This Enemy Town

by Marcia Talley

  The only way out was up.

  I flew up the marble staircase, taking the steps two at a time, with Dorothy hot on my tail. When I reached the first landing, I considered running around the balcony, but I knew I’d have to scramble over theater seats and negotiate the narrow aisles in order to reach the opposite side. It’d slow me down.

  Could I hang from the balcony and drop? Not if I ever wanted to use my legs for walking again.

  I took a deep breath and continued up, flight after flight.

  As I ran, the stairway narrowed. The marble became linoleum. Dorothy was still behind me, but her footsteps seemed to be slowing. Even though I was outpacing her, she and her deadly box cutter still stood between me and the outside world.

  At the next landing, I paused and leaned over the banister, gasping for air. Sunlight poured from the skylights over my head, illuminating the stairwell below and Dorothy’s bright green hat, two flights down, moving relentlessly upward.

  To my left a tall wooden door, decorated with garlands of grapes in an ornate, nineteenth-century style, stood ajar. I pushed the door open and peeked inside. To my right, a pair of double doors led to a neglected classroom. Ahead, just to the left of a trophy case, was a door identical to the one through which I had just entered. I crossed over to it and jiggled the knob, but the damn door was securely locked.

  One way in, no way out. If I didn’t get out of there soon, I’d be trapped.

  I hurried back the way I had come and took the last short flight of stairs, scaling them quickly. At the top was a nondescript door. I grabbed the doorknob, twisted it clockwise and pushed. The door didn’t budge.

  I jiggled the knob, lunged, and applied my shoulder to the door. Again. And again. It suddenly gave, hurling me headlong into the room beyond. I fell hard, sliding along the floor on my knees. My Naval Academy ID, which had been hanging around my neck on a chain, went flying, skittering along the floor and into the shadows.

  With my palms smarting from the attempt to break my fall, I picked myself up and had the presence of mind to slam the door just as Dorothy began plodding up the staircase after me.

  I found myself in a vast room, roughly the size of the auditorium I figured must be directly below. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light filtering in through several round windows placed at regular intervals even with the floor, I wondered if I had landed in a construction zone. Metal girders connected by bolts and studded with rivets crisscrossed the room, designed, I was sure, to support the weight of the enormous dome that dominated the room like an inverted salad bowl, its surface flocked with insulation resembling clumps of snow. Crude metal ladders led up into the rafters, and fat air-conditioning ducts snaked everywhere, wrapped with bright aluminum-covered insulation.

  Behind me, the doorknob rattled. Then the pounding began, so loudly that I was certain Dorothy was using both fists. “You. Let. Me. In.”

  No way! On my hands and knees, I crab-walked across the floor and crouched under one of the ducts, just as Dorothy burst through the door. She slammed it shut behind her and yelled, “Hannah! I know you’re in here!”

  I sucked in my lower lip, concentrating on silencing my breathing. In spite of my efforts, it came in ragged gasps. The ice-cold air seared my throat, like a shot of whiskey taken neat.

  I listened to Dorothy muttering as she explored her surroundings. I knew that if I stayed where I was, sooner or later she would find me. I prayed she would move away from the door so I could make a dash for it, but she must have figured that out because as she paced, she kept herself positioned between me and the exit.

  I needed a distraction. As quietly as possible, I patted the floor, searching for something solid I could throw—like a nail or a screw—but the floor around me was surprisingly clean. I patted my clothing. Nothing. The pockets of my Juicy Couture velour hoodie and matching pants were still too new to have the usual paper clip, stick of gum, or the odd house key tucked into them.

  Almost reluctantly, I fingered the jacket’s signature J zipper pull, slid it quietly down, then twisted it off the bottom of the zipper, thinking, There goes $88 plus tax. First a gash in the sleeve, now a ruined zipper. Some people were never meant to own designer clothing.

  With a flick of my wrist, I tossed the zipper pull across the room, where it pinged anemically on the plywood floor.

  Thankfully, Dorothy heard it and set off in that direction. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she singsonged.

