The footage did not show every action at the water's edge. It did establish that the vehicle had been there at a time when no one had permission to work on my land. Jim copied the video through the proper evidence process and took Mrs. Henderson's statement.
He told me not to confront the contractor or Vivian. I didn't argue. There was too much at stake now for the satisfaction of shouting across a driveway.
By late morning the preliminary picture was bleak. A chemical had almost certainly been introduced into the lake, and a copper-based algaecide was one possible cause. The fish kill was extensive, and testing would have to determine the concentration, distribution, and implications for the food chain. I asked whether we could save anything. Jim looked toward the far bank where a few birds stood in uneasy silence and said, "We can stop more damage if we move carefully. That's our first job."
Sandra came down the path carrying coffee neither of us wanted. She stood beside me on the dock and looked out across the dead water. For a long while she didn't speak. Then she said, "Your grandfather would tell you not to do something stupid just because you're hurting." I nodded.
"He'd probably say it twice," I answered. She took my hand. "Then listen to him."
That was the morning the fight stopped being about a dock.
The laboratory results arrived in stages. The first confirmed elevated copper concentrations in the lake water and tissues from the fish Jim's team had collected. The formulation was consistent with a copper-based algaecide, though the laboratory needed more work to match it to a specific product. Tests also showed unusually low dissolved oxygen in portions of the lake. The combination could explain the sudden, widespread deaths far better than any story about a natural algae bloom.
Jim called me before he released the report. "We're treating this as a serious contamination incident," he said. "You were right to keep people away. No swimming, no fishing, no animals drinking it, and no use of the water until we can clear it." I asked how long that would take. He did not give me an estimate, and I appreciated him for refusing to pretend.
The part that frightened me most was what he said next. "We also need to review groundwater connections. I know you have a consultant examining the spring."
I told him about Dr. Mitchell's preliminary maps. "Have him call our technical team," Jim said. "If the subdivision's supply wells communicate with this lake through shallow fractures, we need to know before we wait for a complaint from somebody's kitchen faucet."
I went inside and called James Mitchell. He came that afternoon, parking his mud-spattered truck beside the equipment shed. He didn't offer the dramatic outrage that I was beginning to feel in my bones. He asked for the sampling results, the site map, and the development's well records, then spent a long time looking at the contours and pumping reports. "The lake is mostly fed by groundwater," he told me.