Patricia picked up her reading glasses and put them back on.

“It’s criminal fraud.”

I stuffed the camera and the cut wire into my jacket pocket and walked back out to my truck.

At ten the next morning I was standing at the tall counter in the Dunn County Register of Deeds office in Menomonie.

The county clerk, a woman named Donna, took a heavy vinyl binder down from the shelf behind her desk.

“Parcel thirty-one,” Donna said, setting the binder down flat on the counter.