June stood before the room could settle.
“I’m June Alvarez, and I didn’t volunteer to have my dishwasher stop in the middle of a cycle.”
She held up the receipt for her inspection.
“Your company told me the problem was old plumbing and offered me an expensive repair.”
Graham began to speak.
June lifted her palm.
“I am not finished.”
The room went quiet.
“Your graph says I saved water,” she continued.
“I did save water, because I took my dirty clothes across town and washed them somewhere else.”
Several people in the audience nodded.
“You didn’t reduce my needs,” June said.
“You moved them out of your picture.”
Rachel saw the commissioner write something in large letters on her notes.
Graham looked down at his slides.
For the first time, he did not appear to have a prepared response.
Dennis Wren took the microphone next.
He brought an empty bread tray and set it on the table beside the stage.
“My business missed two market days because I couldn’t reliably clean my equipment,” he said.
“I know that an empty tray doesn’t prove every dollar of my loss, but it proves your success chart didn’t include my business.”
He read aloud the company’s offer to compensate him in exchange for signing a statement that denied ongoing harm.
Graham called it a standard goodwill agreement.
Dennis asked why goodwill required him to contradict his own experience.
A woman near the back applauded once before stopping herself.
The moderator allowed a representative from the county’s purchasing office to speak.
She said the demonstration award would not proceed until the compliance investigation was complete.
Graham’s shoulders sank.
That decision did not settle anybody’s claim, but it prevented his slides from turning into a new contract that afternoon.
CHAPTER TEN — CAROL’S TURN
Carol had been sitting near the stage beside a display of low-water landscaping.
Rachel had noticed her when the presentation began and wondered whether she would leave before anyone called her name.
Instead Carol walked slowly to the microphone after the moderator asked whether the community liaison wished to respond.
She looked older than she had on Thursday with the hammer in her hand.
Her hair had come loose from its clip, and her cardigan was buttoned unevenly.
“My name is Carol Mercer,” she said.
“I brought this company to our neighborhood.”
Graham stepped away from the lectern.
“Carol, you don’t need to—”
“Yes,” she said.
“I do.”
She faced the audience.
“I believed they had city permission, and I repeated that to people who trusted me.”
Rachel watched her carefully.
“When neighbors reported problems, I dismissed them,” Carol continued.
“I told them they were imagining things because I wanted the project to work.”
A resident near the aisle asked whether she had signed anybody else’s name.
Carol shook her head.
“I did not sign their names, but I marked them as willing when they had not agreed.”
The distinction mattered to the investigators even if it offered little comfort to the residents.
Carol’s voice faltered.
“I also knew by Tuesday that devices might still be inside houses.”
She looked toward Rachel.
“Instead of warning the owners, I broke Rachel’s pipe because I wanted an inspector to find the problem without anyone discovering how involved I was.”
Rachel felt a sudden coldness.
Carol had given her a different account on the porch.
That morning she had claimed she only wanted the device out before something worse happened.
Now the crowd was hearing the part she had withheld.
“I hoped the inspection would make the company fix everything,” Carol said.
“I also hoped nobody would ask why I knew where to strike.
”
Graham stared at her.
“That is a serious allegation about your own conduct,” he said.
Carol turned to him.
“I know what I did.”
