She had her hands in the air. Christabel, who looked as if she’d been flash-frozen, had dropped the wine glass on the rug in the shock of the moment and she had her hands in the air too. And Kutya, Kutya was going bonkers. “Lady,” one of the cops yelled at her, “will you control that animal?”
At first she couldn’t understand what he was saying because they’d come to take Kutya away from her, hadn’t they? Wasn’t that what this was all about? That and maybe her no-show on the seatbelt thing. And the court date on the trumped-up DUI charge, to which she’d pleaded innocent, but that wasn’t for two weeks yet, not that she had any intention of showing for it . . . or hadn’t had. Until now. But wait—and here her blood froze—what about that little incident the other night with the police cruiser and the sugar water meant for innocent hummingbirds? They’d caught her on videotape, she was sure of it, because everything in the U.S.I.G.A. was on tape now, every breath you took, and what about the Fourth Amendment, what about that? Search and Seizure? Hello?
“Kutya,” she called, “Kutya! Stop it now!” But when she tried to get up out of the chair and take him by the collar, the cop shoved her back down. “Hands!” he roared, and he had his gun trained right on her.
She was scared, had never been so scared in her life, but she couldn’t help throwing it back at him nonetheless, “How am I supposed to control him if I can’t even—”
“Shut the fuck up,” that was what he said, or snarled, and then another cop had one of those muzzle things on a stick and seized hold of the dog’s snout and the barking abruptly stopped.
It was right around then that she began to reconsider. There were cops everywhere, stalking through the kitchen, the bedrooms, their guns held out rigidly before them and laser lights poking red holes in everything—but why? Why would there be such a show of force over a woman who wasn’t wearing her seatbelt? Even if she hadn’t shown for her court date? Even if they knew she’d destroyed a police car, which, it became obvious to her in that moment, they didn’t . . .
Another cop was there now, a bald-headed one, tailed by a deputy who looked all of twelve years old, and why did everybody have to shave their heads, was it some sort of cops and robbers sort of thing? He stood there a moment, just out of range of the one who’d pinned Kutya down with the muzzle-stick, staring at her. “Sara Hovarty Jennings?” he asked.
She couldn’t do much more than just nod yes, her heart going like the StairMaster set on Alpine, but the words were on her lips—Threat, Duress and Coercion—and if he didn’t back off she was going to start screaming and they could just go ahead and shoot her, but she surprised herself by finding her voice long enough to frame her own question in as nasty a voice as she could muster, “You got a search warrant?”
The cop ignored her. He swung his head in Christabel’s direction, Christabel who was sitting right there beside her, her hands in the air still. “And what’s your name?”
Poor Christa. She was so scared she could barely talk Or she couldn’t, she couldn’t talk at all.
“You can put your hands down,” he said, softening his voice, “both of you.” He was short, this cop, as nondescript as if he had his face on backwards, but he seemed to be in charge, and he had some sort of decoration or whatever it was sewed to the shoulder of his uniform. “Now, once again, you”—nodding at Christabel—“I asked your name.”
“Christabel Walsh? I’m a teacher’s aide?” She started to say where she worked, as if the name of the school would carry any weight, but her voice got choked in her throat and she couldn’t go on.
And now one of the other cops, the one who’d been in the bedroom, going through her personal things, clomped into the room and announced, “All clear back there. Nobody here but these two.”
“You go out there and check that yard, every blade of grass, hear me? Fence lines, all the fields around here. Get the dogs on it.”
“Yes, sir.” And that cop was gone, out the door and into the yard where lights were at war and voices stalked around the corners.
It was then, just then, in the interval before the chief cop turned back to her, that she began to understand. “Is this about Adam?” she asked, and why she asked she didn’t know—it was just some snaky intuition that made her heart hammer even faster and the fish go sour on her stomach.