He picked up his desk phone, dialed three digits, and spoke into the receiver without looking away from the photograph. "Teresa, pull the Corridor 402 escrow transfers immediately. Bring the authorization files to my office right now."
Within four minutes, Assistant Auditor Teresa Ross walked in carrying a thick cardboard accordion file. Together, they cross-referenced the names on my phone’s ledger photo with the county transit disbursement records. The numbers aligned down to the cent: two hundred and forty-two thousand dollars in public right-of-way funds had been wired forty-eight hours ago into an offshore corporate account titled Highpoint Land Holdings LLC, authorized under emergency summary relinquishment waivers signed by B. Howell.
"Janice Miller isn't a county employee," Ross said, her pen tapping against the wire transfer sheet. "She was terminated from the assessor's field office eight months ago for document irregularities. Highpoint hired her as a project consultant thirty days later."
Sterling looked at the clock on his wall. It read eight-twenty-five.
"They're staging the heavy machinery on Elm Street right now," I said. "Deputy Miller from the Fifth Precinct told me last night that he had orders to arrest anyone who interfered with the surveyor lines."
Sterling reached for his coat on the back of his chair, taking his badge wallet and state investigator credentials from the desk drawer. "Deputy Miller doesn't have the authority to enforce a summary demolition without a signed Chancery writ. Get in my vehicle, Caldwell. We're going to Elm Street."
We hit the residential turn off Elm Street at eight-forty-five.
The quiet, working-class block had been turned into a noisy construction perimeter. A sixty-foot lowboy trailer blocked the center of the road, its diesel engine thrumming as two laborers unhooked heavy steel transport chains from a forty-ton Caterpillar tracked excavator. A white Highpoint crew truck was parked diagonally across Clara's crushed cedar gate, its amber light bar flashing rhythmically against the front porch windows.
Parked directly behind the trailer was Fifth Precinct Cruiser 14. Deputy Miller was leaning against the driver's door with his thumbs hooked in his tactical belt, a heavy pair of stainless steel zip-ties dangling from his vest pocket.
B. Vance stood in the middle of Clara’s vegetable beds, holding a yellow megaphone in one hand and his acrylic clipboard in the other. He was laughing, gesturing with his pry bar toward the corner foundation stones of our porch where the surveyor lines remained pegged into the brickwork.
Clara stood on the top step of our porch, wrapped in her father’s wool overcoat, her bruised arm held close against her ribs. Flanking her on the sidewalk below were Evelyn Gable, Arthur Henderson, and four other elderly neighbors from down the block, standing shoulder to shoulder with their hands jammed deep in their coat pockets, forming a human barricade across our gravel driveway.
"You folks have five minutes to clear the municipal easement!" Vance's amplified voice boomed across the yards, distorted and tinny through the plastic megaphone horn. "At nine-fifteen, this corridor is active county property under judicial order. Anyone standing within twenty feet of that equipment will be detained for criminal obstruction of a licensed infrastructure project."
Deputy Miller unclipped his radio from his shoulder. "Move back to your porches, folks. You're interfering with a county utility contract. Move now, or I start writing citations."
I stepped out of Sterling’s unmarked state vehicle before the wheels stopped rolling on the curb.
Vance saw me first. His grin hardened into a triumphant, mocking sneer. "Well, look who decided to come back. Hope you brought your running shoes, Caldwell, because Deputy Miller here has a warrant for burglary and criminal mischief with your name on the docket."
"Step away from that porch, Vance," I said, walking past the lowboy trailer until I was ten feet from his steel boots.
"You don't give orders on county ground, boy," Vance barked. He turned toward the cab of the excavator and swung his arm in a wide, circular motion. "Fire it up, Carl! Walk it off the bed and drop that bucket through the rear framing!"
The excavator’s twin diesel turbochargers whined to life with a deafening, throaty roar, a cloud of black exhaust billowing over Clara’s porch. The massive steel tracks began to turn against the steel diamond plate of the trailer ramps, clanking and groaning as the iron treads bit the road.
"Shut that machine down!"
The command came from behind me, sharp and authoritative like a gunshot.
Investigator Sterling walked into the center of the driveway, his state investigator gold shield held high in his left hand, an emergency Chancery injunction order gripped in his right. Behind him, two marked state police cruisers swung around the corner of Elm Street, their blue and red strobes painting the houses in flashing crimson light as they blocked the lowboy trailer from both sides.