The police car pulled up to the curb at an angle, red and blue lightbar competing with all the twinkling greens and reds in the neighborhood. And then that big flashlight on the side of the car flipped on and hit her. She stood in the spotlight, dripping, soaked, muddy, and cold. Someone got out of the passenger side and approached her. She put her hand up over her brow—instantly aware that she had just put even more mud on her face—to block the light so she could see.
"Everything okay?" The officer slowed as he got closer.
Emily flicked a glance to the house next door. The front door was open now and an old man and woman stood in their bathrobes, watching.
"What do you think?" She waved a hand at herself. "You think I go out in the rain and roll around in the mud in the middle of the night just for kicks? Hey, maybe I'll wake up the neighbors so they can come out too? That would be fun, right?"
The officer turned back to the car and made a motion with his hand. The spotlight went out.
"Everything okay?" he asked again.
She sighed and a sob caught in her throat. "No. No, it's not, Officer. I'm locked out of my stupid house without a stupid key, and I don't have my stupid phone to call my stupid landlord to come open the stupid door."
He stared at her a moment. He was her father's age, from the look of all that grey in his mustache. He had that dad look about him, too—the look where you're not sure whether you're going to get yelled at or hugged. Then he pulled out his phone and looked at her. "What's your stupid landlord's stupid number?"
She snorted a laugh and a sob at the same time, sure that by now she looked so insane a little snot bubble laughter was not going to affect anybody's opinion of her. "I don't know."
He looked up at her, his thumb still poised over the screen to dial. "How about his stupid name?"
"Leo Kendrick," she laughed/snorted/sobbed.
Dadcop nodded and dialed information. As he gave the operator the name, he motioned her to head to the car. He opened the back door and indicated she should get in. The other officer watched her from the rear-view mirror.
Sitting in the backseat, separated from the free world by a metal mesh screen, she was suddenly clear-headed. "Am I under arrest?"
The eyes in the mirror were amused now. He leaned forward a little and touched the screen on the dashboard. Warm air rushed out of the vent in the console. "No. You're under the heater."
Emily leaned forward and put her hands out in the heat. "Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir."
The passenger door opened and Dadcop got in. He turned in the seat a little to face her. "He's on his way to let you in. You warm enough back there?"
"Oh, I'll probably never be warm again." Now that she was starting to warm up a little, her teeth were chattering, and she was shivering pretty violently. "But thank you."
"Hang on." Dadcop gave her another one of those looks and got out of the car. He got something from the trunk and then opened the back door and handed it to her. It was one of those aluminum foil blankets people use when they go camping. She took it and shook it out to unfold it around herself. "I'm sorry. I'm getting mud all over your car."
"You're not the first person to get mud back there," Dadcop said. He nodded at the house. "You live there very long?"
Drivercop was talking to their dispatch on the radio, and she tried to keep the sniffling down to a minimum so he could hear. She shook her head. "A couple of hours."
Dadcop still watched her, though his eyes flicked to the road now and then. "Bad first day, right?"
"Bad week," she agreed.
"Well," he said. "Leo is on his way, so at least you'll be inside soon."
"Thank you," she said again. Now that she was warming up, she was embarrassed at her state of dishevelment. She had, after all, been tossing and turning even before coming out to get covered with frozen mud. She probably looked deranged.
She brushed her hair back from her face, only realizing after that she had just smeared mud into her hair.
Drivercop smirked in the mirror, then nodded toward the approaching headlights.
"Here we go." Dadcop stepped out as Leo's truck pulled into the driveway. To her chagrin, there were no door handles in the back of the cruiser, so she couldn't get out.
"Just wait," Drivercop said.
Emily watched as Leo conversed with Dadcop, every now and then peering at the car as if he were trying to see inside. Then they stopped talking and both walked to the car. Dadcop opened the door for her.
Leo was not thrilled about having to come out in the middle of the night. That was understandable. Emily was prepared for that. However, his disgusted recoil at the sight of her was downright insulting.
"You okay?" He held a hand out to her as she got out of the car, as if it were obvious to him that she couldn't take a step without falling in the mud.
"Fine." She shrugged away his help. She had to remind herself not to be disagreeable. After all, she was the one who had to call him to come out in the rain in the middle of the night. But she couldn't help herself. "The door locked behind me for some reason."
"What were you doing outside?" He frowned. "It's after three."
"I was just..." The look on his face—the one that said there was no sane reason for that—suddenly annoyed her. "Know what? None of your business."
He looked surprised and baffled at the same time. So did Dadcop.
