Rice Bluff wrong place at the wrong time

Her deliveries had taken longer than anticipated, and Etta was exhausted as she finally got in her van to head home. Unfortunately for her, she must have forgotten to secure everything, when she took a corner and heard something clatter in the back. With a groan, she pulled over in the first parking-lot she could find and shut off the engine, getting out and going to the back doors so she could see what had fallen over.

She glanced around, but the parking-lot seemed to be empty, though it was lit by some dim, buzzing streetlamps, the light yellow and flickering in a way that made it feel strangely filthy. Somewhere behind a fence at the fringes of the darkness, a dog began barking, and Etta jumped, not sure why it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She hastily hopped into the back of the van and put the empty crates that had come crashing down back into a tidy pile and made sure it was secure before she slipped back out, her runners hitting the cracked pavement as the dog barked again.

Somewhere deep in the back alleys between back doors of restaurants and dumpsters a deal was going down. For the past two weeks Dax had been collecting intel information about the who and when, so tonight the detective was in the right place at the right time. He wasn't in uniform but he was armed and had his badge on his belt.
He had come without any back up tonight and that wasn't to seek some thrills. It had a good reason.

"Hey! Ridgefield police. Let me see your hands" He called out holding up his badge and gun in the other to the dealers exchanging drugs and cash a little further down the dark alley.
The three men got startled and instantly made a run for it. Neeldess to say Dax didn't give up that easily. After all his eye was on the prize and was faster than most criminals.
So he dashed after them. Their path went to the dead end where a high wooden fence blocked the way. Both, the criminal with the drugs as well as the police officer leaped over the fence with the ease of men, who were used to running and giving chase.
On the other side there were a few more dumpsters in the back lot of a venue.
From the top of the fence Dax dropped down on the criminal who landed on the tarmac under him.
Dax hammered his fist into the mans face before he twisted his arm onto his back and then searched him for the load of white packages on his body.
"You're under arrest, asshole!"
The cop made sure he had no weapons before he was fishing for his cuffs. Little did he know that he had an audience in one of the parked cars.

Etta could distantly hear the thud of running feet, overtaken by rough shouts of several men's voices before shadowy figures vaulted over the fence, one man stumbling, another dropping on top of him like a hunter onto prey. The sight of it had her frozen, but the sickening sound of a fist hitting the bones and flesh of a face made her shudder. In the shouts and groans she vaguely realized that the guy on top was arresting the other, though she didn't see anything like a uniform on him.

She somehow, instinctively, wanted to hide, but peering out from behind the open door at the back of her van, she could only watch.

He's the police, though, right? A police car is going to pull in with his partner in a minute and it's all going to be fine.

Alley

---

The small white packages in the mans inner pockets of his jacket were unmistakable.
"Please don't do this. C'mon." The dealer begged while Dax transfered the drugs into his own pockets and asked.
"Who are you working for?"
Of course he didn't get an answer but he knew anyway. He was good at what he did and he really wanted to get the big dogs, not the small delivery boys.
"With this amount in your pockets you're looking at a long time in prison." He made a regretful sound but there was a smile tugging on his lips.
It didn't take long for the criminal to start begging for his freedom.
"C'mon....I've got money. A lot. What does it take to let me go?"
Dax pulled the guy to his feet, very sure that he could handle any attack and he wouldn't let him run, not when he had the gun.
"The name of your boss."
Needless to say he didn't get a name, so Dax proceeded to draw his gun on the guy.
"The name!"
Of course none of this was protocol and would not hold up in a court but the detective didn't want this to go to court, he wanted a name and perhaps he'd sell the drugs on, make a bit of extra cash.

Etta’s eyes widened as she realized what was going on. Growing up in Hawknell, she’d hadn’t exactly been unaware of drugs, but any time she’d seen users or dealers in the street it had always seemed more sad and desperate, rather than frightening or dangerous. Something about this was different. Even when the cop—Etta could see the flash of his badge now in the yellow light, and it didn’t look like a costume prop—took some small bags off the dealer and pocketed them, before pulling the guy to his feet, it didn’t feel quite like evidence-gathering and taking into custody. The man was begging for something, the cop demanding...a name?

Then he pulled his gun.

Etta felt her stomach drop into her toes. People didn’t get the death penalty for dealing drugs on a corner. The man wasn’t threatening the cop, he was shaking, but not saying anything, now.

You have the right to remain silent, the right to remain silent...the right...

But did he?

