"Grady Vance had two boys from the maintenance yard loading filing boxes out of the annex basement at midnight on Sunday," she whispered, sliding the paper across the counter under her palm. "Arthur’s brother used to run the water board before the stroke took him. Arthur holds the easement rights to the three feeder wells behind the old timber parcel. The township can't deed the timber parcel to the aggregate company unless Arthur’s name is cleared off the county dependency roll. If he’s declared an indigent ward who can't pay his water fees, Grady signs the easement over as conservator."
I took the slip. It was a transfer manifest for five municipal archive boxes marked 1978–1992 Drainage Deeds, signed by Grady Vance with a county clerk’s stamp that had expired fourteen months ago. Across the bottom, written in purple indelible pencil, was Arthur’s parcel number: Tax Map 4, Lot 118—Foreclosure Pending Abandonment.
The paper was damp from the bottom of her lunch bag, smelling of mustard and old newsprint. It was the first physical link that tied Harlan’s physical threat in the diner directly to the land ledger in the township annex. Harlan wasn't keeping a veteran away from the breakfast counter because of small-town spite; he was running a clock. If Arthur didn't cash his state voucher by noon today, the statute of abandonment kicked in, allowing the county commissioners to seize the timber easement at public auction on the courthouse steps tomorrow morning.
"Where did Grady take those boxes, Martha?"
"The old freight depot behind the feed mill," she said, her fingers curling around the edge of the counter. "The one with the chain-link gate and the yellow county padlock. Grady’s got his boat stored in the dry bay. But you go sniffing around there, Jesse, and Harlan won't just tear your jacket. He holds the diesel inspection contract for the whole valley."
I folded the water slip twice and tucked it into the lining of my leather work wallet behind my commercial driver's license. My Peterbilt was parked fifty feet from the diner doors, its diesel engine ticking over in the damp chill, the twin stacks sending thin gray plumes of exhaust into the low November clouds. In the side mirror, I could see the three black state cruisers still sitting motionless on the highway shoulder, their front bumpers angled toward the municipal line like three hounds waiting for a whistle.
I had four hundred bushels of cracked corn sitting on my trailer that needed to be in Shelbyville by three o'clock, and thirty-four hundred dollars in equipment payments due to the bank on Friday. If Harlan pulled my commercial tags, I couldn't pay the diesel tax, let alone the note on the truck. But as I pulled my keys out of my pocket, the brass ring caught on the corner of the table, reminding me of the sound Arthur’s cane made when Harlan threw him against the wood.
A man spends ten years looking at his own steering wheel while other people take the ditches, and eventually he realizes the road doesn't belong to him either.
I didn't turn south toward Shelbyville. I climbed into the cab, released the air brakes with a loud hiss that made the road crew glance up through the glass, and dropped the transmission into low gear. I pulled out of the Black Oak lot, turned the long nose of the truck north toward the freight depot, and watched in the wide west mirror as the middle state cruiser flicked its parking lights once, dropped into gear, and rolled slow through the slush behind me.
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
Before I could kill the diesel, the cruiser behind me pulled crosswise across the lane, cutting off my turn-radius so I couldn't reverse the sixty-foot spread-axle flatbed without taking down a row of creosote telephone poles. The driver’s door opened, and a man in a slate-gray wool windbreaker stepped out into the damp chill. He didn't wear a Stetson or carry the nickel-plated revolver that Harlan Vance liked to rest his wrist upon. He wore rubberized overshoes over polished black oxfords, and around his neck hung a laminated state credential held by a split-ring clip: Office of the State Comptroller, Special Audit Section.
"Mr. Miller," he said, walking straight to my driver’s step without glancing at the load of cracked corn behind my sleeper cab. "Shut the Cummins down. You’re idling sixty gallons of taxable fuel on an easement that’s been under administrative seal since six o’clock this morning."
I reached across the wheel, turned the key until the engine shuddered into silence, and stayed in the cab. "You’ve got the wrong hauler, captain. I’m carrying four hundred bushels on a private manifest from the elevator down to Shelbyville. This gravel is a public right-of-way till you hit the creek."