Chapter 3 - The Audit of the Soil
The city of Oakhaven does not possess a public mortgage index; the records are kept on long, horizontal steel rollers inside the basement vault of the 1892 courthouse, where the air smells of old vinegar and dry-rotted leather bond.
By five in the morning, the yellow lights of the county service trucks were visible through the basement windows, their wheels throwing a thick, grey slurry of wet gravel against the foundation walls as they cleared the gutters for the morning commute.
I was standing between two rows of steel shelving with the county archivist, an old woman named Mrs. Okafor whose grandfather had cleared the original timber lines for the rail company in 1912. She had a long, narrow ledger open across her apron, her grey thumb pointing at the red ink entries from the winter of 1978.
"The Vale family didn't buy that land on the ridge, Martin," she said, her voice dropping down into that dry, rattling frequency that sounds like dry grass rubbing against a cellar door. "Their grandfather leased the surface rights from your father for ninety-nine years to run the old fruit packing plant. When the plant burnt down in '84, they filed a secondary corporate deed that claimed the underlying acreage under the abandoned infrastructure act."
"The act requires a twenty-year continuous use certificate, Mrs. Okafor," I said, my flashlight illuminating the small, circular blue ink seal at the base of the page.
"They didn't have a certificate," she said. "They had a signature from the county surveyor who died in the river accident that same November. Look at the blue ink on the line, Martin. That’s not the standard state registry fluid. That’s the aniline dye they used for the commercial timber maps in the company office down at the wharf."
I took my digital camera from my coat pocket and took three close-up photographs of the blue seal, the lens catching the small, irregular white flakes where the aniline dye had cracked into the grain of the ledger paper over thirty-six years.
Behind us, the heavy iron door of the vault swung back with a long, metallic groan that vibrated the steel shelving units.
Brandon Vale stood in the doorway, his white shirt still damp from the rain, his grey trousers covered in yellow clay from the driveway on the ridge. He was accompanied by two city police officers—the ones who drove the commercial cruisers with the private security logos on the rear panels.
"That's enough, Martin," Brandon said, his mouth curving into that small, thin line of his lower lip that didn't reveal his teeth. "The archivist office is closed to the public until eight. The officers have an order from the municipal judge to clear the building of unauthorized persons."
"I'm not the public, Brandon," I said, closing the 1978 ledger with a sharp, heavy thud that sent a small cloud of grey paper dust into the light of his flashlight. "The underlying deed for this courthouse block was registered under the Rowan Family Trust in 1894. The city pays one dollar a year to lease the ground beneath these stones, and under section four of that lease, the trustees retain the right of unrestricted access to the archival storage fields at any hour of the day or night."
The two officers looked at each other, their hands remaining on their utility belts, but neither of them stepped across the threshold of the vault. They knew the name on the brass plaque near the front entrance—the one that read Rowan Memorial Hall.
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"You think because you have some old paper you can stop the development project downtown, Martin?" Brandon sneered, stepping closer until his wet leather loafers were within three inches of my boots. "My family’s firm is the only entity in this valley that can clear the tax lines on the old wharf site before the sheriff's auction next month. If the project doesn't clear the council on Monday, the bank takes the whole district, including your father's old customs office."
"The bank doesn't hold the note, Brandon," I said, pulling the blue plat map from my work jacket and laying it flat across the archivist’s desk. "The note was purchased by the Rowan Trust at four-thirty yesterday afternoon. Your uncle Arthur signed the assignment form before he left his office for the country club."
