"Is he still there?" she asked.
"He went home."
"Are you injured?"
"No."
"Do not use the fireplace, furnace vent, or any appliance that shares that chimney until it has been inspected."
That last instruction made my stomach tighten.
My fireplace had its own flue, but the old house had been remodeled twice, and I suddenly realized I could not swear there was nothing else connected to that masonry chase.
I shut off the gas furnace anyway.
Then I opened windows and took Milo outside.
The first deputy arrived twenty-six minutes later.
Her name was Elena Ruiz.
She was young enough to be my daughter and calm in a way that immediately made me feel less foolish for being shaken.
She walked around the house, looked at the ladder marks beneath the eaves, then stared up at the gray streaks.
"You saw him pour it?"
"I watched the whole thing."
"Any video?"
I pointed toward the garage camera.
That changed the conversation.
The front camera showed Nolan carrying the ladder from his yard.
A side camera caught him climbing.
The garage camera recorded almost everything after I came outside, including his statement that I should have signed the transfer.
The audio was clear enough that Deputy Ruiz played it twice.
She asked me to email copies before I touched anything.
Then she called for another unit.
While we waited, I showed her the property survey and the attorney letters.
I showed her photographs of a moved boundary stake, the trench Nolan had cut, and a text message he sent six weeks earlier.
You are going to regret turning this into a fight.
At the time I had treated it like bluster.
Standing beneath a chimney full of wet concrete, it looked different.
Two deputies went next door.
Nolan came out wearing a different jacket but the same knit cap.
From my driveway I could see him talking with his hands, pointing toward our property line and then toward my roof.
At one point he laughed.
Then Deputy Ruiz's partner showed him something on a phone.
I assumed it was the video.
Nolan stopped laughing.
I called a chimney company I had used for years.
The owner, Hector Salazar, thought I was exaggerating until I sent him a photograph.
"Martin, listen to me," he said. "Don't test it. Don't light paper. Don't light a match in the firebox. Don't assume you can burn through anything. Leave it alone."
"Can it be removed?"
"Maybe. Depends how far it fell before it started setting."
Contractors should be forbidden from saying maybe and depends in the same conversation.
"Worst case?"
"We open the masonry."
"How much?"
"I haven't seen it."
"Hector."
He sighed.
"If the liner is damaged, thousands. If the smoke chamber is packed, more. If somebody filled a void that can't be reached from the top, a lot more."
I sat on the tailgate of my pickup and looked toward Nolan's house.
A deputy was taking photographs of the ladder.
Another was speaking to Nolan's wife near the front door.
None of it felt real.
My daughter, Claire, called at 7:20.
She lived in Albuquerque and taught middle school science.
I had not planned to tell her until I knew more, but Deputy Ruiz asked whether anyone could stay with me if the house needed to be vacated.
That question made me call.
Claire went silent after I explained.
Then she said, "Get out of the house."
"I am outside."
"No, I mean leave."
"The fireplace is cold."
"Dad, you don't know what else he touched."
It was exactly the kind of thing Rebecca would have said.
I hated that Claire was right.
Nolan knew construction.
His grading company did foundation work, retaining walls, site drainage, and small demolition jobs.
He knew vents.
He knew gas lines.
He knew my house well enough to know where the cleanout was and which room the fireplace served.
Deputy Ruiz heard part of the conversation.
When I hung up, she said, "Your daughter has a point."
So I loaded Milo into the truck.
I grabbed medications, my laptop, Rebecca's jewelry box, insurance papers, and the binder containing the property dispute documents.
I left everything else where it was.
At 8:35, Hector texted that he could reach me by noon.
At 8:52, the sheriff's department told me Nolan had been issued a criminal trespass warning while detectives reviewed the damage.
At 9:06, the wind picked up.
It had been dry for weeks.
The piñon and juniper on the foothills were brittle, and every local weather station had been warning about fire danger.
Still, the Hermit's Pass Fire was supposed to be west of us and moving north.
It had started the previous afternoon after sparks from a utility crew ignited grass near a service road.
The evening news said crews had it boxed in.
At 9:18, I saw smoke rising behind the ridge.
At 9:23, Claire called.
"Are you watching the fire map?"
"No."
"You need to."
"I'm dealing with something else right now."
"Dad, the wind shifted."
I climbed into my truck and checked the county emergency site.
The red perimeter had moved farther east than it had any right to move in less than an hour.
A neighbor across the road came outside holding his phone.
Then another garage door opened.
By 9:31, people were standing in driveways looking toward the foothills.
The sky had changed from blue to a dirty brown near the western horizon.
At 9:37, every phone around me made the same violent sound.
The emergency alert was so loud that Milo barked and jumped against the passenger door.
EVACUATION WARNING. JUNIPER MESA ZONE B. PREPARE TO LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.
I read it twice.
Deputy Ruiz looked at her own phone.
Her expression changed.
"Pack whatever you're taking," she said. "Do not wait for the next alert."
I almost laughed because I had already packed for a different disaster.
Across the property line, Nolan stood in his driveway.
For the first time all morning, he looked uncertain.
His wife was loading plastic bins into their SUV while he stared at the smoke.
He saw me watching.
"This is your fault," he shouted.
I actually looked around to see if he could possibly be talking to someone else.
"The wildfire is my fault?"
"The cops. All this drama."
"You climbed onto my roof."
"Because you wouldn't listen."
Deputy Ruiz stepped between our driveways.
"Both of you, stop. Prepare to evacuate."
Nolan pointed at me.
"He stole land from me."
"I own my land."
"You know what I mean."
That sentence told me more about him than every attorney letter combined.
He believed wanting something long enough created a right to it.
At 9:49, the alert changed.
MANDATORY EVACUATION. LEAVE NOW.
Sirens sounded down Juniper Mesa Road.
A county vehicle crawled through the neighborhood with a loudspeaker ordering residents east toward Highway 84.
Ash began falling like dirty snow.
I put Milo in the truck, locked the front door, and looked back through the living room window.
The basket of cedar was still beside the fireplace.
That morning I had intended to light the first fire of the season after dinner.
The temperature was supposed to drop below freezing after sunset.
If Nolan had chosen a different morning, or if I had slept through the ladder, or if I had not been home, I might have lit that fire without knowing the flue was blocked.
The thought made my skin crawl.
Then another sheriff's vehicle rolled past and the loudspeaker repeated the evacuation order.
I pulled away.
In the mirror, Nolan's ladder was still lying across his front lawn.
Behind it, the smoke grew darker.
I thought I was leaving because of the wildfire.
I did not yet understand that the wildfire was also removing me from a house Nolan had quietly turned into a trap.
Claire met me at a grocery store parking lot twenty miles east of Juniper Mesa.
She got out of her car before I had fully stopped, opened the passenger door, and hugged Milo first.