Chapter 23
Owen already had the appeal request open on his second monitor when I got in, which meant Harland Mutual had sent it to both of us, or he’d found his own way into my inbox again and hadn’t bothered pretending otherwise.
“Requesting supplemental observation,” he read aloud, in a flat mockery of the adjuster’s tone. “Minimum ten business days. Prior to final determination on appeal. You want to tell me what that means, or should I keep guessing?”
“It means Holloway’s appeal found the argument that turns several brief observations into isolated good moments instead of proof he can sustain warehouse work,” I said.
“A few brief lifts are not an eight-hour shift. It’s defensible, if somebody’s willing to stand in front of a judge and say it with a straight face. ”
“So we need more than one cooler?”
“We need sustained, high-impact exertion. Something his side can’t wave away as a few isolated good moments.
” I’d forwarded him the file the night before with a single line, needing eyes on Holloway’s public activity, anything beyond the claim itself, and Owen being Owen, he’d clearly spent the hours since not sleeping so much as digging.
He was our digital investigator, the guy who could turn a name and a zip code into a full outline of somebody’s life without ever leaving his chair, and he had his feet up on the desk in a way that told me he’d already found something and was rationing out the pleasure of telling me about it.
“You’re going to want to sit down for this,” he said, not looking up from the monitor. “Or don’t. I don’t actually care. But it’s good.”
“Tell me.”
“Trent Holloway, thirty-nine, warehouse supervisor, currently appealing a claim decision on the basis that heavy lifting is beyond his physical capacity.” Owen turned the monitor toward me with the satisfaction of a man who’d been sitting on this for at least an hour.
“Also, and I want you to appreciate the also, Trent Holloway competes in amateur wrestling matches under the name The Wrecker, at a promotion that runs out of a rented gym on the industrial side of Greymonte roughly twice a month.”
The footage was low quality, phone camera in a dim room, but it was unmistakably Holloway under a half mask that covered the top of his face and did nothing to disguise the build underneath it.
He picked up another grown man, held him overhead for a three count of applause, and slammed him to a mat that could not have been forgiving.
“That’s not overexertion,” I said. “That’s a hobby.”
“That’s a hobby that requires a functioning lumbar spine, is what it is.
There’s a promotional page, ticket link, upcoming event in two days.
” Owen leaned back, hands behind his head.
“Public event. Public venue. Anyone can buy a ticket and watch a grown man in a mask suplex another grown man for the low price of fifteen dollars.”
“Fifteen dollars for evidence that closes an appeal.” I copied the event link. “I need still frames, timestamps, and proof this is recurring, not one stunt his side can wave away like the cooler.”
“On it. You want me to pull his match history too? See how far back this goes?”
“Everything. If he’s been doing this for two years, that’s a different case than if he started last month out of boredom.
” I sat down at my own desk and looked at the calendar, at the two days between now and the event, and at the shorter stretch of days that put me back on Rover Street starting tomorrow, camera mounted, decal on the van, invoice ticking upward with every hour I logged against Harland Mutual’s account.
Back on Rover Street, officially, with paperwork. It should have felt familiar. Instead it sat wrong in my chest. Watching Holloway meant watching the courtyard, her stairwell, and the window facing the street, whether I meant to or not.
I called her that evening, because the rule I’d agreed to wasn’t only about facts I learned. It was about not letting her find things out sideways when I could have just told her, even if I’d already told her most of it in person.
“Starting tomorrow I’ll be back on the street working the appeal,” I said, once she’d picked up. “Camera mounted, full days, probably for a while. I know I already told you the shape of it. I wanted you to hear it’s actually happening, not just theoretical anymore.”
“Okay.” No teasing in her voice yet, which told me she’d heard the seriousness under the words before I’d finished explaining it. “What’s the line?”
“Same as before. I can tell you I’m working.
I can tell you roughly when I’ll be there.
I can’t tell you what I catch on camera, what the client decides, or anything specific about the claim itself, because that file isn’t mine to hand out, even to you.
” I said it plainly, the way I’d promised her plain things would come, and felt the old instinct to soften it fight against the newer one that wanted her to have the truth even when the truth was a locked door.
“It’s not a trust issue. It’s a license issue.
If I start treating confidentiality like it bends for you, it stops meaning anything for the next client who trusts me with something private. ”
“I get that. I’d worry if you didn’t have that line.” A pause. “So I searched Trent Holloway with Greymonte. A public gym post congratulated Trent ‘The Wrecker’ Holloway after a match. That tag led straight to the promotion page.”
“What kind of public stuff?”
“The Wrecker has an event page and a ticket link for Friday.” She said it lightly. “Dani and I are buying tickets. Public event, fifteen dollars a seat. We’re not touching your case. We’re two women watching amateur wrestling.”
I considered that for a second, running through every angle I had for talking her out of it, and coming up with nothing that held.
It was a public event. Buying a ticket wasn’t surveillance, wasn’t interference, wasn’t anything I could point to and call improper.
If I told her not to go, I’d be asking her to change her own plans because my case happened to overlap with them, and that was exactly the kind of authority I’d promised her I wouldn’t reach for.
“I can’t stop you,” I said. “And I’m not going to pretend I have a legal reason to try.”
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s an accurate description of my options.
” I rubbed a hand over my face, already picturing it, her in that crowd, bright shirt probably, laughing at exactly the wrong moment, a masked man two hundred feet away performing violence his own claim said his body couldn’t survive.
“I’d rather know where you’re sitting than find out from the footage. ”
“I’ll tell you where I’m sitting.” Something warm came back into her voice, the seriousness folding itself back down into something closer to her usual register. “You could come, you know. As a customer. Fifteen dollars.”
“I’ll be working the crowd for exactly the footage you’re not supposed to help me get.”
“So we’ll wave at each other from a distance. Very normal. Very not-suspicious-at-all energy.”
I didn’t have an answer that wasn’t the truth, so I gave her that instead. “I want you there,” I said. “I shouldn’t, professionally speaking. But I do.”
She was quiet for a moment, and I could picture her exactly, sitting with that answer the way she sat with everything that mattered, testing its weight before she let herself smile at it. “Good,” she said finally. “Because I already bought the tickets.”