by Lutz, Lisa
“Good. You’ll need light.”
“Why?” I asked, still oblivious.
“Maybe a night in solitary will give you some perspective. Maybe then you’ll understand how Schmidt feels.”
I was still standing on the chair when Rae shut the file room door. I heard the key go in the lock and a deadbolt lodge into place.
Then I heard Rae exit the office.
After that, all I heard was silence.
I checked the door. Then I checked it again. Then I scanned the room, which was equipped with a bottle of water, a bag of cookies, a stack of files, a legal-sized writing pad with an assortment of pens, and an empty bucket.
The first hour of my false imprisonment was spent overcoming the sheer shock of the situation. Rae was capable of many things, but this, this took me by surprise. The shock was followed by the natural need to escape the confined quarters. I banged on the door and screamed for help. I searched the file room for anything that could aid my escape. If I found a hammer, I would have spent the rest of my hours bashing away at the door, hoping it would eventually give. There were no matches, so I couldn’t set off the fire alarm, and there was not a single paper clip in sight to play with the lock, although paper clip lock-picking is a long shot at best.
Hour three, I plotted revenge. Hour four, I considered sleep, but I would have had to either bash out or unscrew a steaming hot lightbulb, and frankly, I didn’t think sleep was even possible. By the fifth hour, I resigned myself to the situation, knowing that my revenge would take on many forms and I had only five more hours until morning, when someone would free me.
I used that time wisely. But I’ll tell you about that later. First things first.
THE MORNING AFTER
It was Maggie who liberated me at eight A.M., eleven hours after my incarceration began. The moment I heard the rustlings in the office, I began banging my fists on the door and screaming for help.
A startled Maggie shouted, “Who’s in there?”
“Isabel!”
Within seconds, the door was flung open. Maggie gawked at me in utter shock.
“What were you doing in there?” she asked.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I have to pee.”
I rushed past her and used the bathroom. That weird conversation with Rae had started making sense around hour six. When I returned to Maggie’s office, her expression remained unchanged.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I was still steaming with emotion and said only, “Rae.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Rae locked me in there last night.”
“What?”
“Rae locked me in the file room overnight,” I said, spelling it out.
“Why?” Maggie asked, as if it were still possible that there was a logical explanation.
“To let me know what it’s like to be innocently incarcerated.”
Maggie gawked at me for a moment, but when understanding kicked in, she put her hand over her mouth and gasped in shock.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “I think.”
Maggie reached into her pocket and offered me a half-eaten cookie.
“Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks. There was food.”
“Do you need some water?”
“There was water.”
Maggie then pulled something from her other pocket.
“Breath mint?”
“I’ll take one of those,” I said.
I leaned against the file room door and lost myself in revenge scenarios for a moment. Maggie interrupted.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
My purse was still sitting on the desk. I looked inside for my phone and car keys and both were missing. Well, one mystery was solved—how Rae managed to get home without taking the bus.
“What can I do?” Maggie asked.
“Drive me to Rae’s school,” I said. “I need to get my phone and car keys.”
Twenty-five minutes later (Maggie and I stopped for coffee) I was in the administrative office waiting for a visitor’s pass so I could collect my things. The secretary told me that Rae was in history class and gave me the room number.
I opened the door and got the teacher’s attention.
“Hi. I’m Rae’s sister. I need to speak with her just for a moment.”
Rae was seated in the back of the room. She studied me carefully. I caught glimpses of fear in her expression, but not enough for my liking. As she approached the door, I had a sudden urge to tackle her to the ground and rage over the events of the previous night. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. A brawl wouldn’t be punishment enough. I had to be careful how I proceeded.
My sister and I stepped into the hallway.
“I believe you have my phone and car keys,” I said.
Rae was prepared for the request and handed them over.
“Where’s my car?” I asked.
“In the parking lot,” Rae replied, not taking her eyes off of me.
“Thank you,” I replied in a severely formal tone.
Long pause.
“You didn’t have to use the bucket, did you?” Rae asked.
“No,” I replied.
“Good.”
“See you around, Rae,” I said, and briskly walked away.
My sister was expecting immediate retribution. But this was much better. It kept her off balance and I wanted her to feel that sense of dangerous uncertainty for as long as possible.
The battery on my phone was dead, so I went for a drive while I charged my phone and cleared my head. Without even thinking about it, I ended up in Golden Gate Park, idling my car in front of the acreage that houses the bison. I checked the messages on my phone; a text had come in from Bernie late last night.
BPeter:
Izzy, I got a problem. Can I stay at your place tonight?
Daisy kicked me out of the hotel room.
Rae had taken the liberty of replying for me.
I.Ellmanspay:
No problem. Won’t be home tonight.
Then I listened to the voice mail messages. There were three. I braced myself for what might come. The first was from Connor: “Bloody ’ell, Isabel. I come home to a fat man in our bed! Where the hell are you? Jesus Christ, somebody could have gotten very hurt here. Call back immediately.”
