Breaking Point

“What?”

“Our property isn’t listed as a wetlands. I called her to tell her that, and you know what she said?”

She didn’t wait for Joe to ask.

“She said the National Wetlands Inventory database isn’t definitive. She said just because our property isn’t on it doesn’t mean it’s not a wetlands.”

Joe pushed back and stood up. He crossed the kitchen to the pantry and asked, “Anybody else want a bourbon and water?”

“I’ll take one,” Pam said.

“I’ll take one, too,” Marybeth said. “And I don’t even like bourbon.”

—

JOE PLACED THE THREE GLASSES on the table, and Pam sipped hers and made a sour face, but she didn’t push it away.

“So what did Butch say to this Shauna Naous and the other two when they told him to stop working?” Joe asked.

“Nothing,” Pam said, and sighed. “He just clammed up and waited for them to leave. I think he was so stu

Joe believed her.

“We’ve never been political,” she said. “I don’t even know if Butch voted in the past ten years. We just don’t follow that stuff, even though I’d say we’re both pretty patriotic and conservative. I’m sure he just couldn’t get a handle on the fact that our government could do such a thing.”

“Twice, apparently,” Joe said, and shook his head. “The more you tell us, the more it sounds like the same exact thing that happened to the Sacketts. I wonder if the same people are behind both cases?” Then: “No,” he said, answering his own question. “We’re in Region Eight and Idaho is in Region Ten of the EPA. So it can’t be the same person, can it?”

He looked to Marybeth, and she nodded crisply. She understood what he was implying.

“I’ll start doing some research tomorrow,” she said to Joe. To Pam: “What happened next?”

Pam took another sip. “After Butch came home with Ha

Joe asked, “Did Butch do anything with the lot? Did he blade the dirt back?”

“No,” Pam said sadly. “He just walked away that afternoon and never went back. And the next day he went to work like nothing had happened.”

Marybeth shook her head.

“I’m not like Butch, though,” Pam said. “And the next day I was on the phone to this Naous, leaving messages every hour. Either she didn’t want to talk with me or she was out of the office. I called all week. Finally, on that Friday, she called me back at four-fifty p.m. and made it a point to tell me she only had ten minutes to talk.”

“What was she like?” Marybeth asked.

“She just sounded a

She took a breath. “At first,” Pam continued, “the way she explained things to me made me think Butch might have misunderstood her. She said we could clear everything up by getting what she called an after-the-fact permit once the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did a study and said our lot wasn’t a wetlands. That sounded stupid to me, because no one else had to get an after-the-fact permit, but I wrote it down and thought we shouldn’t have any trouble getting one, since anyone can see there isn’t any water on our property.

“When I asked her where we go to get the study started, she tells me it can’t happen until we request one and the process could take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars—and it’s still not a guarantee that the EPA will agree with it.”

“You’re kidding,” Joe said, amazed and growing angrier as she went on.

“I wish I was,” Pam said. “She said that even if a study said it wasn’t a wetlands, we’d then have to apply to the EPA for something called a wetlands development permit and have it approved or rejected. See, if it was approved, we could start building, and if it was rejected we could have our day in court to try and prove them wrong. I asked how long that takes, and she said years. Plus, we’d have to pay application fees and lawyers’ fees and that could amount to a quarter of a million dollars, she guessed. And if the wetlands development permit was rejected, all we could do then was sue the EPA in federal court, and that would take hundreds of thousands more and even more years.”

“They’ve got you coming and going,” Joe said.

“Right,” Pam said, sitting back and draining her drink. “It’s me and Butch going up against a federal agency with dozens of government lawyers paid by my tax money. They’ve got all the time and money in the world, and none of them are risking their personal bank account or livelihood like we are. And in the meanwhile, even if we started going through the process and applying for after-the-fact permits, we’d still be racking up fines of seventy thousand dollars a day. So as I was talking to this woman, I was getting more and more upset until I was crying. I might have said some things to her I shouldn’t. In fact, I know I did.”

Joe was confused. He said, “I still don’t get it. A person gives you a business card and the fines start automatically that day? With nothing in writing at all?”

Pam said, “I begged her to send me something. I sent certified letters to her office begging for some kind of documentation of what they were doing to us and why. But she ignored me, and no one in that office would talk to me on the phone. After a couple of months, I just stopped calling.”

Joe asked, “Did you try to get in touch with any of her higher-ups?”

“I sent letters and emails but never got a reply.”

“Does the name Juan Julio Batista mean anything to you?”

“Sure,” Pam said. “He’s the big boss. I found his name in a directory, but I couldn’t get past his secretary when I called, and he never replied to my emails.”

“What about Heinz Underwood?”

“Never heard of him.”

Joe said, “How was Butch taking this?”

“Badly,” Pam said. “He just withdrew into his shell. He went to work, he came home and ate di

Marybeth said, “Is that why you never said anything about it to me or anyone? Because you thought we might not believe you?”

Pam took a moment to answer while considering the question. “It’s complicated. I think even though we were convinced we didn’t do anything wrong we still felt . . . guilty somehow. It’s just like the questions you’re asking me—like you think there has to be another side to this story, because why else would they come after us like that?

“But there is no other side,” she said, “unless it’s something we don’t know or never thought about. I think both Butch and I always believed someone would just say, ‘Hey, this is crazy. This can’t happen in America,’ and it would just go away.”