This Enemy Town (22 page)

I was standing outside, on a balcony barely four feet wide that encircled the tower, approximately 120 feet above sea level.

Under ordinary circumstances, a person might have paused to enjoy the view—a spectacular panorama of Annapolis all the way from the Bay Bridge to the Maryland State House dome. But these were not ordinary circumstances. And I wasn't crazy about heights.

On legs of rubber, I grasped the railing and looked down. Patchworks of grass, brick sidewalks, the copper roofs of nearby buildings swam into view. All I could think about was how badly I'd splat should I fall.

In the chamber below, the clock hummed and clanked. I circumnavigated the balcony, searching for a ladder or fire escape, but the only way out was the spiral staircase.

And Dorothy was now standing at the chicken wire door, smack dab in the way.

I reversed direction and ran around the balcony, my feet slipping on patches of ice. While turning a corner, I stumbled on a protruding drain and nearly fell. I managed to recover, but Dorothy gained a few feet on me.

“Hannah, I just want to talk,” she yelled.

“I don't believe you,” I yelled back, but the wind ripped my words away.

Around and around we ran, slipping, stumbling, staggering as cold and exhaustion took their toll in a senseless chase that could only end badly. There was nothing I could do but confront her.

I whirled around, raised both arms and shouted, “Stop!”

Startled, Dorothy did as she was told. Hundreds of feet below, the winter wind whistled across the Severn River and climbed the sides of the clock tower, lifting the brim of her cap—my cap, I realized with a pang, one of the half dozen or so I had given her. Dorothy's eyes narrowed and she tilted her head, as if wondering who the heck I was. The arm holding the box cutter hung limply at her side.

“Please, drop the knife, Dorothy.”

Her eyelids fluttered. She raised her hand. Puzzlement
turned to surprise, as if she were noticing the weapon for the first time.

But my move backfired. Seeing the box cutter only seemed to remind her of exactly who I was and what she intended to do. “Kevin can't be a pilot now,” she snarled. With the box cutter held high, she advanced.

“We don't know that, Dorothy,” I soothed. “Kevin's in the best of hands. The doctors at Bethesda really know their stuff.”

She shook her head. “No. No. It's too late.”

The clock beneath our feet whirred and clanked. I realized it was about to strike noon: eight bells. I'd read Dorothy L. Sayers's novel,
The Nine Tailors,
and as I steeled myself for the first deafening
bong
, I prayed she'd made up the part about the bells turning your eardrums to mush.

“Too late for what?” I pressed.

“Ted says you were hanging around the Pentagon. Is that true?”

“Oh, did Ted see me there?” I asked in what I prayed was a conversational tone, although my voice was quaking as violently as my knees. “Why didn't he say hello?”

“We think you went there to stir up trouble,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“I can't imagine why you think that, Dorothy. I was there to visit the memorial chapel,” I told her, shading the truth just a tad. “It's profoundly moving.”

Below us the clock shifted gears.

“I don't believe you.”

“Paul and I had friends who perished in the attack.” I'd played the sympathy card, but it was wasted on Dorothy, whose tortured brain knew no pain but her own.

“Ted's going to jail!” she wailed. “Now I have nobody! Nobody!” The wind, as bitter as her words, swept across the balcony and tore the hat from her head, sending it spinning into the trees. She didn't seem to notice.

Her sudden baldness, her vulnerability, tore at my
heart. In that instant I saw the true source of her pain. Ted might go to jail. In a year's time, Kevin would graduate, and who knew where the Navy would send him? Dorothy had no other children and, other than me, no friends. She would be utterly alone.

Dorothy closed her eyes for a moment, then joggled her head as if trying to clear it. “I thought you were my friend, Hannah, but now you've turned on me, too, just like all the others.”

Others?
What the heck was Dorothy talking about? The vague hints of paranoia I'd detected earlier seemed to have grown to epidemic proportions.

“Everyone ends up betraying me.” She swayed, reaching out with her free hand to steady herself on the stone balustrade. “Even you. It really, really hurt when you turned against me.”

Coming from a woman who had lied to the police about seeing me at the scene of a crime, I found the statement extraordinary, to say the least. What the hell was going on? Had the chemo made her crazy? But Dorothy was the one holding the box cutter, not me, so I decided it would be unwise to contradict her. She seemed to be crying out for love and support, so I decided to give it to her.