An hour later, Connor again … “Isabel, where are you? It’s five a.m. I’m angry, I’m worried, and I would like someone to vouch for the fat guy who is now on our couch.”
I could hear Bernie shout “Hey” in the background.
The third message was from Bernie, left just an hour ago. “Sorry, Izzy. When you said you wouldn’t be home, I didn’t know that meant your boyfriend would be there. He’s got quite a temper, that one. I just left your place. He’s sleeping. Where are you, Izz? We’re worried. If you don’t call me back soon, I’m going to call your parents.”
I phoned Bernie right away so that he wouldn’t contact the unit. I didn’t want them in on this just yet. I needed to weigh all my options. He asked me about the text message. I said that Rae sent it as a joke. He didn’t think it was funny and said, “Somebody should teach that kid a lesson.”
I agreed.
I finished drinking my coffee in the park. There wasn’t another message from Connor, so I assumed he was still in bed. I drove home a little while later, wondering why I’d drunk the coffee when what I really needed was eight hours of sleep.
When I climbed into bed with Connor, he screamed, as if now every time someone crawled into bed with him, it would be an unusually large retirement-age man.
Connor looked at me, not with concern but with annoyance, as if he had taken the brunt of last night’s nightmare.
“Is this your idea of a joke?”
“No,” I replied, too spent
to say more.
“I don’t think you and I are going to work,” Connor said.
“No, we’re not,” I agreed.
And now I will provide you with Connor’s epitaph:
Ex-boyfriend #12:
Name: O’Sullivan, Connor
Age: 37
Occupation: Bartender
Hobby: Rugby
Duration: Five months
Last Words: “Sharing a bed with a fat man is where I draw the line.”
CONSEQUENCES
I slept out of exhaustion and, in part, to keep myself occupied. It was too soon to take action—not that I knew what action I would take. When I wasn’t sleeping, I stayed in bed and watched TV. Phone calls filtered through and I sent e-mails back explaining that I had the flu. My mother asked if I needed anything. I told her that Connor was taking care of me and there was no need for her to drop by. Rae went silent—too fearful, I suspect, to make any kind of move.
The following day, Henry dropped by. When I opened the door, he felt my forehead and handed me a paper bag containing soup—not just any old soup, but a savory Vietnamese specialty called pho.1 While I like pho it seemed an odd choice for someone claiming to have the flu.
“Chicken soup and ginger ale are the generally agreed-upon fluids for influenza,” I remarked.
“I just figured you were hungover,” Henry said. “And spicy soup is the agreed-upon fluid for that.”
“True.”
“But you’re not sick, are you?” he asked.
“No.”
“You don’t look hungover, either.”
“I’m not.”
“So why are you hiding out?”
“I’m thinking.”
Henry sat down on the couch. I guess he was planning on staying.
“About what?”
And so I told him. And after a lengthy debate and thoughtful consideration, we came up with a plan. If you’ve read the previous documents, maybe you think that plan might be a carefully orchestrated revenge plot that would fall flat. But this time around, we acted like the rational adults that we aspire to be and did what we had to do.
I would like to make it clear that we did not make this decision lightly.
I filed a police report that afternoon. Henry and I arrived at my parents’ house shortly thereafter and explained the events of the previous days. While my parents took in this alarming information, Henry took in the state of the Spellman home, which was increasingly lacking in small but significant hardware.
“You know, the doorknob to the office is gone,” Henry said.
“Yeah, we know,” Dad said without much interest. And under the circumstances, who cared about missing doorknobs and light fixtures (the hallway one was now AWOL, I noticed).
The unit had other things on their mind and, frankly, so did I. While we waited for Rae to return home from school, I added another rule to the whiteboard. It’s one of those rules you’d think would be implied. But I suppose with the Spellmans everything needs to be spelled out.
Rule #51– No locking relatives in confined spaces
When Rae returned home from school, my mother made her change into clean and comfortable clothes and explained that the police would be arriving shortly to take her into custody. Rae turned to every adult in the room with a genuine look of surprise.
“Are you bluffing?” she asked no one in particular.
My father was too furious to speak. But Mom had a few choice words.
“How could you do such a thing? Lock your own sister in a room for eleven hours. It’s despicable. What if the building had caught fire? She wouldn’t have been able to get out.”
“Those odds were extremely unlikely,” Rae quietly replied.
“Don’t speak,” said my mother. “That’s the best advice I can give you.”
Rae was arrested at five P.M. on a Thursday afternoon. She spent the night in a juvenile facility, was arraigned the following morning, and bail was set at $2,000. My parents posted bail and brought Rae home, where the real punishment began. Her room was cleared of all items that might provide entertainment and for the next week she was forbidden to leave the house. Mom picked up her schoolwork every afternoon and returned it every morning. Rae went into immediate sugar withdrawal—coercing, negotiating, pleading for some form of sucrose. My mother, out of pity, gave her some dried apricots, but that was it. All her meals were the bland, square variety. My parents didn’t speak to her unless it was to reiterate their sense of shock and disappointment.
