Four Thousand Pounds Against the Mahogany Garage Doors
CHAPTER 4: BEHIND THE GARAGE WALL
June did not wait for the sheriff’s deputies to cross the yard. She grabbed her heavy canvas coat and a high-intensity inspection spotlight from the charging rack.
“June, stay back!” Silas shouted, lunging toward the door with an iron tire bar.
“They’re moving the evidence, Dad!” June called back, already sprinting through the sleet toward the rear equipment bay.
Ranger Price drew her radio, clicking the emergency channel as she followed. “All units at Larkin Timber, converge on the rear storage barn! We have active destruction of evidence in progress! Suspects are attempting to remove covenanted state timber!”
By the time June rounded the corner of the fuel depot, Ellis Crane’s workers had already sliced through the secondary padlock on the barn door. The heavy corrugated steel door rattled upward on its tracks, exposing the interior of the barn under the amber glow of halogen work lights.
Inside the barn sat no antique furniture.
Stacked twelve feet high on heavy oak skids were seventy-five massive, rough-sawn slabs of prime American black walnut, each four inches thick, eight feet long, and three feet wide. The wood was breathtaking—deep chocolate heartwood swirling with intricate figure, curly grain, and rich purple undertones. Each slab bore a yellow state forestry quarantine tag, but the tags had been partially defaced with an angle grinder.
Beside the stacked slabs stood three heavy wooden crates stenciled in black industrial paint: CONSIGNMENT TO ROTTERDAM MARITIME AUCTION—EXPORT LOT 14.
Ellis Crane spun around at the sound of June’s boots on the frozen gravel. He was a stocky, florid-faced man in his late fifties, wearing an expensive sheepskin-lined jacket and a grease-stained ballcap. He held a cordless impact wrench in his thick, gloved hand.
“You’re trespassing on private leased space, little girl,” Crane snarled, stepping between June and the open trailer. “Conrad Wexler holds an exclusive lease on this structure under civil contract law.”
“You brought this stolen walnut onto my father’s property in your log truck on Tuesday, Crane,” June said, her voice steady and razor-sharp as she raised the spotlight, illuminating Crane’s face and the serial numbers on the export crates. “You falsified the scale slips, you used our yard as an illegal staging depot, and you poached this wood from Compartment Nine on Bear Mountain.”
Crane’s eyes darted toward the access lane, where the flashing blue lights of Ranger Price’s cruiser were cutting through the swirling snow.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Crane spat, his voice trembling with cornered venom. “Wexler bought this timber legitimately through an out-of-state timber broker in West Virginia. I’m just the transport contractor hired to move cargo.”
“Then why are the state forestry quarantine tags still attached to the end-grain?” Ranger Price’s voice rang out from the darkness.
Price stepped into the light of the barn, her sidearm drawn at the low-ready, her badge gleaming against her wet uniform coat. Behind her, two county sheriff’s deputies took up tactical positions along the trailer flanks, their shotguns pointed toward the two men in coveralls.
“Drop the tool, Ellis,” Price commanded. “Step away from the loading dock.”
Crane slowly lowered the impact wrench to the concrete floor, his face draining of color. “Naomi, this is a commercial dispute between private parties. You have no jurisdiction inside a private leased building without a signed municipal search warrant.”
“I have jurisdiction over every piece of state-covenanted timber in the Commonwealth,” Price replied coldly. She walked past Crane, bent down beside the nearest stack of walnut, and aimed her ultraviolet scanner at the freshly planed end-grain.
Under the ultraviolet light, an invisible forensic barcode glowed bright neon green.
“The state forestry department implanted micro-taggants into forty prize black walnut trees on Bear Mountain three years ago,” Price said, looking up at Crane. “Every tree has a unique genomic serial number registered in the state database. This tree was logged forty-eight hours ago. It matches Tree Number 112 from the north ridge.”
Silas Larkin stepped through the open door, his breathing heavy, his hands resting on his knees as he caught his breath. He looked past Crane at the seventy-five massive slabs of walnut, and then down at the wooden crates.
On the lid of the top crate sat a brass marking hammer—the heavy tool used by timber inspectors to stamp official harvest approval into logs before they leave a forest compartment.
Silas walked over, picked up the brass hammer, and turned it over in his calloused palm.
Carved into the seasoned ash handle were the initials: C. L.
Silas’s breath caught in his throat. His knuckles turned white around the grip. “This was Caleb’s inspection hammer. The hammer that went missing from his truck the night he was killed on the mountain road.”
