“You’re kidding,” Joe said, amazed and growing angrier as she went on.
“I wish I was,” Pam said. “She said that even if a study said it wasn’t a wetlands, we’d then have to apply to the EPA for something called a wetlands development permit and have it approved or rejected. See, if it was approved, we could start building, and if it was rejected we could have our day in court to try and prove them wrong. I asked how long that takes, and she said years. Plus, we’d have to pay application fees and lawyers’ fees and that could amount to a quarter of a million dollars, she guessed. And if the wetlands development permit was rejected, all we could do then was sue the EPA in federal court, and that would take hundreds of thousands more and even more years.”
“They’ve got you coming and going,” Joe said.
“Right,” Pam said, sitting back and draining her drink. “It’s me and Butch going up against a federal agency with dozens of government lawyers paid by my tax money. They’ve got all the time and money in the world, and none of them are risking their personal bank account or livelihood like we are. And in the meanwhile, even if we started going through the process and applying for after-the-fact permits, we’d still be racking up fines of seventy thousand dollars a day. So as I was talking to this woman, I was getting more and more upset until I was crying. I might have said some things to her I shouldn’t. In fact, I know I did.”
Joe was confused. He said, “I still don’t get it. A person gives you a business card and the fines start automatically that day? With nothing in writing at all?”
Pam said, “I begged her to send me something. I sent certified letters to her office begging for some kind of documentation of what they were doing to us and why. But she ignored me, and no one in that office would talk to me on the phone. After a couple of months, I just stopped calling.”
Joe asked, “Did you try to get in touch with any of her higher-ups?”
“I sent letters and emails but never got a reply.”
“Does the name Juan Julio Batista mean anything to you?”
“Sure,” Pam said. “He’s the big boss. I found his name in a directory, but I couldn’t get past his secretary when I called, and he never replied to my emails.”
“What about Heinz Underwood?”
“Never heard of him.”
Joe said, “How was Butch taking this?”
“Badly,” Pam said. “He just withdrew into his shell. He went to work, he came home and ate dinner, but it was like he wasn’t really there. We were both waiting for the other shoe to drop-for something to happen so we could maybe find a lawyer or call the governor or some politician who might be able to help. We did talk to a lawyer, but he said he couldn’t really do anything without seeing something in writing from the EPA. In fact, he kind of looked at us like we were paranoid or exaggerating. So we waited for the EPA to slap us with some kind of charge, but nothing happened.”
Marybeth said, “Is that why you never said anything about it to me or anyone? Because you thought we might not believe you?”
Pam took a moment to answer while considering the question. “It’s complicated. I think even though we were convinced we didn’t do anything wrong we still felt. . guilty somehow. It’s just like the questions you’re asking me-like you think there has to be another side to this story, because why else would they come after us like that?
“But there is no other side,” she said, “unless it’s something we don’t know or never thought about. I think both Butch and I always believed someone would just say, ‘Hey, this is crazy. This can’t happen in America,’ and it would just go away.”
Joe said, “You mean since that first encounter you never got a letter, or anything, from the EPA? Not even a call?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I started to think it was all some kind of bad dream. Or, like I said, that it might somehow just go away. I thought maybe Shauna Naous and the EPA had lost their paperwork, or it fell through the cracks or something. I hoped maybe she got fired or something and the whole thing left with her. Then I realized federal employees never get fired. Still, I was starting to have some hope again. But I couldn’t ever stop thinking of that seventy thousand dollars a day.
“A couple of months ago,” Pam said, “Butch moved out. He said he just needed to be by himself.”
Marybeth gasped and covered her mouth. She said, “Pam, why didn’t you tell me?”
Pam shook her head. “I was ashamed. I didn’t want anyone to know. Every day I thought he’d move back in and our life would be normal again. We still worked together at the office, but at the end of the day I’d come home and he’d go to his place. I made Hannah promise me not to tell you, but I think she told Lucy.”
“Lucy never said a word,” Marybeth whispered.
“She’s a good friend for Hannah,” Pam said. “I so appreciate her being able to spend so much time here with a normal family.”
“Oh, we’ve got issues,” Marybeth said, and laughed, “but we think of her as one of our own. She’s a sweet girl.”
“She likes you, too,” Pam said.
“Where has Butch been staying?” Joe asked Pam.
“Downtown. In some grungy little apartment over the Stockman’s Bar.”
“I know of it,” Joe said, recalling once breaking into the apartment during a case two years before.
Pam said, “The good news is Butch moved back home just last week. He said since we hadn’t heard anything from the EPA in nearly a year, that maybe it was all some kind of bureaucratic snafu. He said they could at least apologize for what they put us through, but he didn’t really expect anything.
“It was like having the old Butch back,” Pam said with a sad smile. “It was like a black cloud had lifted from him. That’s not to say I didn’t resent the hell out of him for leaving us. We still have issues to work through on that one, and I don’t plan to let him off the hook as easily as he expects me to let him off. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy yesterday when he said he was going to go up to our lot and get back to work on it. He wasn’t gone three hours before I got a call from Shauna Naous.”
Joe held his breath.
“She said they were delivering the documentation I’d asked for, that it had taken a while to get it all put together.”
“A year after you asked for it?” Marybeth said, obviously outraged.
“And she reminded me that our fine had been accumulating and was up to over twenty-four million dollars,” Pam said, with a high-pitched cackle. “Over twenty-four million dollars! Here we are barely scraping along with hardly two nickels to rub together and they say we owe them twenty-four million in fines. I told her they could have the lot-that we’d just sign it over to them and they could keep it. But she said they didn’t work that way.”
Joe noted the rage building in Marybeth’s face as she listened.
He said to Pam, “This was yesterday when she called?”
“Yes. She said there were some special agents driving up from Denver to hand-deliver the documents.”
“Did you tell Butch?”
“I tried. I called his cell phone, but he didn’t pick up. I figured he was on the tractor up there and couldn’t hear it ring.”
Joe felt his stomach growl from tension. “So those two agents drove up there to your property and Butch didn’t know they were coming?”
“No.”
“How did they know he’d be there?” Joe asked.
“I have no idea,” she said.
“Pam,” Joe said, “do you think he snapped when he saw them?”
Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t cry. She said, “That’s what I keep asking myself, Joe. But what else could it be?”
“And he didn’t get in contact with you? He just never came home last night?”
“That’s what happened. I thought maybe he was so depressed again he just froze up. I kept waiting for him to call or come by, because I wanted to read those papers myself and call the lawyer. But instead of Butch, Sheriff Reed showed up and started asking me questions.”