Within the borders of Harrington County, he was a genuine expert at what he did, and his expertise had kept him safe and powerful for a very long time.

But his expertise was entirely provincial.

It was the expertise of a man who had only ever practiced his craft in one small, controlled environment, against opponents who did not understand it, and who had therefore never had his methods tested against anyone who did.

To me, his scheme was not sophisticated at all.

It was a textbook case, a pattern I had seen a hundred variations of at the federal level, executed with the clumsy overconfidence of a man who had never once faced a real investigator.

The forged liens that terrorized his farmers were, to a federal procurement specialist, laughably crude.