This Enemy Town

CHAPTER 12

It seemed as if my head had just hit the pillow when I dreamed I heard the doorbell ringing.

I rose up on one elbow, straining my ears. At first I heard nothing but the roar of the furnace kicking in, but then it came again, the muffled brrring-brrring of the ancient doorbell attached to our front door.

I squinted at the clock: 5:00. Who could be calling at such an ungodly hour?

I turned on the bedside lamp, swung my legs over the side of the mattress, and felt around for my slippers. As I slipped my toes into them, I turned to check on Paul. He lay on his side, one arm stuffed under his pillow, breathing deeply, sleeping the sleep of a man who’d drunk a bit too much beer with his brother-in-law the night before. I didn’t have the heart to wake him. Paul didn’t have early classes on Friday.

Still half asleep, I was shuffling across the hardwood floor, my feet half in and half out of my slippers, when the ringing turned to knocking. “Hold your darn horses!” I muttered to myself, feeling around in the dark for my bathrobe.

I flipped on the light at the top of the stairs and started down, knotting the sash around my waist as I went. In the front hall, I flipped the switch that turned on the porch light and peered out the window.

A short blonde dressed in a dark overcoat several sizes too big stood on the doorstep. Behind her stood four other individuals-three men and another woman-dressed in dark jackets. Struggling to remain calm, I raised my hand to the dead bolt. “Who is it?” I asked.

“FBI,” the woman called through the door. “We have a warrant.”

I was so relieved that the people clustered on my doorstep weren’t state troopers calling to tell me that Emily and the children had been involved in a terrible accident that what she said didn’t sink in. At least not right away. “A warrant?” I stammered. “A warrant for what?”

“To search the house,” she shouted. “Open up, please, or we’ll have to break the door down, and I’m sure you don’t want that.”

Next to the blonde-in-charge, a husky man shifted from one foot to the other, cradling a three-foot length of pipe about the diameter of a salad plate in the crook of his arm. As I watched through the window, hugging my arms and trying not to panic, one beefy hand moved to grasp the battering ram by a handle, and it looked like he was itching to use it. I decided not to give him the chance. Aside from a few unpaid bills, two overdue library books, and a 1998 federal income tax return that might have been a shade on the dicey side, Paul and I had absolutely nothing to hide.

I twisted the dead bolt and opened the door wide, holding my robe together over my nightgown as the cold morning air swept in.

The blonde didn’t budge from her spot on my doorstop. “Hannah Ives?”

“Yes?”

“Hannah Ives, FBI. You’re under arrest.”

Blood roared in my ears. Dropping the end of the sash I was holding, I pressed a hand to my chest. “What did you say?”

“Step inside, please.”

I was about to point out that I was already inside, when she pushed her way into my entrance hall, a pair of handcuffs dangling from her hand.

Instinctively, I backed away.

“Turn around, please. Hands behind your back.”

I was outnumbered, so I turned obediently, knowing that the next thing I would feel would be cold hard steel closing around my wrists. “Paul!” I screamed. “Paul!”

Ignoring my cries, the blonde guided me toward a nearby chair. “I’m Special Agent Crisp,” she informed me. “Please sit down.”

I sat. I leaned forward when the back of the chair pressed uncomfortably against the handcuffs. I glared up at my captor as she quietly read me my rights-anything you say can and will be used against you… you have the right to an attorney… do you understand…? Clearly, I was having a nightmare. Then the handcuffs pinched my wrists, and I knew it was no dream.

Slightly shorter than my five-foot-six, Agent Crisp’s roundish face was framed by blond hair that curled gently under each ear. As she moved about the entrance hall issuing orders, her overcoat flapped open. Underneath, she wore a dark gray pantsuit and a crisp white shirt, and I realized that what I had at first taken for pleasing plumpness was, in fact, a bulletproof vest. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or dismayed. Imagine! Donning a bulletproof vest for protection against… me!

“Is there anybody else here?” Agent Crisp asked.

“Of course there’s somebody here!” I snapped. “My husband. He’s upstairs in bed. It’s not even light out yet!”

She nodded to a colleague who started upstairs to find Paul. A second agent headed in the direction of the kitchen. He must have let his buddies in the back door because before long there were seven FBI agents swarming around.

For her part, Agent Crisp was all business. “Are there any weapons in the house?”

“Of course not!” I snarled. I wondered if “weapons” included the Wilkinson presentation swords, crossed and hung on the wall in Paul’s office, directly over his computer. I decided not to mention them.

