Chapter 30: Saturday Afternoon Happenstance

Blaine County Sheriff's Office
Sandy Shores Station
Alhambra Drive, Sandy Shores
The Next Day
2:00 PM

The following day was a Saturday, which meant a regular day off for Sergeant Harrison. Always the cop, he chose to spent this overly hot afternoon doing his own follow-up on the manhunt for Trevor Phillips. He began this inquiry by stopping by the Sandy Shores Station of the Blaine County Sheriff's Office.

In an admittedly weird bit of architectural coincidence, this small sheriff's station was located on the opposite side of an oddly placed strip complex with the Sandy Shores Medical Center, which sat between Mountain View Drive and Alhambra Drive. Harrison was standing in the station's lobby opposite the front desk, having spent nearly the last half hour embroiled in a heated discussion with Blaine County's Chief Deputy, Gordon Pulaski. The former was dressed in his leather jacket, a plain white cotton t-shirt, gray sweatpants, and white sneakers. The latter, meanwhile, was dressed in his beige Blaine County Sheriff's uniform.

"I told you already, Troy" A miffed Pulaski said for the umpteenth time, "Deputy Morris and I have checked all of Trevor Phillips' regular haunts around Blaine County. We haven't found zilch. His favorite watering hole was the Yellow Jack Inn off the highway, but Janet banned him for starting one too many bar fights."

"Have you canvassed his neighbors?" Harrison asked.

"Hey", Pulaski said, "We may not have as many resources as the LSPD out here, but we are just as thorough. Trevor's neighbor on the left side of his trailer is a guy named Ronald Jakowski. He's this super paranoid conspiracy nut who has his own crazy show on Blaine County Radio. Let's just say he wasn't exactly forthcoming."

"Any other neighbors?" Harrison asked.

Pulaski's mood seemed to change on a dime as he smirked in retort. "Yeah", he replied, "Ron's next-door neighbor is this guy named Wade Hebert. All the rolls of toilet paper in our Men's Room are collectively more intelligent than his dumb ass. My point being, he wasn't much help either."

Harrison sighed and hung his head with considerable forbearance. "Okay", he said, "I'm going to try and check out a few spots by the Alamo Sea before I head back to the city. I'll give you guys a buzz if I come up with anything promising." He then extended a hand to Pulaski.

Pulaski shook the sergeant's hand firmly. "Please do", Pulaski replied.

"Sorry for being such a stick in your ass, Gordon" Harrison added as he broke the handshake.

"No problem at all, Troy" Pulaski said, "I admire your determination. One way or another, we'll get him."

As he started walking away, Harrison held up a hand to Pulaski as a sign of non-spoken acknowledgement to what he had just said.

Harrison then heard a female voice from behind him. "Hey Sergeant", the voice said.

The sergeant turned to see Detective Raven Wolf Claw walking in his direction. Wolf Claw was in a more conservative black pantsuit with a suitable cream-colored blouse underneath her jacket and white women's loafers, her brown leather gun belt and badge holder seeming quite out of place with such a traditionalistic outfit. "Hey Raven", Harrison said as the young female detective came over to his side, "Good to see you again, kid."

"Same to you, Sarge" she warmly replied, "Look, I overheard some of your conversation with Pulaski. I just want to let you know that Sheriff Burton asked all of us on the Drug Reaction Team to keep our eyes peeled for Trevor Phillips as well. We've been pulling in every dealer in the county and putting the squeeze on them."

A now at ease Harrison nodded and put a hand on Wolf Claw's shoulder for a short moment. "I appreciate that, Raven" he said, "Thanks."

"Adam Xander told me what happened to Officer Fostenberg at the arena the other day", Wolf Claw replied, "How's he doing?"

With a smirk, Harrison shrugged his shoulders. "He got a pretty gnarly bruise on his belly from where Trevor gut-checked him", he candidly replied, "but it didn't seem to slow him down any. Our department physician cleared him for full duty."

Wolf Claw nodded. "That's reassuring", she said, "I don't mean to echo Pulaski's words too much, but one way or another, we'll get Trevor." She then extended a fist for Harrison to bump.

Harrison took the cue and smiled as he bumped fists with Wolf Claw. "Thanks again, kiddo" he said, "I'll check back in with you guys later."

Ace Liquors
Lesbos Lane
Sandy Shores
30 Minutes Later

Harrison had unfortunately struck out at those aforementioned spots by the Alamo Sea, finding no hide nor hair of Trevor Phillips at any of those locations. Cellular reception in this specific part of Blaine County was now frustratingly weak, and as a result, the GPS application on his cell phone wasn't working correctly. On top of that, Harrison felt the imminent call of nature, and as such, Harrison pulled up to Ace Liquors on the edge of Sandy Shores.

Ace Liquors was a rather forlorn-looking, tumbledown establishment just off the highway on the way out of the Sandy Shores town limits. As he hustled inside, Harrison mentally wondered if whomever owned the store had bothered to even try and update its look since whenever it was that they hung the building's first shingle.

Now panting and nervous as he tried to hold back the call of nature, the off-duty sergeant just about sprinted toward the liquor store counter, beside which a heavyset and balding white-haired man who appeared to be in his early 60's stood with a deadpan look on his face. His tattered name tag identified him as "Jeb".

"Hey, my man!" An anxiously panting Harrison said to him, "Do you have a bathroom I can use?"

The look on Jeb's face surprisingly changed to one of concern as he gestured behind him with an outstretched thumb. "Back here", he said in a very throaty voice, "Yeah. There's no need for a key or anything. It's all yours, pal."

