Inadvertent Disclosure (5 page)

She waited until his back had
disappeared into the trees and tossed the branch to the ground. Then, she
leaned against the hood of her car and waited for Officer Maxwell to show up.

* * * * * * * * * *

Sasha rolled her neck to the
left, then to the right. She was right back in the same courthouse where she’d
wasted her morning. After hearing she was an attorney returning to her car from
a court appearance, Officer Maxwell had driven her straight to the sheriff’s office
and made her the deputy on duty’s problem.

Maxwell had scanned the
deputy’s badge, which identified him as G. Russell, and given him an overly
hearty greeting.

“Deputy Russell,” he’d said,
overly familiar. “Good to see you.”

The deputy had eyed him from
behind his desk. Finally, he’d risen from his seat and held out a reluctant
hand. “Maxwell, how you doing?”

With the pleasantries out of
the way, the state trooper had gotten down to business. He’d explained an
officer of the court had been attacked and the sheriff’s office was responsible
for the primary investigation. Russell had tried to refuse her. Like she was a
package he hadn’t ordered. He’d claimed the sheriff’s office didn’t have
jurisdiction. The two officers had argued back in forth in hushed tones, but in
the end Maxwell had prevailed.

Deputy Russell, resigned but
polite, took a long look at her and then disappeared in search of coffee. She
sat back in the deputy’s creaking guest chair and looked around the office. It
had none of the aged glamour and charm of the county’s only courtroom. Instead
of burnished hardwoods and brass, the office was awash in fluorescent lights
and seventies-era carpet. Russell’s metal desk had seen better days. It was
scratched all over and had what appeared to be a dent in the top left drawer.
She leaned forward to get a closer look. It was big enough and deep enough that
she wondered if it had been created by a head.

She straightened as Russell
walked back into the office with two ceramic mugs and placed one on the desk in
front of her.

“Sorry it took a bit,” he said,
pointing with his free hand at the coffee mug in front of her. “You look like
you could use a fresh cup, so I made a new pot.”

He raised his mug and inhaled
before taking a sip. “Fair trade, shade-grown organic Cubano,” he told her.

Sasha raised a brow along with
her mug. She had always thought law enforcement outfits specialized in barely
drinkable, burnt Folgers.

Her first swallow corrected
that notion. The coffee was hot, robust, and strong. She thought she might cry
from joy. As the adrenaline had drained from her body, she’d started to drag.
It had been a long day. She could use a decent cup of coffee.

“Wow. Thanks.”

He shrugged but couldn’t hide a
smile. “Coffee is sort of a hobby of mine.”

She smiled back at him. “It’s
sort of a requirement of mine.”

He cleared his throat and
lowered himself into his desk chair. They drank their coffee in silence for
several minutes. Russell seemed to be in no hurry to take her statement.

“Did you use tap water to make
this?”   Sasha wondered if the waitress at the diner had blamed the water for
the coffee’s taste when the culprit was more likely cheap, stale beans.

Russell knitted his eyebrows
together at the question but answered it. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t. The
oil and gas people swear the water is fine, but I notice they all carry around
bottled water. They even pitched in and got one of those water coolers and set
up delivery of water for the Recorder of Deeds office since they spend so much
time there. If they aren’t gonna drink it, I’m not gonna drink it.”

“The oil and gas people?”

Russell gestured toward the
window. “You know, the Shale.”

The Marcellus Shale was the
thick layer of gas-rich rock running deep under most of the state—in some
places, nine thousand feet below the ground. For ages, everyone had believed
there was no cost-effective way to get to it, but in recent years, the oil and
gas industry had begun to bore wells and pump them full of sand and water mixed
with a chemical cocktail. The pressure would fracture the shale and gas would
be released. And so hydrofracking was born.

In just a few years, the oil
and gas companies had entered into mineral rights leases with thousands of
landowners and entire swaths of Pennsylvania were dotted with wells, drilling
rigs, and equipment. At first, everyone had been a fan of fracking.
Environmentalists, farmers, corporations, and local politicians all gushed
about the cleaner fuel, the jobs, and the money that it would pump into the
towns and rural areas that dotted the state. Sasha knew several attorneys who
had focused their practices entirely on oil and gas rights; they couldn’t work
fast enough to satisfy the demand for their services.

Fast forward four years, and
the cheerleading had been replaced by yelling, finger-pointing, and lawsuits
from all parties concerned. Possibly toxic wastewater was being sent to water
treatment plants that weren’t sure what they were getting, let alone how to
handle it; gas and radioactive material had seeped into the drinking water; and
homeowners were posting videos of brown water pouring from their kitchen
faucets. And hydrofracking was being blamed for everything from anemic children
and cancer-stricken adults to polluted fish and earthquakes.

