Five minutes later, Emmaline had Hadley handcuffed and locked in the back of the cruiser, where Hadley was sobbing. At least she couldn’t hurt herself (or the car) if she was cuffed, and she’d done more than enough to earn it. There were a few leaves in Hadley’s tangled hair and raccoon eyes from where her mascara had melted.
Em leaned against the cruiser, breathing hard. She wasn’t much better off than her passenger. Her forehead stung, and her shin throbbed.
Okay, first things first. “I’ll be right back,” she told her passenger.
Emmaline went inside to the bedroom with the broken window and picked up the glass, then closed the door so too much heat (and the cat) wouldn’t get out. Debated on calling Levi, and then decided he didn’t need to hear about this just yet. He had other things on his mind.
She went back outside, opened the door of the cruiser for Sarge and got behind the wheel. “Is your sister still in town?” she asked.
“No! I’ve got no one and nowhere to go!”
“Have you always depended on the kindness of strangers?”
“As a matter of fact, yes!”
Okay, Blanche DuBois. Em stifled an eye roll.
She’d take Hadley to the station, because she didn’t have time to babysit her at her apartment. She was the officer on call today. Hadley could just sit tight in the holding cell and sober up.
Em rubbed a spot on her jaw where Hadley’s head had slammed into her.
It was going to be a long day.
Ten minutes later, they were at the station.
“You must be freezing! Isn’t she freezing?” Carol Robinson asked when Emmaline brought Hadley in. Though Emmaline had tied Hadley’s coat closed, it barely cleared her ass. Also, Hadley had refused to put on her shoes. “Isn’t that Jack Holland’s wife?”
“Ex-wife,” Emmaline said tightly. “Everett, unlock the cell for me.”
Hadley arched her back as they walked down the hall, still trying to get away. “Don’t! Not in there! Please! Not that! I can’t stand that!”
“It’s not exactly a pit in the ground, Hadley,” she said as Everett opened the holding cell door. “You’ll just stay here for a little while. There’s a blanket on the bed. Get warmed up, okay?” She uncuffed her, gave her a gentle push in and closed the cell door. “I’ll bring you something to wear.”
“Please! Please don’t lock me up!” Hadley pressed a fist to her mouth and sobbed like she’d just seen The Notebook for the first time. Ev was staring at Hadley’s outfit (or lack thereof), his mouth hanging open. Em smacked him on the head. “Ev. Come on!”
“Right, right, sorry,” Everett said. “What happened to you? You look awful. You’re all dirty.”
“Emmaline, you’re filthy,” Carol pointed out.
“Yes, I know.” Em went to her locker, where she kept a clean uniform as well as a pair of yoga pants and a MPD sweatshirt. She pulled the latter two out and handed them to Carol. “Bring these to Meryl Streep, okay? And ask her if she’s hungry.”
“Is Meryl Streep here?” Everett asked.
Emmaline closed her eyes. “No, Ev. I meant Hadley. The woman in the cell.”
Carol went back down the hall, and a second later, Hadley bellowed, “These are way! Too! Big!” followed by more sobbing. When Carol returned, she was trying hard not to giggle. “She wants to know if she gets a phone call,” she said.
“She can have one when she sobers up a little.” Em tried to be professional; Hadley was in custody and a guest of the town now, not just Jack’s ex-wife.
But it was hard to know if she was treating Hadley like she’d treat anyone else, because maybe she was being too nice. Hadley had driven under the influence; somewhere during her rant on the way to the station, she’d admitted that, and her car was parked half on Blue Heron’s lawn, half on the driveway. She’d thrown a rock through a window, which constituted criminal mischief. Drunk and disorderly. Menacing a police officer, more or less.
What would Levi do?
Em thought he’d do pretty much what she’d already done. Give her time to cool down, then deliver a stern lecture, name-drop some of the charges that could be leveled against her and tell her to grow up.
Yeah. All in all, Em was pretty sure she’d done a good job.
She washed up and changed into her uniform, brushed her hair and put it in its customary bun. Took a few deep breaths and left the locker room.
“Levi called,” Carol said. “John Holland, the old one, had a heart attack, and he’s being admitted, so he’ll be at the hospital with Faith.”
“How’s Mr. Holland doing?” Emmaline asked.
“He didn’t really say. Maybe you should ask Jack.”
“Yeah. Anything else?”
“Yep.” Carol handed her a few messages, then sat back down at her desk.
Typical stuff for a weekday. Mrs. McPhales thought she saw a trespasser. Someone saw a stray dog or possibly a coyote in their backyard. A speeder past Phyllis Nebbins’s house. The Knoxes’ free-range chickens were causing traffic danger. Dalton hadn’t shown up for school.
Em checked her phone.
Nothing from Jack.
“Okay, I’ll go out on these calls. Everett, keep an eye on Hadley, okay?”
“You bet,” he said, going back to his computer. She heard the Angry Birds music, gave him a look and left.
WHEN EMMALINE GOT back to the station a couple of hours later, Everett met her at the door. “We might have a problem,” he said. “I just checked on Hadley, and she’s not too good.”
“Shit.” She ran down the hall to the holding cell.
Hadley was sitting on the floor, practically drowning in Em’s clothes. She was rocking and whimpering, and the smell of vomit was unmistakable. “Hadley?” Em said, going into the cell. “You okay?”
