The Court Heard What Holt Had Paid to Keep Hidden

By the time I testified the following June, Holt no longer worked for the city.

The outside audit had found undisclosed payments, false recovery records, and charges for work that had not been done. After a separate employment hearing, the city had fired him.

The criminal case still had to be proved.

Mara told me to remember that distinction. She represented me in my civil claim. A prosecutor handled the criminal case, and Holt had his own lawyer.

"Your job is to answer what they ask," she said. "You don't have to carry the whole harbor into the witness box."

I brought no envelopes to the stand.

I kept one in my jacket pocket, where my fingers could find its folded edge.

The prosecutor asked what my sled did.

"It carried survey sensors near the bottom," I said. "I used the readings to map depth and features."

"Could it cut a mooring cable?"

"It had no cutter. Anything towed through the water could snag something. That's one reason I recorded cable tension."

She asked about the morning in question. I described the shore cradle, breakfast, the launch, and the wake near Keene's wharf.

Holt's lawyer stood.

"You were interested in work connected with replacing that mooring?"

"I had priced survey support if the owner chose to replace it."

"So damage could benefit you."

"It could create work. It also stopped the work I already had."

"Your machine recorded what you programmed it to record."

"Its maker set the signing system. Celeste installed it. I chose the survey settings."

"You wanted Mr. Holt punished."

I looked at the glass of water beside me.

"I wanted my sled back. After I saw the bills, I wanted them checked."

Owen explained the records. Celeste explained her installation, tests, and export. The defense asked about clock errors. Both showed their written checks.

The prosecutor played the tow video without music, slow motion, or a circle around the launch. The jury watched the float roll until its M17 plate showed.

Then Neal Voss took the stand.

He had pleaded guilty under an agreement that required truthful testimony. The jury received the agreement. Holt's lawyer spent a long time asking about the lighter sentence Voss hoped to receive.

"Yes," Voss said. "I wanted less time."

"And you blame my client."

"I cut the cable. I'm not putting that on anyone else."

He said Holt had brought him out on Harbor 3 before dawn. A repair estimate was sitting unpaid. Declaring an emergency would let them remove the mooring and send a larger bill.

"He said the owner would pay once the permit was involved," Voss said.

The prosecutor showed a message recovered from Voss's phone.

Have it free before the survey starts. Same arrangement.

Voss said Holt sent it the night before. Investigators had tied the number to Holt's phone and recovered the matching message there.

The cutter had been checked out in Holt's name. The cut ends remained at North Reach. The launch log placed Holt aboard that morning. His own photo showed the freed cable on its deck before the time he named in his report about me.

Voss's word did not stand alone.

The auditor explained the money. Across seven jobs, $12,380 in charges reflected actual services. The remaining $52,400 covered inflated or repeated charges, false disposal fees, and work unsupported by records.

Only M17's damage had been tied to a planned cutting. The prosecutor did not claim every old failure was sabotage.

That care mattered to me.

For months, people had asked whether I thought he had ruined other moorings. I had always said I did not know. Hearing the same limit spoken in court let me breathe more easily. We had enough to prove without borrowing facts from fear.

Holt testified that he had used poor judgment in taking consulting fees. He said the cutter had only made an existing hazard safe. He called his report about my sled an honest mistake.

The prosecutor put his later insurance complaint beside the hearing decision.

"You sent the old claim after this decision was issued?"

"I still had concerns."

"You left out this decision?"

He said he had.

The jury returned guilty verdicts on the fraud, false statement, and property damage charges submitted to it.

Holt did not look at me when the clerk read them.

Outside, I stood beside Mara and watched rain run down the courthouse steps.

"I thought I'd feel louder," I said.

"You don't owe anyone a feeling."

My phone showed a message from a new client asking for an autumn survey price. I did not answer yet.

Before we left, the prosecutor handed me a notice. Sentencing was set for six weeks later, and the court would hear requests for restitution.