Lena liked him immediately.

She described the unreliable water gauge, the disputed approval certificate, the unapproved drainage routing she had identified with Frank, and the decision to protect the industrial basin at the expense of the municipal channel. She handed over copies of the photographs and identified where the originals had been preserved.

“I also want you to look at how Grayline obtained advance notice of my arrival,” she said. “A security caller gave the deputy my name and vehicle description before I was at the gate.”

Sloane wrote that down.

“You think they wanted you delayed?”

“I know they gave the deputy a false picture of why I was there. I don’t know whether they wanted an arrest. I don’t know what they told the deputy’s office before I arrived.”

“Good distinction.”

He opened a folder and slid a printed email across the table.

It was a message sent at 3:26 a.m. from the county emergency system to personnel listed as contacts for the western flood facilities. The subject read *PRIORITY STATE TECHNICAL ASSESSMENT.* It named Dr. Lena Mercer and provided an estimated arrival time.

The distribution list included a Grayline operations address.

“So they knew I was coming through ordinary channels,” Lena said.

“Yes.”

“Who called the county sheriff’s office?”

“Simon Bell’s supervisor, a Grayline employee named Marla Finch. We have the call recording. She reported that a woman claiming to be a state employee was trying to gain unauthorized access.”

“She never spoke to me.”

“We have no evidence that she did.”

He turned another page.

“She made the complaint four minutes after receiving the emergency notification.”

Lena sat back.

A person had taken a legitimate warning that a state engineer was coming and turned it into a reason to keep that same engineer away.

“Was Voss copied?”

“We’re establishing who had access to the mailbox and the company’s communications. We won’t assume.”

Lena nodded. It was difficult to wait, but she knew the difference between wanting a fact and possessing it.

Sloane then showed her the signature page.

“We found an earlier electronic copy in the state’s archive,” he said. “Same signature image, down to a tiny missing mark in the lower left. It appears on a report you signed two years ago about a different site.”

“That shouldn’t have been reused.”

“It wasn’t authorized for this document. We have requested the underlying revision history.”

He closed the folder.

“I need you to understand something. This may be a long investigation. The most important evidence isn’t always the most dramatic. Sometimes it’s a saved file, an approval chain, and the absence of an inspection that somebody claimed had happened.”

Lena thought of her mother’s apartment, where water had reached the front steps but not the living room. She thought of Thomas Dillard’s photograph, rescued in the middle of the night because an old man could not bear to leave his wife behind.