Chapter 5: What Donna Fitch Said
Donna Fitch called back within twenty minutes of my message.
She had the voice of someone who had heard every version of every neighbor dispute and was not surprised by any of them, but who had also never stopped being interested.
"Walk me through it from the beginning," she said.
"Don't summarize.
Just tell me what happened."
So I did.
The first can.
The confrontation.
His response.
The counting.
The photographs.
The report.
The party.
Ray.
The text from the unknown number.
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.
"The code enforcement complaint is a good start," she said.
"But Greg was right about one thing — personal connections at the county level can slow a complaint down.
Not stop it.
But slow it."
"He said he's known people there for fifteen years."
"That's not nothing.
But it's also not everything." I heard paper moving on her end.
"The corroborating report from your neighbor Ray helps.
A second complainant makes it harder to treat as a personal dispute."
"What about the text Tom received?"
"That's potentially significant.
A pattern of behavior across multiple households is a different legal category than a disagreement between two neighbors.
If the family at the end of the street has documentation — dates, photographs, anything written — that changes the shape of this considerably."
"What shape does it take?"
"Harassment.
Sustained, deliberate, targeted harassment of multiple residents on the same street." She paused.
"That's not a nuisance fine.
That's a civil matter with real exposure."
Tom was sitting across from me at the table.
He could hear her through the phone.
"He also threatened her," Tom said, loud enough to carry.
"In front of witnesses.
On his front lawn."
"I heard that," Donna said.
"Linda, did anyone else hear the threat besides your husband?"
"Ray was still standing near the fence.
And Melissa — Greg's daughter.
She was on the front steps."
"Write that down.
Names, approximate positions, exact words as best you can remember them.
Do it tonight while it's fresh." A pause.
"I want to be straightforward with you.
This is winnable.
But Greg is going to push back hard when he realizes you're not backing down.
He's going to try to make this expensive and exhausting."
"He already told me he's been doing this longer than I have."
"They all say that." Her voice was dry but not unkind.
"The ones who say it loudest are usually the ones who've never had anyone push back properly."
After the call, Tom and I sat at the table for a while without speaking.
Then he said, "I owe you an apology."
"For what?"
"For asking what you were going to do with all those cans." He looked at the notebook.
"I thought you'd lost the plot.
I didn't understand what you were building."
"I wasn't sure I understood it either," I said.
"I just knew I wasn't going to let it keep happening."
My phone buzzed.
A number I didn't recognize — different from the one that had texted Tom.
I answered.
"Is this Linda?" A woman's voice.
Older.
Careful.
"It is."
"My name is Patricia.
I used to live at 22 Clearfield.
The house with the blue shutters." A pause.
"We sold it eighteen months ago.
My husband and I.
We told the realtor it was because we wanted to downsize." Another pause.
"That wasn't the whole truth."
I reached for my pen.
"Patricia," I said.
"I'm very glad you called."
She talked for forty minutes.
I filled six pages.
By the time she hung up, the kitchen had gone dark around us and Tom had gotten up twice — once to turn on the light, once to make tea — without either of us acknowledging it.
He set a cup in front of me and looked at the notebook.
"How many households?" he asked.
"That she knows of directly?
Four.
Including us." I looked at the pages.
"She said there was a fifth family, but they moved before she could talk to them."
"Four households."
"Over nine years."
Tom sat down.
He wrapped both hands around his mug.
"He's been doing this for nine years," he said.
"At least."
Outside, Greg's backyard had gone quiet.
The engagement party was over.
The cars were gone.
The cans were still on the fence — nobody had moved them.
Tom looked out the window at the row of tagged cans still visible in the dark.
"He's going to come back harder tomorrow," Tom said.
"You know that."
"I know."
"Are you ready for that?"
I closed the notebook and set my pen on top of it.
"I've been ready since the second can," I said.
Tom's phone buzzed again on the counter.
He looked at the screen.
His expression shifted.
"It's a photo," he said slowly.
"From Ray." He turned the phone toward me.
May you like
"Linda.
Look at this."
