We Sealed The Survey Cards Before Anyone Could Call Them Missing

The next morning, October sixteenth, I met Soren at the shed. I did not take the cards home in my coat pocket.

I wanted to. My kitchen drawer felt safer than a shed with a cheap lock. But safe was not the same as useful when someone later asked where evidence had been.

Soren cleared our sample table. I called our director, Mae Ellis, and read her both sheets.

"Don't hand anything to Rusk alone," she said. "I'm coming."

"I intend to answer the demand."

"With witnesses."

While we waited, I photographed the card labels beside the day's newspaper and our field clock. Those pictures did not prove when the surveys happened. They showed what we had in our hands that afternoon.

I wrote that difference in the log.

Soren read it and nodded.

"No big claims," he said.

"Only claims we can support."

Mae arrived with an empty file box and the firm's lawyer on speakerphone. His name was Daniel Park. His first question was whether anyone had threatened to destroy the cards.

"No," I said. "They want possession."

"Then we arrange an inspection and verified copies. We preserve the originals. Send me the contract."

His fee to handle the citation hearing was $3,200. Mae offered to advance it against money our crew was owed.

I hated saying yes. I said it anyway.

We made two exact copies with the reader set to block changes. Daniel had a records specialist walk us through it. The software made a long code for each file, like a fingerprint. Matching codes showed that the copies matched the files we had copied.

"It doesn't make the camera clock holy," the specialist said.

"I know," I said. "We have other clocks."

There was the field meter, checked against our phone before each shift. There were sample bottle numbers, courier scans, lab receipts, and Soren's notes.

None stood alone. Together, they held a shape.

We sealed the original cards in numbered bags. Mae signed as custodian. Soren signed as witness. I signed as the person who had made the recordings.

Then we watched a copy of East Draw.

The image settled below the surface at 9:08 on October fourteenth. Brown leaves drifted past the measuring rod. My left glove entered the frame with the first slate.

Every few minutes, I brought a sample bottle or a depth card into view. The net's yellow repair crossed the lens when I checked the outlet lip.

At 10:18, I held up bottle ED-218.

At 10:21, I untangled its cap cord from my glove.

"I remember that," Soren said. "You told me to stop helping with both hands."

At 10:46, the courier met us at the bridge. Soren's log named the driver and seal number. The lab's pickup scan placed that bottle on the route at the same time.

We could ask the driver for a statement.

The underwater run continued until 11:36. There were no missing pieces between the slate and the final rod check.

That long record had started as a work habit. Short videos missed the moment a fish turned back from a drop. They also missed the slow rise of muddy water after a truck crossed upstream.

I had argued for full runs when storage cost us another $90. Mae had approved the expense.

Now I watched leaves slide through the same patch of light and was grateful we had kept the dull minutes, too.

"That's a long way from driving an excavator," Mae said.

"We still need to know when the digging started," I said.

We opened the Kettle Reach run from the day before.

The culvert mouth looked like a throat packed with gravel. I had moved the camera along the bank toward the fresh ditch. Its shallow water was cloudy, but the lens cleared near a root.

A white stake stood under the surface.

Soren leaned toward the screen.

"Back up."

We replayed it without making a new file.

Black numbers ran down the stake: 641.

Farther along stood 642, tied with blue flagging.

"Those aren't ours," he said.

"No."

Our crew used orange rods with broad depth marks. These were narrow county survey stakes, the kind Rusk kept in his truck.

I did not write that they were his. I wrote what the image showed.

Daniel sent preservation notices to the county and the developer. He asked for dispatch records, machine logs, photographs, inspection notes, and any message about my complaint.

I paid the $200 appeal filing fee before the office closed.

At home, I mended the second hole in my net. I had six empty workdays ahead of me and could not waste even one repair.

My phone rang at 8:12.

It was the county records officer.

"Your lawyer's notice reached us in time," she said.

"In time for what?"

She took a breath.

"An instruction to clear the field tablet. Mr. Rusk called it routine reconciliation."

Then she read me the subject line: "Proceed With Deletion After File Transfer."