Broken Ground
Copyright© 2026 by Lumpy
Chapter 4
Taylor arrived at the courthouse just after eight-thirty the next morning. The building’s main entrance led to a lobby with marble floors that looked like whoever designed it and used taxpayer money to pay for it had imagined a much grander place than where the building actually sat.
A directory on the wall listed the various county offices, and Taylor found what he needed: County Clerk and Recorder, second floor.
At the top of the stairs, a hallway stretched in both directions, lined with frosted glass doors bearing black lettering. He found the clerk’s office halfway down the hall and pushed through the door.
The room was larger than he expected, with rows of filing cabinets along one wall and a counter separating the public area, which had a few computer terminals, from the workspace beyond. A woman in her forties sat behind the counter, typing at a computer. She looked up when Taylor approached.
“Help you?”
“I need to look at property records,” Taylor said. “Public records search.”
“What property?”
“Several. I’m researching land sales in the area over the past two years.”
The woman studied him for a moment, then gestured toward a computer terminal near the window. “You can use that station. The system’s pretty straightforward. If you need help, let me know.”
Taylor settled into the chair and switched on the terminal. The interface was dated but functional. He started with Roy’s property, entering the address Milly had given him. The record pulled up quickly.
Roy had owned forty-three acres along the Missouri River, purchased in 1998 for eighty-five thousand dollars. The land included river frontage and extended back into wooded hills. No sales recorded. No liens. The property remained in Roy’s name.
Taylor printed the record and moved on to the next name from his list. Thomas Evans, the hunter who’d died in an accident five months ago. The search took longer this time, but eventually Taylor found it, one hundred and twelve acres in the same general area as Roy’s property, also with river access.
Evans had owned the land since 2003. But six weeks after his death, the property had sold to something called Mountain Vista Industries for four hundred thousand dollars.
Taylor added that to his notes and searched for Sarah Miller, the teacher who’d fallen to her death three months ago. She hadn’t owned property. Neither had Ryan Hall, the farmer who’d died in the barn fire. But Peter Olsen, the mechanic who’d drowned, had owned sixty-eight acres. It sold two months after his death to Mountain Vista Industries for three hundred and twenty thousand.
Justin Bradley, the rancher whose truck had gone off the road, had owned the largest parcel, two hundred and forty acres stretching along the river and up into the hills. That property sold a month after his death to Mountain Vista Industries for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Three deaths. Three sales. All to the same buyer.
Taylor sat back and pictured the data as a whole in his head. Roy’s property hadn’t sold yet, but the others had moved quickly after their owners died. Too quickly, really. Estate sales usually took months to settle, especially when deaths were unexpected. But these properties had changed hands within weeks.
He pulled up the map function and plotted the locations. The properties formed a rough line along the Missouri River, each one adjacent or nearly adjacent to the next. Together, they represented nearly five hundred acres of continuous riverfront land.
Taylor expanded his search, looking for other properties in the same area that hadn’t been involved in deaths. He found four more parcels along the same stretch of river. Two had sold to Mountain Vista Industries in the past eighteen months, although neither of those was associated with deaths. The other two remained with their original owners.
The woman at the counter glanced over. “Finding what you need?”
“Yeah. Have you ever heard of Mountain Vista Industries?”
“Of course, they’ve been one of the largest employers around here for years, although they used to be called Mountain Vista Mining.”
“Mining?”
“This whole area used to be mining country. Copper, mostly. Mountain Vista was one of the bigger operations, but the mines played out in the nineties and they were just hanging on, slowly shutting down shafts for the next fifteen years. About, I don’t know, three years ago or so, the son took over the operation and they started working on some environmental thing. It must be going good because they’ve been hiring again, which I’ll tell you is a big relief for a lot of people around here.”
“What kind of environmental work?”
“Not sure exactly, something about clean energy or some green stuff like that. They built a new facility on the edge of town about two years ago. Big investment.”
Taylor made notes. “You said this all started when the son took over?”
