It wasn't connected to her house.

It was connected to the underground pipe network.

The network extended beneath several properties.

My property was one of them.

The investigators soon discovered that the neighborhood had a history nobody had told us.

Decades earlier, the land had been used by an industrial manufacturer.

The factory closed.

The developer who purchased the property discovered contamination in the groundwater.

Instead of paying for a full cleanup, they created an underground drainage system.

Contaminated water could be moved between underground tanks.

The system allowed them to manipulate groundwater samples during inspections.

When inspectors arrived, contaminated water could be diverted away from testing points.

Afterward, it could be moved back.

The neighborhood was built on top of the problem.

And Dana's late husband, Robert Whitmore, had helped maintain the system.

That explained her obsession with my property.

It also explained the strange document.

The county inspection wasn't really about my pool.

It was about the underground connection.

If the county discovered it, the entire operation could collapse.

But why the glass?

Detective Ortiz gave me the answer.

"Dana needed your pool drained."

"Why?"

"Because the pipe connection is accessible through the pool wall."

"So she wanted to remove it."

"Exactly."

"If she had done that before the inspection, nobody would have known."

Detective Ortiz nodded.

"That's what we believe."

Then she showed me something else.

A maintenance log.

It contained dates.

Pump settings.

Water levels.

Property numbers.

And medical notes.

I read one entry.

Lot 18 — child developed rash after swimming. Reduce flow.

Lot 18 was my property.

My daughter's symptoms had been written down.

I stared at the page.

"She knew."

Detective Ortiz didn't say anything.

"She knew Emily was getting sick."

"Yes."

"And she did nothing."

"Not exactly nothing."

She placed another document on the table.

It showed payments made to Dana.

Year after year.

Monthly transfers.

Thousands of dollars.

Then we found communications between Dana and a man named Victor Lang.

Victor was a senior executive connected to the company that had originally developed the neighborhood.

One message mentioned me.

Another mentioned Emily.

And one sentence explained the broken glass.

Make him drain the pool before the inspection.

I felt sick.

Dana hadn't vandalized my pool because she hated me.

She had done it because she was trying to erase evidence.

Chapter 4 — The Woman Behind the Fence

Dana was arrested.

But she wasn't the person who had organized the entire operation.

That was Victor Lang.

Investigators discovered that the contamination scheme had been operating for decades.

Several former inspectors had received payments.

Some contractors had falsified maintenance records.

Property owners had never been informed about the hidden infrastructure beneath their homes.

Then came the biggest discovery.

The contamination wasn't limited to the old industrial area.

It extended beneath land where the county had recently approved construction of a new elementary school.

The school was supposed to open the following year.

The playground would have been built directly over contaminated groundwater.