Five ♥
*
There was a momentary thought, in the back of his mind, that he could just walk away from all of this. It would just… go away. He wasn't sure how he thought that was going to work, of course. There was simply no way. Whatever was happening, they'd track him down. Precisely the same way that he would track anyone else down to ran off.
And for that matter, he was the Sheriff of Franklin county. He wasn't some thief slinking around in the night, trying to hide from the world. If there was anything he could do, it was deal with someone who had tried to kill him in the lobby of his own station.
So in spite of Misty's pleading, he slipped out of the driver's seat, straightened his hat, and walked inside as if there was nothing wrong. In hindsight, he would reflect, that was probably the biggest mistake that he made, because it was the only one that wouldn't have hurt to simply not make it.
Grant's expression was fixed in studied neutrality as he stepped in through the door. There was an explanation for all of this, he knew; it was just a matter of finding out what it was. For all that he knew, the sinking feeling in his gut was completely wrong. The driver had come to the station to turn himself in, and admit that he'd been involved in a hit-and-run.
The mood in the station immediately dispelled any hopes he might have continued to hold out on, though. All eyes turned to him. They knew him, and they knew that whatever the accusation was, Grant wasn't a man who went off the deep end. At least, not typically.
There was just enough doubt in their minds, though, that they weren't about to go off. He guessed the story that they'd been fed before anyone in the room managed to speak a word. It didn't make him feel any better to know that his dash-cam would paint a slightly different picture.
If their goal was grabbing Misty, then they didn't need a lot of time. A day was more than enough time, if she was stuck in one place. A week? It was impossible to protect her that long, but that was what he would have to do. And somehow, he'd have to do it from a jail cell. He pinched his lips together and tried not to think of it as an impossible task. Anything was possible, if he tried hard enough.
"Is there a problem here?"
Misty came through the door behind him. He looked at her out of the corner of her eye. She took the message and found a seat.
"Sheriff Holloway," one of them said. "We, uh… well, we've been hearing some interesting stories, from this guy."
"Interesting how?"
"He says, and I know this is crazy, but he says you pulled a gun on him."
"Well, I didn't," Grant said. "I was assaulted. He may have been present, but any action I took was in self-defense."
"That's fine, but…"
"But what?"
Deputy Sloane spoke up finally. He had a stern expression on her face. It was the expression she habitually wore, and it was a good look for her. As was the wedding ring on her finger, he noted. Hopefully happier than his own marriage had been.
"You know how this is going to look, if the press gets ahold of it. Another cop who pulls his gun because he thinks he's above the law. And if we just take your word for it, then we'll look complicit. Some kind of thin blue line thing."
"Well, I'm telling you, you can pull my dash cam footage. It'll back up everything I said."
"Figured you'd say that," she said. "But that doesn't actually help us, does it?"
"No," the Sheriff said. "Not really."
"So what do you think we ought to do here?"
"I think you should let me go."
"I'm not convinced that you're thinking from your perspective as Sheriff, Grant," Sloane said. She kept that stern expression. He expected it to soften a little. Maybe to betray some small hint of sympathy. She didn't. "I think you're into this too deep."
He let out a deep breath and closed his eyes, slumped his shoulders. "That's fair," he started. And that was where he stopped, too. There wasn't much way he could argue for himself.
"You talk to the guy about leaving the scene of an accident?"
"He says he's going to eat the fine, but he was concerned about the danger that you posed."
"And considering that I posed no danger whatsoever?"
"I'm not trying to be a bitch here, Sheriff, but…" she pursed her lips and tried to force a little bit of sympathy on, presumably thinking it would make Grant listen. He suddenly wished she hadn't done it. It looked disingenuous on her. "You can tell it to the judge at your arraignment. If it's as open-and-shut as you say, then I'm sure he'll throw it out."
"That's not going to happen."
"I'm sorry?"
"I'm not sitting in a cell," he said. "It's not like I'm a flight risk. Do you think?"
"That's the law, Sheriff."
Grant set his jaw and straightened. He stood a full head taller than his Deputy, though she had something in her that seemed to add an unmistakable stature. He felt like he was butting chests with the umpire in a baseball game, more than lording over a petite woman. She jutted her jaw out and for a moment he thought that she was going to throw a pre-emptive punch.
"I'm not going to accept it," he said. "I'll stay around, but I'm not going to sit in a cell. You've got nothing but his word against my video footage, and I'm not going to be bogarted."
She softened. It wasn't sympathy, this time, forced or not. She tucked her tail between her legs. "I thought you might feel that way," she said. She stepped back. "But if this goes wrong, I'm not taking the fall for you."
"I wouldn't ask you to," Grant said. "Nor anyone else. Anyone wants to make sure I mention that they fought me on this, when the press gets ahold of me, step forward and I'll make sure to make a note of it. I'm not trying to ruin anyone's reputation here."
The deputies studied their shoes. From the conference room, a man turned to watch him over the back of a chair. Behind him, the door chimed as it opened. He turned.
"I'd like to report a hit-and-run," a strange voice said. The second stranger in town in under four hours? It was unheard of. The Sheriff turned.
"It's you," the woman said. Then she turned and stepped right back out the door.
Grant had never seen her before in his life. But that didn't mean that he didn't send Sloane to go fetch her, and get her statement. It seemed wrong to chase after her himself, if she was afraid of him. And if she had something to say about the accident he'd been in, then he wanted to know what it was.
If she said what he was afraid she was going to say, there was a long list of other things that he wanted to know. 'Who put her up to it' topped the list. But first, they had to catch her.
