The supervisors meet on the second floor of the courthouse, in a paneled room with one flag.
Thursday, November 6, nine o'clock.
Every folding chair was full.
Half the room wore seed caps.
The other half wore Harlan Swine Partners fleece vests.
Dwight sat up front with Todd and an engineer.
Glenn and Krista sat two rows behind him.
Dwight had told them to come.
Landowner's family, he'd called them, in an email Brad forwarded me Tuesday.
Glenn didn't look at me.
Krista looked at me the whole time.
Tammy came in late and stood in the back by the coat rack.
In the far corner sat a woman in a gray suit with a yellow legal pad.
Carla Thiessen, county attorney.
She hadn't called me back.
She was here.
The chairman was Gene Boeckmann, who has farmed east of town since the seventies.
He read the agenda item in a flat voice.
"Construction permit application, Harlan Swine Partners, Kruse site."
Dwight's engineer did twenty minutes on setbacks and drainage tile.
Then Dwight stood up.
"We have landowner agreements in place for every acre in the manure plan," he said.
"Including the Ostrander ground."
"The family's here in support."
He gestured back at Glenn and Krista.
Glenn nodded at his own knees.
"Public comment," Gene said.
"Three minutes each."
"Sign-up sheet says Nell Ostrander first."
The county clerk set a timer on the table.
A white kitchen timer, the twist kind.
It started ticking.
I walked up with a manila envelope.
I didn't sit in the chair.
"The landowner agreement for our farm is in Book 431, Page 12," I said.
"It says my mother, June Ostrander, signed it at her kitchen table on April 20."
"On April 20, my mother was in Room 318 at Saint Agnes in Fort Dodge."
I set the discharge papers on the table.
Then the photo of Mom frowning at a plastic egg.
"The notary is my sister-in-law."
"That's all."
I walked back to my chair.
The timer still had a minute and forty seconds on it.
Nobody talked over the ticking.
Gene picked up the discharge papers.
He read both pages.
He picked up the photo and held it at arm's length, the way men his age read.
"I knew June forty years," he said, to nobody.
Then he looked down the table.
"Krista, you're the notary?"
Krista stood.
I don't think she meant to.
"We were all here at Easter," she said.
The same smile.
The same words.
Gene waited.
"Was June?"
Krista's mouth opened.
She looked at Dwight.
Dwight was studying the flag.
"Dwight said nobody ever checks those," Krista said.
Her voice went thin.
"Glenn signed it."
"I just stamped it."
"Dwight said it was a formality."
Glenn came up out of his chair.
"You said you'd done a hundred of them!"
"Sit down, Glenn," Gene said.
"Both of you."
Dwight stood and buttoned his vest.
"Gene, I was defrauded here as much as anybody."
"I paid that family in good faith."
"I relied on what they told me."
In the corner, Carla Thiessen stood with her legal pad.
"We have your texts, Dwight," she said.
"'Hospital or not, get her name on it this weekend.'"
"That's yours, isn't it?"
Dwight didn't sit down.
He just stopped standing like a man in charge.
The timer went off.
Ding.
Nobody laughed.
The board voted three to nothing to recommend denial.
Carla Thiessen asked Glenn and Krista to stay behind.
A deputy stood at the door while she asked.
Dwight left by the side stairs with Todd half a step behind him.
The fleece vests filed out after him, quieter than they came in.
Out on the courthouse steps, Tammy caught up with me.
She had her car keys in her fist.
"You could have warned us," she said.
"I did."
"When?"
"When you put clapping hands on it."
She stood there a while.
Then she went down the steps to her car and didn't look back.
The Zillow listing flipped to Off market that afternoon.
Two weeks later, the DNR denied the permit.
That Friday, Carla Thiessen charged Glenn and Krista with forgery, and Dwight Harlan with conspiracy to commit it.
The Secretary of State revoked Krista's notary commission.
Brad gave a statement and kept his license, barely.
Dwight's lawyer sued Glenn for the forty thousand.
Glenn's lawyer said the whole thing was Dwight's idea.
They're both right.
On December 2, Darlene called me from the recorder's counter.
"Thought you'd want to know, honey."
"Somebody just brought one in."
She read it to me over the phone.
Release of Manure Application Easement
Book 431, Page 12
Released in full