Chapter 4
The kid showed up at ten in the morning. He was driving a blue Prius with a cracked windshield and a bumper sticker that read DEMOCRACY DIES IN DORKNESS.
He parked next to my truck and climbed out holding a neon orange can in one hand and a messenger bag in the other, squinting through thick glasses at the cabin.
Richard Whitlock was short and thin as a fence post, with a scruffy beard and brown hair that needed cutting.
He wore a wrinkled navy polo shirt tucked into khaki slacks that were a half-inch too short, showing white socks above leather shoes.
He looked like an intern at a bank that was about to fold.
Richard spotted me on the porch and raised the orange can in greeting.
"Mr. Harmon?"
"That's me. Please call me Thomas."
"Thomas. Right. Cool."
He bounded up the porch steps and stuck out his hand. His grip was firm, which surprised me.
"Richard Whitlock, Bremerton Times. Thanks for having me out."
"I'm glad you found it. Like I said in my email, the entry is easy to miss."
"The mailbox helped. The driveway was longer than I expected." He looked around. "This place is wild. Like, in a good way. Very off-grid chic."
"It's my home. Please have a seat, Richard."
He dropped into the other camp chair, set his messenger bag between his feet, and took a long pull from the neon orange can. The label said brAINJUZZY in jagged letters. Below that, in smaller type: brAINJUZZY BINGE, brO!
"Can I get you some coffee?" I asked. "I also have some really excellent tea."
"I'm good." Richard tapped the can. "Caffeine-wise, I'm operating at like eleven right now. If I add coffee I might vibrate straight up into the sky."
"Well, let me know if you need anything."
"I will." He pulled a notebook and a digital recorder from his bag. "You mind if I record?"
"Go ahead. I haven't seen a recorder in a while. Most people use their phones these days."
"My journalism professor swore by a good recorder. Not just for technical reasons but because it also gives a sense of journalistic authority." Richard shrugged. "Most of my class thought it was lame, but it made sense to me. Pen and paper, too. Old school."
"Old school," I nodded.
He set the recorder on the porch railing and clicked it on. Then he flipped open his notebook, and I saw pages of handwritten notes in small, precise script. It was not the haphazard scrawl I expected, but the handwriting of someone who organized his thoughts before committing them to paper.
"June 2, 2026. Speaking with Thomas Harmon at his cabin near Port Chasten."
He tapped the recorder and played back what he just said. Satisfied that everything was working, he started recording again.
"Thomas, I read everything you sent. The whole packet. Three times."
"What did you think of it?"
"Wowser." He shook his head slowly. "I mean, genuinely.
The boundary survey discrepancy alone is a story.
The original 1970 plat shows Mark James's property line running along the ridge at the east end.
Harlan Foster's 2001 resurvey moved it forty yards north.
Forty yards. That's not a rounding error, that's theft. "
"That's what I thought. I'm glad you agree."
"And the tax abatement scheme." Richard shuffled through a stack of papers in his messenger bag.
"Harlan Foster files conservation easements on parcels he controls through shell LLCs, claims the tax breaks, then turns around and leases the same parcels for commercial logging.
The county assessor either doesn't notice or doesn't care.
I'm guessing doesn't care since the assessor is a man named Darrel Kessler.
He and Harlan apparently go fishing in Mexico together every August."
"How do you know that?"
"The fishing I got by snooping social media.
Older folks love sharing pictures of the fish they caught.
Younger men, too, but whatever. Anyway, the rest I found in public disclosure documents.
The shell LLCs are registered in Olympia.
The names are different, but the registered agent is the same. A law office called Pryce & DeVille."
"How did you find all this?"
"Just basic journalism. I already pulled their corporate filings. They represent four LLCs, all created within eighteen months of each other. All list their principal address as a PO box in Olympia."
I looked at Richard. This young man had done his homework. More than his homework.
"Marcus Webb told me you were thorough," I said, marveling at the connection my old friend had made for me.
"Mr. Webb is being generous. I'm obsessive. There's a difference."
"How did he contact you?" I asked. "He mentioned knowing your father, but not much else."
"Yeah, so Mr. Webb and my father go back years.
Dad runs a venture capital firm in Seattle.
Boring stuff, but big money. He came to my graduation dinner and knew I had an investigative journalism degree.
