“Turn on the faucet,” Marissa yelled to Wendy.
Wendy reached into the cabinet and tried to turn the knob. It wouldn’t budge. She put both hands on it. With all her strength, she pushed. Suddenly, the valve began to move. Wendy spun it wide open.
Mafissa held the heavy nozzle with both hands. She pointed it down the corridor at the approaching guard. Although she had braced herself, Marissa was not prepared for the force of the jet that finally burst forth. The power was enough to knock her backward, tearing the hose from her grip. The nozzle flailed wildly under the force of the uncontrolled jet.
Marissa scrambled out of the way of the hose as it sent a pressurized stream of water in every direction. Spotting a fire alarm next to the cabinet, Wendy pulled down the lever, activating both an alarm and the sprinkler system. With the same stroke, an alarm in the Cambridge fire station was set off, interrupting a highly contested game of poker.
Both Marissa and Wendy had been sobbing for some time. As embarrassed as they were about their emotions, they couldn’t help it. Their feelings had run the gamut from terror to relief to humiliation. Then the weeping had taken over. It had been an experience neither would forget. Both agreed it had been the worst of their life.
Marissa and Wendy were sitting on scarred wooden chairs whose varnish was coming off in flakes like a peel after a bad sunburn. The chairs were in the center of a blank, dingy room that was mildly littered with trash and smelled of alcohol and dried vomit. The only picture on the wall was the humorless face of Michael Dukakis.
Robert and Gustave were sitting across from them. George Freeborn, Robert’s personal attorney, was in a chair by the window balancing an alligator briefcase on his lap. It was 2:33 in the morning. They were at the district courthouse.
Just as she finally began to gain control of herself, Marissa’s eyes welled.
“Try to pull yourself together,” Robert told her.
Marissa glanced at Wendy, who had her head down, her face pressed into a tissue. Every so often her shoulders would shake.
Gustave, who was sitting next to her, put a hand on his wife’s shoulder.
At the conference table in the center of the room sat a no nonsense woman of about forty-five years of age. She wasn’t happy to be there, as she’d let everyone know. She’d been pulled from her bed in the middle of the night. On the table in front of her was one of the many forms that had been filled out that night.
She was completing it with exaggerated strokes of her pen.
Glancing at her watch, the woman raised her head.
“So where’s the bail bondsman?” she asked.
“He has been called, Madam Magistrate,” Mr. Freeborn assured her.
“I’m certain he will be here momentarily.”
“If not, these ladies are going back into the lockup,” the magistrate threatened.
“Just because they can afford a high-priced lawyer doesn’t mean they should be treated any differently by the law.”
“Absolutely,” Mr. Freeborn agreed.
“I spoke with the baifll bondsman myself. He will be here immediately, I assure you.”
Marissa shuddered. She’d never been in jail before, and she didn’t want to go. The experience that evening had been overwhelming.
She’d even been handcuffed and strip-searched.
When the fire department had arrived at the Women’s Clinic, she and Wendy had been ecstatic. The flailing hose had kept the security guard at bay. But along with the firefighters had come the police, and the police had listened to the guard. In the end, Marissa and Wendy had been arrested and led away in handcuffs.
First they’d been taken to the Cambridge police station where they had been read their rights a second time, booked, fingerprinted, and photographed. After they’d been allowed to call their husbands, they were put into the police station lockup.
They’d even had to endure the indignities of using exposed toilets.
Later on, Marissa and Wendy had been taken from the police station cells, re-handcuffed, and driven to the Middlesex County Courthouse, where they had been reincarcerated in a more serious appearing jail. There they’d been given dry prison garb to replace the wet clothes they’d had on.
The magistrate was kept waiting another ten minutes before the bail bondsman arrived. He was an overweight, balding man.
He entered carrying a vinyl briefcase.
The bondsman strode directly to the conference table, placing his briefcase on it with a resounding thud.
“Hello, Gertrude,” he said, addressing the magistrate. He released the latch on his case.
“Did you walk here, Harold?” asked the magistrate.
“What are you talking about?” said the bondsman.
“I live out near Somerville Hospital. How could I walk here?”
“I was being sarcastic,” the magistrate said with a disgusted expression.
“Forget it. Here are the bail and bond orders for these two ladies. They are for ten thousand each.”
The bondsman took the papers. He was impressed and pleased.
“Wow, ten thousand!” he said.
“What did they do, hit the Bay Bank in Harvard Square?”
“Just about,” said the magistrate.
“They’re to be arraigned by Judge Burano on Monday morning for breaking and entering, trespass, malicious destruction of property, larceny through unauthorized computer entry and theft of private files, and…” The magistrate consulted the form in front of her.
“Oh, yes! Assault and battery. Apparently they beat up on a security guard.”
“That’s not true,” Marissa yelled, unable to contain herself.
Her sudden outburst brought fresh tears. She blurted out that it had been the other way around: the guards had attacked them.
“And Paul Abrums, a retired policeman, will testify to it,” she added.
“Marissa, shut up!” Robert said. He still couldn’t believe his wife’s escapade.
The magistrate glared at Marissa.
“You are perhaps forgetting that Mr. Abrums is also a defendant in this action and will be facing the same charges when he gets out of the hospital.”
“Mrs. Buchanan is very upset,” Mr. Freeborn said.
“That’s obvious,” the magistrate said.
