CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“So it’s settled then. We’ll let the courts decide.” The Governor of Maryland tipped her chair back and put her feet up on her desk. She didn’t smile, but her satisfaction was palpable. “If she turns out to be pregnant, I don’t care whose daughter she was. She goes back. That’s the law we agreed to long before this red state/blue state Agreement stuff started. I don’t like the bounty hunters any more than anyone else, but I will have the law enforced. If the Rescuers try to interfere I’ll arrest them, too. I won’t have those radicals tearing the United States apart while I can stop it. The law must be enforced,” she repeated prayerfully.
“Look Barbara,” Roper said patiently. “I don’t want you sending state troopers to bring her in. The optics will be terrible. Tell John Brown to bring the girl in.” He handed her the phone.
“I’m not doing it,” Sheriff Brown said. “If Barbara Van Buren wants that poor runaway girl sent back to Virginia, she can serve the arrest warrant herself.”
“John,” Van Buren’s voice sounded gentle, but her picture on the phone was anything but happy. “It’s the law. If we don’t take her to state court, her stepfather is going to get a warrant from the feds. That mob of protesters protecting young Lucy can only hold out so long. We know the administration is willing to shoot protesters, they did it in Ohio, remember? And who knows what the bounty hunters might try. We need to bring her into custody and put her safely into jail where we can protect her. I’ve got a lot of people down in Eastern Maryland who want to send her back with no trial at all. They don’t want trouble with Virginia; jobs aren’t so easy to get in case you hadn’t noticed, and a lot of them still work there. This is the best deal we’re going to get. Just do your job.”
“No!” John Brown pulled his wheelchair closer to the phone screen on his desk. “Your third way didn’t work. I won the goddamn election, and I’m not sending any more girls back. I don’t care what they did. Did you see the picture of her back the Road people put up?” the sheriff continued. “Check your newsfeed for #southerncomfort. It’s been the fastest trending topic all day.”
“John,” she said, “you’re letting your personal feelings get in the way of your duty as a law enforcement officer. The Virginia authorities have properly requested the extradition of that girl under the Fetal Protection Act. We have to arrest her. If she has a defense she can make it in court.”
“Damn right I feel this personally!” he said. “Anyone who would do that to an innocent girl is a barbarian. It is time the barbarians learned that people in the Blue States also have states’ rights. That’s why I ran for sheriff and that’s what I’m going to do.” He rubbed his left leg where the phantom pain had been tormenting him ever since he took a bullet two elections ago in the Battle of Columbus. And he threw his cell phone against the wall.
At the noise, Ed Roper looked up from his cell phone. “It’s OK Barbara,” Roper said. “I have a better idea anyway.” He put the phone he was using down and picked up his official phone. “Let’s call Glass.”
“Larry,” he said, when Glass answered, “I don’t see any reason why we have to tar your client with an actual arrest, sheriffs coming to get her and all. Let’s just arrange a voluntary surrender. You can’t go on like that with that mob around your law firm, and sooner or later she’s going to have to stand trial. Go out that secret garage entrance you have at the Post Office Building and bring her to Jeanne’s apartment up in Cobble Hill. She’ll have her processed for the Baltimore County Court in an hour. Then you can take her home pending a trial if you think it’s safe or we can arrange for protection in the County jail.”
“Ugggghhhhh,” Larry sighed. “I know you’re right, but somehow actually turning her into the system myself feels wrong.”
“Larry,” Roper said patiently, “We had a deal.” He hung up on Glass and turned back to his other phone.
“What is going on?” Kelly poked her head in Larry’s door, with Josh just behind. “Don’t turn her in to them!” Josh said. “What did she do? She’s not underage. They have no right to her at all. We can just keep her here and the rescuers will keep the girl catchers away and she’ll never have to go back. Sooner or later they’ll forget about her.”
“They’re not going to forget about her.”
“Why not? Lots of girls leave the Red States and no one goes after them.”
Kelly said nothing.
