47.
Hailey
Hailey’s first thought was that someone had broken the etiquette about white Christmas lights. Then she saw that the blue beam that pulsed through the onslaught of snowflakes was coming from a police car parked on the other side of the fence that divided Magpie Court from the main road.
Mack headed straight for the boundary, and Gulliver tore after him. Hailey managed to grab the dog by the back of the plaid Christmas sweater that Pammy had given him, and then she followed Mack to the edge of the yard.
“Why aren’t there any sirens?” Had the police come to them? For them?
“It looks like a roadblock,” Mack said. “They’ve got someone pulled over.”
Hailey pressed her face against the wrought-iron bars of the fence. “That seems crappy to do on Chris—”
“Betsy was right,” Mack said, squinting. “It’s that Allison woman. Betsy told me they’ve been trying to bust her.”
“Bust her for what?” How on earth did Mack even know who Allison Murdoch was?
“Drinking and driving. She’s apparently done it before.”
They watched as a tall, thin policeman opened the driver’s side door of a silver Mercedes G-Class. Then the silent scene exploded in front of them.
“Get out of the car!” The cop’s voice made Hailey jump. “I said get the fuck out of the car!”
Allison Murdoch gave no discernible reply, and Hailey and Mack looked on as she was wrenched from the car and, not forty feet away from them, pushed to the ground, her hands pinned behind her back, her face pale against the darkness of the asphalt.
“He’s going to hurt her,” Mack said, and Hailey noticed that he stepped back from the fence, away from Allison and the cop.
“We have to do something,” Hailey said, but in the softest whisper.
Allison sprang to life: “Get off me! Get away from me! Call my son! Call—” Her voice trailed off into an animal scream as the officer put his knee on her back. He pulled handcuffs from his side, and the size of him looming over Allison was too much for Hailey. She was sprinting along the fence toward the street when she heard the sirens, two separate cars that came from nowhere and blocked the road as they slid to a stop. Hailey stopped too, as soon as she saw that the cops that rushed out of these cars had their guns drawn. Her eyes went straight to Mack, who was edging his way along the fence toward her. The two of them met in the middle of the yard; Hailey knew they should go inside, should mind their own business.
The cops pulled Allison to her feet; she was wearing a Christmas sweater that said “Joy” across the front, and what looked to Hailey like bedroom slippers. A female officer pulled a bottle of vodka from the Mercedes and stood in front of Allison, who was then pushed down again to sit cross-legged on the frozen ground. The sirens drowned out the words, but Allison’s mouth was going a million miles an hour, and she was shaking her head. Even from this distance, Hailey could see that she was crying.
“I’ll bet she’s sober now,” said a voice, and Hailey had to stifle a scream. Betsy Wakefield stood behind them, shivering in the cold. “So awful.”
Behind her, both Sinclairs stood in their driveway. Even one of the lawyers at the far end had come halfway down the street. A bitter thought snuck into Hailey’s brain: Christmas brought out everyone’s neighborly instincts.
“You were right,” Mack was telling Betsy. “They must’ve been waiting for her. Man, why would she be out like this on Christmas?”
“She’s just gone through a terrible divorce,” Betsy said. “Pretty recently. She’s just spiraled. It’s so sad.”
“Do you have her husband’s number?” Hailey asked her. “Or her eldest’s, maybe?”
“No. But they’ll take her in no matter what we do. She doesn’t even have a license anymore... Plus they’ll want to make an example out of her so they can prove they aren’t racist. Did you see the story on the news about how they only pull over Black drivers in Bratenahl?”
Hailey shook her head. They watched without comment while the cops bundled Allison into the back of a cruiser. And then, in a matter of a few minutes, the whole procession of police cars disappeared, leaving Allison’s car stranded crookedly by the side of the street.
The tiny crowd of neighbors dispersed, but when Hailey started toward their own still-open front door, Mack didn’t move. He stood staring out at the scene, and Hailey knew what he was thinking about even before he said it.
“That’s the end of her life as she knows it,” Mack whispered. “Just like that. She’ll lose her kids, all her friends, her freedom... all at once.”
“It sounds like it had been coming for a while,” Hailey told him. “She must’ve had plenty of warnings. She could have just—”
“I can’t go to jail,” Mack pleaded with her, his voice breaking.
“You’re not going to. Neither will Allison, probably. She’ll get a slap on the wrist. But we need the police, Mack. This is so far out of control.” Still, she had to agree that the image of the rushing blue figures with their guns and shouting made the prospect of ending up on the wrong side of dirty money and casual arson feel all too real.
“If that money really is linked to something like terrorism,” Mack said, “it will make what just happened to that woman look like a fucking picnic.”
