The room was very quiet. Then Pa Houa Lor stood up, in the front row, and said something in Hmong, briefly, and sat back down. Tou hesitated, and didn't translate it, and his grandmother elbowed him hard, and he said, "She says, 'Okay. Now plant something.'"
The Article Nine amendment was repealed a hundred and three to four.
The rest happened slowly, the way things like this happen in the real world, which is to say not like television at all. In December, the Fernhill City Council voted to suspend enforcement of the Chronic Nuisance Property Ordinance pending repeal, and in January they repealed it, six-to-one, after a public hearing where forty-one people spoke, and at which I did speak, as chief, to say that the department would not seek any replacement and would be releasing every outstanding lien it had placed under the ordinance. I had already ended the Community Partnership direct line, in my first week, by a two-sentence written order: All calls for police service shall be received through 911 or the department's non-emergency number and dispatched in the ordinary course. No resident, organization, or partner shall have a direct line to any officer for the purpose of reporting calls. That was it. It was the least dramatic thing I've ever signed, and probably the most important.
In February, a Guilford County grand jury, sitting on a referral from the SBI because the case had been moved out of Fernhill's district to avoid any appearance of a home-court advantage, returned indictments against Garrett Kessling and Tamara Kessling on charges including obtaining property by false pretenses, conspiracy, and willful failure to discharge duties, and against Cyrus Dobrowski, who had already entered a cooperation agreement, on a single count of making false reports. Garrett resigned the same day. He'll have his day in court. That's the way it's supposed to work, and I wouldn't have it any other way, and I won't be the one standing in judgment of him. I've been careful about that. I gave my statement to Agent Mbatha, once, under oath, about what I saw in my own house and on my own sidewalk, and that's all I've said, and that's all I'll say.
Ellsworth Breedlove was never charged. Maxine Mbatha told me, in our last meeting, that she believed he genuinely hadn't known, that he'd signed whatever Garrett put in front of him and gone to Rotary. I've thought a great deal about whether that's better or worse. I still don't know. He hasn't come to a department function since. I'm told he spends most of his time fishing.
The DA hasn't decided what to do about Marcella. Some of her reports were things she saw. Some were things she imagined. A few, by her own admission, were things she wrote down because Cyrus Dobrowski told her to, about houses she'd never looked at closely, and she says she can no longer tell which were which. She's been interviewed four times. Her lawyer says it could go either way. I don't know what the right answer is, and I'm glad, very glad, that it isn't mine to give. Her house is still for sale. The second mortgage didn't go away just because the people who'd been watching it got indicted. Fitzgerald has been quietly organizing something, a few of the neighbors, I don't know the details and I've made a point of not knowing. Pa Houa Lor brought her a flat of tomato seedlings in March. Mortgage Lifters. Somebody told her the story.
Legal Aid of North Carolina filed a civil suit in the spring on behalf of the seven families who lost homes to Article Nine foreclosures, seeking to void the sales and recover damages from Tidewater, the HOA, the management company, and the City of Fernhill. Six of those houses have been resold, the same way mine was. Six other families like mine, who bought in good faith from a nice woman with expensive hand lotion, are now named as interested parties in a lawsuit that may decide that the houses they live in were never rightfully sold. My lawyer tells me the law is on my side. Bona fide purchaser for value, without notice. She says I'll keep the house if I want it.
I asked her what happens if I don't want it.
She was quiet on the phone for a while. Then she said, "Chief, that's not a legal question."