"I have exigent circumstances on a reported felony, Mr. Vance," Cole replied without turning his head. He kept his tall frame angled between Evelyn and the dark interior of the garage. He reached up with his left hand, tapped the power switch on his chest-mounted Axon camera twice until the green indicator chimed solid, and tilted the lens down toward the cart’s contents. "I observed fresh mortar slurry on the complainant’s tires that visually matches the wet pour in the subject cellar. I see an open blister pack of hardware matching the lock I just removed from the neighbor's bulkhead. Nobody touches this cart until County CID looks at it."
Miller strode across the turf, his jaw working so hard a muscle twitched below his ear. "Cole, get back on this side of the line. We don't drag the neighbors into an environmental hazard."
"Look at the chuck on this drill, Miller," Cole said, pointing a gloved index finger at the cordless impact driver resting in the cart bed. "Take two steps over here and look at it through the camera."
Miller stopped at the wire fence. He didn't cross. But his eyes dropped to the tool.
Clinging to the magnetic bit holder was a heavy five-sixteenths hex socket. Stuck inside the hollow cylinder was a ring of fresh, unweathered yellow pine shavings. Five feet behind us on our stone cellar stairs lay the five lag bolts my father had driven into the framing three years ago—bolts with five-sixteenths heads.
"Sarah," I said, keeping my hands resting open on the top rail of our battered gate so Miller couldn't claim I was interfering. "Call the watch commander."
Sarah had already pulled her county administrative directory from her smartphone. She held the phone to her ear, her lanyard credentials swinging against her navy blouse. "I’m already past township dispatch, David. I have Sergeant Kowalski on the direct county tie-line."
Keith Vance’s pen stopped against the orange placard.
"Sergeant Kowalski?" Sarah spoke clearly, projecting across both yards so every word landed on Cole’s recording microphone. "This is Deputy Clerk Sarah Miller from the County Deeds and Records Division. I am on site at 414 Elm Street. We have Township Officer Miller and Inspector Keith Vance attempting to execute an emergency Section 114 condemnation on an occupied residence while Officer Cole is securing physical burglary tools on the adjacent parcel. I need an on-duty supervisor and the municipal fire marshal here with air monitoring equipment immediately."
"Sarah, hang that phone up," Keith ordered, taking a step toward her. His professional calm had cracked, leaving behind the hard, cornered snarl of a township bureaucrat whose rubber stamp had suddenly met daylight. "You don't summon county supervisors to a municipal nuisance call."
"It stopped being a nuisance call when you brought an orange placard to my aunt's sixty-eighth birthday party, Keith," Sarah said without blinking. "The watch commander is rolling unit four. Estimated arrival is four minutes. And by the way, Keith, I pulled the township boundary docket during lunch on Friday. I know about the ten-foot utility easement Evelyn applied to vacate last month."
The silence that fell over the yard was heavy and cold.
Evelyn Vance took half a step backward toward her garage wall. Her fingers twitched against the hem of her cardigan, curling around the bulky rectangular shape resting in her right pocket.
"What easement?" I asked, looking directly at Keith Vance.
Sarah didn't take her eyes off him. "Evelyn’s new flagstone patio violates the township side-setback by nine feet. The municipal engineer flagged it in August. If the setback isn't resolved by November first, the township code board is mandated to order the patio jackhammered out at her expense. But if the adjacent parcel—my aunt's house—is declared a condemned environmental hazard and vacated, Section 88 of the county health code allows an adjoining owner to purchase an emergency remediation easement for five hundred dollars to abate the contamination."
My mother let out a small, wounded sound from the card table. "Evelyn... you wanted my garden?"
Evelyn didn't look at my mother. Her lips were pressed into a thin, colorless line. "That garden is an overgrown health hazard," she hissed, her voice abandoning any pretense of neighborly concern. "The roots from your willow are lifting my retaining wall. Your gutters have been overflowing since Frank died. You don't have the money to paint the porch, let alone fix a foundation. You belong in an assisted-living apartment in town, Martha. Not dragging down property assessments for everyone on this lane."
"So you poured concrete into her sump pit," I said, walking slowly along our side of the fence until I stood parallel to her. "You waited until we walked out the front door for eleven o'clock mass. You rolled your cart through the gate, backed my father’s bolts out with your impact driver, dumped lacquer thinner to make the house reek of poison, and slapped a True Value padlock on the door. Then you called nine-one-one with a fake kidnapping story so Miller would kick the gate down and Keith could condemn the lot before anyone smelled the difference."