Looking for Jane (76)

A thrill of relief washes over Evelyn. Donovan. This must be a relative of Doris’s.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Donovan.”

“Happy to help,” she says, turning now to the policeman. “Could you remove the handcuffs from my client please, Officer?”

He blinks at her twice before recovering himself. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s in custody. And it’s Sergeant.”

“I didn’t think she was actually under arrest, unless the situation has changed since I was first contacted.”

The sergeant shifts his feet. “We haven’t formally arrested them, no.”

“Then she poses no threat. This is purely an exploratory conversation and she is free to go whenever she wishes. You will remove her cuffs, please.”

He hesitates for a moment, then lets out a frustrated sigh as he unlocks the cuffs from Evelyn’s wrists and tosses them on the metal table. Evelyn jumps at the sound, which was of course his intention. Selena extends her hand and grips Evelyn’s firmly, a proper handshake that Evelyn returns with interest.

“Be my guest, Miss Donovan,” he says.

“Counsellor, please.”

“Excuse me?”

“You may call me Counsellor Donovan.”

“But she called you Miss Donovan.” He gestures at Evelyn’s back as she takes a seat at the table, massaging her bad shoulder.

“She actually called me Miz Donovan. But regardless—you may call me Counsellor.”

Sergeant Moustache presses his tongue into the inside of his cheek. “Whatever.”

Selena sits down across from Evelyn. She pulls a voice recorder out of her purse, sets it on the table, and presses the red button with a click. “Have you done anything wrong, Dr. Taylor?” she asks, a smirk playing around her lips.

“Wrong?” Evelyn asks, considering. “Not wrong, no.” Illegal, maybe.

“Under what pretense were Dr. Taylor and her associates taken from the apartment off Spadina this afternoon, Officer?”

“Sergeant,” he spits at her. “And we had received intelligence that Dr. Taylor and her associates were running an abortion operation at that address, which is against the law.”

“Yes, Sergeant, as a criminal defense lawyer, I am intimately familiar with the Criminal Code and what is against the law.”

His eyes narrow under his thick brow line.

“How was this alleged intelligence gathered?” Selena presses.

“Via a woman officer whose close friend reported that an acquaintance of hers had received an abortion from someone at that address. She provided a phone number to call, and our undercover officer made an appointment. Our officer proceeded to the address this afternoon at the appointed time, wearing an audio recording device. A tactical unit, including me, was waiting across the street, ready to move in once our officer had retrieved the desired evidence and given us the go-ahead.”

“And what evidence is this?” Selena asks.

“Audio of one of these women describing an abortion.”

“Could we hear that audio recording, please?”

“Yeah, we’ve got it. Officer Heinz is waiting outside. Don’t move, I’ll be back.”

“Yes, please do go retrieve your woman officer, Sergeant. We’ll wait.”

His shoes whisper on the tile floor. The door shuts behind him and they hear him calling imperiously for Officer Heinz. Selena presses the stop button on the recording device and her head snaps up. Evelyn suddenly has the sense she’s in a giant spotlight under the intensity of this woman’s eyes.

“My cousin Doris called me,” Selena says.

“I figured, by your name. Thank you for coming.”

“I’m happy to help. Listen: What’s this about an audio recording? What am I walking into here?”

“My nurse and I were out in the kitchen, and our volunteer was in the procedure room with a woman we thought was called Patricia. She was our two o’clock. Protocol is one of our volunteers debriefs the patient on the procedure beforehand.”

“Shit. What did the volunteer say?”

“That’s the thing; she swears she never said the word ‘abortion.’ That everything she said could potentially be open to interpretation, inconclusive.”

Selena nods curtly. “Okay. I guess we’ll see when he comes back with it. Is there any other evidence anywhere that might be a problem?”

Evelyn smiles. “Not anywhere they’ll be able to find, that’s for sure.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Quite sure.”

“Okay, then. Let’s see what happens.”

Evelyn swallows, and they wait another minute or so before Sergeant Moustache bursts back into the room, followed closely by Evelyn’s would-be patient, Officer Heinz.

The officer is still in her civilian wear. She’s young and pretty, just doing her job, but in this moment Evelyn wants to rip her limb from limb. She settles for biting sarcasm. She’s learned it’s a powerful tool; you can’t prove sarcasm.

“Nice to see you again, Patricia,” she says.

This earns her a kick under the table from Selena, who hits the record button on the machine again.

Officer Heinz sets another black device down on the table beside Selena’s voice recorder. This one is clearly a set of speakers for the tape she had strapped to her waist during her pre-op with Nancy. Evelyn can feel her shoulders rising to meet her ears like high tide.