He arrived at 2:00 in the afternoon and immediately crouched down at the sinkhole like it was an old friend he was disappointed to see again. "Aldderton Road," he muttered, probing with a rod. "Yeah, yeah, there's old tile drainage under this whole corridor." "Pre 1,960 construction. Most of it's supposed to be decommissioned." He probed again deeper, but this right here, he stood up and looked at Clare. Ma'am, has there been any recent excavation on this property that you're aware of?
Not that I authorized. He looked at her over his glasses. That's a careful way to answer. Yes, it is. He walked the property the same way I had slowly watching his feet.
He stopped at the depression I'd noticed. He followed it to the garage. He looked at the vent panel. He turned back to us. There's been recent disturbance in the soil along this line.
Someone has been accessing the old drainage channel from this property. He pulled off his glasses and cleaned them. That channel, what's left of it, runs north south under Alderton Road for about 3/4 of a mile. It was originally a storm overflow system built in 1958. How big is it?
I asked. The main channel big enough to walk through, bent over, about 4 ft in diameter. Clare made a sound that wasn't quite a word. Someone has been using it, Hargrove said flatly. I'll need to file a report and you're going to want to get the sheriff's department involved.
We called the sheriff's department. Two deputies came out, took a statement from Clare, took a statement from me, looked at the sinkhole and the vent panel and the depression in the soil and told us not to touch anything and that someone would follow up. They were polite. They were professional. They were also clearly categorizing this somewhere between neighborhood dispute and unusual but probably explainable.
Clare watched them drive away and she said very quietly, "They don't know what they're looking at. Maybe not yet. That box has been in the ground since before Daniel died. Maybe longer." She turned to me. He buried it, Caleb.
He buried it and he told me not to trust the ground and then he died. And now someone has been crawling around under my yard. Her voice stayed completely level, which made it more intense, not less. I need to know what's in that box. I looked at the box on the porch railing.
The deputies said not to touch it. They also didn't come back with a warrant or crime scene tape. So, they're not treating this as a crime scene. She walked to the porch. It's my property.
It's my husband's belongings, and I've waited 6 years to understand what happened to him. She put her hand on the box. Will you stay? I should have said no. I should have said wait for the authorities.
Let the process work. I should have protected myself the way every contractor knows you protect yourself when something weird happens on a job site. Instead, I said, "Yeah, I'll stay." Clare lifted the box off the railing. She carried it to the kitchen table and she opened it. The lid was rusted along the hinges, but it opened.