Almost Doesn't Count [Short Story]

Almost Doesn't Count.

Harris nodded and stepped into the colorful night sky of flashing police lights. He stood in the headlights as the crew swarmed his car carefully. The watchdog cops stared into his soul with hand on weapon daring him to make a single move. Stay calm.

"It's for a friend," he interposed as they removed the cash with eager eyes.

"Did we give you liberty to speak sir?" He kept his hands placed on the hood of the cop car. They took the duffel bag stuffed with cash and contraband in their hands and had what they needed to make the arrest.

He said nothing. He stayed calm. The officers whispered plans, each weighing in on ways to adjudicate his justice between the special forces that gathered to handle Harris.

"Harris?" Nellie typed. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes elapsed. Several scenarios circulated in her thoughts as Harris was over an hour late for his ETA.

Nellie scrambled for her keys. Determination struck her brave spirit as she suddenly decided to go searching for her friend, and play detective in this puzzling night. She hadn't really known him well enough to reasonably care this intently, but she cared deeply about the truth. If his unresponsiveness was truly all an unfortunate misunderstood traffic stop, she had to make sure Harris was alive and well. And to feed her obsession with closure, she had to also make sure it wasn't just one big twisted lie and an empty promise.

As Nellie took the road toward Harris' route, she scanned for any signs of him or the police. Through the night's correspondence, he hadn't been able to share with her his exact location, but she was somewhat familiar with the route enough to find the backroads that he might have taken. Her heart pounded as she navigated the curvy dark roads.

She traveled nervously about 30 minutes outside of the city before spotting flashing lights in the bend.

Harris.

As she approached, she noticed the cop cars forcing traffic into a detour. They flagged cars away that even tried to come near in an adjacent parking lot. She watched the scene with growing alarm, and devised a plan to hide in plain sight.

Her knowledge of the neighborhoods allowed her to navigate a back road for her to peak through the trees. Close but not quite close enough. She creeped up as close as she could get with her headlights off and her eyes adjusted to the night sky. Her pupils dilated and distressed as she searched for answers.

She could just make out a subject standing between two cops. She counted the cop cars - one, two, three - at the scene as Harris had described to her in his final text message. She shook her head in disbelief.

His hands were taken one by one as they cuffed him and put him in the back of their cruiser. The other two cop cars drove off. And a civilian car, she assumed, consequently left the scene traveling an opposite direction. Nothing was left behind on the shoulder of the road, and all had vanished.

Her calculations began to try to comprehend. Had Harris come with an accomplice? Was Harris the driver and his passenger the detained? Through the distance, the subject did not appear like the photos of Harris on the internet. But the details of the day otherwise matched his descriptions.

Nellie sat helplessly as she wondered if Harris was somewhere hidden, watching the scene to relay the details to Nellie as a decoy.

She assumed that the only logical destination for the cops and the subject was the police station. She tried to pursue from a distance without being seen to make sure her eyes had not been deceiving her. The careful cop cars accelerated stealthily. A few moments behind the cops would be a safer following distance for her to drive. As they inched into the city, a traffic light switch separated her from the sight of the cruiser. Her pulse slowed as she watched the car disappear underneath the hill. At green, she progressed towards the police station at a faster speed.

The police station was dead silent. The county jail was dark and quiet. She commuted the same mile between the two law enforcement beacons in a loop for close to an hour. Not a single cop car approached or arrived.

A young recruit greeted her innocent face at the police station desk. The worry on her face was apparent and disarming. "Sir, can you please give me information... on a traffic stop tonight?"

He looked back at his quiet desk and asked for her patience. The clicks on his keyboard incited hope in her spirit as he kindly agreed to help her solve this mystery. She held her breath as he arose from his computer and walked back to the front window. "No one's been detained all night ma'am... and I don't see any traffic stops," he reported. "I'm so sorry, and I hope you find your friend."

She fumed and reeled and spiraled as she pondered who had been cuffed before her eyes in the cop car. Where did the parade of cops disappear to after leaving the scene? And where was the mystery man Harris?

She checked every lot and every bay behind the fences of the station, but answers were nowhere to be found. She called each surrounding county's cop station to close in on his whereabouts. Nothing. Nowhere.

Nellie could only pray he was okay, wherever he was.

"Please Harris, if you're able to read my message, you're still welcome at my home."