The formal rescission of all fines issued against Raymond Holt was entered into the minutes. The board passed a resolution requiring that any contact with law enforcement on behalf of the HOA required a 2/3 board vote, except in cases of actual ongoing criminal activity. Thomas Garrett was appointed interim president pending a new election.
Deputy Wallace, for his part, had filed his incident report before leaving the ranch that afternoon. The report documented the call, the response, the property documentation, the statements made by all parties, and the deputy's finding that no violation of law had occurred on the part of the property owner. It also documented, in careful neutral language, that the initial call had been made based on an assertion that the well was a community utility that the caller had not verified before reporting. The report went to the county records.
Gerald Finch's office sent a letter to the HOA the following week, noting that future calls of a similar nature, made without factual basis, could constitute misuse of emergency services. The letter did not threaten prosecution. It did not need to. The HOA board had already received the message clearly enough.
Karen—which was what her neighbors had taken to calling her on the community page, replacing her given name with the word that had come to mean something specific and not flattering in the local vernacular—posted one final statement on the community board before her administrative access was removed. It said that she had been trying to protect the community and that she hoped people would remember that her intentions had been good.
The post received three responses before the board took it down:
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One of them said that intentions did not override property rights.
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One of them said nothing but a period, like a sentence ending.
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The third, posted by someone who had never participated in the community page before, said, "Being sure of yourself and being right are not the same thing."
The pipe repair took two more days to complete properly. Raymond had decided, while he was at it, to replace a section of the main line that had been showing its age for a while, which added a day to the timeline, but was going to save him headaches later.
The backhoe operator, a man named Pete, who had worked with Raymond on four or five jobs over the past decade, said he had heard about what happened with the sheriff's cars and asked Raymond how he was feeling about it.