“I
am
your friend, Dorothy. You have to believe that.”

“You told on Ted.”

“No. I didn't. Jennifer Goodall told on Ted.”

Dong.

The clock had been cranking up for several minutes, but still the clang of the bell so close to my head surprised me. It surprised Dorothy, too, because she startled, seemed to recall where she was, and lunged.

Dong.

Her arm came down, and I managed to parry the blow, forgetting until her arm made contact with mine that that was the one she'd slashed.

“Eeeeeeeah!”
I screamed as pain blazed up my arm, exploding in colored lights inside my head.

Dong.

With my right hand, I grabbed Dorothy's wrist and pushed back. With my left, I found her thumb where it grasped the weapon. I worked my fingers around her thumb and bent it backward as far as it would go.

Dorothy screamed and dropped the box cutter. It hit the balustrade, bounced, and tumbled over the edge. I heard glass breaking as it struck one of the skylights below.

Dong.

Dorothy kept coming. Both arms shot forward like pistons, hitting my chest like a battering ram, knocking the air out of me. I staggered and tried to regain my footing, but slipped on a patch of ice and went sprawling.

Dong.

Dorothy was on me in an instant, both hands around my throat. As I struggled to breathe, I forced my fists between us, brought them together and thrust my arms straight up and over my head, breaking her grip. I brought my fists down again, hard, on the top of her head. She screamed and rolled away, palms pressed flat against her temples.

Dong!

By the time I had struggled to my feet, Dorothy had, too. She slumped against the balustrade, panting. While her attention was diverted, I launched myself at her like a linebacker, sweeping her feet out from under her. She landed on the snow-covered terrazzo, her skull making a sickening crack as it hit the stone.

On my hands and knees, I crawled toward her, appalled at what I had done. Dorothy's eyes were closed. She wasn't moving.

“Dorothy!” I cried as I straddled her legs. “Oh, Dorothy, I'm so sorry!” I felt for a pulse in her neck and was relieved when I found it, beating strong and steady.

By some miracle, Dorothy's cell phone was still clipped to her belt. I slipped it out of its case and with the bell still bonging away behind me, pressed 911, reported our location, and characterized the situation as a stabbing
and a head injury. I'd knocked her out, that was for sure, but other than that, I really didn't know what was wrong with Dorothy. I figured we could sort that out when the paramedics got there.

Then I telephoned Paul.

It rang once, twice. Paul didn't pick up. I'd left him at home reading the paper. Where the hell had he gone?

Three rings, four, and the answering machine kicked in. “Damn it to hell!” I said, and mashed my finger down on the star button to skip the message and get straight to the beep. “Paul! Don't ask any questions. Just get your butt over to Mahan. I'm up in the clock tower with Dorothy. Please hurry!”

Beneath my legs, Dorothy stirred. Her eyelids fluttered, then flew open. She began to pitch and turn, struggling to get up.

I set the phone aside, leaned forward and pinned Dorothy's shoulders gently to the terrazzo. “Tell me about Jennifer Goodall,” I urged her softly.

Dorothy dissolved into tears. “It was Jennifer this and Jennifer that and Jennifer said and Jennifer thinks,” she sobbed. “Ted didn't see it coming, but I did, oh yes, I saw it coming from a mile away. Oooooh,” she wailed. “How can a man be so blind?”

“Surely you're—” I began, but Dorothy cut me off.

“Imagining things? That's what Ted used to say, but then I caught him red-handed.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

A sly look crept over her face. “I read his e-mail. He thought his AOL was password protected, but I figured it out.” She laughed. “Men! It's always all about them, isn't it? Think they're so clever.” She raised her head a couple of inches from the terrazzo, grimaced, moaned, then lay back. “The password was his license plate number! Is that stupid, or what?”

“What was in his e-mail?” I asked, trying to steer Dorothy back on track.

“She wrote him love notes. They were graphic, totally disgusting. I confronted Ted about it. I begged and I pleaded. His career, his brilliant career, was going down in flames, and all because he couldn't keep his fly zipped!

“He tried to break it off several times, you know,” she continued, “but Jennifer kept threatening him. She knew all about what was going on in his office. He was paying her money to keep quiet about it.”

