I called Annette Pillsbury at her cell. She picked up on the second ring with the calm of a senior PSC engineer who had told me 2 weeks earlier to call her at any hour during the active investigation. "Annette, they are burying unauthorized cable on my property right now. Get a PSC inspector to the southern fence line at first light. Sheriff is on his way for the arrest." "On it."
I watched the cameras. The trencher kept cutting. The cable kept laying. They did not, however, know about the cellular trail cams or the secondary thermal cameras Alaric had helped me wire into the cottonwoods 2 weeks earlier on the chance of exactly this kind of move.
The footage kept recording. 14 minutes later, three cruisers came down the gravel road, lights off until the last 50 yards. They pulled wide on the easement corridor from two directions, lights on at the same instant. The footage on my phone showed five figures freezing in nine flashlight beams, hands going up, trencher dropping, cable falling, Della's voice suddenly small and very high asking if she could please call her husband.
By 3:30 a.m. she was in handcuffs. The four men with her, two contractors she had paid in cash, the HOA vice president Wyatt Halverson, and a Cheyenne electrical contractor she had retained on a private invoice, were in handcuffs beside her. The buried cable, when forensics traced it, ran for 260 ft along the corridor and extended outside the recorded right-of-way into soil that had been undisturbed since 1958.
Decker came up to my porch where I was waiting with coffee. He took the mug. He looked at me. "Quinn," he said, "she's been caught at 2:11 in the morning on your property, illegally installing unauthorized utility infrastructure inside an easement corridor under active state regulatory inquiry while a civil case is pending. Do you know how many felonies that just stacked?"
I said I had a guess. He said, "You have no idea."
Off the record, in the cruiser on the way to county lockup, Della tried to invoke her husband's name twice, each time more loudly. The deputy did not respond. She tried to invoke a state senator's name. The deputy did not respond. Then she went silent for 19 mi.
Just before the booking station, she asked, in a small, flat voice, what was going to happen to her dogs. The deputy told me later he had to roll the front window down to keep from saying something unprofessional in the rearview mirror.
The next morning, the Sheridan Press ran Bryer Knox's third article, front page, above the fold. The headline read, "HOA president arrested at 2:11 a.m. installing unauthorized cable across ranch she sued in court." By noon, the Casper Star-Tribune had reposted it. By 3:00, the Denver Post had it on the wire.
By Saturday morning, the AP had moved a national story. Theron Vosberg filed for divorce on Sunday afternoon. His attorneys hand-delivered the papers to the Sheridan County Jail before lunch. The Wyoming PSC hearing was 6 days away.
The Wyoming Public Service Commission hearing was held in the third-floor conference room of the State Office Building in Cheyenne. The same room where 4 weeks earlier Annette Pillsbury had told me to leave my file with her and brace myself. The room was packed past the legal occupancy limit by 9:00 a.m. PSC staff opened the adjoining hearing room and set up a live audio feed. The hallway filled. The lobby filled.
Director Phyllis Tillinghast, the senior commissioner presiding, called the room to order at 10:00 sharp. Two associate commissioners sat to her left and right.
The HOA's attorney, a Cheyenne litigator named Walker Bramble, sat at one table. His client was, of course, absent. Della Vosberg was at her arraignment in a different building. Theron Vosberg sat in the third row, alone, with his hands folded in his lap. Vernon Crowell sat at our table with a single leather folder and a yellow legal pad.
Beside us sat Annette Pillsbury. Beside her, Kit Bensenhurst. Beside Kit, Dr. Alaric Fenton. Beside Alaric, Brynn Marsden, holding her own resignation file and a separate folder of internal HOA correspondence. Behind us, Bryer Knox with two photographers.
Beside her, the Casper Star-Tribune, the Denver Post, and a senior reporter from the Wall Street Journal who had flown in from Chicago overnight. Behind them, 140 Cloud Peak residents.
Director Tillinghast read the case caption. She read the procedural history. She invited Walker Bramble to speak first. Mr. Bramble stood.
He spoke for 9 minutes. He talked about reasonable interpretation and long-standing practice and operational necessity. He never once produced an engineering report. He never once mentioned the 1958 termination clause. When he sat down, the silence in the conference room was so deep, you could hear the hum of the elevator at the end of the hallway.
Director Tillinghast turned to Vernon. Vernon stood. He cleared his throat once. He laid the leather folder open on the table.
"Director Tillinghast," he said, "with the commission's permission, my client and the supporting parties will present six exhibits." He held up the first sheet. "This is the 1958 easement deed signed by Hollister Ardmore, recorded with Sheridan County, with a termination clause in plain English, allowing the lineal heir to terminate upon written notice with 180 days grace in the event of unauthorized expansion of voltage, scope, or width. The clause was triggered by the 2010 upgrade. The termination notice was filed by my client 3 weeks ago. The clock currently stands at day 21 of 180."