Chapter 4 - THE RESERVE FUND
The HOA reserve fund should have held roughly $2.4 million. It had $611,000. Residents believed the rest had been used for roofs, drainage, and roads. Invoices existed. Much of the work did not. Three vendors received most payments. Rascin Community Services. Sloan Risk Consulting. North Bay Development Advisors. All connected to Vera, Raymond, or their relatives. Then the fines. Nearly $930,000 collected over five years. Absurd for 180 homes. Who paid most? People least likely to fight. Elderly residents. Disabled residents. Widows. Renters. People with limited English. Then liens. Twelve homes. Three foreclosure threats. One completed. Buyer: North Bay Development Advisors. The scheme sharpened. Create violations. Increase fines. Attach liens. Push vulnerable owners toward sale. Acquire below market. The neighborhood sat beside a planned commercial corridor where property values were expected to rise. Raymond had access to municipal planning conversations through city contacts.
Vera controlled HOA enforcement. Bryce handled intimidation. Cole suppressed complaints under coercion. Then my own boss told me to recuse. For once, he was right. Ella was a victim. I had conflict. So I stepped away from the formal case and handed evidence to state investigators and federal housing-fraud agents. Then Bryce’s warning shot was reconstructed. He fired four feet from Ella, downward into stone. Not aimed at her. Still reckless. Still criminal. Then the older casing. Ballistics matched a second firearm registered to Bryce. A private resident’s cloud camera gave us the rest. Video from fourteen months earlier. Hannah pushing Ella’s stroller along Firefly Path. Bryce appears. They argue. Then Bryce raises a handgun toward the ground and fires. Hannah flinches. Ella cries. The first loud boom. Two days before Hannah’s crash. Another camera recorded a black SUV entering thirty minutes later. Plate: Raymond Sloan. Then Margaret Hales testified Hannah left later in her car.
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A black SUV followed. My heart pounded. Still not homicide proof. Then state police reopened Hannah’s crash. Insurer photographs showed a clean puncture in the rear tire sidewall. Could be debris. Could be deliberate. No collision marks. Then traffic camera showed Hannah’s car with Raymond’s SUV behind it. Four minutes later, the SUV passed another camera. Hannah’s car did not. Raymond admitted following her. “To talk.” About what? He said Hannah claimed she had backed up the phone video. Then her cloud account produced an unsent draft to me: Thorne, I think your boss is protecting Vera. If anything happens, look at the HOA reserve accounts. My chest broke. She had tried to protect my job by not sending it. The same mistake people kept making. Protection through silence. Then Raymond left me a voicemail. “You are letting grief turn you into exactly the kind of investigator you hate.” That line almost worked. Then: “You’re dragging your disabled daughter into it.”
There. Not concern. Leverage. I forwarded the recording. Then Vera called a special HOA meeting to tighten “mobility device rules.” Even under investigation. That was not confidence. It was panic.
