Behind the counter, Martha moved. She didn't look at Hollister. She walked around the end of the formica, carrying a clean white bar towel soaked in ice water, and dropped to her knees beside me in the spilled coffee.
"Don't move, Walt," she whispered, pressing the freezing cloth against the split skin above my eyebrow. "Just stay down till he gets in his cruiser. Please. He's got the deputies watching the highway turnoff."
"He took the paper, Martha," I muttered, my vision clearing as the ice hit the cut. "The valuation paper."
"It doesn't matter what he took," she whispered, her eyes darting toward Hollister’s back as he laid the five-dollar bill on the zinc register. "He’s had the surveyor out at your fence line since Tuesday. He’s already sold the parcel to the aggregate plant across the county line. The contract's signed, Walt. Everyone at the courthouse knows it."
Hollister pocketed his toothpick, pushed through the diner's front door, and let the brass bell overhead ring twice as the heavy plate glass swung shut behind him. Through the diner window, I saw him walk down the gravel apron to his black-and-gold cruiser, toss my phone onto the passenger seat, and start the engine. He didn't pull out onto the blacktop. He just sat there with the motor idling, the cruiser’s exhaust pipe sending grey plumes into the cold September morning, watching the diner door.
He wasn't waiting for an ambulance. He was waiting to see who walked out to help me.
"Martha," I said, leaning my head back against the wood siding of the counter. "Where's your landline? The old one on the office wall."
"Wayne had the district crew cut the external drop three weeks ago when the road work started," she said, her hands shaking again as she pressed the towel tighter against my head. "Said the county was upgrading the lines. It’s been dead since Labor Day."
I looked down at the scrap of brown envelope still gripped between my bloody fingers. On the back of the torn flap, printed in faint carbon purple from the assessor’s automated stamp, was a single routing code: PARCEL 44-B / SEC 12 / RE-APPRAISAL / ATTACHMENT D.
And beneath it, scrawled in blue ballpoint ink by the county assessor's clerk before the envelope had been intercepted: State Department of Transportation right-of-way easement approved. Compensation check held at District Four Treasury.
Hollister wasn't just taking the yard to lease it to the gravel pit. The state was buying the parcel for three hundred thousand dollars to widen Highway 9, and the compensation check had already been issued to whoever held the title on the morning of the council vote.
The council vote was scheduled for noon today.
I pushed Martha's hand away, grabbed the rim of the counter with both palms, and hauled my boots under me. The diner spun once, hard and dark, then settled into a dull, thumping grey.
"Walt, you can't walk out there," Martha pleaded, catching my sleeve. "He’s sitting right in the turnout."
"I'm not walking out the front," I told her, spitting the blood out onto the grease-trap drain. "Give me the key to your grease shed out back."
CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED
In the corner, beside two tiers of vegetable shortening tins, sat Martha’s emergency dispatch radio. It was a surplus three-channel marine rig her late husband had hauled off an Ohio River tugboat forty years ago, wired to a deep-cycle marine battery sitting in a plastic milk crate. A yellowed piece of electrical tape above the dial read County Fire / Road Crew.
I reached for the microphone. My right thumb left a smear of tacky red over the press-to-talk rocker. Before I could key the circuit, the external speaker on the wall gave a brief, flat click.
"Unit One to base," Wayne Hollister’s voice came over the speaker cone, dry and unhurried. He was broadcasting from the cruiser out front on the highway shoulder. "County dispatch, log an administrative hold on the parcel transfer file for four-four Bravo. Land clearance begins at thirteen hundred. Notify the road superintendent that scrap removal is authorized under the public nuisance code. If the tenant approaches the fence line, advise the patrol cars to transport him directly to the district annex for evaluation."
"Copy, Unit One," the voice of dispatcher Brenda responded from the county courthouse six miles north. "Has the owner signed the access release?"