“Wade Hutchins. His family’s been in the mining business here for generations. His grandfather started the original company back in the fifties, but when Wade took over, he made some changes. Or so I heard.”
Taylor thanked her and returned to the computer. He searched for more information about Mountain Vista Industries, but the county records only showed business filings and property transactions. The company had purchased eight properties in the past two years, all along the Missouri River. He already knew several of those had belonged to the people who died, but just as many people sold without anything bad happening to them.
He pulled up the business registration, which confirmed what the clerk had said. Mountain Vista Mining, incorporated in Montana, did a name and purpose change three years ago to Mountain Vista Industries, with its primary business listed as “environmental remediation and waste reclamation services.” Corporate officers included Wade Hutchins as CEO and two others Taylor didn’t recognize.
The company’s registered address matched a location on the outskirts of Glacier Falls. Taylor made note of it.
He went back to the map and studied the properties. It seemed pretty clear that Mountain Vista had been systematically acquiring land along a specific stretch of the river. They’d purchased some properties through normal sales, or at least sales that appeared normal on paper, if paying a bit more than he thought they should go for, but about half had been after the owners died in accidents.
Six deaths in five months. Five properties that either had sold or likely would sell to Mountain Vista. That wasn’t a coincidence.
Taylor searched for death certificates, but those records weren’t publicly available. He’d need a court order or family permission to access them. What he could access were the property tax records, which showed when payments had been made and by whom.
Thomas Evans’s property taxes had been paid by Mountain Vista Industries within days of the sale closing. Same with Peter Olsen’s land and Justin Bradley’s ranch. The new owner had moved fast to secure the properties and keep them current.
Taylor leaned back and rubbed his eyes. He’d been staring at the screen for over two hours, but the picture was getting clearer. Mountain Vista wanted this land badly enough to pay premium prices for it. They wanted it badly enough that they’d acquired most of it right after the owners died in suspicious accidents.
The question was why. What made this particular stretch of river so valuable?
He pulled up maps of the area. The properties ran along the Missouri River for roughly eight miles, starting just west of Glacier Falls and extending into the hills. Dense forest covered most of the land, with the river cutting through the valley bottom. He could see old mining roads and what might be closed shaft entrances on some of the properties, remnants of the area’s mining history.
Taylor zoomed in on the Mountain Vista facility, which on this map was still only partially built. God, he missed having things like satellite imagery.
The new building sat on the southern edge of the company’s land holdings, right where the river came down from the hills. The structure looked like it was going to be large, or was large now that it was built, with what looked like several smaller outbuildings and a paved parking area. A service road connected it to the main highway.
The company had systematically acquired land along a specific corridor. They’d built a major facility at the downstream end of that corridor. And they’d done it all within the past two years, most of it in the past eighteen months.
The same eighteen months when six people had died in accidents.
It at least gave him somewhere to start. Roy had been onto something, and if Taylor had to guess, it was looking into the deaths of his neighbors. If Roy had been killed for that or for his land, which was in the stretch Mountain Vista was buying up, Taylor didn’t know yet.
What he did know was they were somehow involved. There were too many coincidences for it not to be.
Taylor gathered his papers and stood up. The woman at the counter looked over.
“Done already?”
“For now. Thanks for your help.”
“Find what you were looking for?”
“More than I expected,” Taylor said.
He walked out of the clerk’s office and down the stairs.
Taylor needed to see these properties for himself.
He found the Bradley ranch ten miles north of Glacier Falls, where the county road turned to gravel. The house sat back from the road, a single-story ranch with faded blue siding and a detached garage. A Ford pickup with rust eating through the wheel wells sat in the driveway next to a U-Haul trailer, already half-loaded with boxes and furniture.
He parked behind the pickup and got out. The property stretched down toward the river that ran perpendicular to the property, east to west. It was maybe forty acres of cleared land with pine forest hemming it in on three sides. Fresh wooden stakes dotted the landscape, bright orange flags tied to each one. Survey markers. Recent ones, from the look of them.
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