Cole stopped in the center of the driveway, hooking his thumbs into his heavy leather duty belt. A slow, arrogant smirk spread across his face as he looked me up and down.
"Well, well," Cole drawled, his voice echoing slightly against the aluminum siding of the shed. "Look who decided to come back. I thought you might have run off to cry to a lawyer, Walter. Or maybe you went down to the state barracks to tell them a big, scary story about the mean county deputies."
I stopped ten feet away from him. I looked at the slashed feed bags. I looked at the younger deputy, who suddenly seemed very interested in the toes of his boots. Then, I looked dead into Cole's eyes.
"You're trespassing, Cole," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "You have no warrant. You have no probable cause. You have nothing but arrogance."
Cole laughed, a sharp, ugly sound that cut through the humid air. He unhooked his radio, letting it dangle loosely from his grip. "Trespassing? Walter, you're a person of interest in a narcotics investigation. We received an anonymous tip that you were moving weight through this dilapidated farm of yours. That gives me all the probable cause I need to tear this place down to the studs if I feel like it."
He took a step closer, his chest puffed out, towering over me. He wanted me to flinch. He wanted me to beg.
"In fact," Cole continued, dropping his voice to a theatrical whisper, "we were just about to find something very interesting tucked behind your air compressor. A couple of vials, maybe? Hard evidence of your new side business. It’s a shame, Walter. A respected guy like you, losing the farm because he got greedy in his old age."
He patted his own chest pocket, the exact pocket where I knew he had stuffed my fifteen hundred dollars.
"You should have just kept your mouth shut on the highway, old man," Cole sneered. "You should have just taken the ticket and walked away. Now? Now you're going to lose the farm, your truck, and the next five to ten years of your life. And that little cash contribution you made to the county earlier today? Consider it a processing fee."
I didn't blink. I didn't move a muscle. I just stood there, letting him dig the hole as deep as he possibly could. He was so drunk on his own localized power, so completely insulated by years of getting away with this exact routine, that he couldn't see the world shifting beneath his feet.
"Are you finished?" I asked evenly.
Cole’s smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. My utter lack of fear was finally starting to register. "What did you say to me?"
"I asked if you were finished," I repeated, pointing a weathered finger at his chest. "Because you're right about one thing, Cole. I did go to the state barracks. I just didn't go there to tell a story."
Before Cole could process the words, a sound breached the heavy summer air.
It started as a low, distant wail echoing over the cornfields. Within seconds, it multiplied, rising into a piercing, harmonized shriek of heavy sirens closing in fast from the north. Cole’s head snapped toward the road. The younger deputy dropped the crowbar, the heavy metal clattering loudly against the gravel.
A massive cloud of dust exploded over the crest of County Road 9.
Four sleek, dark grey Ohio State Highway Patrol cruisers breached the hill, running in a tight, aggressive formation. Their light bars were a blinding frenzy of flashing blue and red strobes, slicing through the afternoon haze. They didn't slow down to evaluate the scene. They descended on my farm with military precision.
Cole took a step backward, his hand instinctively dropping toward the butt of his sidearm before he realized how catastrophic that move would be. "What is this?" he hissed at me, the arrogance draining from his face like water down a cracked sink. "What did you do?"
"I leveled the playing field," I said.
The state cruisers slammed to a halt, boxing in the county vehicles completely. Before the dust even had a chance to settle, doors were flying open. Six state troopers, fully geared and moving with absolute, unyielding authority, fanned out across the driveway, their hands resting cautiously on their duty belts.