Whiskers of the Lion (16 page)

Thursday, August 18

9:35
P.M.

ALMOST AS soon as they slid the door closed on the FBI's black panel van, Fannie suspected that she had made a grave mistake. By the time they were rolling silently into the center of Middlefield, she was nearly certain of it. As the van turned at the Middlefield city square to roll west out of town on 87, she was contemplating a jump from the sliding door. She was contemplating a run. An escape.

Feeling so completely alone inside the dark van, with four armed men as escorts, Fannie wondered if perhaps she had not foolishly forfeited her one best chance for freedom. She wondered if she had not lost her chance to walk away from the perverse legalisms of federal law enforcement. To walk free of the legalisms that demanded that she be held in isolation against the improbable eventuality that the leaders of a violent drug cartel might one day be captured and brought to trial.

But Reuben had been so confident. So she would be confident, too. Tonight was not the night to run. That day would come soon, but it was not tonight. And remember, Reuben had said. Sheriff Robertson has given us the key. When it is time, it requires only courage. It requires only faith to see it through.

So Fannie rode with her escorts as the van pushed westward into the night, toward the hotel that Robertson himself had chosen. She rode silently as her escorts switched on a small roof light and checked their weapons. The black pistols made ugly clacking sounds as the agents worked the top gun parts back to peer inside. They made clicking sounds as the bullets slid into place. From a single overhead cabin light, Fannie could see the menacing triggers. She could smell the gun oil. She could imagine the muzzles spitting fire and death, and she regretted that she had ever left Reuben's side. She knew that she should have run when the Brandens first arrived.

Wordlessly, Fannie watched as the van circled into the wide parking lot of the hotel and rolled toward the rear corner of the four-story brick building. There it seemed to her that an unnatural darkness had descended where the lights of the parking lot should normally have been shining. She realized that the lights had been shut off for her arrival, and she groaned with the misery of her isolation.

As the van approached the building's corner, Fannie closed her eyes to pray. She felt the van circle sharply toward a stop, and she heard Parker, riding beside the driver, speak into a radio handset. “On the rear door. Arriving now.”

The van came to a full stop in the unnatural darkness, with its headlights illuminating the front of a loading platform with steep concrete steps. The driver switched off the headlights, and the men stirred inside the van. Parker got out first, followed by the driver. Fannie heard chatter on the radio as Parker slid the van door open beside her.

“Come out now, Fannie,” Parker said. He reached in to take her arm and guide her out.

The two agents who had ridden in the back of the van also climbed out to the blacktop behind her. On either side of her, the men took her elbows and led her forward to the steps. As if she couldn't manage it on her own, they lifted roughly on her arms to escort her quickly up the steps. Parker and the driver already had the steel door open for her at the back of the hotel. They ushered her inside, and the steel door clanged into place behind her. Squeezed between her escorts, inside a small and dreary basement vestibule, Fannie felt that she now understood the isolation of imprisonment. That she understood the loneliness of a jail cell. And she tried to summon the words to protest.

But before she had a chance to speak, Parker barked into his handset, “Go,” and the doors to a service elevator spread open in front of her. Two more agents stepped off the elevator toward her, and she found herself surrounded by six armed men.

Parker next said, “One of you at each of the entrances,” and three of Parker's agents disappeared into a stairwell door. Then Parker checked his watch, and Fannie found herself being hustled forward into the elevator.

Once the elevator had started its rise, Parker spoke again on his handset. “On our way up. Secure the hallway on four.”

Just as the elevator doors were about to open on the fourth floor, Parker used his handset again, “Stepping out.”

On the fourth floor, Parker and his two agents took Fannie left down the hallway. As she made the turn, Fannie looked to her right and saw yet another agent standing guard near the end of the hall. Beyond him, she saw an Amish woman, with an Amish man holding a position beside her. The Amish woman was delivering pillows to the last room at the end of the hall.