"The problem is the stupid door shut behind me and locked me out." She pointed up at the house. "Are you going to let me back in?"
"Yeah. Let's go look at the door." He dropped his offer of a hand and gave Officer Dadcop a nod. "Thanks for helping her out."
"Yes, thank you," Emily said sincerely.
Dadcop nodded and started back toward the car. "Hope you have a better day tomorrow."
She turned and waved a hand toward the house. Leo was ahead of her and didn't see the gesture, but she couldn't help the anger. "You need to fix that door. That's just not accep—"
The curtains in the big window at the front of the house moved, as if someone had been watching from there.
"Someone's in the house!" She gasped and stopped so suddenly she almost stepped backward. "Did you see it?"
That got Dadcop's attention again. "What did you see?"
"There was somebody there, at the window." She pointed. "The curtains moved, and somebody looked out."
Leo and Dadcop both scanned the front of the house for anything out of the ordinary.
"I didn't see anyone," Leo said.
"Well, I did!" she insisted. "They pulled back the curtain and looked out."
"Man? Woman?" Dadcop was still watching the window. "What did they look like?"
"I don't know. I only saw them for a second." Her heart was pounding hard now. Someone was in the house, and they had locked her out in the cold.
"She thought she saw someone inside before, too," Leo told Dadcop. "But I checked out the whole house. I didn't find anyone."
"Stay here." Dadcop walked back to the car and said something to Drivercop.
"Leo, I saw someone." Emily pointed at the window again. "Someone locked me outside."
"We'll get it sorted out." He nodded, but he was still watching the window, too. "There's just no place for someone to hide in that house."
The chill returned to her skin. "Someone was hiding in the house? While I was asleep?"
"No," he tried to be reassuring. "That's what I mean. There couldn't have been."
Dadcop returned. He held his hand out to Leo. "Give me the key, I'll check it out before you go in."
Leo nodded and handed him the keychain with a single key on it. As the officer walked away, Leo pointed to his truck in the driveway. "No sense standing in the rain."
She nodded and followed him to the vehicle. He opened the door for her and waited until she was in before shutting it behind her. Then he went to the driver's side and got in. They both watched the house and the front window.
"You sure you saw something?" He looked out the windshield.
"Yes!" She was getting a little offended at the implication, now. "There was definitely someone there."
"Okay," he said quietly. "We'll figure it out."
"They locked me out of the house." She exhaled sharply, frustrated by his obvious disbelief. "Who knows what they're doing in there?"
He said nothing, just nodded. He hit the ignition button and the truck started. The heater was already on and, after the initial blast of cold, warm air started filling the interior. They both watched the exterior of the house.
"Sorry for waking you up." She tried to quell her bad mood. "Tell your wife I'm sorry, too."
He looked at her strangely. "I don't have a wife."
"Oh. Sorry." She was embarrassed. "Your—"
"Don't have one of those, either." He turned to watch the house again.
"Oh, but you said you had kids." She shrugged. "I just assumed—"
He gave her that weird look again. "I didn't say I had kids."
"Yeah, you did." She was getting annoyed again. "You said even my kids call me Leo."
His brow furrowed slightly, then smoothed and he smiled. "Yeah, okay. I did say that. My kids do call me Leo."
"So how many kids do you have?" That smile irritated her more than his purposely confusing words.
The irritating smile grew microscopically, and he turned back to the window, although she suspected his attention was still on her. "About eighty."
"You have eighty kids?" she demanded. "Maybe you should stop eating red meat."
"About eighty, give or take. Across all the grades." He turned back to her, clearly amused at his own put-on. "I'm a teacher. Music. At the high school."
"Oh cool," she said unenthusiastically. "Bet that's fun."
"It is." He frowned and turned back to the window. She could see the muscles in his jaw were rigid now. She'd offended him.
"Sorry. It's been a bad day. I didn't mean to take it out on you," she mumbled. She forced a small smile to bolster her lukewarm apology. "You're probably a better high school music teacher than the one I had."
"Miss Cuzak?" He laughed. "Well, she didn't set the bar very high."
"How did you know—" Then she remembered. She wagged a finger between the two of them. "Oh yeah. Same school."
"I'm surprised we don't know each other." There was that weird smile again. "If you had Miss Cuzak, then we probably had music together. Did you do any of the choirs?"
"No." She sighed and silently thanked the universe for digging up all of her trauma on one night.
