The Pipe Camera Found A Branch Where The Cap Had Been

Owen arrived Thursday at eight with a camera reel strapped inside his van.

Blaine was waiting at the courtyard gate.

"This man no longer works here," he told Owen, pointing at me. "You won't be paid."

"I paid the booking fee," I said.

"And we have access in writing," Owen added.

June Arlen came out of Number Four carrying a folder. She was the association secretary, and Ruth had sent her the recorded easement the night before.

"I checked with our counsel," June said. "A camera through the existing inlet is within the access rights. No digging today. I've notified the other directors."

"I am the president."

"You're one director, Blaine."

He stepped aside just far enough to make us brush the gate.

Owen photographed the inlet before he opened it. I had pulled leaves from its grate the morning after the flood. Below it, the basket was clear. He filmed that, too.

"Do you want me to tell you what I hope we find?" I asked.

"After I make my own notes."

That was worth $425 to me.

He lowered the camera and fed it into the overflow pipe. On his screen, the inside looked like a long gray throat. The first forty feet were clear. No roots. No packed mulch. No mass of leaves.

At fifty-eight feet, the camera reached standing water.

"There," Blaine said. "Blocked. By garden dirt."

Owen kept feeding the cable.

"I don't know what it is yet."

At 63.4 feet, the side branch appeared. Its old cap was gone. A black plastic pipe came through a rough opening. Below it lay pale gravel and a strip of orange plastic.

Owen stopped.

"New material at the branch. Debris in the main. We'll measure before we draw conclusions."

I opened the old inspection on my laptop beside his monitor. Same concrete patch. Same seam shaped like a bent thumb. In the old recording, a gray cap closed that opening, and the bottom of the main was clean.

June leaned between the screens.

"Someone connected something," she said.

"That could have been there for years," Blaine said.

"Not when this was recorded," Owen answered.

He saved the new recording without changing its file name. He gave June and me copies and kept the original on his recorder. Leena arrived in time to watch him measure the cable against the site plan.

"It lines up with the apron," she said.

Blaine folded his arms. "You still haven't shown it goes to my garage."

He was right about that. I wrote it down, though I hated giving him even that much.

We had shown a change. We hadn't yet proved who made it or where it led.

Owen would not push past the debris. He said the camera could lodge there and make matters worse. He also would not run water without knowing whether it might reach Nora's basement.

"This isn't a demonstration," he told Blaine. "It's an inspection."

Nora stood beside the walk. She had brought her damaged furnace service report.

"Thank you," she said.

Blaine went inside his garage and shut the door.

At my truck, Leena spread a clean sheet over the hood. She added the new branch to my sketch but left its far end blank.

"No blue rings yet?" she asked.

"Not on that end."

June watched me draw the line from memory.

"He told us you couldn't read plans," she said.

"He never asked me to."

She looked down at the fine in her folder.

"There was no board vote on this. He put it on the agenda as a completed action."

"Will you put that in writing?"

"Yes."

At noon, Ruth had the new video, Owen's notes, June's statement, and both survey sheets. I sent the full files, then drove the originals to her office on a drive. She labeled the envelope and had me sign a simple record of what I had delivered.

"Don't call it fraud in public," she said. "Tell me what happened. Let the papers carry the weight."

We were preparing a request to stop work over the junction when my phone rang.

It was Cal Mercer, the paving contractor. His number was on the notice posted at the courtyard gate.

"You left me a message about buried access," he said. "I'm looking at two drawings, and one has a box missing."

"That's the junction."

"My crew has been told to bury it under compacted base this afternoon."

I stood up so fast my chair hit the wall.

"The notice says tomorrow."

"The president changed the schedule. He says the drainage dispute is settled."

"It isn't."

There was a long pause.

"Then somebody needs to send me something official," Cal said. "His latest instruction says fill starts at four-thirty."