“What the hell is going on?” Awakened by my screams, Paul thundered down the stairs wearing nothing but his Y-fronts, nearly trampling the agent who’d been sent upstairs to fetch him.

The agent grabbed the banister with one hand and raised the other. “Your wife is under arrest.” Then seeing the rage on my husband’s face, he quickly added, “Sir.”

Paul swept the man’s arm aside. “Under arrest? What the hell for?”

“For the murder of Jennifer Marie Goodall.”

Paul’s face grew dangerously red. “The hell she is!”

Murder! I doubled over, feeling like I’d been kicked in the stomach by a horse. Jennifer Goodall. I should have known. “This is a mistake,” I moaned.

“Hannah.” Paul took another step in my direction, but Agent Crisp’s arm shot out like a toll booth barrier, blocking his way.

“Sir.”

Paul froze. “I need to comfort my wife,”

“I think it’s best if you wait in the kitchen, sir.” Agent Crisp didn’t smile, but her eyes seemed kind.

My cheeks burned with tears. I swiped at my eyes the best I could, using my shoulders, then turned my ruined face to Crisp. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Crisp nodded to one of her colleagues, who struck off in the direction of the kitchen, returning in less than a minute with a damp paper towel. He held it out in front of me helpfully, although what he expected me to do with it when my hands were cuffed behind my back, I hadn’t a clue.

Paul snatched the towel from the agent’s hand and quickly, before anyone had time to draw their weapon, used it to wipe my flaming cheeks.

“Oh God, Paul, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed against his hand. I couldn’t look at him. Seeing the confusion in my husband’s eyes would just set me off again.

In the meantime I could hear that Agent Crisp’s intrepid colleagues had moved from my kitchen to my dining room, noisily opening and closing drawers and cupboards. Flashbulbs flashed. I heard the distinctive clanking of my mother’s silverware as someone pulled open a drawer. Glassware in the china cabinet tinkled alarmingly.

“Paul,” I bawled. “They’re tearing the house apart. Please, make sure they don’t break anything.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am.” Agent Crisp was reassuring. “We’re trained to be careful. We photograph the rooms both before and after we search. Everything will be left exactly the way we found it.”

My head throbbed. No, you’re wrong! Nothing will ever be the same. You’ve invaded my home. I’ve been violated.

But it was about to get worse.

“Stand up, please, ma’am. I’m going to search you now.”

She was polite, Agent Crisp, and professional. There was a nurse at Anne Arundel Hospital Center like that, I remembered. No matter how terrifying the procedure I was about to undergo, she’d explain it to me carefully, as if I were a moron. “This is a pill. We’re going to give it to you now. It’s a sedative. It’ll make you feel very sleepy.”

I could have used one of those sedatives just then. Maybe a dozen. Maybe someone could wake me when it was all over.

With another officer and Paul observing, Agent Crisp removed my handcuffs just long enough for me to take off my bathrobe and step out of my slippers. Through my nightgown, she felt around my waist, then ran the backs of her hands along both sides of my legs, my upper body and arms. Finally, she checked my head. Some criminals hid weapons in their hairdos, I supposed, but considering my short bob, that additional step seemed rather ridiculous.

“You’ll need to dress,” Agent Crisp said. She tucked a wayward swath of bangs behind her left ear.

Still sobbing, I nodded.

“Where are you taking my wife?” Paul demanded.

“To the FBI Resident Agency here in Annapolis for processing, then up to the courthouse in Baltimore, where she’ll be arraigned.”

“On what charge?”

“The charge is murder, sir.”

“But I didn’t kill anybody!” I choked back fresh tears. “Why isn’t anybody listening to me?”

Agent Crisp reached into her pocket and handed Paul a card that she’d already prepared. “Here’s the name and number of the Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the case. Have your lawyer contact him.”

“When can she come home?”

“That’ll be up to the judge.”

And with my hands still cuffed behind me, she marched me upstairs.

How many times had I stood in front of that very closet, trying to decide on an appropriate outfit for a wedding, or a funeral, or to dress the part of a trophy wife in order to trap a crooked insurance broker? What did I own that was suitable for going to jail?

Agent Crisp had planted me in the center of the bedroom, removed my handcuffs, and slid open my closet door. I felt ridiculously embarrassed by the mess inside. The clothes I’d worn the night-no, years!-before were heaped in a corner, and shoes I kicked off in a hurry lay scattered everywhere.

I realized Agent Crisp was waiting for me to say something. “What should I wear?” I asked, feeling helpless.

“Nothing expensive or tight,” she suggested.