  Cautiously, I unfolded from my cramped position. Keeping the duct work between me and Dorothy, I crept toward the door, sprinting the last three yards. I tugged on the knob, but once again the door was jammed.

  Dorothy spun around and came after me, moving slowly but confidently.

  I backed away, easing my way warily along a rough brick wall. A few feet to my right, a short flight of stairs disappeared into an opening in the brickwork. I had no idea where they led, but at least it was out, so I scrambled up the steps, banging my head painfully on the jamb as I charged through the low opening.

  I emerged into a passageway that appeared to run between the roof of Mahan and the base of the clock tower. Built crudely of firebrick, the rough mortar tore at what was left of my clothing as I careened down the short corridor and pushed through another door. I closed it behind me, noticed that it had a latch of sorts, and with fumbling fingers dropped the hook into the eye. The primitive latch might keep Dorothy at bay for the time it took me to figure out what to do next.

  To my utter amazement, I found myself in the clock tower, surrounded on four sides by giant clock faces, their hands all pointing to IIX and IX. Was it 1:05 already? Then it dawned on my frazzled brain that I was seeing the faces from behind. It was only 11:55.

  Directly before me was a room within a room, constructed of white clapboard, like a summer cabin, and decorated with the usual midshipmen graffiti: KATHY AND BEN,’02 and the perennial GO NAVY, BEAT ARMY. From the clicking and whirring emanating from inside the structure, I suspected it housed the clock mechanism.

  It took only seconds to explore the room. There was no way out, except for the way I had come and whatever lay at the top of a spiral wrought-iron staircase. Another staircase. I groaned. How many staircases had I climbed that day? I’d run out of staircases soon, and then what would I do? Fly?

  Dorothy began cursing and kicking at the door, so I had no choice. I scampered up the spiral staircase, round and round, until my head popped out in the bell tower itself. A single bell, larger than a washing machine but smaller than a Volkswagen, hung from a pyramid of stout wooden beams. I touched the bell, ran my hand over the cold metal.

  Floor-to-ceiling windows were set into each wall, covered with chicken wire to keep the pigeons out. A door had been cut into one, presumably to provide access to the balcony. I opened the makeshift door and stepped through.

  I was standing outside, on a balcony barely four feet wide that encircled the tower, approximately 120 feet above sea level.

  Under ordinary circumstances, a person might have paused to enjoy the view—a spectacular panorama of Annapolis all the way from the Bay Bridge to the Maryland State House dome. But these were not ordinary circumstances. And I wasn’t crazy about heights.

  On legs of rubber, I grasped the railing and looked down. Patchworks of grass, brick sidewalks, the copper roofs of nearby buildings swam into view. All I could think about was how badly I’d splat should I fall.

  In the chamber below, the clock hummed and clanked. I circumnavigated the balcony, searching for a ladder or fire escape, but the only way out was the spiral staircase.

  And Dorothy was now standing at the chicken wire door, smack dab in the way.

  I reversed direction and ran around the balcony, my feet slipping on patches of ice. While turning a corner, I stumbled on a protruding drain and nearly fell. I managed to recover, but Dorothy gained a few feet on me.

  “Hannah, I just want to talk,” she yelled.

  “I don’t believ
e you,” I yelled back, but the wind ripped my words away.

  Around and around we ran, slipping, stumbling, staggering as cold and exhaustion took their toll in a senseless chase that could only end badly. There was nothing I could do but confront her.

  I whirled around, raised both arms and shouted, “Stop!”

  Startled, Dorothy did as she was told. Hundreds of feet below, the winter wind whistled across the Severn River and climbed the sides of the clock tower, lifting the brim of her cap—my cap, I realized with a pang, one of the half dozen or so I had given her. Dorothy’s eyes narrowed and she tilted her head, as if wondering who the heck I was. The arm holding the box cutter hung limply at her side.

  “Please, drop the knife, Dorothy.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. She raised her hand. Puzzlement turned to surprise, as if she were noticing the weapon for the first time.

  But my move backfired. Seeing the box cutter only seemed to remind her of exactly who I was and what she intended to do. “Kevin can’t be a pilot now,” she snarled. With the box cutter held high, she advanced.