Dorothy's eyes were fixed on mine. “It was going to go on and on and on. Somebody had to put a stop to it, and Ted didn't have the balls.”

“So who stopped her, Dorothy? You?”

Dorothy squeezed her eyes shut, turned her head to one side. “I sent her an e-mail, asking her to meet me here to talk about it.” She turned her face to me again and grinned mischievously. “I used Ted's e-mail account, of course. She thought it was him. And when she got to Mahan, I was waiting by the barber's chair.

“I didn't mean to kill her,” Dorothy whimpered, “but she made me so mad! She didn't even bother to deny the relationship with my husband, she even boasted about it!”

“I know about that,” I said quietly. “She tried that little trick with me.”

“Yes! That's why I knew she was evil, and that she'd never go away and leave us alone.

“I don't know what happened, really,” Dorothy continued dreamily. “One minute I'm standing there holding the hammer, listening to her go on and on about how sexy my husband is, and the next minute I'm standing over her. I'm still holding the hammer. She was dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “So I put her in the trunk.

“At least I still have Kevin.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Kevin won't let me down, not like his father did.”

Dorothy shivered, and covered her bare head with both hands. I took my cap off and slipped it over her head, making sure the tips of her ears were well-protected.

“So, you hit Jennifer with the hammer and put her in the trunk. Then what?” I prodded.

“I guess I panicked. The cast and crew would be showing up pretty soon, so I ran off the stage and wrapped the hammer in the first thing that came to hand and threw it in the Dumpster.”

“That was my sweatshirt.”

“I know,” she sniffed. “I'm sorry.”

“How can you tell me you're sorry when you deliberately told the police that you saw
me
throw the hammer in the Dumpster? I thought we were friends, Dorothy.”

“I don't know why I told them that!” she wailed, fresh tears cascading sideways down her cheeks. “I get so confused!” She covered her eyes with her hands, her freshly manicured and painted nails a stark contrast to her ravaged face.

I was trying to work out how it was that my fingerprints, and not hers, were found on the hammer, and then I remembered the gloves she always wore to protect her nails.

“Were you wearing your gloves when you hit her?”

She nodded miserably.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up!” Somebody was chanting in a tinny, faraway voice.

After a confusing second or two, I realized Dorothy's cell phone was talking to me. I must have set it down on the terrazzo after leaving the message for Paul.

I raised the phone to my ear. “Paul?”

“What the hell is going on? I was out sprinkling salt on the sidewalk, and when I came in I heard voices coming in over the answering machine. Hannah, are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Paul, so to speak. Did you hear everything?”

“Yes, I did. And the answering machine did, too.”

With Admiral Hart shipped off to Norfolk, Virginia
, where the Navy could keep a close eye on him, and Dorothy in police custody, I figured Kevin could use a friend. It had been three days since his mother's arrest, and he was still at Bethesda, but we heard from Emma that he'd turned his room into a command post and was directing his mother's defense from there.

“I'm glad Dorothy's in a hospital,” I said as Paul eased his Volvo into the heavy stream of traffic moving counterclockwise around the Washington Beltway. “I couldn't bear to think of her locked up in a cell.”

“Dorothy's sick, Hannah. Cheevers won't let her go to jail.”

Kevin's father had recommended a lawyer for his wife, but Kevin turned him down flat. When Kevin asked for my advice, I'd sent him to Murray Simon. Nobody, after all, could be more familiar with the Goodall case than Murray. But citing conflict of interest, Murray handed Kevin off to James Cheevers, his colleague at Cheevers, Tanner and Greenberg, a firm that specialized in criminal law. We'd met Jim once, at Concert of Tastes, a fund-raiser for the Annapolis Symphony. Aside from a fetish for novelty ties—on symphony night he'd been wearing one decorated with cellos—Cheevers was the best, and Dorothy Hart, poor thing, was going to need him.

Paul took the Wisconsin Avenue exit and drove the short distance south to the National Naval Medical Center, the multistory hospital with the distinctive central tower, familiar to millions of television viewers as Bethesda, the hospital that had saved the lives of several U.S. presidents and a goodly number of congressmen, too. Paul flashed his Naval Academy faculty ID for the sentry, who waved us through into the parklike grounds.

Five minutes later we left our car on the second level of the parking garage and made our way across a footbridge into the hospital proper.