Grant sat in his office and leaned back in his chair. He looked across the desk at Sloane; then he looked past her. Misty sat behind a desk, with a Sheriff's coat wrapped around her shoulders, and tried to look like she fit in. She didn't, and it was obvious.
"Okay, let's go through the whole thing," Sloane said.
"I told you," he said. "There's no story to be told. The first thing I knew was when I got creamed, and then a bunch of guys I didn't know were swarming the car."
"Let's dig into that, then," Sloane said. "I'm not trying to bust your balls here, Grant."
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was too tired to deal with this. But he'd heard about real interrogations, in some of the big cities, and he'd heard about some of the stuff that guys went through overseas. He reminded himself that this was hardly anything, in the grand scheme of things.
"Yeah. Okay." He let out a breath. "Where do I start?"
"How about we start with your leaving the station?"
"I left the station to get some food. My shift was over, anyways."
"You took a cruiser. Is that standard?"
"I've been doing it for four years. You know the only car I've got is that old Honda, and it barely runs."
"You could afford something else."
"I could, if I had to. But I didn't need to, because I took a cruiser. If I got a complaint, I'd look into it, but I didn't."
"Okay. What about the girl?"
"I don't understand the question."
"Why bring her?"
"She's an old friend. I thought it would be nice to celebrate her return to town."
"Okay, so you went out to get something to eat, with an old girlfriend?"
"I'm not interested in getting into my history with Miss Glenn, so yeah. That's enough to get by."
"Why not?"
"Because it's not germane to the case, first, and second, because there's history that doesn't help anyone, but it's stuff I'd rather not think too hard about."
"So for the record–" Sloane looked significantly at the recorder, and then looked back at the sheriff. "At that time, you had no reason to suspect that there was anything untoward, or anything to worry about?"
"I had a woman I hadn't seen in almost ten years come in telling me that she was being chased by some guys. It sounded crazy. I assumed it was either a whole bunch of lies, or it was enough half-truths that I didn't care enough to dig through it all. So in hindsight, I had reason, but at the time, I didn't see any reason to be suspicious."
"Alright. You went to dinner. Where did you go?"
"The diner in town," he said.
"The name of the diner."
"Come on, the good one." He let out a breath, and racked his mind. They didn't have a sign that he knew of. The menu had a logo on it, but his memory of it was that it just said 'Burgers' and it had been a long time since he needed to look to make sure that his memory was complete. "The one on Main. I don't think it's got a name. 'Burgers' is all I remember."
"Okay." Sloane took a breath. Grant sat back in his chair and looked past her again, checking on Misty. She'd pulled out a pack of cards that someone shouldn't have kept on their desk, and was dealing herself out a Solitaire game. "So. Next question. Anything happen during dinner?"
"Yeah," he said. "Carrie-Anne was being a nosy brat," he said. "Otherwise, no."
"Nothing at all? I'm just…" she pressed the button on the recorder and let out a breath. "Look, boss. I know I'm not painting myself as a particularly sympathetic figure here. I know, okay? But you have to understand, we've gotten no less than four separate calls about this. Not a one of them is a local. Who the hell is this guy?"
"I don't know," Grant said. "But I know that I think it's got something to do with the girl. Whatever she's involved in, they're putting a lot of effort into punishing anyone who gets within fifty feet of her."
"So what are we supposed to do about it? It's not like anyone's going through official channels, and if they did, then I don't know what we'd do about it."
"I don't know what we do," Grant said. "But I'm not happy about this."
A moment passed. "Yeah," Sloane said. "I get it."
"Not you," Grant told her, on the edge of annoyed. Now was not the time for his deputies to become prima donnas. He needed someone in his corner, because it was becoming clearer and clearer that there was something going on, and there was no way that he was going to be able to deal with it himself, regardless of what he might have wanted to be able to pull off.
"Okay. Back on." She pressed play and record at the same time. It should have been a digital recorder; even though the cost wasn't high, nobody had allocated the funds to buy something new. So they kept the analog records, and digitized them whenever it became necessary to do so. "So tell me what happened after you left the diner."
"I got into my car and pulled into the street."
"Had anything to drink in the diner?"
"No," Grant said. "I don't make a habit of drinking regularly," he said.
"Irregularly?"
"Special occasions only."
"What about your publicly-known issues with your wife? No reason to celebrate? Nothing to do with your girlfriend coming back?"
"Jesus, Sloane. What's that supposed to mean?"
"Can you just answer the question, Sheriff?"
"I had a glass of Coke. I didn't even get a refill; I finished it and a glass of water, and was back on the road. No celebrations, regardless of whether or not I had a reason."
"Good. Then what?"
"I got into the car, looked both ways, turned into the road, and a guy with his lights off sped up to slam into me."
"You're sure he sped up?"
"Of course I'm sure."
"Did you draw your sidearm?"
He let out a breath. It was a tire to go through all this again. But there was no way out of it. "I did," he said.
"And for what reason?"
"There was a second vehicle, which pulled up momentarily afterward. Three men exited the vehicle, brandishing weapons. I drew my weapon. I fired twice in self-defense."
"If you saw the men again, could you identify them?"
"They wore masks," Grant said, knowing precisely how useless that made him sound. It was nothing compared to how useless it made him feel.
"So you could not?"
"I could not," Grant agreed. "Two of the three were injured in the ensuing gunfire. The third took the two injured men into the back of the van, and both vehicles, the sedan that hit me and the van that carried the gunmen, drove off."
"And then?"
"Then I drove here. Slow going, I think the axle is bent or something. The driver's-side front is practically falling off."
"Anything else?"
"They tried to take her, Sloane."
"Who?" He gestured with his eyes. "State it for the record."
"Misty Glenn," he said. "A woman who I apparently don't know much about."