our minds. By 8:00 AM the next morning, I was
standing at the doors of the County Clerk’s office,
'This is... unusual,' Mr. Harrison murmured,
tracing a finger over the gold seal. 'The formatting is
completely wrong for our department. And this seal
—this isn't the zoning commission's seal. This is the
seal for the County Historical Preservation Society,
and it looks like it was printed from a low-
resolution JPEG.' He turned to his computer and
began typing rapidly, pulling up the digital archives
for Elmwood Drive. He cross-referenced the file
numbers printed on the supposed decree.
After a few minutes, Mr. Harrison let out a
sharp laugh of disbelief. 'I've found it,' he said,
turning the monitor toward me. 'This document
your neighbor showed you is a complete
fabrication. What she did was find a public record
of a proposed, but rejected, zoning variance from
1956 regarding a drainage ditch on the other side of
town. She completely rewrote the text, slapped a
fake seal on it, and printed it on heavy paper. It
holds absolutely zero legal weight. It is, quite
literally, a forgery.'
A profound sense of vindication washed over
me, quickly followed by a renewed, icy anger. Not
only had this woman destroyed our property, but
she had done so using a fraudulent document to
intimidate us and the police. I immediately
requested certified, notarized copies of the actual
property lines and a sworn statement from Mr.
Harrison verifying that the document Mrs. Graves
possessed was a fake. I left the clerk's office and
drove straight to the offices of the most aggressive
property litigator in the city.
The lawyer we hired, a sharp-suited woman
named Ms. Sterling, listened to our story with
predatory interest. When I showed her the evidence
of the forged document, her eyes lit up. 'Oh, she has
look at the paperwork, apologized to me, packed up