The Investigator Sealed My Wood Samples Before The Trucks Left

Vance waved the check as if we had left lunch unfinished.

"Marnie forgot her pay."

Gideon stood beside me. "She seems to remember it."

"And you are?"

Gideon gave his name and office. Vance's hand lowered an inch.

"We had a little contract dispute," Vance said. "Nothing worth state time."

"Then the paperwork should be brief."

Vance put the check under my windshield wiper. Before he left, he nodded toward the scratched lock.

"Rough little neighborhood. You should find somewhere safer."

Gideon wrote those words down.

After a deputy photographed the door and took my statement, I unlocked the workroom. Gideon stayed by the threshold until I invited him in.

My sample cabinet stood under a roof vent. I had saved for its $390 price tag for four months. It looked like a place to keep sewing patterns.

"That it?" he asked.

"The glamorous side of tree work."

I showed him the core trays without lifting anything out. Eighteen pencil-thin lengths of wood lay in numbered grooves. My field book recorded where each came from. The survey's source file sat on an external drive beside it.

"Can these prove where a log came from?" he asked.

"Sometimes. Ring patterns can help. Narrow years, wide years, old wounds. But I won't promise a match from a glance. We need the stumps and the logs. We need someone else to check my work."

"Good," he said.

"Good that I can't promise?"

"People who promise everything tend to deliver a brochure."

I laughed before I meant to.

He photographed each tray in place. With my written consent, he packed the cores and drive in separate sealed containers. We listed every item on a receipt. I checked each number twice.

When he offered me a copy, I folded it into my bird notebook.

"Your backup file?" he asked.

"Stored off-site. Original dates, too."

He nodded. "Keep the location private."

Then he called Lena Vale, whose number I gave him. Nora's daughter had arranged my first site visit. She answered from Spokane and agreed to meet us at Alder Fold the next morning.

"My mother died in March," she said over speaker. "Why are you asking about a new cutting agreement?"

Gideon looked at me.

"We're trying to locate it," he said.

"So am I. Brogan keeps saying his office mailed it."

At home that night, I heated soup and checked my business page. Two new reviews called me confused and careless. One claimed I had marked healthy trees as dead for cash.

Neither name belonged to a client.

I saved the pages with the time shown, then shut the laptop. My hands shook once the lid was down.

Gideon called at eight.

"The deputy will include the lock damage in his report. Call emergency services if anyone comes to your home and won't leave. Don't meet Brogan alone."

"Is this the part where you tell me to stop working?"

"No. Rent remains stubbornly fond of being paid."

He told me a second investigator would join us at the forest. He also gave me the number for his office supervisor. I liked that. Protection should not depend on one man answering his phone.

At Alder Fold, Lena stood beside a locked gate with a folder held to her chest.

"Mother wanted this place quiet," she said.

Past the gate, the ground looked peeled. Slash lay across fern beds. Stumps shone pale under the clouds. A red-breasted nuthatch called from a thin strip of trees left beside the road.

I wrote the sound before we walked in.

Lena watched. "You still do that?"

"Helps me slow down."

I found tree A-17 by the rock at its roots. Its stump held the old scar I had measured in June. A small round hole from my borer remained near the cut edge, at the recorded height above the root flare.

Gideon's colleague photographed the stump, scale ruler, tag, and map position. I pointed. They collected.

"I don't want my hands muddying your record," I said.

"Your hands started the record," Gideon said. "We're adding witnesses."

Lena opened her folder. Nora had signed a forest care plan years earlier. It barred commercial cutting in the three marked stands. A later amendment confirmed those limits.

"Vance said she changed her mind," Lena said. "He charged the estate $18,400 for road repairs. Then the log trucks came."

By noon, Gideon had maps, fresh stump samples, and enough concerns to take to his supervisor and a prosecutor. Lena signed a complaint and gave written permission for more site work.

At the gate, Gideon's phone rang.

He listened without speaking, then turned toward town.

"Brogan has booked six loaded trucks out of his yard at five tomorrow morning."