It was from the city project liaison.
Due to an incident involving you and a resident, your scheduled inspection has been reassigned, the message said.
An alternate inspector had been appointed.
I called Rosa immediately.
She checked the project file and said nobody had informed her of a change in personnel.
She asked me to forward the email.
The city liaison’s address was almost correct, but one letter in the domain was different.
Rosa said the city had not sent it.
We alerted information security and preserved the message with its original header.
Someone had anticipated a public confrontation near my home and prepared to exploit it.
Lorraine might have acted to protect me, but the men in the van apparently had their own plan for the same morning.
I called Munroe again, explained the fraudulent email, and told him about the upcoming inspection.
He asked whether I had ever encountered Voss personally.
Only once, I said.
The previous winter, at a council presentation, Voss had called me meticulous and thanked me for delaying approval until the backup generators could be tested properly.
He spoke like a man who enjoyed appearing patient in public.
I remembered the tight smile behind his compliment.
That night, I put together a list of unresolved defects from the communications building.
The backup generator failed one automatic start test.
The battery rooms lacked clear evacuation signage.
One air-handling duct crossed a fire barrier without the correct damper documentation.
None of those problems proved criminal conduct.
All were enough to prevent me from signing an unconditional acceptance certificate.
I found a note from the project engineer attached to the latest drawings.
It said the company had asked for a waiver because correcting the ductwork would delay the opening.
The waiver had been denied.
I felt a strange convergence of past and present.
At Bellwood, an emergency service had allegedly changed a dispatch record to hide a dangerous decision.
Now the same company’s leadership was asking the city to rush certification of a system meant to serve tens of thousands of people.
I could not prove the two were connected.
But the effort to remove me from Thursday’s review gave me a reason to look carefully at who benefited.
At midnight, Erin called again.
Paige had asked to come home so she could help me fix the garage door latch.
I told Erin that I missed her and that she was staying where she was for now.