  “We don’t know that, Dorothy,” I soothed. “Kevin’s in the best of hands. The doctors at Bethesda really know their stuff.”

  She shook her head. “No. No. It’s too late.”

  The clock beneath our feet whirred and clanked. I realized it was about to strike noon: eight bells. I’d read Dorothy L. Sayers’s novel, The Nine Tailors, and as I steeled myself for the first deafening bong, I prayed she’d made up the part about the bells turning your eardrums to mush.

  “Too late for what?” I pressed.

  “Ted says you were hanging around the Pentagon. Is that true?”

  “Oh, did Ted see me there?” I asked in what I prayed was a conversational tone, although my voice was quaking as violently as my knees. “Why didn’t he say hello?”

  “We think you went there to stir up trouble,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

  “I can’t imagine why you think that, Dorothy. I was there to visit the memorial chapel,” I told her, shading the truth just a tad. “It’s profoundly moving.”

  Below us the clock shifted gears.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Paul and I had friends who perished in the attack.” I’d played the sympathy card, but it was wasted on Dorothy, whose tortured brain knew no pain but her own.

  “Ted’s going to jail!” she wailed. “Now I have nobody! Nobody!” The wind, as bitter as her words, swept across the balcony and tore the hat from her head, sending it spinning into the trees. She didn’t seem to notice.

  Her sudden baldness, her vulnerability, tore at my heart. In that instant I saw the true source of her pain. Ted might go to jail. In a year’s time, Kevin would graduate, and who knew where the Navy would send him? Dorothy had no other children and, other than me, no friends. She would be utterly alone.

  Dorothy closed her eyes for a moment, then joggled her head as if trying to clear it. “I thought you were my friend, Hannah, but now you’ve turned on me, too, just like all the others.”

  Others? What the heck was Dorothy talking about? The vague hints of paranoia I’d detected earlier seemed to have grown to epidemic proportions.

  “Everyone ends up betraying me.” She swayed, reaching out with her free hand to steady herself on the stone balustrade. “Even you. It really, really hurt when you turned against me.”

  Coming from a woman who had lied to the police about seeing me at the scene of a crime, I found the statement extraordinary, to say the least. What the hell was going on? Had the chemo made her crazy? But Dorothy was the one holding the box cutter, not me, so I decided it would be unwise to contradict her. She seemed to be crying out for love and support, so I decided to give it to her.

  “I am your friend, Dorothy. You have to believe that.”

  “You told on Ted.”

  “No. I didn’t. Jennifer Goodall told on Ted.”

  Dong.

  The clock had been cranking up for several minutes, but still the clang of the bell so close to my head surprised me. It surprised Dorothy, too, because she startled, seemed to recall where she was, and lunged.

  Dong.

  Her arm came down, and I managed to parry the blow, forgetting until her arm made contact with mine that that was the one she’d slashed.

  “Eeeeeeeah!” I screamed as pain blazed up my arm, exploding in colored lights inside my head.

  Dong.

  With my right hand, I grabbed Dorothy’s wrist and pushed back. With my left, I found her thumb where it grasped the weapon. I worked my fingers around her thumb and bent it backward as far as it would go.

  Dorothy screamed and dropped the box cutter. It hit the balustrade, bounced, and tumbled over the edge. I heard glass breaking as it struck one of the skylights below.

  Dong.

  Dorothy kept coming. Both arms shot forward like pistons, hitting my chest like a battering ram, knocking the air out of me. I staggered and tried to regain my footing, but slipped on a patch of ice and went sprawling.

  Dong.

  Dorothy was on me in an instant, both hands around my throat. As I struggled to breathe, I forced my fists between us, brought them together and thrust my arms straight up and over my head, breaking her grip. I brought my fists down again, hard, on the top of her head. She screamed and rolled away, palms pressed flat against her temples.

  Dong!

  By the time I had struggled to my feet, Dorothy had, too. She slumped against the balustrade, panting. While her attention was diverted, I launched myself at her like a linebacker, sweeping her feet out from under her. She landed on the snow-covered terrazzo, her skull making a sickening crack as it hit the stone.

