Here She Lies

began to cry, and as I wiped my tears with my hands, I saw that bracelets of red swelling had replaced the depressions left by the handcuffs. I felt massively confused about why I was here — and yet here I was.
    I turned to face my cell. My cell. Hard shelf of a bed, stainless-steel toilet with no seat, tiny stainless-steel sink. Affixed to the wall was a boxy blue phone with ashort curly cord and push buttons. I lifted the receiver and the dial tone, a direct link to outside, was to me as brilliant and miraculous as the sound of the ocean discovered improbably inside a shell. I dialed, but four numbers into it I heard the incessant bleating of a blocked connection. Dialing nine for an outside line didn’t work, nor did any other number.
    “They don’t make it simple.”
    An obese man in gray slacks and a blue dime-a-dozen button-down shirt was standing on the other side of my cell bars. An accumulation of sweat made his forehead shine. He carried an unlabeled manila file folder stacked atop a yellow legal pad.
    “Maybe they should,” I said, “if they’re going to confiscate our phones.”
    He laughed, actually laughed, and opened the file, humming as he surveyed it. In the tense silence of him reading and me watching him I recognized the theme song of Evita. After a minute he closed the file and smiled at me.
    “Anais,” he said, pronouncing it correctly. “That’s what I always wanted to name a daughter.”
    “Who are you?”
    He stepped closer. “Evan Shoemaker, FBI. Sorry about all this. Normally I would have come for you myself, but Federal Plaza’s on lockdown — anthrax scare; can you believe that’s still going on? — so today everyone’s getting processed through the City. Anais.” He repeated my name. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” He reached through the bars to shake my hand. His was sweaty, but I didn’t allow myself toflinch. This might be the person who could get me out of here.
    “Thanks for coming,” I said, meaning it, but it came out as a flippant remark that failed in the context of my crying-puffy face. He dug into his pants pocket and handed me a crumpled tissue. “I still don’t know why I’m here,” I said. “The officers wouldn’t really speak to me.”
    “They take Poker Face 101 in cop school. The point is to speed up the arrest and get you in here faster so I can get you out faster.”
    He smiled, a nice smile, and I realized that trapped inside the fat was a handsome man. He motioned for Officer Williams to unlock the cell door and joined me inside. Sitting with me on my bench bed, he opened my file and consulted it again. As he read, I saw that his nails were perfectly filed and that he wore clear nail polish. His breath, each time he breathed out, was noticeably sour.
    “This is some kind of mistake,” I told him. “I was going to a job orientation. I’m a physical therapist.”
    He looked up with light brown eyes that struck me as gentle and understanding and even safe — until he spoke. “Grand larceny, it says here: embezzlement of federal funds. That’s a felony. You’re looking at some serious time.”
    “But that’s wrong. They must have me mixed up with someone else.”
    He read off a list of details and they were all me. Me : name, birth date and place, Kentucky address, marital status, number of children, even my height, hair and the color of my eyes.
    How could this be happening?
    “Who’s bringing the charge?” I asked.
    His finger trailed down a page in the file, and stopped. “Says here, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Kentucky.”
    When I heard that, my stomach turned, my face felt clammily cold, my head seemed to spin. I glanced at the toilet, preparing to make a run for it.
    “Take a deep breath,” he said.
    I did; I took two. And then the nausea passed. “Agent Shoemaker, please listen to me.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Until recently, I was a commissioned officer with the United States Public Health Service. I worked in that prison, but I never embezzled anything. I am not a thief. I resigned and I think my boss might be getting some kind of revenge.”
    “If that’s the case,” he said calmly, “it shouldn’t be a problem.”
    “I need to make my calls.”
    He crossed the room, dialed in the code for an outside line and held the receiver in my direction. “Here you go.”
    I tried Julie first. She didn’t answer at home or on her cell. Then I thought of Bobby.