Etta wasn’t sure how, but as her feet couldn’t move, she slid her phone out of her jeans pocket and flicked it to the camera, jabbing the record button with her thumb and trying to hold it steady, hoping for a clear video in the half-light. She’d already got a glimpse of the cop’s face in the gleam in the streetlight, but she didn’t want to rely on a faulty fragment of memory for this moment.

There were three options here. Actually arresting the dealer and doing this by the book. Nope.
Shooting him in the leg. Nope-too loud. Or number three... Dax decided quickly that this was his way to go, so he backhanded the guy once more and then wrapped his forearm around him from the back until he could barely breath.
"What the fuck..." The dealer gasped while Dax explained in a very mellow but definite tone. "Scum like you, swamping the streets with drugs, won't be missed by anyone. Who cares if a dealer is found on a corner with a broken neck....A name!"
The guy was already turning read and seemed to understand that he had to comply, so he finally nodded. The cop gave him enough air to breathe "Thommy VanDyke....the warehouse on 5th."
"Good boy!" The detective commented and let him go just to knock him unconscious with one hard blow.

Then he stepped over the limp guy and looked around wiping his hands on his pants. The parking lot seemed to be empty ....seemed to be. Slowly he walked closer to the car that Etta was hiding behind. A flash of light caught his eye.

Watching the guy get dropped by a blow to the head somehow made motion flood back into her legs. The cop had turned towards her, but she didn't think she'd been seen--yet. Killing the recording on her phone as she pressed herself back behind the open door of the van, she shoved her phone back into her pocket. It was time to go. She had to do this right and she had to be fast. She tried to take a deep breath--it didn't quite work, her heart was pounding in her throat, squeezing it too tight to breathe easy--and swallowed against the panic pressing at the back of her tongue. Then, she moved. She slammed the doors shut at the back of the van and rounded to the driver's side--she had shut and locked the door when she'd gotten out, not wanting to leave the keys unguarded in the ignition in a sketchy neighbourhood...now that seemed like the dumber choice. Her fingers felt stiff and clumsy as she fumbled with the key fob, the locks finally clicking open as she pulled the handle, ready to fling herself into the van and drive off, seatbelt-fastening be damned, even if it was right in front of a cop.

That's when he saw her. Some skinny woman was making a run for her car door after slamming the back closed. If she was in such a hurry, she had probably seen and heard what was going on.
Dax was at her driver side door. He pushed it closed before she could get in and drive away.
"Wait a minute."
He was tall and broad shouldered and basically towered over her. In her eyes he could see the fear. Yes, she'd seen what he had done and that light he had seen must have been a camera flash.
"Give me your phone." There was noone else nearby, noone who could possibly help her if she screamed. Plus he could always show them his badge.

Etta pressed herself against the van--it was solid, and that didn't exactly reassure her, but it kept her upright as her knees started to shake. Her hands rose in an instinctive effort to push him away, but she stopped herself just in time. She didn't need to give him a physical reason to escalate things, even if he'd been the one to come at her.

"Y-you need a warrant."

She realized how futile it sounded when clearly whoever the hell this guy was wasn't all that interested in playing by the rules, but she wasn't about to just hand anything over.

"Oh, you're funny."He commented and cocked his head to the side. "You took my picture without consent. Hand it over."
He didn't wait any longer because he could see it peeking out of her pocket, so he grabbed it and held it out to her.
"Unlock it."
This girl was really testing his patience. Next thing he'd smash the fucking phone.
"You'd better hurry up because I don't have all night and I'm sure you don't want to join our friend Mr. Dealer on the tarmac."

"Hey!" Etta let out a yell when he grabbed her phone away from her. It made her skin crawl, the feeling of somebody rooting around in her pocket. Then he started making demands and threats and somehow the supreme irony of him bitching about consent when he was being a total bastard totally in public, made something go ping in the part of her brain that wasn't as far from living in a cave as the rest of it, and she made a bid to launch her kneecap straight into his balls.

---

miss

It might have been a reflex or she might have done some self defense course. Whatever it was, his fingers on the top of her phone-not even on her body-made her aim her knee for his balls bit instead she only connected with his thigh which still felt quite unlpleasant plus the reflex to protect his crown jewels made Dax jump.
Of course that angered him. Instead of making more demands, he grabbed her by the shirt and growled. "What do you think you're doing?"
Okay, then he'd simply keep the damn phone. Easy.

