fence attack 100% match to Preston Holloway. Cross-referenced against his 2022 DUI sample. Same match across four other cans recovered from crime scenes over the past 3 months. This is a serial pattern, court-ready.
I opened the folder, read the report. 22 pages of chain of custody documentation, gel electrophoresis charts, statistical certainty tables. Dr. Wexler had been thorough enough to publish. She always was. I looked up.