From five feet away I stared into the closet.

My jeans? Too tight.

My green wool skirt? Too new.

My black wool slacks from Talbots? Too expensive. They’d be ruined.

“That long skirt,” I decided at last, pointing. “The one with the gored panels.”

Crisp located the skirt and eased it off its hanger. Made by Ahni Salway, an Annapolis designer with a genius for fabric and color, the skirt was one of my favorites. Falling at mid-calf, it was smart but comfortable. Colorful geometric shapes swirled over one panel; Japanese courtesans lounged on another; ripe apples decorated a third. Usually it made me smile, but not that morning. “And a black sweater,” I added. “I don’t care which.”

As Agent Crisp rummaged through my closet looking for a sweater, I tried to gather my wits. They think I murdered Jennifer Goodall. But I hadn’t, of course, so what possible evidence could they have against me? The fight alone wouldn’t have been enough to sustain an arrest warrant.

Maybe I was being framed!

Oh, God. What was going to happen to me? Would they lock me away forever? Send me to the electric chair?

Crisp interrupted my panic attack. “Where’s your underwear?”

I gaped at her. My God, I wasn’t even going to be trusted with a pair of underpants! “Top drawer,” I told her, struggling to maintain control.

Agent Crisp opened the drawer I’d indicated and ran her hand around inside, checking, I supposed, for guns in my drawers. (Ha, ha!)

I asked for my black tights, but that wasn’t allowed. Were they afraid I might hang myself with them? I would have to wear ankle socks instead.

Agent Crisp added the ankle socks to the neat pile she had made on top of my dresser. I knew I was supposed to get dressed, but I wasn’t sure how. All the usual protocols had suddenly, drastically, changed.

I’d dressed in locker rooms before, of course, at summer camp and in college, but that was long before my mastectomy. It had taken me months after the surgery to gain enough confidence to show my body again, even to Paul. And Agent Crisp was a total stranger.

I stood there shivering in my nightgown, arms dangling at my sides, doing nothing.

Crisp seemed to sense my discomfort. She lifted the bra and panties from the top of the pile and held them out. “You can turn around, if you like,” she suggested. “But don’t go near any of the furniture.”

I took the underwear from her outstretched hand, slipped the underpants on under my nightgown and then turned away. I eased my gown over my head and let it fall to the carpet. I fumbled for and dropped the bra. When I bent to retrieve it, I noticed Crisp flinch as she caught sight of my reconstructed breast. It wasn’t bad, as reconstructed breasts go-the plastic surgeon had done a terrific job-but the nipple had migrated a little left of center. Clearly, it wasn’t the breast I was originally issued.

I flushed, picked up the bra and put it on as quickly as I could, my back to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this must be difficult.”

“I didn’t do it, you know,” I said as I struggled with the hooks. “I won’t pretend that I’m sorry Jennifer Goodall’s dead, but I didn’t have anything to do with her ending up that way.”

Agent Crisp slipped a sweater off its hanger, felt it over carefully, then handed it to me.

“And I can’t be the only person in the world who hated her guts,” I added as my head emerged from the neck of the sweater.

“I couldn’t possibly comment on that, Mrs. Ives.” Was it my imagination, or had Agent Crisp just suppressed a smile?

“My first name’s Hannah,” I told her, as if she didn’t know. “What’s yours?”

“Amanda,” she said. “Amanda Crisp.” She nodded toward her colleague, who at one point or another had joined us in the bedroom and now lounged tall against the door frame. “And that’s Special Agent Elizabeth Taylor.”

Taylor was a solid, sour-faced woman whose muscular arms and broad shoulders seemed custom-designed for blocking any attempt on my part to escape. She wore her dark hair in a ponytail tied low at the nape of her neck and not a speck of jewelry. Somehow I didn’t find the knowledge that she shared a name-and little else-with a famous movie star reassuring. If we got into a Good Cop/Bad Cop situation, I knew which one of them would be the first to aim a five-thousand-watt klieg light in my face.

I touched my ears, then pointed at the dresser where my jewelry box sat. “Earrings?”

Amanda Crisp shook her head. “We don’t recommend you wear jewelry.”

I glanced at my engagement ring. The young Paul Ives had slaved all summer to earn the money for that ring, sweating from sunup to sundown in a South County tobacco field. It was only a third of a carat, but more precious to me than the Hope diamond.

Crisp noticed. “And you’d better leave that at home, too, Mrs. Ives. They’re just going to take it away from you.”

“They?” I croaked. “Who’s they?”

