Chapter 6 - The East Road Changes Everything
I called Rachel.
Then the sheriff.
Not Wade.
Not Lorraine.
The note did not prove Garrett had been murdered.
I refused to make that leap.
Garrett died when his truck left a mountain road during heavy rain.
Highway patrol concluded he lost control near a washed shoulder.
The crash was tragic.
That was all I knew.
The sheriff reopened contact with the investigating agency after seeing
Garrett’s note.
Meanwhile, I examined the flash drive with a forensic copy rather than
plugging it casually into my everyday laptop.
Old habits.
The files contained photographs.
Invoices.
Maps.
Emails.
Garrett had been investigating illegal timber removal along the eastern
boundary.
Someone had cut valuable ponderosa and Douglas fir from our acreage over
several years.
The estimated loss was substantial.
One invoice named Mercer Timber Services.
Wade’s company.
I felt physically sick.
There were emails between Garrett and Wade.
Garrett:
Stop entering the east parcel until we resolve the boundary and timber
accounting.
Wade:
Dad’s land was never yours to fence me out of.
Garrett:
County records disagree.
Then a final message from Wade, eight days before Garrett died:
You keep pushing this and everybody loses.
It was threatening.
But not proof of murder.
I sent everything to law enforcement and counsel.
Then Rachel called.
“There’s more.”
The 2018 survey showed a private access road crossing my eastern
acreage.
Wade needed that road.
May you like
Without it, a neighboring development project he had been negotiating
lost its easiest commercial access.
