Michael R Collings (27 page)

“Mr. Huntley? I’m Edgar Sai, from the city inspector’s office. I hear you have some questions.” The man was short, official looking, with a calculator in one shirt pocket and a clipboard in his hand. He glanced down, as if to re-check his data.

“A few,” Willard responded. “A few.”

In a couple of minutes—after the introductions were made and Catherine went into the family room to keep herd on the kids—Willard and Sai were walking along the back of the house. Sai kept his head down, studying the earth along the foundations of the house, the way the concrete patio slab canted toward the grass, the surface of the yard itself. Occasionally he would nod. He did not speak.

They turned the corner and stood at the end of the narrow strip along the side.

“Here’s where I found it,” Willard said. He pointed to the shallow excavation that paralleled the wall, but the action was unnecessary. Sai was already on his knees, one finger tracing the exposed crack. He stood.

“Do you have a shovel?”

Willard indicated the one leaning against the fence.

It took Sai only a couple of minutes to continue the trench the length of the wall. He was more proficient with the tool than Willard had been.

“Okay,” he said when both of them could see that the crack extended from corner to corner, never less than half an inch wide, sometimes as much as two inches. “It’s pretty clear what happened. We’ve seen this often enough here.”

“What do you mean,
here
?”

Sai straightened and leaned the shovel back against the fence.

“Here, in Charter Oaks, as well as in Sunset Hills, over there toward the hills. There were a lot of problems when the subdivisions were built, improper materials, inadequate compaction of the soil, even some outright illegalities in construction. Happened, oh, twenty, thirty years ago or so.”

“But what…?”

“Basically, the builders failed to meet most of the codes then in place, and the houses started to fall apart within a couple of years.”

“Weren’t there laws…?”

Sai had apparently had this conversation many times before. He seemed to know what Willard was about to ask and had no compunctions about interrupting.

“Sure. But laws only work when you catch the bad guys breaking them. This guy—McCall—was too canny. It wasn’t until two years after this subdivision was finished, almost five years after Sunset Hills was finished, that the inspectors finally started to close in on him.”

“Did they get him? Put him in jail or something?”

“Actually, it was sort of ironic. About the time the indictments came down and the law finally got in motion, he…died.”

“Died? How?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, some kids found him….” Sai suddenly stopped. His eyes dropped to the clipboard in his hands. He took a second or two to read something, the looked up at Willard. For another couple of seconds his eyes widened and he just stared. “Uh, they found his body on Halloween night. Gave them quite a scare. Still a bit of a mystery as to how he died.”

Sai seemed unwilling to say more. He made a few notes on the form on the clipboard.

“From what I see here,” he said finally, “it’s pretty clear what happened. This McCall had a nasty habit of cutting corners wherever he could, regardless of what it meant to the integrity of the structures.

“One of his favorite tactics was supremely simple. He would set the foundation boards and lay the steel rebar, everything ready to pour the slab. The inspector would come out and find everything perfectly within code. He’d sign off on the house, then leave.

“And McCall would pull up the rebar, pour the slab immediately, and use the same rebar in the next house. Saved a lot of money that way. No one knows which houses, if any, finally got to keep the rebar.”

“So the concrete would just give way after a while,” Willard said, almost to himself.

Sai nodded.

“That in itself would have been enough of a problem. But he had another trick as well.”

Sai knelt down and caught a clod of dirt in his had, then stood, crumbling it as he did so. Both men watched the dust filter to the ground.

“The soil here, and at Sunset Hills, is unusually expansive. It captures moisture when it rains, and…well,
swells
is a good non-technical term. Then when it gets dry, it shrinks. Up and down.

“That’s why rebar is so crucial around here. It helps stabilize the slab to minimize the effects of the recurrent movement. In addition, construction permits in the Valley specify a particular compaction technique on a property before any building can begin. It takes a fair amount of time, some expensive heavy equipment, and specially trained operators for the technique to work properly.

