Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

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.”

Baltimore, Maryland. My second hometown.Druid Park Zoo, the National Aquarium, the Baltimore Museum of Art. The bliss of Friday nights in August, sitting on a folding chair in Little Italy watching Casablanca or Life Is Beautiful projected on the side of a building. Saturdays can be perfect, too. Strolling through Fells Point, grabbing the latest thriller from Mystery Loves Company and a cup of coffee from the Daily Grind. My sister Georgina lives in Baltimore, too, in Roland Park with her growing family.

But the feds? I wasn’t sure where they hung out up Baltimore way, but when Agent Taylor made the left turn onto Pratt Street, I recognized the Garmatz Building and the statue of Thurgood Marshall, who’d been gazing out over the Inner Harbor for decades.

Regular citizens enter the building via a door behind Thurgood. Prisoners go around back, directly into an underground garage.

As I rode up in the freight elevator between the two agents, I felt strangely detached. Everything had taken on a surreal feeling, something I hadn’t experienced since the last time I’d pulled back-to-back all-nighters at Oberlin or… well, since the last time I’d inhaled and enjoyed it. The Welcome to Baltimore sign where someone had painted in “Hon,” Ravens Stadium, Camden Yards, even the battleship Constellation had looked strangely distorted, as if I were seeing them for the first time, or looking at them through the wrong end of a telescope.

Agent Crisp had called ahead. When the steel door slid open, two burly marshals were waiting, solid as trees. We were introduced, I feel sure, but if they had names, I’ve forgotten them. The big lug, I called Jesse. The shorter hunk, Arnold.

Arnold studied the paperwork Amanda Crisp handed him, raised one bushy eyebrow. “Her attorney’s already here, raising hell. Demands to see her right away.”

Jesse scowled. “Tell him to cool his jets. We haven’t even searched her yet.”

Her fingers still fastened to my upper arm, Crisp said, “We’ve already done that. She’s clean.”

Jesse puffed up. “You know the rules.”

“We’ve already searched her, and she hasn’t been out of custody.” Crisp’s fingers dug more tightly into my arm. A territorial squabble was going on, I was smack dab in the middle of it, and if Amanda Crisp didn’t win, I’d be the loser, big-time. I’d be strip-searched: the ultimate humiliation.

While Arnold and Jesse conferred, the second hand on the wall clock jerked from five to six to seven. I decided to create my own distraction. “I demand to see my lawyer.”

Jesse turned icy eyes on me, blinked, then looked at Arnold. “So what about her lawyer?”

“Some hot shot.” Arnold was unimpressed. “Tell him she’s being processed. Let him wait.”

There was that word again: processed. I was being “processed” like meat or fish or plastic-wrapped squares of cheese food. But at least we’d moved on, and a strip search seemed to be off the agenda.