To be perfectly honest, I was truly surprised that the unit sided with me. But I guess locking someone in a file room overnight is a considerable offense. It was hard for me to have perspective since I had my own substantial rap sheet.
I spent the next few days away from the Spellman fold.
On Friday, I lounged around my apartment in my pajamas clearing out all signs of Connor. I tried to make myself wallow in the breakup, but to be perfectly honest, I barely noticed Connor’s absence, and not being woken up in the middle of the night improved my sleep pattern, which then improved my general mood. That is, until I realized that I could no longer frequent the Philosopher’s Club. Rather than mourn my loss, I decided to move on. Immediately.
THE HEMLOCK EFFECT
Saturday afternoon I commenced a bar crawl, anonymously auditioning bars to be my new watering hole.
I started with a beer at the Kilowatt, but then I decided I needed a place closer to the office, in the event of an emergency. I hopped on the Van Ness bus and stopped at O’Farrell and walked a few blocks to The Nite Cap. I made friends within a few minutes and decided I needed a place with more anonymity. I then strolled down to Polk Street, which is like a bar garden—a vast and incongruous mix of flora ranging from weeds, to daisies, to lilacs, to orchids, and even the occasional plain but snobby rose (which I suppose I associate with wine bars—and those were totally out of the question). I dropped into Lush Lounge and ordered a whiskey. I liked it, but somehow the name seemed too fancy for me. I moved on to Edinburgh Castle, but it reminded me too much of Uncle Ray and it made me sad. Still, I stayed for another drink and honored his memory.
When I finally surfaced again, it was night and the cool air sent a chill through me. My audition wasn’t complete, so I roamed the street a little longer looking for that perfect flower. And then I found it—the Hemlock, a tavern right off Hemlock Street, walking distance from Spellman Investigations. It seemed perfect considering the mood I was in. I sat down at the bar and I ordered a drink. I made small talk with the bartender, but that was it. No point in things getting personal. I was going to learn to keep things professional. That was the only way this kind of relationship could work out.
By seven P.M. I was tanked, out of cash for a cab, and in no mood to take the bus. Since Rae always asks for rides from Henry, I didn’t see any reason why he should deny me.
I made the call.
“Hello. I need a ride.”
“Isabel?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Only a little.”
“Where are you?”
“At the Hemlock.”
“Where is it?”
“On Hemlock Street.”
“Off Polk?”
“Yes. Don’t you think it’s cool there’s a street called Hemlock? It’s more like an alley, but I think it’s cool. Don’t you?”
“I’ll be there soon. Don’t drink anymore.”
I ordered another beer while I waited for Henry. He arrived twenty minutes later, looked at the bartender, and said, “Is she paid up?”
The bartender, whose name I never got because now I’m all into the anonymity thing, nodded his head. Henry took my arm.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You called me,” he replied, annoyed.
I didn’t forget calling him, I just felt like being
difficult.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“How drunk are you, Isabel?”
“Extremely,” I replied.
Can you blame me for drowning my sorrows? In the past four days, I had been locked in a file room for eleven hours, my boyfriend had broken up with me, and I had been directly responsible for having my sister arrested on felony charges. Plus, every single case I was working on was going nowhere. This was definitely not my best week.
Henry pulled his car into the driveway of my apartment building and left a note on the windshield in the event one of the neighbors needed access to the garage. I stumbled up the stairs; he made sure I didn’t plummet to my death.
“Is Connor here?” Henry asked.
“Nope.”
“You expecting him?”
“Huh.”
“Yes or no. That was indistinguishable.”
“You like big words.”
“It’s not that big a word.”
“It has many letters. I can’t count them right now, but if I did I think you’d be surprised how many letters it has.”1
“Yes or no,” Henry said. Unfortunately I had forgotten the question.
“Huh?”
“Are you expecting Connor?”
“No way, José.” (One of the problems with being drunk is that you say things you wouldn’t normally, and if you say something like that once, there’s always a chance it will pop up again inadvertently.)
I tried to work the key in the door, but it was testing Henry’s patience, so he took it from me and worked the lock himself. Once inside, I threw myself down on the couch. Henry busied himself in the kitchen. Then he made me sit up and drink a glass of water. Then he served me a plate of toast and butter.
I seemed to sober up for just a split second and my mind briefly returned to work.
“Where are my fingerprints!” I demanded.
“On your fingers,” Henry replied.
“Noooo. Not my fingerprints. The ones I gave you. I need them. I need them now.”
“You don’t need them right now,” Henry replied. “Eat your toast.”
“Don’t try to distract me from my work.”
“There’s a backlog in the lab and they’re not a priority. You’ll get them when I get them.”