“Unfortunately, there’s no real way to test the soil before construction to make sure it’s been compacted sufficiently.”

“Let me guess.” Willard knew what was coming. “McCall skimped on it.”

“Yeah, most of the places around here are still sitting on pretty loose ground, and when we have a wet winter followed by a dry summer….”

“Up and down. Up and down.”

“Right. And this is what happens. The walls separate here,” Sai pointed to the foundation. “And there.” He pointed up to the jointure of wall and roof. “You can see where….”

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Willard stood silently for a minute.

“Wasn’t anything done about the houses, I mean, after the city found out what was happening?”

“Not much. By that time McCall was dead. The other partner in the business had disappeared a couple of years before—everyone figures he guessed what was coming and took off for parts unknown. There weren’t any laws like the first-year guarantee back then, so buyers were on their own.

“A couple of insurance companies made good on claims for the first year or two. Then, when it became obvious that probably every house in both subdivisions was defective, they got together and set up a deadline. They honored claims up to that date. Afterward…. Well,
caveat emptor
, as they say.”

“But…” Willard was feeling more than a bit of the rage that had been with him since the roach experience weeks before. “But what about now? Isn’t there anything like an inspection that would let new buyers know?”

“Sure. But there are ways around that as well. Look here.” He knelt again and indicated the place where the stucco showed at least three paint jobs.

“This”—pointing to the lower color, sickly yellow showing here and there where a more recent slate blue had been abraded away—“this was probably the original paint job. From the looks of it, it was probably the only one for twenty years or so, then the house was repainted with this blue. See how the coats of paint extend a couple of inches below the soil level.”

Willard nodded.

“This”—now running his finger along the earth-tone paint just above—“is new, probably less than a year old.”

He surveyed the wall more closely.

“Yeah, it looks like the last owners realized how difficult it would be to sell the place, so they fixed it up. First, they hauled in enough topsoil to cover the foundations for six inches or so. See how the side here and the front part of the back yard slope away from the house?”

“Sure, but I thought that was normal.”

“Some slope is. Not that much. And the fact that they completely covered the crack here, then repainted the house to hide any additional cosmetic treatments,” he paused and jerked his thumb toward the eaves, “like plastering the break up there, tells me that they knew exactly what was going on and decided to hide everything.”

Willard was livid by now, almost unable to speak. He kicked savagely at the leaning shovel. The fence shivered threateningly as the impact vibrated through the handle.

“Those bastards! I knew that something….” He took a deep breath. “But aren’t there inspections before sales, don’t houses have to meet some kind of standards? Aren’t there disclosure laws?”

“Can you show me your contract?”

By the way Sai asked, Willard knew that worse was coming.

4.

Five minutes later they were sitting in the living room. Catherine had just returned from the master bedroom, where they kept important papers in a small lockbox tucked away at the top of their closet.

She settled herself next to Willard on the couch. Sai faced them in the matching armchair.

Without speaking, she handed the sheaf of legal-sized papers over to Sai.

He shuffled through them, muttering here and there as if keeping tabs on what he had seen and what he had not. He was apparently looking for a particular sheet.

“Ah,” he said finally. The silence had begun to grate uncomfortably on both Catherine and Willard. They could hear the kids playing quietly in the family room. No interruptions. Thanks for that, at least.

“Here we are.” He leaned across to hand the papers to Willard. He had folded the top sheets back and under at the place he had been looking for, and indicated a short paragraph which his finger. “Read that.”

It was only a line or two on the inspector’s report.

Willard read it aloud: “Structure shows signs of some foundation issues, notably minor cracking of the external surfaces and additional soil at the base, above anticipated grade level.”

He looked at Catherine. She looked back. They both shook their heads and shrugged, nonplussed.

“What does
that
mean?” Catherine handed the papers back to Sai. “Sure, we saw a couple of small cracks here and here outside, especially at the corners of the windows, but isn’t that common with stucco houses?”

