Marjorie did not like that answer. She was accustomed to choosing the framework in which a disagreement would be judged, and Tessa had refused to accept her terms. The investigator was not angry, and for that reason Marjorie could not redirect her by portraying disagreement as personal hostility. All she could do was watch the papers leave the SUV inside evidence sleeves.
A finance analyst called Tessa shortly before eight. Court-authorized preservation had identified a conditional transfer of two million four hundred thousand dollars associated with the completion of the access road. The records indicated the payment was to benefit a company tied to Marjorie, and an approval entry bore the name Nolan Price, the deputy county recorder. Investigators had not yet established whether Nolan had personally authorized it, but the account connection was strong enough to change the scope of the inquiry.
Tessa walked to Laurel and Brennan, who had arrived at the outer command post. "We may have a government access problem," she said. "A payment linked to the road uses a county-records official's credentials. It connects the false boundary change to the proposed construction. We need to preserve the original server entries before anybody can alter the history."
Brennan asked the obvious question. "Is this the same Nolan Price who met with Everett when the false addendum appeared?"
"Yes," Tessa replied. "We have an account name, not yet a confession. I'm requesting the supporting records and legal authority for the relevant offices."
Laurel looked toward the farmhouse. "Then this has reached beyond the association," she said. "Let your team handle it. I don't want my husband's complaint to be the only thing anybody sees when they open that case."
Sheriff Grant Mercer arrived soon afterward, not with a parade of deputies but in his ordinary county vehicle and an expression that suggested he had been awake long before his alarm. He walked the damaged entrance with Everett before either spoke about an apology. The sheriff stopped at the place where the gate latch had torn free and looked down the road toward the dark line of Silverbriar roofs.
"Your calls shouldn't have been sent back to that association for review," Grant said. "I'm not going to pretend I didn't see the reports. My office closed four of your complaints over the last year as private boundary matters. Some of those reports included allegations of tampering with public markers and threats of unauthorized entry. We should have examined the criminal questions instead of assuming somebody else would handle them."
Everett did not immediately forgive him. "I asked for the records to be checked," he said. "I wasn't asking your deputies to choose me over my neighbors. I was asking them to find out whether the documents were real. Every time your office said 'civil,' Marjorie wrote another letter as though somebody had given her permission."
Grant nodded. "You're right. Three weeks ago Nolan Price asked one of my supervisors not to interfere with any supposed enforcement action out here unless there was obvious violence. We treated it as a courtesy call about a legal matter. That was a mistake, and it's being reviewed."
"There are people who can't afford one mistake from a sheriff's office," Everett said. "I've got a lawyer and cameras. What happened to the people who had neither?"