Dax stared at her from up close.
"I don't know what you were planning to do with that video but you have to understand that the man back there is a drug dealer. He floods our streets with heroin that gets people addicted...teenagers...he makes a living of others peoples ruin. He deserves this!"
Letting go of her shirt he stepped back.

"So why the fuck don't you just take him to jail?" spat Etta, trying to twist herself away, glumly trying to keep her eyes on her phone for any opportunity to snatch it back out of his grasp. "You're not a real cop! You're probably just some wannabe rival dealer who's just as bad as he is!"

Sure, Etta was shy. Etta stumbled around talking to strangers. But sheer terror had shaken something loose in her, and this guy wasn't anybody she wanted to know, socially. He was pure, uncut jerkass, and now words were coming out of her mouth like projectile vomit before she could even really rationally think about what they were.

There was an aweful lot of attitude behind her words considering how much she was shaking. It was almost amusing, especially when she suggested that he was a rival dealer....if only. He'd be a lot richer by now.
But he felt a bit threatened by her knowing what he had done.
"Because I want his boss." Was the simple explanation why 'the fuck' he didn't put the small dealer in jail. He'd trail him and find out where his boss was. But Etta didn't need to know that.
"Do you want junkies in the streets or a drug free city? Let me do my job, lady. Even if you don't like my methods."
Once more he eyed the furious girl.
"Unlock the phone or I'll take it."

"St-statistically, social support is more effective than criminalization..."

What was she doing? Etta didn't have a goddamn clue. She wanted to scream her head off. She wanted to kick him again. He had a gun, she knew that, and she'd seen him beat the shit out of that other guy, so she wasn't sure why she was hoping, somehow, she could get out of this unscathed. She wasn't dealing drugs--she was a caterer. She dealt in doughnuts!

But nobody was afraid of unarmed young women, she knew that.

Unless...

Unless they were...

Etta hadn't played a part since elementary school had forced her to take part in a play, and she hadn't exactly brought any elements of Meryl Streep to the process...but more recently than that she'd done alright in convincing the landlord at her restaurant that she'd actually enjoyed sleeping with him in return for waiving her rent for those last few months. Desperate times, desperate measures.

She looked up at the guy who, narrowing her eyes and trying to exude utter calm.

"You picked the wrong supernatural to mess with," she hissed, before she launched herself at him, trying to sink her teeth into the hand holding her phone.

---

Chomp!

Was she really going to lecture an obviously bad cop in a dark parking lot about statistics? This girl had some nerve and she did not comply. Just when he decided that keep and possibly smashing her phone was the only option the beast bit him.
Not only that made him yelp and pull his hand back in surprise bit also the line about 'supernatural'. What the hell? Was she a vampire? Was she a cougar? The phone had dropped to the ground as he pulled back his hand and looked at the deep marks she had left on his skin.
It happened out of the reflex to the bite but in a heartbeat that very same hand was on her throat squeezing it. The bite mark hurt enozgh for him to let go
"You little bi*ch. You bit me." He wasn't going to strangle her so he tried to shove her hard against her car but stepped on the phone.
The feeling under his sole made him take his foot off and bend down to reach for it. Maybe the thing was broken already and he didn't need to worry about it anymore. But then there would still be the biter to worry about.

MISSx2

[Warning: blood/violence]

Etta could taste blood in her mouth, and she knew it wasn't hers. It was absolutely vile and disgusting and she hated it, but right this second? She didn't care. He'd dropped her phone and she had a chance to get it back. He'd tried to push her back against the van, to get his hand around her throat, but his focus was still on her phone--he knew that her recording was the real danger to him, in the long run. Not that she hadn't gotten a pretty good look at his face. If this psycho was a cop, she'd have plenty to report, and doubted he'd have a good excuse for why he had her dental records imprinted on his hand.

...that was if he didn't just murder her, of course. Etta really hoped he wouldn't--because she hoped she'd definitely make the news. Her family would raise hell, that was for sure. But cops protected their own.

In the moment he was distracted by the phone, she squirmed out of his grip, sliding along the side of the van and backing away, trying to get her bearings, trying to decide what came next, when what came next...just did.

The dealer had evidently not been clocked hard enough to be out cold for a while, and Etta saw the shadowy figure jump up behind the cop, wielding something busted that looked like it had come out of the dumpster, swinging it at him as he slur-hollered something about his stash being stolen.