“Which one’s Buchanan and which is Anderson?” the bondsman asked, coming over to the men.
“I’ll take care of this,” Mr. Freeborn said.
“Mr. Buchanan’s banker is waiting for your call to arrange collateral for both suspects. Here is the number.”
The bondsman took the number.
“You can use this phone,” the magistrate said, pointing to the phone on the conference table with her pen.
As soon as the bondsman made his call, the rest of the paperwork went swiftly.
“That’s that,” the magistrate announced.
Marissa stood up.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Sorry you didn’t like our accommodations here at the courthouse,” the magistrate told her, still miffed at what she thought was the special attention Marissa and Wendy had been able to arrange through Mr. Freeborn.
Mr. Freeborn accompanied both couples as they left the deserted courthouse. Their heels echoed loudly against the marble floor.
Marissa and Wendy were chilled by the time they got to their respective cars. They climbed in in silence. No one had spoken since leaving the conference room.
“Thanks for coming out, George,” Robert called to the lawyer.
“Yes, thanks,” Gustave called.
“See you all Monday morning,” George called back. He waved as he climbed into his sleek black Mercedes.
Robert and Gustave exchanged glances. They shook their heads in mutual sympathy.
Robert got into his car and slammed the door. He glanced at Marissa, but she was staring straight ahead, her jaw set. Robert started the car and pulled out into the street.
“I’m not going to say I told you so,” he said finally as they crossed over the old Charles River Dam.
“Good. Don’t say anything.” After her ordeal, Marissa felt she needed comforting, not a lecture.
“I think you owe me an explanation,” Robert said.
“And I don’t think I owe you anything,” Marissa said, glaring at Robert.
“And let me tell you something: those guards were crazy back in the clinic. I was almost shot in the face at pointblank range. The man you hired told you so. They even beat us!”
“It all sounds a little hard to believe,” Robert said.
“Are you suggesting we’re lying to you?” Marissa asked, incredulous.
“I believe that’s what you believe happened,” Robert said evasively.
Marissa faced forward. Once again her emotions were caroming around like a squash ball. She didn’t know whether to cry more or pound the dashboard. Undecided, she just clenched her fists and gritted her teeth.
They drove in hostile silence along Storrow Drive. After they got on the Mass Pike, Marissa turned to him.
“Why did you have me followed?” she demanded.
“Apparently it was a damn good thing I did.”
“That’s not the point,” Marissa said.
“Why did you have me followed?” she repeated.
“I don’t like it.”
“I had you followed to try to keep you out of trouble,” Robert said.
“Obviously it didn’t work.”
“Someone has to try to follow up on these TB cases,” Marissa said.
“Occasionally risks have to be taken.”
“Not to the point of doing something plainly illegal,” Robert said.
“You are obsessed with this thing, and irrational. It’s become a crusade, and it’s driving me crazy. I can’t believe you.
You’re still trying to justify unjustifiable behavior.”
“What if I told you we discovered eighteen cases of TB salpingitis in the Women’s Clinic alone?” Marissa asked.
“Do you think that might bear out my suspicions? And that eighteen probably isn’t even counting Rebecca Ziegler. Her record was already erased from the computer. What do you think about that?”
Robert shrugged irritably.
“I’ll tell you what I think. I think they have something to hide,” Marissa said.
“I think there was something in Rebecca’s record that they didn’t want anyone to see.”
“Come on, Marissa!” Robert snapped.
“Now you’re getting melodramatic and paranoid. This is all conjecture. In the meantime, we’ll he footing some all-too palpable legal fees to try to keep you out of jail.”
“So it all comes down to money,” Marissa shot back.
“That’s your biggest concern, isn’t it?”
Marissa closed her eyes. Sometimes she wondered what had ever possessed her to marry this man. And now she had the threat of a jail sentence looming in her immediate future. Things seemed to be going from bad to worse to worse still, like the unraveling of a Greek tragedy.
Marissa opened her eyes and stared at the onrushing road. Her mind jumped from one anxiety to another. She wondered what effect the guard’s blows might have had on her embryo transfer.
Monday was to be her day of reckoning in more ways than one.
Not only was she to be arraigned on an array of criminal charges, she was scheduled for her pregnancy blood test.
Fresh tears welled in her eyes. The way things were going, it wasn’t hard to predict how that blood test would turn out. All of a sudden it wasn’t so surprising that Rebecca Ziegler had jumped to her death. Maybe she’d been under similar stress.
But, then again, maybe she hadn’t jumped. Maybe she’d been pushed…. \020April 2, 1990
9:35 A.M.
Although Marissa and Wendy had spoken on the phone early Saturday morning, Marissa did not see her friend until Monday morning at the courthouse. As she and Robert entered the courtroom, they saw Wendy, Gustave, and their lawyer sitng in the pew like benches on the left. Robert tried to steer Marissa to an empty row on the right, but she resisted and went over to her friend.
Wendy looked awful. She stared ahead as if in a trance. Her eyes were red, rimmed, and sunken. It was obvious she’d been crying, probably a lot. Marissa touched her on the shoulder and whispered her name. Seeing Marissa, fresh tears began to streak down her cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” Marissa asked. Wendy seemed more distraught than expected.
Wendy tried to speak but couldn’t. All she could do was shake her head. Marissa grabbed her arm and pulled her out of her seat.