Dad mentioned I was at the Bremerton Times covering, you know, school board meetings and pothole complaints.
Mr. Webb contacted me and said he had a story that might interest me. " Richard paused. "He was right."
"Marcus has good instincts about people."
"He said the same thing about you. He said you found things in Claire Beaumont's financial records that a forensic accountant would have missed. Your background in insurance claims gave you an eye for fraud?"
"I spent twenty-two years reading documents that people didn't want me to understand. After a while you learn to see what's missing. The gaps tell the story."
"That's a great quote. I'm using that."
"I don't know if it's great," I chuckled. "I just know it's true."
"Best kind." He took another swig of BrainJuzzy. "Okay. So here's what I have so far. The boundary fraud. The tax scheme. The well rights deception with Mark James and his family. That one is particularly ugly. She knows about that?"
"She does. And the other things. Claire is trying to find an attorney to take her case, but they all want really high fees paid up front."
"That's no surprise. These kinds of property disputes don't pay very well and take a long time. So Claire Beaumont is running a farm with legal issues she can't afford to litigate."
"That's right. It's how Harlan Foster works."
"Wowser." Richard said it quietly this time, almost under his breath. He looked up from his notebook. "This guy is a real piece of work."
"You've only seen half the picture."
Richard's pen stopped moving. "What do you mean?"
I had been watching the southern path for the last twenty minutes. Now I nodded toward the tree line at the south end of the property. A figure had appeared on the path that wound up from the creek, moving at the unhurried pace of a man who knew every root and stone.
Richard looked a little taken aback at the sight of Abner. I could understand why. Abner Flint was a striking person. His long blonde hair, streaked heavy with gray, hung past his shoulders, and his beard, fully gray, reached his chest.
He wore his usual flannel shirt, faded red, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Canvas trousers and boots that had been resoled at least twice. The Ruger GP100 rode on his hip in its deerskin flap holster, the shoulder strap crossing his torso.
Richard looked at me, apprehension in his eyes.
"That's Abner Flint," I said. "He's my neighbor. He's the other half of your story."
Abner reached the porch and stopped at the bottom of the steps. His blue eyes moved from me to Richard and back.
"Good morning, Thomas. Is this the reporter?"
"This is him. Richard Whitlock, Bremerton Times. Richard, Abner Flint."
Abner climbed the steps and extended his hand. Richard stood and shook it. I watched him take in the revolver, the mended clothes, the weathered face of a man who looked a decade older than his fifty-eight years.
"Thanks for coming, Abner. I think Richard is someone who should hear your story."
"Fair enough."
"I'll get a chair for you. And coffee."
I went inside, pulled a chair from the kitchen table, and poured a mug from the pot I had warming on the stove. When I came back out, Richard was sitting again and Abner was standing at the porch railing, looking out at the tree line.
I set the chair beside him and handed him the mug. He sat, took a sip, and set the mug on the railing next to Richard's recorder.
"Shall we begin?" Abner asked.
"Yes. Uh, do you mind if I record this, Mr. Flint?"
"I mind being called Mr. Flint. Name's Abner."
"Abner. Can I record?"
"You can, Richard."
Richard settled his notebook on his knee. "Thomas tells me you have history with Harlan Foster."
"I have sixteen years of history with Harlan Foster. None of them good."
"Can you start at the beginning? Whatever you're comfortable sharing."
Abner was quiet for a moment. A Steller's jay screamed from the Douglas fir at the corner of the porch. The sound echoed and faded.
"I served 22 years in the United States Army. Military Occupational Specialty 12P. Prime Power Production Specialist. When I got out, all I wanted was a home where my daughter could roam and grow, away from the poisonous influences of consumer society."
I listened as Abner detailed his story for Richard, going over the escalating harassment that culminated in his power being cut.
"I appealed at every level, right down to Olympia. County kept winning. They told me I must pay $32,000 to be code-compliant. I had a pension check and a six-year-old girl."
"Fucking outrageous," I muttered.
"Indeed. The system is built for men like Harlan. Patient men with money who understand that the process itself is the punishment."
"The process is the punishment," Richard repeated, writing it down.
"That's exactly right," I said.
Richard looked up from his notebook. His face had changed. The eagerness was still there, but something harder had settled underneath it.
"So what did you do?"