Paul took my hand and squeezed it three times. I—love—you.

“Me, too,” I said aloud. “And aren't you glad you're not married to a criminal?”

“You know what's criminal?” he said, punching the Up button on the elevator.

“What?”

Paul stepped into the elevator and dragged me in after him. After the door slid shut, he pulled me into his arms. “What's criminal,” he said before planting his lips firmly on mine, “is how gorgeous you look even with your arm in a sling.”

We found Kevin on 5C, in a sterile white-on-white room, sitting up in bed with an IV feeding into his arm. Emma was perched at the foot of the bed, while Jim Cheevers, wearing a wool scarf and a tweed overcoat, occupied the single chair in the room that was reserved for visitors. A Navy lieutenant dressed in khaki, her blond hair twisted into a braid and secured with a silver clip, bent over a computer terminal, typing away. I could tell from her collar device that she was a nurse.

“Hi, Kevin,” I said.

The lieutenant turned a dazzling smile on at her patient. “Midshipman Hart, this is your official notification that you are now exceeding the regulation visitor allotment by two individuals.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Aaronson,” Kevin replied with no hint of concern in his voice. “I'd like you to meet Professor and Mrs. Ives, from Annapolis.”

Lieutenant Aaronson grinned, shook our hands, and relented. “But since you've come all this way …”

Kevin winked at Emma. “See. She is putty in my hands.”

“Behave yourself, Kevin!” Emma slapped his leg where it rested underneath the blanket.

“Excellent advice, Midshipman,” Lieutenant Aaronson shot back over her shoulder as she busied herself again at the terminal.

Kevin's face grew serious. He turned to Cheevers, who, we soon learned, had arrived only minutes before us. “What's going to happen to my mother?”

Jim Cheevers unwound his scarf, shrugged out of his overcoat, then leaned forward, resting his forearms on the briefcase that lay across his knees. “She's been arraigned, but the court has ordered a complete mental and physical evaluation. She's up at the University of Maryland Medical Center right now.”

I nodded. “That's
good,
Kevin. My mother was a patient there. They couldn't have been more wonderful.”

“Have the doctors found anything yet?” Kevin asked.

Cheevers's flyaway salt and pepper eyebrows hovered over his eyes, round and dark as chocolate drops. He nodded.

I was almost afraid to ask. “Is it the cancer?”

“No, something else entirely. Because of the migraines, the confusion, the problems she was having from time to time with her coordination, the doctors suspected that something was putting pressure on her brain.”

Kevin's good eyebrow shot up. “A tumor?”

“Because of her medical history, they suspected a tumor, of course,” Cheevers said, “but the MRI showed no evidence of that. They did find something else, though. Your mother may be suffering from normal pressure hy
drocephalus, which in spite of the name, isn't normal at all. In layman's terms, it's an abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain. The fluid is often under pressure and can compress the brain, causing all kinds of difficulties.”

“Are you talking about water on the brain?” I wondered. “I thought that happened with babies.”

Jim Cheevers nodded. “Exactly. But the disease can occur in adults, too.”

Lieutenant Aaronson stepped away from the monitor. “Excuse me for interrupting, Mrs. Ives, but I think I can respond to that. We don't know why, but this condition is becoming increasingly common with older adults. And if you'll allow me to climb up on my soap box for a moment, it's very often misdiagnosed as senile dementia or even Alzheimer's disease because of the symptoms. We get it with the veterans all the time.”

“What kind of symptoms?” Paul wanted to know.

Lieutenant Aaronson ticked them off on her fingers. “Headaches, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, fatigue, irritability, incontinence, personality changes, and problems with coordination. In advanced stages, it can even cause paranoia.”

I couldn't believe it. Dorothy Hart was a textbook case, a poster child for the disease. We'd mistaken her symptoms for the side effects of chemo. “Can it be treated?” I asked the nurse.

“It's amazingly simple. Doctors install a shunt in the brain that lets the excess fluid drain away, thereby relieving the pressure.”

“So Mom will be cured? Once a shunt is installed she'll be completely normal?”

Lieutenant Aaronson nodded. “More than likely, she'll be completely normal.”

Normal.
Everyone in the room kept silent while the significance of that word sank in. How could anything be normal when you were being accused of murder?

