"Just giving advice," I replied.
I turned my back on him. The walk from the counter to the diner’s glass double doors was an exercise in pure willpower. Every step sent a jolt of fire through my dislocated right shoulder, radiating down into my fingertips. The cold morning air hit me the second I pushed through the exit, carrying the scent of wet asphalt and impending storms. The rain had intensified, drumming a steady, heavy beat against the roof of my battered Ford pickup parked at the edge of the lot.
I climbed into the cab, grimacing as I awkwardly pulled the door shut with my left hand. The interior was freezing, but I didn't reach for the ignition. Instead, I carefully extracted the phone from my jacket pocket.
I brought it to my ear.
"I'm here," Elise said. Her voice was ice-cold, stripped of any familial warmth. It was the voice that commanded a crew of three hundred sailors, the voice that directed lethal force across open oceans.
"You get all of that?" I asked, leaning my head back against the headrest. The right side of my face was beginning to swell, the skin tight and throbbing where Hollister had introduced me to the steel counter.
"Audio is secured," she said, the faint sound of a mechanical keyboard clicking rapidly in the background. "Time-stamped, encrypted, and uploaded to a remote server he can't touch. He confessed to battery, intimidation, and judicial corruption in the span of three minutes. Who is the judge he mentioned?"
"Judge Caldwell," I said, wincing as I shifted my weight. "They play golf every Thursday at the country club out on Route 9. It’s an open secret around here."
"Noted," Elise said. The clicking intensified. "I'm running a diagnostic on the county dispatch logs. Hollister shouldn't even be on shift right now. His cruiser's transponder shows him logged out for vehicle maintenance at the impound lot, not having breakfast at a diner on Main Street. He’s operating completely off the books."
"He usually does," I said. "He treats this county like a personal ATM. The locals are too scared to speak up, and anyone passing through who complains usually ends up with a broken taillight and a possession charge."
"Not today," she said, a dangerous edge creeping into her tone. "But audio of him bragging isn't enough to trigger federal oversight, Dad. He’ll claim he was joking, or trying to de-escalate a vagrant who was disturbing the peace. We need the physical evidence locked down before his network can bury it. How bad is the shoulder?"
"Out of the socket," I said. "Head wound is bleeding, but I don't think the skull is fractured. Just a deep laceration."
"You need to go to the county clinic immediately," Elise ordered. "Do not go to the main hospital in the city yet. We need a localized, time-stamped medical record in his jurisdiction to prove the immediate aftermath of the assault. Once the triage nurse logs the injuries, it generates an automated insurance routing number that Hollister can't erase without leaving a digital footprint."
"The clinic is run by the county," I warned her. "They all know him."
"That's exactly why you need to go there," she insisted. "Force them to document it. If they try to cover it up, that proves the systemic corruption. I'm tracking your GPS. Put the phone on speaker and slide it into your shirt pocket. Do not hang up."
I did as I was told, the faint electronic hum of the open connection resting against my chest. I started the truck with my left hand, awkwardly dropping it into gear, and drove the three miles down the rain-slicked highway to the Oakhaven County Medical Clinic.
The waiting room was entirely empty, bathed in harsh, flickering fluorescent light. The receptionist, a woman in her fifties wearing teal scrubs, looked up from her magazine as I walked in. Her eyes widened, taking in the blood soaking the collar of my jacket and the unnatural angle of my right arm.
"Sir, you need to sit down," she said, immediately reaching for a clipboard. "What happened?"
"I was assaulted," I said clearly, making sure the phone in my pocket picked up the acoustics of the room. "By Sheriff Ray Hollister. He threw me into a steel counter at the diner."
The receptionist’s hand froze hovering over the blank intake form. The color drained completely from her face. She looked at me, then glanced nervously toward the glass doors leading to the examination rooms.
"I... I can't put that down," she stammered, lowering her pen. "If I write that, I have to call the police to file a report. And if I call the police..."
"You call Sheriff Hollister," I finished for her. "I know. Just document the injuries."
She swallowed hard, writing nothing on the paper. She pressed a button under her desk. Less than a minute later, a young doctor wearing a wrinkled white coat stepped through the double doors. His nametag read Dr. Aris.
"What do we have, Brenda?" he asked, before stopping dead in his tracks as he saw me.