"Sir," she said, "I'm not sure this is a criminal matter at this point. It sounds like there may be a genuine dispute about the association's authority to—"
That was when the district truck came around the corner.
It was a white three-quarter-ton Ford with a utility bed and the district logo on the doors, a blue drop of water inside a green circle, and an amber light bar on top that wasn't flashing. It pulled up behind the police cruiser. The man who climbed out of it was in his mid-forties, broad and solid, with a gray goatee and a district polo shirt tucked into work pants and a radio on his belt and a tablet in a rubber case under his arm. His shirt said MONDRAGON over the pocket. He walked up the sidewalk at an ordinary pace, looking at the meter lid on the gravel and the open pit and the trench beyond the fence, and he was about ten feet away when he looked up and saw who was standing beside the pit holding the key, and he stopped walking.
"Georgie," he said.
"Fidel." She smiled at him, and it was almost a real smile. "They sent you. Good. I'm glad it's you."
He didn't smile back. He stood there a moment longer, and then he came the rest of the way and nodded at Kasprzak and at me, and introduced himself as Fidel Mondragon, senior field technician, and asked me if I was the account holder, and I said I was. Then he crouched down at the edge of the pit and took a flashlight off his belt and shone it down past the meter at the curb stop, and stayed crouched there for longer than he needed to.
"There's no lock on this," he said, to nobody in particular. "No tag." He looked up at Georgine. "There's no work order on my tablet for this address. Not for today. The only thing in the system is a courtesy leak survey for Monday." He waited. "Did you call this in to anybody, Georgie?"