One item was retrieved yesterday. It's at this address now. She gave Janet's address. Yes. I'll wait for your call.
She hung up. She set the phone down and looked at both of us. Margaret says, "Don't touch the storage unit and don't move anything from the property until she's made contact with the EPA field office and the AG's environmental crimes unit. She's going to file for protective status on the evidence under the state whistleblower statute. It'll take a few hours.
Is she confident about the case?" Clare almost smiled. It didn't quite make it, she said. And I'm quoting her directly. Claire, if half of what you're describing is documented the way you say it is. Whoever buried that waste is going to have a very bad winter.
Janet made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. What about the truck last night? I asked. Dorothy gave the partial plate to the sheriff's department this morning. Margaret says that's actually helpful.
It establishes that someone was surveilling the property after official vehicles were seen there. It supports the idea that there are people actively trying to monitor what we know. So, we wait. We wait. Clare picked up her coffee.
I've spent 6 years waiting. A few hours won't break me. The call from Margaret came at 11:17. She'd reached the EPA's emergency response line and spoken directly to a field coordinator in the Columbus Regional Office. When Clareire described the contents of Daniel's storage unit, the soil sample results, the GPS coordinates, the truck photographs, the corporate filing records, Evansfield notes the coordinator had asked her to stop talking and put someone else on the line, that someone else had asked three questions and then told Margaret to have her client secure the physical evidence and expect contact from the agency within the hour.
The EPA called back in 42 minutes, not the field coordinator. A senior investigator named Sandra Woo, who introduced herself in a single sentence and then asked Clare to describe in chronological order everything from when the sinkhole appeared to the current moment. Clare talked for 37 minutes. I know because Janet was timing it on the clock above the kitchen doorway. Not out of impatience, out of something like protectiveness.
Watching her sister hold up under something heavy. Clare described it all. The sinkhole, the chair that appeared over it without her placing it, the metal box, the key, the storage unit, the corkboard, the notebook, the drainage channel, the vent panel with new screws, the truck at 2:00 in the morning. When she finished, there was a pause on the line. Then Sandra Wu said, "Mrs.
Bennett, I need to ask you something, and I need you to think carefully before you answer. In the materials at the storage unit, the soil sample results, the GPS coordinates, is there a specific parcel identification number on any of the property documents? Clare looked at me. I nodded. I'd photographed everything.
I pulled up the photograph on my phone and read out the parcel number from the deed record Clare had found in the first box. Another pause. Longer this time, Mrs. Bennett. I'm going to need to make a call and get back to you within the hour.