"When you bought this property," he asked, "did your title search mention a fisheries demonstration site?"
"No. It mentioned drainage easements and access rights for maintenance. Nothing about a fish farm."
He turned an aging photocopy around. It showed the same valley as a county agricultural survey dated 1978, long before anybody dreamed of putting two hundred expensive houses on the neighboring ridge. The present-day development was open land on the older map, and the creek bed behind it had a name I had never heard used. Riverstone Drainage Corridor.
Near the western edge of my pond was a small handwritten symbol. Beside it, a clerk had added the words FISHERIES DEMONSTRATION SITE. I read those words twice, then looked out my kitchen window as if the water might somehow answer a question I had not thought to ask in twenty years.
"Demonstration site," I said. "Does that mean the county owned my pond?"
"Not according to the recorded deed. Ownership and historic use are separate questions. It may mean your pond was once included in an experimental water-management or fish-breeding program. We need the actual agreements before we draw conclusions."
That was the thing I appreciated about Daniel. When he didn't know, he said he didn't know. Karen, by contrast, had a way of using an uncertain fact as the beginning of a command. If Daniel could find a map reference to an old program, he wanted the underlying record; if Karen found a reference, she would have issued a compliance notice before lunch.
He showed me a registration from a company called Ridgewater Fisheries LLC, which had operated on a parcel bordering the future Silver Ridge development. Its business description involved freshwater aquaculture, hatchery support, and selectively bred sport-fish stock. A separate reference pointed to a predecessor operation called Riverstone Fisheries. The names were different, but the land descriptions overlapped, and both appeared in documents mentioning the drainage corridor.
"The ponds that Karen emptied are where?" I asked.
Daniel traced the map. "The neighborhood's retention basins are on the higher end of the corridor. The old Riverstone facility was lower down, near this junction. Your pond lies beyond that, separated by the old channel and a culvert that only carries overflow during certain conditions."
"So somebody could move fish downstream without getting onto my road?"
"Some fish might move through the connected water during major runoff, depending on the barriers. But that isn't the same as a contractor bringing thousands of fish here by truck. The invoice proves somebody organized a transfer. It doesn't tell us who owned the fish or why your pond was selected."
I leaned over the map. There was a dotted line beside my eastern bank that I had always assumed described a maintenance trail. According to Daniel's older copy, it marked a former inspection route between the demonstration site and an aquatic reserve marker near the water. I knew the place: a muddy corner of shoreline hidden behind young willows and the remains of a wire fence.