Just then, Dadcop came out the front door. Leo turned off the engine and got out of the truck to meet him on the sidewalk and get the key. Emily got out of the truck too. The cold rain hit her like a slap in the face, after the warm truck.
"No one's inside," Dadcop said to her. "I checked everything. Everything is locked up tight."
"Did they go out the back door or something?" She looked up at the window on the front of the house. The curtains were still closed and unmoving.
He shook his head. "Doesn't look like anyone has been in the house except you."
She frowned. "But I saw them at the window."
"No one's there. You're safe." He gave Leo a nod and started back to the car.
"Leo, I saw someone." She grabbed his arm.
His eyes flicked down to her hand, then back up to her face. "Okay. I'll look, too."
She realized she'd just put her wet, dirty hand on his coat. "Sorry."
He nodded and led her up to the open front door. They went in.
She stood in the doorway while he walked through the entire house again. She could hear him opening and shutting cabinets and doors again. When he returned to the front of the house, he shrugged.
"No one's here but us. Everything is locked up," he said. "You're safe."
She exhaled sharply, frustrated.
He looked around the front room, then pointed to the air duct on the ceiling. "The heat probably switched on and moved the curtains."
She nodded skeptically. "Did you check the attic?"
"Yes," he assured her. "No one is up there."
"You weren't gone very long," she challenged. "Are you sure you checked it?"
"The attic is empty. Nothing is up there. No place to hide." He gave her that irritating amused look again. "I looked up there. There was no one."
She frowned. "Well, someone locked me out of the house."
He took a step and shut the front door behind her. Then he pointed to the little button on the knob. "If you go out without your key, make sure you turn the button this way. If it's up and down, it will lock behind you."
"Yeah, I know how doors work." Did he think she was completely stupid? "It was horizontal when I went out."
"Was it, though?" He shrugged. "Because it locked behind you."
"Well, then the door is defective." She grabbed the knob and twisted it several times, but it worked just as it was supposed to. Still, she fumed. "You need to replace it."
"The door is fine." He shook his head. "Just make sure you're turning the knob."
"If the door were fine, I wouldn't be standing here in the middle of the night, wet and cold and muddy." She crossed her arms over her chest.
He frowned and took in her soggy sweater, ratty hair, and dirty hands and feet. "Why don't you drink some hot cocoa or take a hot shower to warm up? You don't want to get sick."
Her anger fizzled in the face of his concern, and she had to work to get it back. "Well, I don't have any cocoa. Or cups. Or towels to take a shower."
He just looked at her. She wasn't sure what he was thinking.
"Well, of course I have them," she said, aware that not having those things raised a lot of questions she didn't want to answer. "I mean, I just don't know where they are right now. I haven't unpacked yet."
He said nothing but looked around at the empty room. Her coat on the floor was the only sign of habitation.
"It's raining," she said, maybe too quickly. "I was just going to wait until tomorrow to unpack."
He nodded. "You have some dry clothes to wear?"
She sighed, looked toward the door, the outside, her car.
"Why don't I bring something in?" He reached for the doorknob. "Are your boxes marked?"
"It's okay. I'll get it." She thought about her clothes, all shoved into black trash bags. She really would look like a transient if he saw that. "You don't have to."
"I don't mind." He was out the door when she remembered and called him back.
"Leo, wait!" She ran to the kitchen counter and grabbed her keys, then ran back to the door and tossed them to him.
The way her night had been going, she was almost surprised when he actually caught the keys and didn't have to fish them out of the muddy front yard. He held them up to show he had them and then sprinted out to her car on the street.
In a minute, he was back with three bags in his arms and her purse looped over his shoulder. He sat the bags down and then shrugged off the purse. He held it out to her. "Shouldn't leave this in the front seat like that. Especially parked on the street."
"Yeah, I know." She took it from him. "I was just in a mood."
He raised his eyebrows comically. "Oh really? I hadn't noticed."
She frowned to keep from smiling. "Thanks for bringing all that in. I'll get the rest tomorrow."
He nodded, then looked around awkwardly. "Okay. Well, I'll let you get to that shower."
"Okay." She nodded, too. "Thanks."
"No problem." He kept nodding. "Just, you know, call me if you need me."
"Yeah, okay." She was still nodding, like an idiot. Two idiots nodding away at each other. "Hopefully I don't get locked out again."
"Yeah, hopefully not." He put his hand on the knob, but his head just kept bobbing. "But, you know. Call me if you do."
"Okay. Yeah." She watched him leave, watched him all the way to the truck. Then she shut the front door and made sure to turn the lock vertically, so it was locked on purpose this time.