Harrison nodded and crossed to a side door to the right of the counter that Jeb now held open for him before motioning to the small bathroom located beside a stairwell that evidently led upstairs. "Thank you", Harrison nervously uttered to Jeb before hurrying into the bathroom and slamming the door shut behind him.

Five minutes later, a now quite literally relieved Harrison exited the bathroom after thoroughly washing up. As he shut the door behind him and went to cross back through the side door, he heard some heavy thumping sounds as he saw someone descending the stairs out of the corner of his eye.

Harrison instinctively looked to his left and caught a cold sweat as he realized who it was coming down the stairs. Still wearing the same Del Perro Pier tank top, dirty jeans, and dirtier boots as he did at the Maze Bank Arena, Trevor Phillips momentarily locked eyes with Harrison for a split seconds before turning back around and hustling back up the steps.

"Hey!" Harrison shouted as he tore up the stairs after him, "Trevor Phillips! Stop! LSPD!"

"Fuck you, piggy!" Trevor gruffly barked as he continued barreling upstairs in front of Harrison.

The two adversaries reached the building's second floor. Even in his desperate haste, Harrison visually took note of several pieces of makeshift lab equipment, a ratty old TV set, a dirty mattress, an even older refrigerator, and some other pieces of sparsely-placed cheap furniture. This second-floor space was obviously meant to be some sort of peculiar cross between a crude methamphetamine lab and an even more so makeshift crash pad.

Harrison managed to momentarily grab Trevor by the back of his tank top. "'Piggy', huh?" he smirkingly said, "Really, dude? I would've thought a crazy motherfucker like you would've come up with something more original!"

Trevor's immediate response to this was to mule-kick Harrison without even returning a gaze, at which point he made harsh contact with the determined sergeant's left shin. "How's that for fucking originality, turd?" He menacingly replied.

His grip on his suspect now revoked, Harrison groaned in pain as he sat down directly on his backside for a moment. Trevor, meanwhile, seemed to be sprinting for a side door that led out onto the store's roof. Thinking fast, Harrison sprang up and leapt over the broken half wall between the meth lab and the door, outstretching his uninjured right leg as he became airborne. Harrison's precise kick caught Trevor off-guard as it made contact with the center of his back.

The unstable drug dealer shouted in extreme pain as he crumpled face-first onto the floor. While his suspect was momentarily disabled, Harrison seized the opportunity to reach into the back of his sweatpants and withdraw his Sig-Sauer P-226 handgun, which he promptly pointed down at Trevor.

"Holy shit, Piggy!" Trevor exclaimed, "What the hell? Do you watch a lot of kung fu movies or something?"

With his gun now firmly pointed at Trevor's face, Harrison grinned. "Blue belt in Ju-Jitsu, dickhead" he sardonically replied, "Get your ass up off that shitty floor. Now."

Trevor did a quick log roll and leaped upright before running to the old refrigerator. Harrison fired off a shot, the round from which struck the upper freezer door just as Trevor opened it. The latter grunted in frustration as he stopped in his tracks.

Harrison hurried over to the fridge and momentarily glanced inside it. He scoffed as he removed a five-inch wooden-handled serrated tomato knife that had been haphazardly tucked into the side compartment of the freezer door. "Heh", he said, "If I'm in a kung fu movie, you're obviously some sort of horror movie villain, I guess."

The thumping sounds of multiple people ascending the stairs was heard. "Sheriff's Office!" a commanding male voice shouted.

Suddenly, Harrison was struck from behind with an unknown object and the only thing he was able to hear was the sound of glass breaking as he fell to his knees. He briefly clutched his head in pain before falling facedown onto the dirty floor. The last thing he saw prior to completely passing out was Trevor Phillips flipping him the bird and hurrying out of the room.

Sandy Shores Medical Center
Mountain View Drive
Sandy Shores
2 Hours Later

The Blaine County deputies had discovered Sergeant Harrison on the floor of the clandestine space at Ace Liquors, unconscious and bleeding from an apparent blow to his head with bits of glass embedded in the wound. Naturally, paramedics were notified and were able to successfully revive him in the ambulance on the way to Sandy Shores Medical Center.

Now, Harrison sat up on a bed in a treatment room in the medical center's Emergency Room, the right side of his head bandaged to cover the sutures that the ER physician had used to close the open wound.

Working as a volunteer firefighter/paramedic for the Sandy Shores Fire Department on this particular Saturday, Adam Xander had heard about his friend's predicament and stopped by to check in on him. Dressed in his paramedic's bunker coat with a plain blue t-shirt, gray cargo pants, and gray steel-toed work boots, Xander sat in a chair near the bed.

"So", Xander said, "Just so we're clear here. You stopped to take a whiz at Ace Liquors, ran into Trevor Phillips, and went toe to toe with him for a bit before some unknown person busted you over the head with a glass object."

Harrison nodded. "Yep", he said, "That's about the gist of it, bud. Any idea what they hit me with?"

"The deputies found what was left of a glass beaker near where you fell", Xander explained, "The doc removed the same type of glass from your wound, so that confirms things, I guess. No leads on who your assailant was as of yet, but Sheriff Burton and his people are on it. Meanwhile, the LSPD wants a full account of today's events as soon as you're up to it."

In yet another instance of eerily uncanny timing, both Harrison and Xander's phones simultaneously chimed with alert notifications for a new text message.

"Right on cue", Harrison said as he looked at his phone, "Chief Sacco wants to see us both in his office first thing tomorrow morning."