While Dax picked up the phone she slipped away but didn't get very far. The cop shoved it in his pocket and wanted to follow her but got stopped quite abruptly by something slashing the back of his jacket.
Instinctively he whirled around to come face to facevwith the man he had knocked out not even ten minutes ago.
Dax pointed to the road while he got the feeling things were getting out of control.

Etta watched with dismay as he pocketed her phone and re-entered a scuffle with the dealer. She didn't want to throw herself in between them, exactly--she couldn't stop them, and she knew she'd probably just get hurt in the process. But God, she needed her phone back before she could leave. Her brain fixated on that, even if she could have gotten into her van and made a getaway without it, now. (Which she couldn't--they were right next to the driver's side door.)

But then the streetlamp light caught something shiny arcing through the air, and Etta scarcely had time for a shriek she tried to swallow behind her hand as the sharp metal plunged into the cop's body. She'd seen enough, she didn't want to add anybody's murder to the scenes she would get to revisit in her nightmares...but she was powerless to stop it.

One bad choice, one gun drawn too late and it was over. The piece of metal stuck in his abs like they were made of butter.
Dax fell back and hit the car before he slid down and lost the gun he had just drawn.
It slipped from his fingers and landed at Ettas feet.
The pain under his ribs almost paralyzed him while the dealer towered over him.
At least the guy was stupid enough not to grab the weapon but padded the cop down, found the baggies in his jacket and pulled them out.
Then he leaned down to squeeze his throat tight.
"That's what you get for messing with us, pig. Should have arrested me when you could."
That's when he turned his eyes on Etta with a dangerous sparkle.

It wasn't instant--Etta could still see the painful hitch of the fallen man's ribs as he drew what had to be agonizing breaths, the metal sticking out of his torso as the dealer took back his supply.

She looked down at the gun at her feet and realized she didn't want anyone else to have it, even if the idea of picking it up turned her stomach. She bent and did it anyway, the metal cold and heavy in her hands in a way that made them shake...but somehow lighter than she had anticipated. It shouldn't be that light, she thought. Not if it could do what a gun was made to do.

Clutching it without pointing it at anyone, she looked up at the dealer and simply bared her bloody teeth.

"You got your shit, now get the fuck out of here and let me feed before he dies," she growled.

It wasn't clear who was more irritated. The dealer or Dax who was clutching his ribs and feeling the object protrude.
The dealer gave her a very irritated glance but both the bloody teeth and gun made him want to follow her orders. So he did.
Leaving behind nothing but one bag he had missed the guy was out of sight in a flash.
Dax however struggled to keep breathing steadily. He tried to sit up and fend off the hungry vampire with his forearm. Blood had already soaked through his t-shirt and hoodie that he wore under the jacket giving away how pressing the situation was.
Suddenly it was all reversed and the helpless girl held all the power.
"I'm really a cop." He pressed out hoping to save himself from her revenge.

Once the dealer took off Etta bounded over to where the stabbed guy was lying, trying to push himself back up. She opened the van and deposited the gun on the seat before she slammed the door shut and dropped to her knees, scrambling to get her phone out from under his body where he'd fallen on it.

"Shut up and stop moving!" she snapped, holding her breath for a moment until the screen of her phone lit up. It was cracked, but not dead, thank God. She tapped the emergency function and dialed 911 on speaker as fast as her shaking fingers would let her.

What is your emergency?

"I...we need an ambulance," she said, her voice almost cracking as panic flooded back into her tone. "In Rice Bluff...it..." She glanced around for any landmark. "There's an electrics repair shop across the street--Dobson's? There's a...someone got stabbed. It's bad."

Etta pulled off her hoodie and tried to press it around the piece of metal. She knew better than to pull the thing out, but there still seemed to be so much blood, and she had no other way to try to stop it.

It was more than ironic that the woman who he had just tried to push around like a rag doll had not only chased away the dealer but was now trying to help him.
Hevtried to thinknof what to do...how to cover his tracks...get the video erased....and survive at the same time. Only one thing was working. The surviving part.
Dax lifted his head to see the damage done while the woman was pressing some fabric against his wound.
"Oh fuck, that hurts."
He knew that he had no choice though.
"Why are you helping me?"
For the first time she could possibly see a hint of panic in his eyes.

I'm sending paramedics to your location...

Etta scarcely heard the dispatcher's voice as she sniffed loudly, trying to keep from having a complete meltdown. What the hell had just happened in the last five minutes? She couldn't entirely comprehend it, much less process it. There was just so much blood, and she had to stop it. But she had blood in her mouth as well as on her hands, and some of it was her fault, but mostly it was his fault, but what was the point of trying to decide exactly what was whose fault at a time like this?

