This Enemy Town

CHAPTER 13

“What time is it?” I asked Amanda Crisp as Agent Taylor steered the Taurus through Annapolis’s narrow streets, avoided the ever-present construction on Rowe Boulevard, and eased into the commuter traffic heading west on Route 50.

Agent Crisp stared straight ahead. “Seven.”

Back in my cozy kitchen, the coffeepot would just be kicking into automatic, gurgling cheerfully, in the mistaken assumption that it was going to be just an ordinary day. At that moment I could have killed for a cup of coffee.

Except for the crackle of the police radio, it was quiet inside the car. I wanted to fill the silence with shouting: I’m innocent! You’re making a big mistake! As if the FBI didn’t hear those words twenty times every day.

Instead of heading north on I-97 to Baltimore, Taylor took the Riva Road exit, and I began to panic. “Where are you taking me?”

“The FBI Resident Agency.”

“Oh, right.” I remembered now. That’s where they’d “process” me. Whatever the hell that meant.

“What happens there?” I asked.

“We have an automated booking process,” she explained. “JABS. Saves having to do it up in Baltimore.”

I remembered what Crisp had said earlier about the U.S. Marshals not being “people people” and began to relax.

We turned right on Truman Parkway. Just opposite the Farmers Market, Agent Taylor turned into the underground parking garage of an unremarkable brick office building I’d passed a hundred times before. My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, especially without my usual shot of caffeine, but some questions were beginning to float to the surface.

“Why the FBI?” I asked as Crisp unbuckled my seat belt.

“Lieutenant Goodall was murdered on federal property,” she explained. “That’s where we come in.”

“But it’s a naval base,” I said. “I thought the NCIS had jurisdiction.”

Crisp stood outside the open car door, looking in. “They do, but we get involved, too, particularly whenever a civilian enters the equation.”

Civilian. I thought for a moment. That would be me.

They marched me to the elevator.

A few minutes later I was seated in an ordinary office with ordinary desks and ordinary chairs arranged in ordinary cubicles, just like at Whitworth and Sullivan in Washington, D.C., and every other office where I’d ever worked. Ringing phones and clacking keyboards surrounded me with a familiar and strangely comforting cacophony. There were no bars on the windows to remind me that I was, after all, a prisoner.

But it was false security, I knew. The pounding in my head continued relentlessly.

Agent Crisp removed my handcuffs. I massaged my wrists and stared thirstily at a cup of coffee steaming on an adjoining desk.

Crisp noticed. “Would you like something to eat or drink?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Special Agent Taylor?”

Agent Taylor grunted, and took off to fetch me a cup.

“Cream and sugar!” I called after her. “Please.”

Meanwhile, Amanda Crisp began tapping at her keyboard. I couldn’t see the monitor, but by the number of times she hit the Tab key, I figured she was filling out some sort of form.

“Okay,” I said when she lifted her fingers from the keyboard for a moment. “I understand that you’re only doing your job, but what possible evidence can you have against me?”

“After your lawyer talks to the Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to your case, he’ll have more information for you, Mrs. Ives. You should be able to see your lawyer later today.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me any questions?” I asked, gratefully sipping at the coffee Elizabeth Taylor had brought me.

“No, I’m not. You’ve asked for your attorney, and we’re scrupulous about that.”

Agent Crisp finished typing, then took me off to be fingerprinted. I’d expected them to smear ink all over my fingers, but the JABS system was fully automated.

“What’s JABS stand for?” I asked as the technician helped me roll each finger on a glass plate.

“Joint Automated Booking System,” he replied, his green eyes bright and serious behind his eyeglasses. “It eliminates the repetitive booking of offenders. All federal law enforcement agencies tap into it. We can collect up to seventy-five data elements about a case,” he said, smiling with pride, as if he’d invented the system himself. “Mug shots, crime scene descriptions, photos of evidence, like that.”

I watched as a bar of light panned across the glass plate like a miniature Xerox machine and he clicked on the button that would send digitized images of my fingertips off to AFIS. I knew what AFIS was: the FBI’s automated fingerprint identification system. Then he scanned the four fingers of each of my hands together and sent those images off, too.

When the technician had finished, Amanda Crisp came to collect me. By then my digestive system had processed the coffee and my bladder was sending out urgent messages. Privacy or no privacy, I knew I couldn’t keep my legs crossed forever. “I need to pee,” I told her.

Crisp grinned. “I’m taking Mrs. Ives to the restroom,” she told Agent Taylor as we passed her desk. Together we walked down a long hall. “We don’t have a private bathroom,” Crisp explained. “Give me a minute.” While I leaned against the wall, Crisp opened the door to the ladies’ room and yelled, “I’m coming in with a prisoner!”

A chorus of toilets flushed in unison and Crisp stepped aside as three secretary types scurried out. I guess they didn’t want to share the bathroom with a criminal.

Crisp checked the stalls, then nodded that it was okay for me to go in. She stood sideways holding the stall door open but not looking directly at me while I relieved myself.

My eyes filled with tears. Would I ever again be able to use the bathroom without an audience?

Of course you will, I told myself. Murray will move heaven and earth to get you out. Paul will call in all his IOUs. Dennis will pull strings. They knew I had nothing to do with Jennifer’s death.

“We better hurry.” Agent Taylor barged into the ladies’ room. With a stubby finger she tapped her watch. “Shit, Amanda, we don’t have time to get her up there for the ten o’clock arraignment.”

I stood at the sink, thoroughly soaping my hands.

“We’ll have to sit around that freaking courthouse until three,” she complained.

I twisted the tap, adjusting the water temperature.

“Goes with the territory, Liz.”

With the two FBI agents looking on, I rinsed my hands, then dried them carefully on a paper towel. I crumpled the towel into a ball and tossed it into the trash.

Then I smiled. “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.”

“What?” Agent Taylor’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Amanda grinned. “Never mind, Liz.”