"And the death certificate?" I asked, looking through the grime-filmed window toward the yard gate.
"My brother’s boy has a cousin working intake at the county palliative center in Gresham," Arthur rasped, his eyes flashing with fierce clarity. "They filed an emergency administrative admission under my Social Security number on Monday using an old clinic card Harlan stole from my kitchen drawer. Harlan planned to transport me out tonight after the equipment was gone, dump me in an unlicensed home across the Washington state line, and let the state assume I was a wandering dementia case."
A cold knot twisted in my stomach. This was a living erasure. If Arthur’s machinery vanished onto interstate flatbeds this afternoon, there would be no business left to fight for, no income to hire a lawyer, and no physical proof that Arthur hadn't simply passed away or abandoned the deed.
Beside the carbon sheet lay an open folder containing a haulage manifest from Tri-County Heavy Transport, listing destination yards in eastern Washington and northern Idaho. The manifest was marked with an expedited cash surcharge paid by Harlan's newly registered company. Once those trucks crossed the Columbia River, the machinery would disappear into private chop yards before any circuit judge sat on Monday morning.
Outside, the air horn of an eighteen-wheeler echoed down the gorge, deep and rattling, followed immediately by the hydraulic hiss of air brakes rounding the highway bend.
I stepped to the window. Through the dusty glass, I watched an unmarked three-axle lowboy trailer swing wide into the entry lane, kicking up dry ochre dust as it lined up with the equipment ramp. Harlan stood in the middle of the driveway, phone pressed to his ear, waving the driver forward toward the parked loggers with an urgent, sweeping arm.
"They're here to load," Arthur whispered, his thin fingers clutching the desktop as he fought for breath in the heavy room. "Nathan, if those rigs leave the county line with that forged bill of sale, the sheriff won't touch Harlan. He’ll call it a civil probate dispute. By Monday morning, that machinery will be cut up in Idaho, and I’ll be an old man raving in a locked room."
I looked down at the carbon title assignment in my fingers, then through the window at the fuel pump strapped to my idling motorcycle thirty feet away. I had come here to deliver eighty pounds of cast iron and collect two hundred dollars for my back rent. If I slipped through the back fence now, I could disappear into the timber. My record was stained; local deputies didn't take an ex-convict’s word over a blood nephew holding a notarized transfer.
Then I looked at Arthur Vance, who had handed me a wrench six years ago without asking what cellblock I had slept in.
I folded the yellow carbon receipt twice, slipped it deep into the inside breast pocket of my leather vest, and zipped it shut against my ribs. Silence was no longer an option, and walking away would make me Harlan’s undertaker.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"Harlan didn't invent this scheme alone, Nathan," Arthur whispered, his voice gaining a rasp of steel as the water hit his system. "He doesn't have the brains to register a fresh limited liability company or set up an Idaho shell account. My younger brother Roy—Harlan's father—believed for forty years that because our grandfather staked this five-acre turnout in 1954, the acreage belonged to blood, regardless of who paid the taxes or serviced the loans."
"Who is driving that heavy lowboy?" I asked, looking through the grime of the lower window pane. Outside, idling diesel exhaust from the heavy transport truck billowed across the yard, carrying the sharp, stinging stench of unburnt fuel.
"Pete Miller," Arthur said, recognizing the green cab. "Independent hauler out of Wasco County. Pete’s honest as an alder pole, but he takes broker dispatches off the regional load board if the cash deposit clears. Harlan told him this was an authorized probate liquidation. If Pete hooks those chains to the Peterbilt and pulls onto Highway 26, that rig crosses the Bridge of the Gods into Washington within forty-five minutes. Once commercial iron crosses state lines with a notarized title transfer, Oregon troopers won't impound it without a federal court order."
"Then the bill of sale won't stop him," I said, tapping the yellow carbon sheet zipped inside my leather vest. "Harlan has Sandra Cleary’s notary seal on it. To an independent trucker or a road deputy, that purple stamp looks like legitimate authority until a circuit judge intervenes next month."
Arthur caught my work sleeve with a trembling hand, his grip surprisingly firm. "Sandra Cleary didn't see the real titles, Nathan. She couldn't have. Because those titles aren't in this desk, and they aren't listed in the state commercial database as free and clear."
He pointed a shaking finger toward the oil-soaked rubber runner that led from the doorway to the dispatch window. "Pull that mat back. Third seam from the scale counter."