“Please let me out,” she whispered, seeming completely different from before.
“Yeah, sure. You feeling all right now?”
“Can I make a phone call?” She was shaking.
“Absolutely.” Emmaline led her out of the cell and into the station proper. “We’re not charging you with anything. Not yet, anyway. I just wanted you to be safe. You were pretty...wild before. Do you remember that?”
She nodded. Em sat her at the desk and handed her the receiver. “Just dial nine to get an outside line,” she said. Then she took a few steps away so as not to eavesdrop.
This wasn’t good.
“What happened?” Carol asked.
“She threw up. I don’t know what else. She’s a lot quieter now. Everett, were you watching her?”
“Uh, yeah! Yeah, I was. I mean, when she settled down, I was kinda glad, you know?”
“When did you check on her last?”
He looked at the clock and winced. “An hour ago, maybe?”
Great. So Hadley could’ve been sitting in puke for an hour.
There was a hard pit in her stomach. This wasn’t going to end well.
“Can I get you anything?” Emmaline asked Hadley when she hung up. “Some water, maybe?”
Hadley shook her head and just folded her hands in front of her.
“Do you need the bathroom? Want to get cleaned up?”
“No, thank you.” Her voice was a whisper.
The minutes ticked by. Em tried to take care of some paperwork, but dread was settling over her like a cold, damp fog.
Then the door opened. “Jack,” Hadley whispered. She stood up and wobbled into his arms, looking more like an orphan than the irate prostitute she resembled earlier. Her feet were bare. Damn. Em should’ve given her socks. Hadley was shaking like a leaf, all of her, right down to her toes.
For once, Emmaline didn’t think she was faking.
“Emmaline, what the hell happened here?” Jack asked, his voice hard.
“She was drinking, Jack. She showed up at your house, and—”
“So you arrested her?”
As if they sensed a scene brewing, the four paid members of the Manningsport Fire Department, as well as Shannon and Kelly Murphy, who were training to become EMTs, wandered over. “Hey, Jack, how’s your grandfather?” Gerard asked.
“Not good,” Jack said. “Emmaline? You gonna explain this?”
Em glanced at the Murphy girls, who grimaced in sympathy. “I didn’t actually charge her. I just put her in the holding cell.”
“She’s claustrophobic, Emmaline!”
Shit on rye. “I didn’t know that.”
“You couldn’t tell? Take a look at her.”
Em ran a hand over her head. “No one likes going in the drunk tank, Jack.”
“She was screaming and crying,” Carol said, most unhelpfully. Sounded a lot like police brutality, the way Carol put it.
“Well, she was screaming from the time she got to your house,” Em said.
“So you arrested her,” Jack said, his mouth tight. “She said you chased her and handcuffed and locked her in a cell. Really, Em? Because she was upset?”
“No! It was because she was... I thought she was a danger to herself. And possibly others. She was very aggressive. She—”
“You probably outweigh her by forty pounds, Em. You couldn’t handle that?”
The stutter opened its skeleton eyes.
“I was acting in my capacity as a police officer,” Emmaline said stiffly.
“Sounds like you were acting like a jealous bully,” he said, his voice calm and flat, and the words actually made her head jerk back.
Oh, God. Was he right? Her stomach curled in on itself. Hadley looked so small and ruined and...vulnerable. Her face was white. A person couldn’t fake that.
“Jack,” Everett began.
“I don’t have time for this,” Jack said tightly. “My grandfather is at death’s door, and I have to get back to the hospital. But now I have to take care of her, because look at her! She’s a wreck. Thanks, Emmaline.”
“J-J-Jack, I d-d-didn’t—” Her voice stopped cold.
The stutter, her old enemy, laughed and squeezed.
“I have to go,” Jack said.
Then he opened the door, looked at Hadley’s feet and scooped her into his arms so she wouldn’t have to walk barefoot to the truck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE GOOD NEWS was, Pops was still alive.
The bad news was everything else.
The past few days had passed in a tense blur of bad coffee and worse sleep. Jack went to the hospital, always careful to check the corridor for Mr. and Mrs. Deiner, not wanting to cause them any further upset than he had already. When he’d finally returned home late that first night, he’d found a broken window in the yellow room upstairs.
He’d taped a sheet of plastic over it, the silence of his house pressing down on him, grateful for Lazarus’s weird little croaks. Then he lay down on the couch and fell asleep, his phone on the coffee table set on the highest volume, and woke around five o’clock, his cat sleeping on his chest.
There was a coffee cake on the counter, and the coffeepot was set up and ready to go.
That would’ve been Emmaline’s work.
He felt a pang of guilt, but goddamn it, he was tired of feeling guilty. The woman had turned off his phone. He didn’t have a landline. She knew that. What if Pops hadn’t made it? What if she’d taken away his chance to say goodbye to his funny, crusty old grandfather?
Em had no right to decide when he could get calls. None.
Yeah, okay, taken by itself, it wasn’t that big a deal. She hadn’t known Pops was going to have a heart attack.
But what about arresting Hadley? Had all that really been necessary? Jack was well aware that his ex-wife was a drama queen, but she’d been genuinely traumatized, and when Jack saw her there in the oversize clothes, tears streaming out of her eyes, he... Ah, screw it. Jack didn’t know what. But he couldn’t just leave her there.