As the agents hurried her down the hall, Fannie counted three rooms to her right and four rooms to her left. They were all labeled as suites. The agents stopped her at the last room on the right. It was marked Suite 416.

Inside, Parker immediately directed Fannie to the bedroom on the left. Fannie was given her suitcase, and she carried it into the bedroom, where she turned around and sat on the end of the nearest of two queen beds. Parker switched the lights on for her, and she felt as if she had been marooned in a foreign land. She felt alone, and she realized that she could depend on no one but herself right then. So she calmed herself by studying the layout of her bedroom.

There was a long dresser to her left, with a flat-panel TV parked on top. Also there was a nightstand between the two beds, with a lamp and the TV remote laid out on it. A soft chair sat in one corner, and a desk with a lamp was in another corner. The bathroom door was situated to her right, on the other side of the bedroom's entrance.

The second queen bed was set beside the bedroom's single window. The window was covered with heavy drapes. Fannie rose instinctively to move to the window, but Agent Parker said, “Please don't go near the windows, Fannie. And please do not open the drapes.”

Once Parker had closed the bedroom door behind him, Fannie sat again on the bed, whispering to herself, “Reuben, what have we done?” As she whispered for her fiancé, Reuben's reassurances returned to her. The words he had spoken to her at the door to the van gave her a measure of peace. She remembered what Reuben had said, and she held fast to the words of Sheriff Robertson's letter. She held fast to the key that Sheriff Robertson had given them:
You would have been safe among your people . . .

Fannie heard a mix of voices on the other side of the bedroom door. She got off her bed and stepped forward to put her ear to the door. She heard Parker's voice most distinctly. Authoritative, commanding, insistent. “Is there another way in?”

“No,” he was answered. “There are emergency exits, but after nine o'clock, they do not open from the outside.”

Next, Parker asked, “What was that business at the end of the hallway just now?”

“Room 401 requested pillows,” an agent replied.

“Were they checked out?” Parker asked.

“Of course. Both the maid and her supervisor. Also the occupants of 401.”

“Why does it take two people to deliver pillows?” Parker asked.

A second agent explained. “It's hotel policy. A supervisor always escorts the maids when they make deliveries at night.”

“They were both Amish,” Parker said.

“They all are.”

“Who is, precisely?” Parker asked.

“Everyone who works here. Maids, room service, kitchen staff, clerks, even the concierge—all of them, really. It's Amish owned and Amish operated. The tourists like it that way. And Amish women don't make deliveries to rooms at night without a male supervisor to chaperone them.”

Next, Parker said, “OK, we'll sleep in shifts. Two at a time, three hours apiece. And let's get some food and coffee up here. We're going to be here all night.”

“When will the maintenance team arrive?” an agent asked.

“Nine
A.M.
,” Parker said.

“And they'll maintain this location until Monday?”

“Right. Three days only.”

“Then Cleveland?” another agent asked.

“Of course,” Parker answered. “This place suits my purposes for now, but if Robertson thinks I'm going to keep a key witness in a tourist hotel indefinitely, then he's even more stupid than I thought he was.”

Fannie retreated to a chair in the far corner of her room. Shaken by the swiftness of Parker's plan, she was also stunned by the callousness of his duplicity. Reuben had warned her, but he hadn't anticipated how soon she would be betrayed. Really, the sheriff had warned her, too. But like Reuben, the sheriff could not have expected this level of deceitfulness. Clearly, Fannie realized now, it would be foolish to trust the FBI past the weekend. But it was more than that. No doubt, she had been foolish to have talked at all to the Brandens. Or to have waited with the Masts until Detective Lance had arrived with her partner. Or to have waited even longer for the FBI.

And if it was Parker's intention—if it had been his intention all along—to spirit her away to Cleveland, where she would see no more of her kind as long as her protective captivity lasted, then it meant only that Reuben would have to be ready that much sooner. It meant that they would all have to be that much bolder.

