The work caused tension with Cho. She worried our informal interviews might complicate formal witness statements. Simone advised us to stop asking leading questions and to refer anyone with relevant documents directly to investigators. I was frustrated because I wanted to keep moving, but she was right. When people feel unheard, it is tempting to become both advocate and detective. The roles can interfere with each other. I concentrated on the maps, where I had genuine expertise, and left the interviews to trained investigators.
Graham visited on Saturday and found me rebuilding one of Dad's wooden shelves. He watched for several minutes before offering to hold the plank while I drove the screws. We worked in silence. Then he told me about the first day he met my father. Harold had brought an old truck to Graham's workshop in a thunderstorm and insisted the engine only needed a new coil. Graham thought the diagnosis was wrong. Harold was right. They argued for an hour over the price of the part and became friends before the storm ended.
'He was stubborn even when he was frightened,' Graham said.
'He was frightened most of the time after Mom died.'
'Yes. I think he forgot that being frightened isn't the same as being helpless.'
I set down the screwdriver. 'You helped him hide this for decades.'
'I did. And I regret some of that. But there were people with authority who wanted the evidence destroyed. We had already watched two women disappear and another one die. The system hadn't earned our confidence.'
'It still might have worked.'
'Maybe. That's the part I live with.'
He looked at the shelf, which was crooked, and gently loosened a screw so I could align the board. The small act made me unexpectedly emotional. Men like Graham and my father could spend their lives hiding behind practical tasks, yet those tasks sometimes revealed exactly what they could not say. I asked him to tell me about Evelyn as a young woman. He said she loved loud music, hated being underestimated and could hear an engine misfire before anyone else in the shop. 'She'd argue until midnight,' he said. 'Then she'd show up at dawn to help you with a broken axle. Never held the same grudge two days in a row.'
He took a photograph from his wallet, one too creased to fit flat on the table. It showed Evelyn sitting on the hood of the Chevelle with a paper crown on her head. 'Birthday party,' he said. 'She turned twenty-one and announced she was going to drive across the country. She made it as far as Tennessee before the transmission failed.' He smiled and put the photograph away. The smile remained for a moment and then faded. I could see how missing someone could become a physical habit, something the body practiced even in sleep.
On Sunday morning a local television crew arrived outside the property. Their reporter asked if I would explain the allegations against the county. I declined an on-camera interview and gave them a short written statement prepared with Simone: we supported the investigation, would cooperate with lawful requests and would not speculate about unresolved matters. The reporter seemed disappointed. She asked whether I believed a prominent developer had arranged my mother's death. I said I did not know. She asked how I felt about the possibility. I said my feelings were not evidence. Later, when the segment aired, they used three seconds of me shutting the garage door and a voiceover describing the mystery as a 'shocking conspiracy.' I understood then why Cho disliked cameras almost as much as rumors.
The publicity brought people to the property. Two strangers drove slowly past with their phones raised. A man knocked to ask if he could buy the Chevelle once the police released it. Another left flowers at our gate and a note saying his father had lost a house in the land deal. Peter installed a temporary sign asking visitors not to enter. We worried it made us seem unfriendly; then someone stepped over the chain and tried to photograph the workshop through the window, and the question answered itself.
At a town council meeting that week, residents demanded access to the historical flood studies. The current council chair said the county would publish all available records after a legal review. Several former property owners asked whether the review would include independent experts. A younger council member proposed hiring an outside engineering firm, but others worried about cost. I sat in the back beside Omar and listened to the debate. In the middle of it a woman stood and asked whether the county would remember that the people whose houses had been labeled unsafe were not all still alive. Nobody answered for a moment. Her question did more to quiet the room than any accusation.
Afterward, I found her in the corridor. Her name was Claire Montero. Her parents had lived near the west ridge; her father died before he saw the homes built on land he sold at a loss. She carried a folder containing all his correspondence with the county. 'I don't need a fortune,' she said. 'I want someone to put on paper that he wasn't foolish. He knew the assessment was wrong. They made him feel foolish anyway.'
I told her about Simone and the preservation process, careful not to give legal advice. She said she had waited twenty years to speak to someone who would look at the documents without changing the subject. As we parted she asked whether my father had been happy at the end of his life. I didn't know what to say. She explained that he had once visited her father's house to repair a generator during a winter outage. He refused payment because, he said, the neighbors had already paid too much for things they did not receive. I promised to remember the story.
Later that night, I stood in the garage holding one of Dad's wrenches. He had helped people in ways he never told us about and failed us in ways he could not undo. Both were true. I had spent years imagining that understanding a parent meant deciding which truth was the real one. The investigation was teaching me that a life could hold contradiction without becoming meaningless. It was a lesson I wished I had learned while he was still alive, when an argument might have ended in conversation rather than an unread letter.
There was a private meeting with Simone the following Monday. She explained that the landowners might have several avenues for civil relief, depending on limitations periods, discovery rules and whether specific fraud could be established. She also warned that successful litigation did not automatically return property or repair every loss. 'You might get a judgment,' she said, 'but you don't get back the birthdays your mother missed or the years your brother spent afraid at home.' I told her I understood. Yet it helped to hear a lawyer say there were harms the law could acknowledge without curing.