Politicians were arguing over
taxing and regulating the gas companies, and neighbors were arguing over
whether hydrofracking was saving or destroying their towns. All the while, more
wells were being drilled.

It had become a loud, ugly,
stinking mess—literally and figuratively—as far as Sasha could tell.

“Fracking’s big around here?”
she asked. She’d done most of her driving before the sun had risen that morning
and hadn’t noticed the dark shapes of derricks looming over the farmlands that
lined the highway.

Russell laughed. “I’d say so.
In fact the guys who attacked you probably thought you were one of the suits.”

“Suits?”

“You kind of have to see it to
believe it. Come with me.”

Russell drained his mug and
stood. Sasha followed him through the glass door stenciled with gold lettering
that read Sheriff and out into the hallway. As they followed the corridor
around the corner to the left, the clacking of their shoes striking marble was
drowned out by the sudden clamor of dozens of conversations drifting down the
hall.

At the far end there was a door
identical to the one they’d just come through, except its gold letters spelled
out Recorder of Deeds. But that wasn’t what Russell wanted her to see. It was
the suits.

Long wooden benches flanked the
door for twenty feet on each side of the hallway. The benches were packed with
men, interspersed with women here and there, sitting elbow to elbow, knee to
knee. They were all wearing suits, mainly black pinstripes, but there were some
navy blue renegades in the mix. Rows of briefcases lined the floor at their
feet. Overflow suits who couldn’t find seats milled around, crowding the
hallway.

From the too-hearty laugher and
shouted conversations, Sasha could tell the suits weren’t strangers. They also
weren’t friends. But it was clear they’d whiled away long hours sitting on
those hard benches together. She recognized the signs of enforced camaraderie.
She’d lived it, in long-running, multi-party cases where, for the first months
or years, the defense group clustered together on one side of the room and the
plaintiffs’ attorneys kept to themselves on the other. But after the first year
or two of circling around each other at depositions, hearings, and status
conferences, they’d lean across the aisle and ask after one another’s families.
They’d share the big news—a daughter’s marriage or a parent’s cancer diagnosis—and
the mundane news—an alma mater winning a championship or someone getting a new
car—before standing up in front of the judge and accusing one another of being,
at best, misguided buffoons, or, at worst, scum-sucking subhumans. Then it
would be back into the hall for some more backslapping and chitchat.

As Sasha and the deputy drew
closer to the office door, Sasha noticed a deli counter ticket machine resting
on a table next to a water cooler.

“Is that for real?”

Russell nodded. “Yep. The oil
and gas suits installed that, too. After the fire chief told them the fire code
limited occupancy in the office to thirty people, it got hairy. People started
camping out on the courthouse steps to be the first ones here when the doors
opened. That violated the vagrancy code. Then I had to break up a fistfight
when one of the gals saved another one’s place in line while she used the
facilities. The Recorder tried an appointment system, but these jackals kept
canceling each other’s appointments and signing up for seven, eight blocks of
time at once. All sorts of dirty tricks. Finally, Big Sky Energy showed up with
the ticket machine. Runs a lot smoother now.”

“What are they all doing here? 
Filing mineral rights leases?”

“This is where they file them,
yeah. But the frenzy is over researching new ones. They go in there and pull
old deeds from the archives to find the landowners who haven’t yet signed away
their mineral rights.”

“At this rate, there can’t be many
left, can there?”

Russell gave her a resigned
look. “Clear Brook County spans approximately five thousand square miles.
They’ve barely scratched the surface.”

He nodded to a few of the
waiting researchers then turned to leave. “Let’s call Bricker’s Auto and see
how they’re making out on your car. Then I guess I’d better get your
statement.”

CHAPTER 5

Across the street, Dr. Shelly
Spangler walked Miriam King to the door. As she reminded the woman to check her
blood sugar more frequently, she saw her sister approaching.

Shelly pasted on a smile and
said goodbye to her patient.

“Oh, hi, Commissioner Price,”
Miriam said, excited by her brush with minor celebrity, as Heather rushed past
her.

Shelly watched as her sister’s
political instinct kicked in, compelling her to stop and shake Miriam’s hand
with that two-handed clasp that all elected officials seemed to use.

She had taught her old spaniel,
Corky, that trick. “Shake like a politician,” she’d say, and Corky would offer
up a paw, wait for Shelly to take it, then put his other paw down on top of her
hand. Now, every time she saw Heather do it, she had to resist the urge to toss
her a treat.

“Is my sister taking good care
of you, Mrs. King?” Heather asked, radiating concern.

“Oh my goodness, yes,” Miriam
burbled, “I just need to lay off the pastries, I guess, right, doc?”

Shelly nodded. “You’ve got it,”
she agreed. “Now, you give Ken my regards.”

As Miriam stepped out onto the
sidewalk from the doctor’s office, Heather swept inside, rolling her eyes.