"Do you want to die?" she blurted out, utterly confused, though her instincts made her continue to try to keep pressure on the wound, or at least around it. "Because I don't want anybody to die, okay? I don't care if you sell drugs or stole drugs or whatever!"

Dax endured the extra pressure because he could feel the back of his shirt getting wet now. He knew that she might be saving his life.
"I'm not a dealer. I just....I use unusual methods."
She must be able to see his badge on his belt if she cared to look.
He was getting cold now. It was still a frosty night and the tarmac half frozen.
All he could hope was for the ambulance to get there in time.
"Please delete that video." He pleaded in between shallow breaths.

Somewhere in the distance the horn of the ambulance could be heard.

Right and wrong had felt so much clearer to her several minutes ago. Now, Etta was lost. A dying man was begging her to get rid of the video, but she had been so certain that taking the video was the proper thing to do. He wasn't innocent, but he wasn't so guilty he deserved to bleed out in a parking lot that smelled of every foul thing she could think of with nobody around but a stranger who thought he was nothing more than a soulless bully. But maybe nobody was their worst day. Etta hoped she wasn't hers.

"I'm Etta," she said quietly instead, fighting the almost overwhelming urge to just start sobbing. If she started, she knew she wasn't going to be able to stop, and he still needed help, even as the sirens wailed closer, and she could see the flicker of the lights reflected dully on the cloudy night sky. "What's your name?"

Most of his focus was on his abdomen and the possible damage this piece of metal had done. Keeping it together was hard when he was just barely holding on.
The girl was having a hard time, too, and suddenly introduced herself.
Dax could have lied. Any name but his real one was a good name but she deserved the truth, so he whispered. "I'm Dax."
His eyes closed for a moment but the grimace remained. He wasn't unconscious yet when the ambulanced stopped out on the main street looking for someone who had called them.

"Okay, you just hold on for now, Dax," she told him. She couldn't make any promises about what she was going to do with that video. She didn't want to think about it right now. She wanted somebody else to tell her what to do, so she looked over her shoulder out at the street as the ambulance came to a halt. "Over here!" she called, raising one bloody hand to wave as the paramedics jumped out with their kits and came running across the parking lot. "Here," she repeated again, feeling very slow and stupid as the man and woman in uniform descended on the scene, working like a well-oiled machine to assess the situation.

'Are you both injured?'

"Not me, I'm not--h-he's..." Etta didn't need to continue as they focused on the man on the ground, nitrile gloves and packing gauze already seeming to litter the scene as they stabilized Dax so they could move him to the ambulance. Etta stood back, shivering, and felt her stomach clench when she saw the cop car pull up behind the ambulance. She'd said it was a stabbing. Of course that was a crime. Of course the cops had come. But what kind of cops, she wondered, were these ones?

She wanted to run. Jump into her van and get out of there...but there was no way she was outrunning and hiding from the police in her own goddam catering van with Dax's weapon on the seat.

Her presence and help was the one friendly thing that he couldn't have counted one whilst bleeding out in a back alley. Yet, there she was telling him to hold on.
"Okay." He also stopped urging her for the video now. Hopefully she wouldn't save his life and then screw it up.

It seemed to take forever for the ambulance to arrive and when they did Etta had to make way for them. As unlikely as it seemed Dax didn't want her to step back or leave. He had no choice though. But while they were stripping him of his clothes, revealing where the piece of metal was stuck under his ribs in a perfect six pack, his gaze still followed her.

The back alley had become a garden of flashing lights.

Illuminated by the blues two plice officers came onto the scene. As they approached they noticed the woman standing close to the injured man.
So they asked her.
"What happened here?"

Working in kitchens, Etta had seen her fair share of accidents around hot stoves and sharp knives; but however blistered or bloody those injuries had been, they didn't quite compare to the dirty hulk of jagged metal that had been stuck into a body with the intention to do serious harm. She didn't blink as she watched the paramedics work, but her face had gone pale in a sickly sort of way before one of the uniformed officers took her by the elbow and turned her to face him as he spoke to her, asking her what had happened.