  On my hands and knees, I crawled toward her, appalled at what I had done. Dorothy’s eyes were closed. She wasn’t moving.

  “Dorothy!” I cried as I straddled her legs. “Oh, Dorothy, I’m so sorry!” I felt for a pulse in her neck and was relieved when I found it, beating strong and steady.

  By some miracle, Dorothy’s cell phone was still clipped to her belt. I slipped it out of its case and with the bell still bonging away behind me, pressed 911, reported our location, and characterized the situation as a stabbing and a head injury. I’d knocked her out, that was for sure, but other than that, I really didn’t know what was wrong with Dorothy. I figured we could sort that out when the paramedics got there.

  Then I telephoned Paul.

  It rang once, twice. Paul didn’t pick up. I’d left him at home reading the paper. Where the hell had he gone?

  Three rings, four, and the answering machine kicked in. “Damn it to hell!” I said, and mashed my finger down on the star button to skip the message and get straight to the beep. “Paul! Don’t ask any questions. Just get your butt over to Mahan. I’m up in the clock tower with Dorothy. Please hurry!”

  Beneath my legs, Dorothy stirred. Her eyelids fluttered, then flew open. She began to pitch and turn, struggling to get up.

  I set the phone aside, leaned forward and pinned Dorothy’s shoulders gently to the terrazzo. “Tell me about Jennifer Goodall,” I urged her softly.

  Dorothy dissolved into tears. “It was Jennifer this and Jennifer that and Jennifer said and Jennifer thinks,” she sobbed. “Ted didn’t see it coming, but I did, oh yes, I saw it coming from a mile away. Oooooh,” she wailed. “How can a man be so blind?”

  “Surely you’re—” I began, but Dorothy cut me off.

  “Imagining things? That’s what Ted used to say, but then I caught him red-handed.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  A sly look crept over her face. “I read his e-mail. He thought his AOL was password protected, but I figured it out.” She laughed. “Men! It’s always all about them, isn’t it? Think they’re so clever.” She raised her head a couple of inches from the terrazzo, grimaced, moaned, then lay back. “The password was his license plate number! Is that stupid, or what?”

  “What was in his e-mail?”
I asked, trying to steer Dorothy back on track.

  “She wrote him love notes. They were graphic, totally disgusting. I confronted Ted about it. I begged and I pleaded. His career, his brilliant career, was going down in flames, and all because he couldn’t keep his fly zipped!

  “He tried to break it off several times, you know,” she continued, “but Jennifer kept threatening him. She knew all about what was going on in his office. He was paying her money to keep quiet about it.”

  Dorothy’s eyes were fixed on mine. “It was going to go on and on and on. Somebody had to put a stop to it, and Ted didn’t have the balls.”

  “So who stopped her, Dorothy? You?”

  Dorothy squeezed her eyes shut, turned her head to one side. “I sent her an e-mail, asking her to meet me here to talk about it.” She turned her face to me again and grinned mischievously. “I used Ted’s e-mail account, of course. She thought it was him. And when she got to Mahan, I was waiting by the barber’s chair.

  “I didn’t mean to kill her,” Dorothy whimpered, “but she made me so mad! She didn’t even bother to deny the relationship with my husband, she even boasted about it!”

  “I know about that,” I said quietly. “She tried that little trick with me.”

  “Yes! That’s why I knew she was evil, and that she’d never go away and leave us alone.

  “I don’t know what happened, really,” Dorothy continued dreamily. “One minute I’m standing there holding the hammer, listening to her go on and on about how sexy my husband is, and the next minute I’m standing over her. I’m still holding the hammer. She was dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “So I put her in the trunk.

  “At least I still have Kevin.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Kevin won’t let me down, not like his father did.”

  Dorothy shivered, and covered her bare head with both hands. I took my cap off and slipped it over her head, making sure the tips of her ears were well-protected.

  “So, you hit Jennifer with the hammer and put her in the trunk. Then what?” I prodded.