“It’ll be on final documentation.”
“Tell me now.”
“I don’t memorize numbers.”
“Name of your firm?”
“Precision Boundary Solutions.”
“Insurance carrier?”
Rick started packing.
“There’s a calibration issue I want to verify.”
“You just billed me eight hundred dollars.”
“I’ll return.”
He did.
A week later.
This time he had rented professional-looking equipment and brought two assistants.
For three hours, they created theater.
Tripods.
GPS-looking receivers.
Orange flags.
Clipboards.
Rick announced that historical county maps relied on “obsolete reference points.”
My driveway was supposedly partly shared easement.
My garden shed allegedly sat on Willowbrook property.
Brenda appeared the next morning.
Thirty days to move the shed.
Easement agreement for driveway use.
Fine schedule if I refused.
I did not argue.
I hired Jennifer Cole.
Jennifer was a licensed professional land surveyor who had been practicing twenty-seven years.
She spent the first afternoon researching deeds before placing a single instrument on my land.
That alone told me how badly Rick’s work had been performed.
Her crew returned for two days.
They found monuments.
Checked historical plats.
Verified bearings.
Matched my deed.
At the end Jennifer stood beside the eastern corner and drove a capped stake into the ground.
“County line is right.”
“Exactly?”
“Within normal record tolerances. Your shed is yours. Driveway is yours. Willowbrook begins over there.”
She pointed.
Roughly where every legitimate map said.
“And Rick?”
Jennifer looked at his report.
“This document has no reliable survey basis.”
“Can you say that in writing?”
“Yes.”
“Will you?”
“Yes.”
Then she pointed toward Willowbrook’s decorative entrance monument.
“That’s interesting.”
“What?”
“Part of their sign appears to sit in a county right-of-way.”
I laughed.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“Please don’t move it.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“I just want the irony preserved.”
She almost smiled.
The licensing board confirmed the rest.
Rick’s survey license had been suspended two years earlier after disciplinary action involving falsified boundary work during a property dispute.
He was not authorized to provide the survey he gave me.
Marcus’s reaction was short.
“Excellent.”
“That sounds evil.”
“It sounds evidentiary.”
Brenda did not retreat.
She changed weapons.
My property shared a legitimate utility easement along part of the east side.
Twenty feet wide.
Electric.
Water.
Gas.
Nothing unusual.
One Tuesday, I woke to three utility trucks on my lawn.
A supervisor named Mike Reynolds apologized before I even asked.
“We got an emergency access complaint.”
“About what?”
“Irrigation allegedly obstructing a main.”
My sprinkler system had been installed two months earlier by a licensed company.
Permitted.
Marked.
Mike’s crew dug test points.
Checked access.
Three hours.
No problem.
“Who complained?”
He showed me the form.
Brenda Kowalski.
The next week came the gas leak.
Six in the morning.
Fire trucks.