"I...I pulled over my van...to fix something in the back," she said, her voice sounding hollow and strangely far-away to her own ears. What was she telling? The truth? Of course. Parts of it, at least. "There...there was a man, he--" she glanced back at Dax. "He might have had drugs, I don't know...there was...everything happened so fast. They came over that fence," she pointed to it, and the dumpsters. "There...there was a...a struggle. Um." She closed her eyes for a moment, as if trying to recall details, when she was cropping out the things she felt were unwise to go blabbering about in front of just anybody. "He found something on the ground, something sharp, and--" she made a vague gesture with her blood-covered hands, the result being obvious. "...I was trying to help, I wanted to do the right thing," she admitted.

'Are you hurt? There's blood on your face--' One of the officers was a little more kind, maybe more inclined to see her as an innocent witness rather than an instigator. She'd called in the emergency, after all. Someone settled a crinkling silver sheet around her shoulders as she felt herself shivering, thinking it was only because she'd given up her hoodie to press against the wound, but as the nicer officer helped her to lean against the squad car, she realized she was probably in some level of shock.

"No, I...I bit him," she explained, briefly rubbing the knuckle of one thumb across her mouth to try to clean it, but there was too much blood on her hands, now, too, so it hardly made much difference.

'The dealer?'

"No, him. I got scared, I was so scared, I just--"

'Alright, and after the stabbing, which way did the guy go? Did he have a car? What did he look like?'

Etta swallowed, hard. There was no good guy, here. She pointed down the street in the direction she recalled the dealer had taken off on foot.

"He was running. His clothes were dark, I didn't see...I don't know to describe him. The light wasn't...I didn't get a good look."

Dax was the one who had gotten up in her face. Dax was the one she could describe to a sketch artist. Hell, Dax had done 99.99% of the threats made against her, personally. But these cops weren't interested in Dax, and Etta just wanted to go home.

"And I put the gun in my van," she added, trying to think of anything else she could tell. "On the seat. He--" she nodded to Dax again. "He dropped it, but I didn't want it going off or getting taken, so I put it in there."

Officer down

---

The packing of the wound totally distracted Dax from what the woman was saying to the other cops. He could only overhear fragments and hoped that she wasn't telling them everything. Maybe she was intimidated enough not to rat him out. Maybe not. He couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Across the yard the cops were puzzled by her bits and pieces of information. Once a scream alerted them and they looked over at the wounded but then they zoomed in on the girl again.
"I need a better description of the other man. So there were two men, dealing drugs and struggling. And then somehow you ended up biting the one over there and collected his gun? Were you involve in the drug deal and where are the drugs now?"
The female officer cast a glance at the passenger seat, then reached around her and bagged the weapon using gloves.
"It's a standard issue New Nambu M60." Her colleague looked surprise because it was the same weapon he was carrying.

"Let me see your ID, please. We'll also need you to come to the station tomorrow and give a statement."
While she stayed with Etta, her colleague went over to Dax.
"Can I have a word with the victim?" He asked the paramedics.

"I--I...I don't...he was thin, I guess? He came over the fence pretty easily. Um." Etta looked back at the fence, trying to recall a rough idea of height when it had been a split-second of two people clambering over it before they fell to the ground. "Maybe a little taller than the dumpster? He took off with the drugs. They were in small bags, I think. I'm not sure what was in them."

At the suggestion she might have been involved, she could only shake her head. It was so ridiculous she wasn't even afraid of that accusation.

"I'm a caterer," she said, pointing to her van. "I had a delivery in the area, I...I can show you my receipts, you can talk to the woman I just took food to. He--well they both came around the side of my van when I had gotten out, and he pulled his gun, and I...well, of course I bit him. There were two strange men with a gun and a sharp bit of metal trying to kill each other or something right in front of me! A hand got in my face and I just...sorry..."

Etta had to lean over and spit onto the ground, wanting to get the taste out of her mouth. She felt like she might vomit, if she didn't.

"My ID is in my van," she told the officer. "And so are my delivery records..."

'Okay, I'll take a look at those...'

It seemed like forever went by in an instant before Etta found herself sitting behind the wheel in her van. She'd gotten the worst of the blood off her hands and face with a packet of wipes, but she still wanted to crawl out of her skin and burn what was left behind. She settled for driving herself home and, carefully putting her cracked phone down beside the sink, sat down in the bottom of the tub in her clothes, turned on the shower, and burst into tears.

While Etta made her escape Dax was getting loaded into the back of the ambulance.
At least he had been able to show his colleagues his badge so they didn't cuff him to the reil.
Thanks to a good dose of pain killers questioning him was also not an option for the next few hours until the doctors would fix him up and clear him.

Later he would tell anyone his version of the story which wouldn't include knocking the dealer out or pushing Etta around.