“The U.S. Marshals at the Federal Courthouse in Baltimore. That’s where you’ll be arraigned.”

I swayed on my feet, suddenly dizzy. “I need to sit down.”

Crisp held up a hand, palm out. “Just a minute.” While Agent Taylor kept her eagle eyes trained on me, Agent Crisp shook out the bedding and laid it aside. Using both hands, she tipped up the mattress and looked underneath, checking (I supposed) for any handguns I might have hidden in the box springs. Then she peered under the bed. “Okay. You can sit.”

I plopped down on the edge of the mattress, inhaled deeply, and held my breath, as if by not breathing, I could stop time. It didn’t work. I wrapped my right hand around my ring finger and considered what she’d just told me. “No,” I said after a few minutes. “I’m not going to take my ring off. And if anybody tries to take it from me, I’m going to fight them for it!” I waved my hand in the air. “How can I possibly hurt myself with this?”

Crisp shrugged. “Your choice, but I think you’re going to find that the U.S. Marshals are not particularly good ‘people people,’ if you know what I mean. They’ll want to take it from you and put it in an envelope with your personal effects. Trust me. It’ll be much safer with your husband.”

Personal effects. They were talking about me as if I’d died.

Maybe I had, and instead of going to heaven, I’d ended up in hell. Maybe that’s why my bladder was giving me fits all of a sudden. “Can I use the bathroom?” I asked.

Agent Crisp nodded. She gestured to Agent Taylor, who pushed herself away from the door frame and ambled into the bathroom. Taylor opened the medicine cabinet, ran her fingers over the items inside, removing a brown prescription bottle. I had no idea what it contained. She peered into the cabinet under the sink, lifted each towel. She peeked inside the toilet tank, too, checking for weapons there, also, I presumed.

Satisfied, she motioned me inside, then assumed a watchful position near the open bathroom door.

I stood by the toilet, waiting for her to leave, but she didn’t move a single one of her oh-so-solid muscles. I needed to pee, but there was no way I could do it, not while Taylor was watching me. So I brushed my teeth. Made a production of washing and drying my face and my hands, anything to delay the inevitable.

Then I finished dressing and they escorted me downstairs.

“Where’s your coat?” Crisp inquired when we reached the entrance hall.

Coat. I’d forgotten about a coat. It was February. It was cold outside. Why was I so hot?

Without any direction from me, Crisp located the closet, selected a black corduroy car coat with a fake leopard collar that used to belong to my daughter, and held it out. I was too exhausted to correct her.

Crisp patted down the pockets of Emily’s coat before helping me into it. I was allowed to fasten the buttons, then we began what would become a ritual over the next several hours: coat on, handcuffs on, handcuffs off, coat off, handcuffs on. This time, though, the handcuffs went on in front.

While all this was going on, Paul stared at me forlornly from the chair in the entrance hall. “Hannah, Hannah,” he crooned as the cuffs tightened around my wrists.

With a firm hand on my back, Crisp guided me toward the front door.

“Call your lawyer! Call Murray Simon,” I yelled to Paul over my shoulder. “But please, don’t tell Emily!”

Paul shot from the chair. “Don’t worry, Hannah. Murray and I’ll get you out of there. You’ll be home for dinner. I promise.”

“I know you will. And Paul? Don’t you worry. I beat cancer, and I can beat this, too.”

On the narrow one-way street outside our house an unmarked Ford Taurus idled, blocking traffic. Behind it, an irate motorist began backing up. I recognized the driver as one of my neighbors, Ray Flynt. As I watched Ray turn his car around near the William Paca House and drive the wrong way down Prince George Street, I prayed that he didn’t recognize me, that none of my other neighbors were awake and peering out their windows.

Crisp opened the rear door on the passenger side of the Taurus and guided me inside with a gentle hand on my head, just like on TV. After I sat, she leaned inside the car and wove the seat belt through my handcuffs before inserting the buckle in the clip and clicking it shut. Then she slammed the door, walked around the other side of the car and climbed in next to me. With Agent Taylor behind the wheel, we rolled quietly away.

With tears streaming down my cheeks, I twisted in my seat to look over my shoulder. Paul stood framed in our doorway, barefoot, his bathrobe flapping open in the wind. Light snow had started to fall, each flake a sparkling diamond in the light from our porch lamp. Mother would have grabbed my hand, squeezed and said “Look, Hannah, it’s a Winter Wonderland!”

Some Wonderland.

My husband standing half naked in a February snow-storm. And even in the lamplight, I could see he was crying.