"Get me Lieutenant Miller," Gabe said into the receiver. "Tell him Gabe Miller is calling from the Route 9 boundary orchard. Tell him his road deputy, Mark Vance, is operating an unregistered civil seizure on private farmland, and I have state agricultural paper and thirty seconds of dash footage showing felony destruction of commercial property. He has twenty minutes before the township surveyor drives stakes into my ditch."
He hung up without waiting for the dispatcher’s acknowledgment. He went to the pantry, pulled down an old canvas sling from a nail, and strapped my left arm tight across my chest so the bone couldn't grind against the socket.
Outside, tires crunched over the gravel turnout by the highway culvert.
The twin halogen beams of Bob Vance’s white municipal F-250 cut through the orchard fog, followed closely by the low, distinctive silhouette of Mark Vance’s Crown Victoria. The cruiser didn't have its roof rack flashing, but its amber corner markers were lit, illuminating the rear bed of the pickup where two orange-vested township road workers were already unstrapping bundles of painted wooden survey stakes and a heavy steel sledge.
"Stay behind me," Gabe said, picking up his clipboard from the counter. He left the shotgun against the woodbox. "We don't give them a reason to draw."
We walked out into the dawn mist. The cold air burned in my throat, each stride jarring the fire in my left shoulder, but I kept my pace even with Gabe’s.
Mark Vance was standing by the open tailgate of his cruiser, his patrol jacket zipped to the throat, sipping coffee from a foam cup while his brother Bob leveled a brass transit tripod directly in the center of our access lane. Dave Morris, the township’s contract surveyor, was kneeling in the wet clover with a ten-foot measuring rod, driving an orange fiberglass pin into the edge of Gabe’s drainage bank.
Mark didn't look surprised to see me, but his eyes narrowed slightly as he took in the sling pinning my arm against my jacket. He dropped the foam cup into the grass, crushed it beneath his boot heel, and unhooked the retaining strap on his service holster with his thumb.
"You took a long walk in the wet, Rafael," Mark said, stepping out into the gravel lane to block our approach. "I figured you’d still be warming your heels at the diner by the quarry."
"You’re thirty yards west of the county right-of-way, Mark," Gabe said, stopping six feet from the deputy’s chest. "This is deeded agricultural ground. You don't have an administrative entry warrant, and you don't have a court order."
Bob Vance walked over from the transit, an aluminum clipboard tucked under his heavy forearm. He was grinning, the confident, easy grin of a township trustee who had run uncontested for twelve years and owned half the concrete supply in the county.
"We don't need a county warrant for an emergency environmental abatement, Gabe," Bob said smoothly, tapping the paperwork clipped to his board. "The township water commission declared this drainage channel an active industrial hazard at six o'clock this morning. Your tile is discharging grey silt into the county road culvert. Under township ordinance seventeen, we have forty-eight hours to mitigate the flow or assume physical custody of the easement."
"Show me the municipal test report," Gabe said.
"The test was certified by the board chairman," Bob replied, not blinking. "Me. Now tell your brother to step back to the porch. He’s looking at three class-A misdemeanors for evading an administrative stop and trespassing on municipal property behind the salt sheds."
"Dave," I called out over Bob's shoulder, raising my voice so it carried down the ditch line to the surveyor.
The surveyor paused, the heavy wooden hammer resting against his knee. He was an older man who had run boundaries in Blackwood County since we were boys, his license issued by the state board in the capital.
"Before you drive that second pin, Dave," I said, holding out the folded white document with my good right hand, "you might want to check the state environmental docket number on this regional drainage review."