CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
"I didn't step foot on his parcel," I said, leaning my weight against the swivel stool until the ache in my reconstructed hip settled into a manageable, dull throb. "Harlan bought the old county road maintenance shed three years ago through an auction the commissioners never advertised. The property line runs along the old railway ditch. The township drainage canal cuts right through the boundary fence, six inches into the public easement. Every time his wash bay drains, the runoff spills straight through the culvert pipe onto the easement shoulder."
Cole didn't answer right away. He reached into his olive field bag, pulled out a pair of disposable nitrile gloves, and picked up the small iron key by its looped head. "What’s the key open?"
"The padlocked junction box bolted to the concrete culvert," I told him. "In nineteen-ninety, when the state still ran the highway depot, they installed an automated water sampling weir inside that pipe to monitor lead runoff from the old battery plant. When the state closed the depot, they abandoned the housing, but they never pulled the lines. Three weeks ago, when Harlan’s private surveyors started driving red stakes across my south fence, I walked that ditch at midnight with a flashlight and a six-volt lantern. The monitoring line was still pulling liquid into the steel collection reservoir. I drew four mason jars out of the reservoir tap."
Behind the counter, Martha dropped a metal spatula onto the stainless grill with a clatter. She looked at me, her knuckles pressed against her apron. "Thomas, you can't fight Harlan on this. His brother-in-law already has three dump trucks parked behind the grain elevator. They’re bringing the crushing rigs down from the ridge by nightfall."
"They won't crush anything if the state environmental unit seals the basin," I said.
Cole turned the key over in his gloved fingers, his expression tightening into the cold, calculated neutrality of a man who dealt in regulatory filings and toxicological tables. "The lab ran the mass spectrometer on the core jars you mailed last week, Thomas. They didn't find swamp silt. They found heavy polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and industrial solvents. Two hundred parts per million of trichloroethylene. It’s the kind of degreaser commercial mechanics use to strip earth-moving diesel engines."
"Harlan hasn't just been servicing county squad cars back there," I said. "He’s been running an off-the-books repair depot for Blue Ridge Drainage Solutions. He’s housing their heavy excavators in the county shed, washing the crankcases down the floor drain, and letting the slurry bleed straight into the creek that feeds my north wetland."
Cole pulled his notebook from his jacket and began writing down serial numbers from the blue-lined surveyor’s map. "If Blue Ridge is washing commercial fleet engines into a public runoff ditch, that’s not an administrative dispute over gravel rights. That’s a willful violation of the Clean Water Act. It carries criminal liability for whoever authorized the discharge."
"That’s why he needs my land, Cole," I said, pointing my cane toward the window, where the dark line of tupelo pines bordered the southern bend of the river. "The swamp naturally filters the runoff before it hits the municipal water intake two miles south. But the ground is saturating. If state inspectors come down to verify the drainage line for his gravel permit, they’ll find forty barrels' worth of solvent trapped in the peat. The only way Harlan covers that spill is to dredge the entire marsh under an emergency flood easement, haul the poisoned topsoil out as aggregate fill, and pave over the whole basin with three feet of crushed limestone before your division can pull a certified core."
"And if he does that," Cole murmured, looking up from his ledger, "the evidence of the illegal dump is buried beneath two thousand tons of municipal aggregate."
"He doesn't just bury the dump," I said. "The county pays his brother-in-law three hundred thousand dollars out of the local infrastructure fund to do the hauling. He cleans his crime with taxpayer money and walks away with the timber lease."
Cole slid the key into a clear plastic evidence pouch, zipped the seal tight, and slipped it into his inner pocket. "I have two field technicians waiting in the third utility vehicle outside. They have state sampling kits and chain-of-custody seals. But Vance gave us a three-hour deadline. If he gets to the county courthouse before we document the discharge line, he can have Magistrate Gidley sign an emergency injunction declaring the drainage culvert an active hazard scene. Once he yellow-tapes that ditch under local police power, he can legally bar my technicians from the easement until his excavators finish the scrape."
"Gidley won't sign it if he knows the Attorney General is watching," I said.
"Gidley owes his seat to Harlan’s family," Cole countered, stepping toward the glass door. "He’ll sign whatever Vance puts in front of him, and he’ll sign it before the noon recess. If we want that sampling line recognized by a federal judge, we have to pull the certified core from the weir before Vance gets back from the county seat."
"The culvert is three miles down the old logging trail," I said, reaching for my canvas field satchel. "The gate is padlocked from the county side, but my father built the timber road along the western bluff. A state truck won't make it through the mud holes in this rain, but my old International flatbed has chains on the rear duals."
Cole looked at me, taking in the tremor in my left hand and the blood crusting against my gray hair. "Thomas, you took a hard hit against that counter. You ought to be at the clinic in town getting stitches."
"The clinic is right next door to the sheriff’s annex," I said, buttoning my coat with fingers that felt stiff and cold. "If I walk into Harlan’s town right now, Clanton will have me sitting in a holding cell on a disorderly charge before the doctor can find a needle. My head can wait. The water can't."
Martha reached across the counter, her voice dropping to a whisper as she slid a paper towel soaked in cold ice water toward my good hand. "Thomas, please. Harlan's cousin is the dispatcher. The second you crank that old truck, they’ll know where you’re headed."