Captain lay beneath the desk while the ceiling fan turned. James looked at the page and felt the old familiarity of a case beginning to take shape. He had retired from law enforcement because he wanted a quiet life, but retirement had not erased the habits that kept him alive and useful. He knew how to wait. He knew how to separate what he suspected from what he could establish. Most of all, he knew that a person who believed there were no consequences for a small abuse of power rarely stopped at the first one.
He called Harlan and said he wanted to consider formal litigation. Harlan answered that some claims were ready, others needed further investigation, and any accusation involving theft or fraud would require careful treatment. He advised James not to provoke Patricia or invite a confrontation merely to strengthen a case. "If she makes another move on her own," Harlan said, "we'll document it. But we don't need to manufacture one."
"I wasn't planning to," James replied. "I've got a pond that needs clearing and two horses who don't care what the board votes."
He meant it. For the next several weeks he concentrated on Whitfield. He repaired the fence around the south pasture, took Captain to the veterinarian, and invited Cole Mitchell and Cole's wife to dinner on a free weekend. He cooked steak on the grill, served tomatoes from his garden, and talked about everything except Patricia.
The respite did not last. One Wednesday in March, the sound of a hammer came from the eastern edge of his land, followed by the metallic clatter of a truck door. James put down Duke's brush, crossed the pasture, and found strangers planting stakes inside his property line.
A white pickup stood at an odd angle near the east pasture fence. Its door bore the name Corley Land Services, and a man in an orange vest was kneeling beside a wooden stake that had been driven into the grass. Another stake stood forty feet farther west, where James knew the land was still his. Orange survey ribbon fluttered from a branch nearby. Duke watched the operation from a safe distance, his ears moving as if he were trying to understand why humans had developed such elaborate methods of telling each other where to stand.
"Morning," James said, stopping several yards from the worker. "Who's directing this survey?"
The man straightened. He was in his thirties, with a shaved head and mud on his knees. He introduced himself as Eli Parrish and said the crew was doing a boundary assessment for Palmetto Crest Estates. He held out a folded work order signed by Patricia Davenport. The attached diagram labeled a strip of James's pasture as proposed community green space and placed the eastern boundary forty feet west of its position on the recorded plat.
James studied the drawing, then looked at Eli. "Did a licensed surveyor establish that line here in the field?"
"Our supervisor sent us the points," Eli answered. "Mr. Corley checked the office plat. We're supposed to mark it before the landscape crew comes."