After Lieutenant Aaronson left the room, Cheevers got to his feet and approached Kevin's bed. “She'll plead not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Kevin nodded.

“We'll waive a jury trial,” Cheevers continued. “We'll let the judge decide, but, yes, I believe she'll be acquitted.”

“Do you think Mom will have to spend any time in jail?”

“A hospital, maybe, but just until the court determines that she's no longer a danger to herself or to society.”

Kevin relaxed against his pillow. “Good. That's good.”

“Not so fast, young man.” Jim Cheevers raised a cautionary hand. “There's still the matter of the attack on Hannah.”

I flashed back to the time I had spent in the jail cell, the hours that dragged on like eternity, and I didn't wish it on anyone, especially someone who had been legally insane at the time. “I'm not going to press charges.”

“You may have no choice, Hannah,” Cheevers interrupted.

“It was an accident,” I insisted. “Dorothy and I were dismantling the sets, she dropped the box cutter and it fell on my arm.” I glanced from my husband to Dorothy's lawyer, searching their somber faces for any sign of support. “That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.”

Paul's mouth gave a twitch of a smile. “Right.”

Cheevers adjusted his tie, a masterpiece in bright blue, decorated with battleships, circa World War II. “An accident.”

That “accident” had required fifteen stitches. With my bandaged arm, I saluted Kevin's bandaged cheek. “We're a pair, aren't we?”

Kevin grinned.

“How's the eye, Kevin?” Paul asked.

“Absolutely A-okay, Professor. The antibiotics are doing their thing. The IV comes out today, then I'll have to take pills for a while.” He tapped his temple with an index finger. “The doctor says the eye will be good as new.”

“I was thinking,” Emma said from her perch at the foot of Kevin's hospital bed. “It's just like Sweeney Todd.”

Cheevers, who hadn't seen the musical, asked, “In what way?”

“Well, you know at the end, where Sweeney kills the poor, mad beggar woman he didn't recognize as his wife? Kevin's mother spiked Adam's Dr Pepper, thinking that he'd be drinking it, but she ended up drugging Kevin instead.”

Emma was right, I thought. Sweeney was blinded by revenge, and in the end destroyed the one person in the world that his poisoned heart still loved. And Dorothy? In her obsession over her son's career, she nearly took it from him.

I stepped forward and joined the huddle of people gathered around Kevin's bed. “Kevin, I've been puzzling over something. On the day of the matinee, you went to Mahan, drank the Dr Pepper, went down to the makeup room and
then
went out and got in your car. What the heck did you do that for?”

Kevin smiled. “It sounds a bit weird, doesn't it? It's like this. I was eating Sunday dinner at my sponsors' when I got the call that I'd be going on in Adam's place, so I high-tailed it over to Mahan and got into the Beadle's costume.”

“It's my fault, I'm afraid,” another voice interrupted. Professor Medwin Black, swathed against the February cold in wool from head to foot, bustled into the room, instantly bringing Kevin's visitor count to three over quota. “You may recall that Adam Monroe played the Beadle bald. We had such a good bit of stage business going with it that I insisted Kevin wear a pate.”

“Pate?” Paul's handsome brow wrinkled attractively.

“A bald wig,” Kevin explained. “We couldn't get it to fit right,” he said, continuing the story. “I looked like a kid wearing a Halloween costume from Kmart, so I said the hell with it, I'll just go back to the Hall and shave my head. That's where I was going when the wall ran into me.”

Emma rested her hands on her hips. “So, how come you drank Adam's soda, Kev?”

“I figured if I had his part, I could have his stupid soda, too.”

“I'm glad you didn't shave your head, Kevin,” Emma said, giving him a sisterly peck on the cheek.

“I don't know about that.” Kevin grinned. “Simone might find it very attractive.”

“Who's Simone?” I asked.

“My nurse. She's hot.”

I remembered the attractive blonde who had just left the room after recording Kevin's vitals, and although I suspected my advice might fall on deaf ears, I said, “Kevin! You can't date a lieutenant. She outranks you.”

“My God, Kev, they'll fry you for frat!”

“What she said,” I agreed, pointing a finger at Emma.

Kevin threw me an exaggerated wink. “If you don't ask, Mrs. Ives, I will never, ever tell.”