Chapter 13
The pond had warmed through two weeks of June sun until the water felt like bathwater in the shallows, but the coldness still deepened toward the center.
I floated on my back, arms spread, staring up at a sky so blue it looked almost fake, the kind of sky they'd use in one of those weird perfume commercials.
Grace lay stretched out on the grass in a bikini top and cutoff shorts, one arm thrown over her eyes, the other resting on her stomach. She'd arrived an hour ago with a towel and a paperback.
A northern flicker called out nearby, making me grin as I recognized its call. Then another sound, unexpected. The high whine of a small engine, gravel popping under tires.
I stood in water and watched the old Prius emerge from the treeline, its cracked windshield catching the sun in a jagged line of light. The bumper sticker was legible even from the pond: DEMOCRACY DIES IN DORKNESS.
Richard parked and climbed out with his messenger bag slung across his chest and a tall neon-orange can of BrainJuzzy in his right hand. He stood for a moment, surveying the clearing, looking for me.
He found Grace first.
She'd propped herself up on her elbows at the sound of the car, her bikini top shifting as she moved. Her legs were crossed, tanned and inked and very much on display.
"Hey," she called. "You lost?"
Richard's mouth opened, but nothing came out. He adjusted his glasses with the hand holding the BrainJuzzy and nearly poured neon orange liquid down his polo shirt. He caught the can, over-corrected, sloshed some onto his khakis, and stood there with a wet stain spreading across his thigh.
"I'm, uh..." He cleared his throat. "Richard. Richard Whitlock. I'm here to see Thomas. Mr. Harmon. I have a, we have a meeting. An appointment. Not an appointment, exactly, but a planned, uh..."
"You need to borrow my towel?" Grace grinned. "For those pants?"
"I'm good. It will dry in the sun, I think."
I swam to the bank and pulled myself out. I was glad I'd decided to wear shorts today. Water streamed off me and I grabbed my towel from the grass where I'd left it.
Richard spotted me and the relief on his face was so naked it was almost painful.
"Thomas. Hey. Good to see you."
"Richard." I toweled off my hair and nodded toward Grace. "This is Grace Kim. She's staying on the property. Grace, Richard's the reporter I told you about."
"From the Bremerton Times, right?" She tilted her head at the bumper sticker. "Democracy Dies in Dorkness. That's actually pretty good. Your idea?"
"No, I didn't make it up." Richard took a sip of BrainJuzzy and attempted to look casual, but the wet stain on his khakis undermined the effort. "It was a graduation gift."
"From who? Your mom?"
"No." He paused. "Okay, yes, my mom got me the bumper sticker. But I picked it out."
Grace laughed and Richard grinned in return.
"Come on up to the porch," I told him. "I've got iced tea if you want something with a little less caffeine than that energy drink."
"Never," Richard joked.
I pulled on a shirt and led him up from the pond. Grace gathered her towel and paperback and followed without being asked.
"Wowser, this setup looks really sophisticated," Richard said as we passed the solar panels.
"Those feed the batteries in that shed," I said, pointing. "Power direct from the sun. More than makes up for the cut line."
"Quite the act of defiance."
"Well, Abner is a defiant man. I couldn't have done any of this without him."
We climbed onto the porch and I poured glasses of iced tea from the insulated pitcher by my front door.
Richard settled into one of the porch chairs and pulled a spiral notebook from his messenger bag.
Grace dropped into the other chair and tucked her feet under her, still in the bikini top, towel around her shoulders.
"I was in the area and thought I'd fill you in on my progress," Richard said.
"Excellent. I'd like to hear what you found."
Richard glanced at me. The question was in his eyes.
"Grace can stay," I said. "She was here when Harlan showed up."
That got his attention. The notebook came up.
"Harlan Foster was here? When?"
"Three nights ago. Came at dusk. Drove up the driveway without invitation in his fancy Range Rover."
"Walk me through it."
I sat on the porch rail and told him. The headlights. The charm offensive. The offer to buy my property at above market value. The sudden turn toward pressure when I didn't take the bait. And then I told him the part that mattered.
"He knows someone's been pulling files at the county records office. Files with his name on them. He said it to my face."
