Bev Strand called me back at one in the afternoon on a Saturday, which I would later learn was how she showed she cared. She was sixty-four and had practised criminal defense in Ada County for thirty years, with a sideline in what she called "homeowners' association hostage negotiation." She chewed nicotine gum with such force that I could hear it over the phone.
"First," she said, after I'd talked for twelve minutes without stopping, "you don't post anything. Anywhere. Not on Facebook, not on that neighborhood app, not a cryptic quote on your Instagram about how the truth will out. Nothing."
"I don't have Instagram."
"God bless you. Second. You don't talk to Darlene. If she knocks on your door, you don't answer. If she talks to you in the street, you smile and walk inside. Third. You don't talk to the police without me in the room. Not because you did anything. Because innocent people talk themselves into all kinds of trouble trying to be helpful."
"Okay."
"Fourth." She paused and chewed. "Marisol tells me you're an archivist."
"A conservator. At the state archives."
"So you know how to keep records."
I looked over at the banker's box on my office shelf, with the typed index on top. "Yes."
"Then go do it," Bev said. "Every letter. Every email. Every fine. Screenshots of every post with the time and the date on it. The code enforcement report. Your camera footage, every clip, downloaded to something that isn't your phone. Write down everything you remember about this morning while it's fresh, and put the time you wrote it at the top. I want it boring and I want it complete. Juries love boring. Boring is the sound of somebody telling the truth."
I spent the rest of Saturday doing what I do best. By midnight I had a three-ring binder with tabbed sections, a typed chronology running to eleven pages, and a thumb drive. I'd also made a backup copy of the thumb drive and put it in the freezer, which Bev later told me was not necessary but which she found "very soothing as a concept."
On Sunday morning, a letter from the board arrived. It was hand-delivered, in a business envelope, with my name written in blue ballpoint capitals.