He folded it into a clear plastic sleeve and walked toward his truck. His path took him directly past my porch.
He stopped at the bottom of the steps. He did not look up at me at first. He looked at the empty pond bed for a long moment.
Then he looked at the exposed spillway. Then he looked at the porch railing. Then at me.
He said, "Sir, may I ask you something?"
I told him he could.
He said, "What was this structure?"
I told him briefly. "Stormwater retention. Sixty years. Registered. Designated permanent on the 1992 subdivision plat. Removed today without a state demolition permit."
He went quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "Ma'am over there told us it was a private water feature on a hobby farm. She told us it was unregulated. She showed us a county notice. She did not show us any plat."
I asked him if he would be willing to put that in writing.
He took a business card out of his wallet. He wrote his cell number on the back in pen. He handed it to me.
He said, "If you need a statement, you call me. I will give you one. I have been doing this work for 26 years, and I have never knocked down a registered structure in my life. If she lied to us, I want the record to show I did not know."
I thanked him. He walked to his truck. He drove out.
Linda walked past my porch on the gravel road five minutes later on her way to her own car. She did not look at me.
She straightened the cream blazer at the lapel and said just loud enough for Marcus to hear, "Some people just can't accept progress."
I had what I needed.
That night in my study, I printed three things and put them in a single new folder. The folder was red. I labeled it in felt-tip pen: October.
The first was the NOAA Climate Prediction Center's seasonal outlook for the region for the months of October through December. The probability of above-average precipitation: 60 percent. The probability of well above average: 33. The probability of below average: 7.
The second was the county GIS elevation map of the subdivision. I had printed it in color.
Lot 14, Linda's cul-de-sac, was the lowest grade in the development by three vertical feet. The next four lowest lots were the cul-de-sac immediately adjacent. Six houses total sat in what an engineer would call, without irony, a natural collection basin.
The third was a single page of my own hydraulic calculation. I had run the numbers three different ways. Conservative case. Average case. Wet-season case.