 • • • 

Fannie stayed in her bedroom thinking for an hour before she unpacked her suitcase. She had heard Parker giving instructions to his men, and then the middle room of the suite had been quiet on the other side of her door. Alone in her room, she eventually found herself unable to remain idle.

Fannie opened all the drawers in the bedroom and in the bathroom, and she tested all the lamps and light switches. She turned off most of the electric lights, leaving only the bathroom light switched on, with the door cracked open. Dim lights for dark thoughts, she told herself as she sat in the corner chair. A quiet place to think and to plan.

After a while, Fannie turned her thoughts to what comforts the room could offer her. She paced on the plush carpet with her shoes off, crinkling her toes into the unaccustomed softness. She laid her head on each of the pillows and chose a soft feather pillow for herself. She picked up the handset of the phone and listened briefly to the dial tone. She turned on the hot water in the shower, thinking that she would bathe.

But while the water ran, she decided against that. She turned off the water and watched it drain away. Caroline would be coming. There would be time for a shower once Caroline had arrived. Or maybe even later in the night. She could bathe after she had gauged Caroline's intentions. After she had gauged her capacity for truthfulness.

Restless and uninterested in sleep, Fannie opened her bedroom door and entered the middle room of the suite to check in the kitchen's refrigerator. There she found only bottled water and a box of baking soda. She took out a bottle of water and carried it into the sitting area.

With a magazine in his lap, an agent was seated on a couch. He watched her cross the room. Fannie sat in a corner chair and the agent opened his magazine again. Curious to learn what he would do, Fannie returned to the kitchen and stepped around the small dining table to pull the cord on the blinds over the kitchen window. As she took the cord in hand, the agent appeared at her side and said, “Please stay away from the windows, Ms. Helmuth.”

Fannie released the cord and smiled demurely. “Can I go down for something to eat?”

“Sorry, but no. We're having food brought up.”

“Where is Agent Parker?”

“Making his rounds, Ms. Helmuth.”

“And the three agents who were with him when they picked me up at the farm?”

“Two are sleeping in the second bedroom. One is at his post.”

“What can I do until my dinner arrives?”

“There's a TV in your bedroom, Ms. Helmuth.”

“I don't like television.”

“Sorry. We have a few magazines.”

“May I stretch my legs out in the hall?”

“I'm sorry, but no.”

“You could walk with me. And aren't there some stairs we could climb? For exercise?”

“There are two staircases, Ms. Helmuth, but you can't use them. You need to stay inside, here with us. It's for your protection.”

“How are all of you going to get any rest?” Fannie asked, feigning concern for the agents. “There are eight of you, right?”

“There are seven, Ms. Helmuth. And we have sleep rotations in place.”

“Are you the seven who will be my captors until the trial?”

“Well, we aren't captors, really.”

“What would you call it, if I can't leave the suite?”

“We are the acquisition team, Ms. Helmuth.”

“Does that mean I'll get a different team?”

“Yes, a maintenance team.”

“When? Monday?”

“No. Probably tomorrow morning.”

“Will they all be new people? Seven new people?”

“Yes, but there will only be four. Four new agents.”

“Will these four new agents know who I am?”

“They will have been briefed, Ms. Helmuth. Really, wouldn't you rather get some rest? You've had a long day.”

“I could sleep,” Fannie said. “But isn't there something to read?”

“Only the magazines that are there on the coffee table.”

Fannie turned to the center coffee table and took up the stack of magazines. She sorted through them and said, “Thank you, no.”

“We can have some other magazines brought up.”

“Is there a store in the lobby?”

“It's a newsstand and a small hotel store. There's also a souvenir shop and a bakery.”

“I suppose Caroline could get something for me after she arrives,” Fannie said.

“The hotel store is still open, but everything else is closed, Ms. Helmuth.”

“Then in the morning?”

“That would be better, Ms. Helmuth.”

“Thank you,” Fannie said as she turned for her bedroom. “Would you please knock on my door when my dinner arrives? I might be asleep.”