"Tow it. The registration is in my son's name now." That's what the HOA president screamed at two of my own officers when they arrived at my house on a Saturday afternoon.
It was a 1968 Mustang fastback I'd rebuilt with my late wife and my own son.
The registration in her son's name was a forged receipt she'd notarized with a Cumming notary whose license had been revoked in 2022.
It was a 1968 Mustang fastback I'd rebuilt with my late wife and my own son.
The registration in her son's name was a forged receipt she'd notarized with a Cumming notary whose license had been revoked in 2022.
The two officers, Sergeant Brennan and Officer Murchison, stood 20 ft from my open garage waiting for me to identify myself. I was in jeans and a faded UGA cap. I removed the cap. I turned around. They snapped to attention and saluted.
I'd been the chief of their department for 6 years. The HOA president stood across the cul-de-sac with the forged receipt loose in her hand and watched her empire end in 20 seconds. Cederville sits at the south end of Forsyth County, Georgia, about 40 minutes north of Atlanta on a Saturday with no Falcons traffic. 25,000 people. Two stoplights you can name from memory.
A police department of 41 officers, 14 patrol cars, one mounted unit, and a chief named Sterling Halloran who's been doing the job since 2018. That last one is me. I came up through Atlanta PD in 1992. Six years on patrol in zone three. Moved to Forsyth County Sheriff in 2001.
Made detective in 2006. Ran major crimes for 9 years. Came to Cederville as deputy chief in 2015 and took the corner office in 2018 when Chief Easterling retired to a farm outside Calhoun. My wife Marguerite passed away in 2019. Brain aneurysm.
She was 47. She was making coffee. She set the mug down. She sat at the kitchen table. She closed her eyes.
She never opened them. The paramedics worked her for 19 minutes. The neurosurgeon at North Fulton told me at 3:00 in the morning that there had been nothing for him to fix. I drove home at sunrise and sat in the garage and looked at the rusted-out 1968 Ford Mustang fastback she'd bought me at Barrett-Jackson in Scottsdale 2 years before. She'd handed me the auction paddle and said, "Sterling, we're buying it."
"Tate is 12. The two of you need a project."
He had been 12. He's 19 now. He starts at the University of Georgia in 2 weeks. We worked on that car together for 4 years in our old garage in Roswell, sanding, welding, rebuilding the four-speed, dropping in a fresh 289 V8. The pearl white paint was hers.
The cherry red interior was Tate's. The brass dash plaque with the date November 18th, '17, for my two favorite men was hers, riveted onto the glove box 4 months before the aneurysm. I sold the Roswell house in 2023 because I couldn't sit on her porch swing anymore. I bought a four-bedroom in Briarwood Glen Estates in Cederville, new construction, brick, pine straw beds, a two-car garage I painted myself the color of a Coca-Cola bottle. I didn't tell anyone in Briarwood Glen that I was the chief.
I wear jeans and a UGA cap on weekends. I drive a 2014 F-150 with the original tailgate dent from a Lowe's parking lot. I keep my badge in my glove compartment. The Cederville Police Department station is 15 minutes east. None of the new neighbors recognized me, and I didn't see a reason to introduce myself with a title.
I'd come to Briarwood Glen to be quiet. Marguerite was a quiet person. I was trying to be more like her. Hadley Lockwood introduced herself 2 weekends after I closed on the house. She drove a pearl white Mercedes GLE, the same color as the Mustang in my garage, which she would later tell me was providential.
She brought a key lime pound cake from the Publix bakery on a flowered porcelain plate. She wore a coral blouse and white capris and gold sandals. She told me she had been HOA president for 9 years and that we just love welcoming new families to Briarwood Glen. I thanked her. I took the cake.
I told her my son and I would enjoy it. She didn't ask what I did for a living. She did ask, twice, about the car in my garage. The first time I told her it was a rebuild project I'd done with my son. The second time I told her it wasn't for sale.
She smiled the way some women smile when they've already decided you're going to change your mind. Three weeks after the pound cake, Hadley's son walked into my garage, uninvited. I was changing the front sway bar bushings on the Mustang. The garage door was up because Georgia in late August does not negotiate temperature. A muscular kid in white tennis shorts came up my driveway, stopped at the open bay, and said, "Whoa, is that a '68?"