“Yes, it is. But that is not what this sentence is talking about. What you have here is realtor-speak for ‘Beware—there’s something wrong with the foundation, otherwise the current owners would not have gone to the expense of hauling in dirt and hiding the base.’”

“It doesn’t say a word about…!” Willard was on his feet.

“Sit down, Mr. Huntley. Please.” Sai leaned back in his armchair and looked sympathetically at the pair. “You’re right. It doesn’t. But what it
does
say is sufficient in a court of law to indicate that there were fundamental problems with the slab. I’ve seen this sentence—or others like it—on enough contracts here in the Valley to recognize legalese that basically says ‘You haven’t got a leg to stand on. You were warned.’”

“But we didn’t even
see
that!” Willard was standing again, gesturing angrily as if he wanted to strike out at someone—Sai, since there was no one else available.

“You initialed the bottom of the page,” Sai said quietly.

That stopped Willard for a second. He examined the paper again. When he spoke his voice was cold, his rage under control for the moment but waiting to explode.

“When we signed the papers,” he said carefully, biting off each word, “they took us through them so quick that we didn’t get a chance to read everything. And Chuck said….”

“Chuck?”

“Chuck Maxwell, the real estate agent.” Willard’s teeth were clenched now, his body perfectly rigid.

“He offered to accompany us to the signing. To help us if there was anything....” Catherine fell silent.

She understood now.

“Maxwell.” It was a low murmur, redolent with emotion.

Sai shook his head sadly. “Even so, everything done was—from the court’s point of view—legal. Punctiliously so.” He seemed to enjoy the word. He had probably used it before in just this context.

He let the Huntleys have a couple of moments before he spoke again.

“I would venture to guess that you’ve seen more than just the foundation problem.”

Willard looked startled, shaken from an angry reverie.

“Uh, yeah. You could say that.”

He stalked to the sliding doors that led to the patio and jerked back the carpet and padding, not difficult to do since there was no longer any tack-strip holding them down. He pointed to the break.

“This goes from the far corner of the kitchen all the way along the back of the house.”

He gestured widely with one hand.

“There are cracks in nearly every joining—walls, ceilings, floor.” He motioned for Sai to follow.

“You can see where the slab’s broken under the tiles here in the entry way.” Sai nodded. Willard did not give him time to respond any other way.

“But here’s the best. Oh yes, here’s the really fun part.” He laughed bitterly as he led Sai down the hall. Catherine did not follow. She went into the family room to be with the children. She could hear small sounds of discomfort coming from them. They had heard their daddy’s tone of voice before, and they did not like it.

5.

They stood in the doorway of the back bedroom, Willard fuming and speechless, Sai calm and dispassionate.

Willard didn’t need to say anything.

It was all there. The sinuous crack nearly bisecting the room, disappearing beneath the baseboard with the clear intention of continuing on into Suze’s bedroom and, who knew, on from there into the master bedroom.

The rough fissure fully exposed along the back wall, inches wide and black as hell, who knew how deep.

The odor, even though faint, still cloying and oppressive five full days after the spill. Suggestive of rot and decay and suppuration, suggestive of many things but
not
of sewage.

Sai merely stood there, impassive.

When he finally spoke, it was with a certain amount of sympathy in his voice. “I’ve see this before. House after house. There’s one place in Sunset Hills where the living room floor is so displaced along one side that there is a four-inch differential. It’s like the owners have half a sunken room. They are one of the unlucky ones. It didn’t slip that much until after the insurance deadline passed.”

Willard stared at him, speechless.

“I would guess that the side wall here probably shifts as much as a couple of inches between winter and summer.” He studied the line where ceiling and wall met. “See there, in the closet, where the new plaster is already cracking. You’ll probably have that in all three rooms along this wall. On family with a problem like this told me that in the summer, they can see stars between the wall and the ceiling.”