Chapter 11: Get Out of the Car
"Step out of the vehicle. Now."
Officer Travis Weldon said it flat, like a line he had used so often it no longer needed anger to carry it. He stood in the drizzle on State Route 12 with his flashlight still aimed through the driver's window of the black Mercedes-Benz S-Class, his other hand resting near his holster, and he did not step back to give Alicia Ford room to open the door.
Alicia kept both hands where he could see them. The clock on the dash read 1:14 a.m. when he had first lit her up, and it had ticked forward only a few minutes since. She was forty-one, a senior corporate attorney and a managing partner, a woman who spent her days in rooms where people measured every syllable before they spoke. She measured hers now.
"Officer, I will get out," she said. "I need you to step back so the door can open, and I would like you to lower the light so I can see the ground. It is wet, and I am wearing heels."
"You don't give instructions at my stop," he said. "Out. Right now, or I pull you out."
From the passenger seat came nothing. The seat was reclined as far as it would go, and under a dark wool overcoat Jonathan Reeves lay still behind the tinted glass, his breathing slow, his face turned away. Alicia did not look at him. Earlier, in the first minute of the stop, his hand had found hers on the console and tapped twice, slow and deliberate, their private signal from years of marriage and his years in uniform: I am awake; trust me.
Weldon struck the window once with the butt of his flashlight, a sharp crack of metal on glass that made her flinch despite herself.
"I'm not asking again, girl," he said. "Open this door or I drag you out by your hair and you can add resisting to everything else. You want to sit in a cell tonight in that nice suit? Because that's where this is going."
"I am not resisting," Alicia said. "I want that clear. I am going to unbuckle, I am going to open the door slowly, and I am going to step out. Please do not touch me."
"You've been difficult since I walked up," he said. "Swerving all over my road, attitude when I ask simple questions, and now refusing a lawful order."
"I was driving fifty-five in a fifty-five," she said. "I have refused nothing."
He keyed his radio then, tilting his head toward his shoulder, and his voice changed into something performed, louder than the roadside required. "Dispatch, Unit Seven. I need backup at mile marker twenty-two, Route Twelve, code three. I have a combative driver refusing orders, possible narcotics. Send units now."
Combative. The word landed like a stone in still water. Alicia felt her pulse climb and forced her breathing down the way she did before opening arguments, in through the nose, out slow. She understood radios. She understood recordings. Whatever he said into that microphone would become the first draft of the truth unless someone better documented a second one.
"Dispatch copy," a thin voice crackled back. "Units en route."
"There," Weldon said, satisfied. "Now you've got an audience coming. Last chance to do this easy."
Alicia unbuckled her seat belt with exaggerated care, announcing each movement before she made it, the way she might narrate a demonstration for a jury. "Releasing my seat belt. Reaching for the door handle. Opening the door now." She pushed it open only as far as his stance allowed and turned sideways in the seat, placing one heel, then the other, onto the slick shoulder. Gravel and cold water met the soles of her shoes. She rose slowly, hands open at shoulder height, palms toward him, and stood clear of the car while the drizzle needled through her blouse and darkened her shoulders.
"Hands where I can see them, don't move, don't reach for anything," he said, crowding the words together. "You reach, that's on you."
"My hands are empty," she said. "My purse and phone are inside the car. I am standing still."
"Turn around and face the vehicle."
She turned. The Mercedes was still running, its exhaust feathering white in the freezing air, its headlights washing the wet trees beyond the shoulder. Somewhere behind her closed door, behind dark glass, her husband the chief of police of Millbrook lay hidden and silent, a man who had held his office only three months and who had recognized this officer's voice before Alicia had any reason to know it. She kept her eyes on the rain-beaded roof of her own car and did not turn her head.
"Stay exactly like that until my backup gets here," Weldon said. "You move, I take you down."
"I will stay exactly like this," she said quietly. "Please note that I complied."