“Perhaps a glimpse in the
mirror should have clued her in to the need to lay off the pastries,” she
cracked, dropping the politician act to ridicule the woman waddling away.

Shelly ignored it. The easiest
way to deal with Heather’s mean streak was just not to feed it.

“What’s the occasion?” she
asked instead.

Heather rarely stopped by
unannounced.

“Oh, I just wanted to check on
the preparations for the grand opening. Aren’t you going to be excited when I
turn that dump next door into a decent restaurant?”

Shelly shrugged. Bob’s served
perfectly good food, as far as she was concerned, but Heather was dead set on
bringing organic, locally-sourced, farm-fresh cuisine to town. It wasn’t a bad
idea, as many of Shelly’s patients could stand to eat a healthier diet. Of
course, the café wasn’t for
them
, it was going to be geared to the oil
and gas crowd, with their ample per diem stipends, so people like Miriam King
probably wouldn’t be able to afford the beet and goat cheese salad or whatever
Heather was planning to serve.

Heather was waiting for an
answer, her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Oh, uh, yeah, I can’t wait!”
Shelly enthused.

Satisfied, Heather draped
herself over a waiting room chair and crossed her legs, letting her high heel shoe
dangle off one foot.

Shelly sat across from her and
waited. Apparently, Heather was in the mood to chat.

Heather cut her eyes to the
empty reception desk. “Where’s Becky?”

“I sent her out to the store.
We’re getting low on some office supplies.”

“Did you hear about the
attack?”

“What attack?”

Heather’s eyes, so blue they
were purple, sparked with excitement.

“Apparently, one of Danny
Trees’s idiot followers attacked an out-of-town lawyer with a stick in the
municipal lot this morning.”

“Was he badly hurt?”

“First of all, it was a she,
and she wasn’t, but I guess
he
was,” Heather said with a laugh. “She
grabbed the stick off him and beat him with it.”

“Good for her!”

“Yeah,” Heather agreed, “good
for her. But not for you.”

“What?”

Shelly’s heart dropped because
she had no idea where this was going, but most surprises from Heather weren’t
the nice kind.

“Well, Shelly, it seems Judge
Paulson appointed the stick-wielding lawyer from Pittsburgh to represent Jed
Craybill at his incapacitation hearing. Didn’t Marty Braeburn call you?”

“No, he didn’t say anything.
Now, why would Judge Paulson go and do something like that?”

Shelly was annoyed, but she
didn’t think it was a big deal.

Her sister, however, was
working herself up over it.

“I don’t know, Shelly, maybe
that old fool finally caught on to us. We can’t afford this, you know that,
right? We need that land, and we need it now.”

“Calm down, Heather. Just
because Jed has an attorney doesn’t mean anything. Paulson will declare him
incapacitated, I’ll take control of the property, and we’ll move forward. At
most, it’s a tiny delay.”

“You better hope so, Shelly.
That parcel is the key to the rest of our plans. Not just the wells, you know,
but the hotel and all of the rest of the development. His lot abuts Keystone
Property’s land. His house is going to have to go; I don’t want tourists to
have to drive by that old shack on their approach to the resort.”

Heather and her flipping hotel
resort were driving Shelly crazy. Her job was to get the leases. Period. But,
Heather was always yapping about building the next Nemacolin Woodlands right
here in Clear Brook County. For one thing, Shelly thought Nemacolin was
bizarre. There you are, just driving through Uniontown, as rural as could be,
and some giant building modeled after a French castle pops up over the hill. It
was off-putting if you asked her. But, of course, Heather hadn’t asked her,
and, as long as the money flowed in the way Heather said it would, Shelly
didn’t much care about the aesthetics.

“Anyway,” she said, “even if
the judge denies the petition, we can just appeal.”

Heather shook her head so hard
the Prada sunglasses perched on top wobbled.

“No, Shelly, we don’t have time
for appeals. Not for this, not for the declaratory judgments. Time is money.
Haven’t you learned that by now? I told you all along you should have gotten
the county to use Drew instead of Marty for this work.”

Shelly didn’t want to get into
it.

Drew Showalter was the county
solicitor; he advised the commissioners. Heather firmly believed she controlled
him through a combination of desire and fear. Shelly had no doubt Drew both
wanted and feared her sister, but every once in a while she thought she saw
something like regret or conscience spark in the man. Anyway, it wasn’t her
call. The Department of Aging Services used Marty because he was cheaper than
Drew.

“Well, what does Drew say?” she
asked.

“I don’t know, he’s always
yammering about evidentiary standards and elements, four-pronged tests, yada
yada. It’s like he’s getting paid by the word.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

The sisters shared a good laugh
over that. Shelly was glad to have distracted her from this latest issue.
Keeping Heather happy was becoming a fulltime job.