Richard's pen stopped moving. He looked up from the notebook, and I watched him process it. It wasn't fear, but something more measured than that. The calculation of a journalist who'd been working a story from a safe distance and just learned the distance had closed.
"What were his exact words?"
I thought back. "He said he heard a young kid was snooping around the county records. Pulling files. Making copies. He didn't name you directly, but it was clear he knew what was happening."
Richard wrote it down in quick, tight script.
"Did he frame it as a warning? A threat?"
"He framed it as friendly concern, the way he frames everything. But the message was obvious. He knows, and he wants me to know he knows."
"Dude went from Mister Rogers to Bond villain in like ten seconds," Grace said. "At first he was all folksy grandpa, butterscotch candy, big smile. Then Thomas said no and it was like watching someone peel off a mask. He started talking about Thomas's personal life. About Aimee and Claire."
"Aimee?"
"A friend of mine in Port Chasten," I answered.
"What did he say about them?" Richard's pen was ready.
"Gross stuff about Aimee and Claire's sexual history. Basically implying Thomas was sleeping his way around town and people would start talking if he didn't cooperate." Grace's jaw tightened. "He checked out my car too. Walked over and looked at the plates like he was memorizing them."
Richard wrote steadily. When he finished, he sat back and read over his notes in silence. The BrainJuzzy sat forgotten on the porch beside him, sweating in the heat.
"This fits," he said. "Everything he did that night fits the pattern I've been documenting."
He flipped back several pages in the notebook and laid out what he'd found. His voice changed when he got into the material. The stammering kid from the clearing was gone, replaced by someone precise and methodical who'd spent weeks inside county records and come out with something solid.
Richard had found the tax abatement fraud went back to 1991.
Harlan had filed falsified boundary documents on at least four properties, claiming acreage that wasn't his to reduce his tax burden.
The county had accepted these filings without challenge.
Richard had pulled the original boundary surveys from the state archives in Olympia and laid them against the county records. They didn't match.
"The county signatures are the problem," Richard said. "Or the opportunity, depending on how you look at it. I've got filings from 1993 and 1997 signed by a county assessor named Dale Worthing. Dale Worthing retired in 1989. He wasn't in office when those documents were signed."
"Someone forged his signature?"
"Or used his name on a rubber stamp. Either way, the dates don't work.
Same thing with a 2004 conservation easement filed through an LLC called Olympic Heritage Holdings.
That LLC is registered to a P.O. box in Olympia.
I traced it through state business records to a second LLC called Peninsula Land Trust, which shares a registered agent with Harlan's personal real estate company. "
"Shell companies," I said.
"Three layers deep. Really complicated stuff."
"What about Abner?" I asked. "How long has Harlan been doing this to him?"
"The code enforcement complaints against Abner's property started in 2011.
Every single one originated from an anonymous tip line.
The county can't legally disclose who filed them, but the pattern is obvious.
Every time Abner refused to sell, a new complaint appeared.
Electrical violations, septic violations, zoning violations.
The electricity cutoff was just the latest."
"Goddamn," I muttered in disgust.
Richard closed the notebook and held it against his chest.
"Thomas, I want to be straight with you about something."
"Go ahead."
"This story is bigger than I thought it was when I started.
What I walked in with was a local corruption piece.
What I have now spans more than three decades of systematic fraud, a disabled veteran who came home only to have his own county government turned against him, and an active intimidation campaign against you.
This has regional legs. I mean, this could be Pulitzer material for an investigative feature. "
He said it plainly, a statement of assessment, not ambition.
"But?" I asked, sensing his hesitation.
"But the Bremerton Times is a twelve-person operation with a legal budget that probably wouldn't cover one round of discovery motions if Harlan decided to sue.
Running a story that names someone with his money and his connections is a risk my editor has to calculate in real terms. Libel defense costs money. "
"Does your editor know what you have?"
"She knows the outline. I've been feeding her pieces as I verify them.
She's interested, but she hasn't committed.
" Richard picked up the BrainJuzzy, took a long pull, set it down.
"This is the part of investigative journalism they don't romanticize.
You can have the story cold. Every fact nailed down, every source confirmed, every document authenticated.
And it still might not run because the paper can't afford the risk of printing it. "