Chapter 4 - The Evaluation of the Perimeter
The response from my legal counsel, Silas Vance—a seventy-two-year-old title attorney who spent his winters in a log house near the Roaring Fork river with nothing but three bird dogs and a collection of nineteenth-century mining law journals—was delivered at seven-fifteen the next morning via an encrypted facsimile transmission.
"The papers Wesley was printing are non-binding without a notarized signature from the primary trustee, Valerie," the old man said when I called him from the kitchen landline, his voice carrying the dry, crackling texture of a man who had spent forty years watching corporate land-grabbers try to clear the old families out of the high valleys. "But the fact that he had the combination to the iron safe indicates an active security leak within your domestic perimeter. Did you give him the secondary key to the gatehouse?"
"He took the master remote from my truck dashboard three weeks ago," I said, my eyes tracking the movement of a lone magpie across the frozen garden beds outside the window. "He told me he was taking it to the local locksmith to have the battery cells replaced. He must have cloned the frequency code for his mother’s suburban."
"Change the relays before the weekend, Valerie," Silas said. "The Hayes family has a six-million-dollar note coming due at the Denver bank on the first of November. If they can't show the auditors that they have an equitable share in your water rights and the ridge land parcel, the board will initiate an involuntary restructuring of their commercial real estate pool. They aren't looking for a place to eat cake; they're looking for a primary asset asset they can pledge against their secondary debt line."
I spent the next forty-eight hours executing the technical modifications myself. I cleared the electronic remote relays from the gatehouse control box, replacing them with a manual, rolling-code system that required a six-digit digital sequence known only to me and Joe the stonemason. I changed the internal locks on every door of the slate house, installing heavy, case-hardened steel cylinders that had been shipped from an industrial security firm in Chicago.
Finally, I mounted a third high-resolution security camera beneath the eaves of the office wing, its optic field calibrated to record any physical contact with the lower safe drawers.
Wesley did not return to the house during the week. He sent three text-only messages from his corporate number, each one maintaining the flat, unmodulated cadence of a professional travel coordinator.
—Mother’s vehicles will arrive at thirteen-thirty on Saturday. The catering van from the Mexican restaurant requires four feet of clearance at the kitchen bay. Ensure the walnut sideboards are moved back to the main dining room by Friday noon.
I did not offer a digital reply. I went down to the equipment shed, started the three-ton diesel tractor, and moved two massive blocks of un-split grey granite from the woodpile until they sat exactly twenty-four inches from the secondary fence line, restricting the lower parking lane to a single vehicle width that could be monitored from the kitchen island.
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When the clock on the microwave display reached one o'clock on Saturday afternoon, I brewed a pot of black chicory tea, adjusted the contrast on the two closed-circuit monitors, and waited for the Hayes family name to clear the valley road.
The storm had passed, leaving the alpine air so clear that the reflection of the sun off the white gold foil balloons looked like a series of small, high-intensity flares moving through the blue spruce branches. They came with the cake, the trays of mole, the stereo speaker, and the absolute confidence of people who had spent three generations using the local courts to remove the small operators from the land.