Larry sighed again. “Josh,” he said, “she’s pregnant. That’s why I asked for the copy of the fetus Act. Sooner or later it’s going to become obvious. When it does, the Reds are going to force the President to send federal troops in here to get her. They want those babies. Especially if it’s a girl. Do you want a pitched battle around Glass & Glass?”
“She’s pregnant?” Josh said. “She’s only seventeen. Who’s the father? Does she have a boyfriend back there?”
“I haven’t asked her. I’m too busy trying to put together some kind of a defense. There aren’t that many defenses to the Fetus act. And one of them is not hiding the girl until her stepfather loses interest in her prospective abortion.”
“She’s pregnant,” Josh said. “She never told me that.”
“Well she is.”
He stopped. Why was he arguing with Josh? He needed his help to make the backstage transfer of their client. No point in adding a perp walk to her troubles. And anyway he really needed that mob to go away from the building where he was trying to practice law.
“Go get her,” he said to Josh.
“I hate to ask you to do this,” Larry said to Lucy.
“Then don’t!” Kelly said, opening up for the first time. “Make Van Buren find someone to serve that arrest warrant. She needs an abortion. Once they get her in the system, we’ll have our work cut out for us to get her out in time. While the mob holds the cops off, she may just slip away, like to New York. Or Canada.”
“Kelly, don’t be ridiculous,” Larry answered. “We’ll all lose our licenses. Or worse.”
“It’s OK,” Lucy said. “I don’t want to do that to you. I’ve made it bad enough already.”
“I’ve got to get you to Jeanne Schmidt’s apartment as soon as possible,” Larry said. “The sooner we get you into Maryland custody the better. The feds have a complete right to come after you. Our only hope is that the Maryland courts won’t give you up, once we start the extradition proceedings there. And in Maryland we have a chance to make arguments against it and quickly. We have friends in the courts here. I think you’ll be OK in Maryland, Lucy. Otherwise I wouldn’t turn you in.”
Lucy climbed into the back seat of Larry’s car and crawled onto the car floor. Larry tossed a blanket on her. It was hot. Nothing like as clever as the Jeep the rainbow guides used. Of course a corporate lawyer wasn’t likely to have a retrofitted escape vehicle. Not even in these unsettled times.
“OK we’re out of the city now,” Larry said. “You can take the blanket off I think. But stay down. I’ll tell you when to put it back. They may be watching Schmidt’s house.
But the tree-lined street was all quiet when they pulled up.
Larry dialed the number Schmidt had given him. “We’re here,” he said to the voice at the other end.
“Come on up. 4G. I’ll buzz you in.”
Larry walked up to the apartment entrance as Lucy slowly got out of her perch on the floor of the back seat and began to follow him. As he walked through the heavy plate glass door to the apartment, the elevator doors in the lobby opened and a slight man in rimless glasses stepped out.
“Brad,” Larry said. “What are you doing here?”
Two more men appeared immediately behind him. Someone had leaked to the feds.
“We’re here to take your client in,” Brad said.
“But she’s turning herself in to Jeanne Schmidt,” Larry protested. “The feds have no business here.” How did they get here?
Seeing Larry talking to someone, Lucy hesitated in the door for a moment.
“Not any more. I know you don’t do much criminal,” Brad said genially, “but the federal courts enforce the Fetal Law too.” He turned toward Lucy.
Every instinct that got her out of Virginia two months ago kicked in. Lucy ran down the walk back toward Larry’s car. She yanked the door open, pressed Start and rammed the car into Drive, peeling off down the quiet suburban street. Good thing Larry always left the fob in the cupholder. She noticed that when he started teaching her how to drive a few weeks ago. Of course she had no idea where she was or where to go. The speedometer was reading eighty. She was madly punching the buttons on the Mercedes’ GPS. Surely Larry had the office in it somewhere, where was it? Destination. State? The QWERTY GPS keyboard appeared. Where was the M? The neat suburban houses sped past. She’d never get it all spelled out.
OK, back, STOP sign, too late, new screen: Favorites, Office. She pushed frantically, doing eighty down the narrow suburban street with three weeks experience behind the wheel. Well, there went somebody’s side view mirror. A school bus pulled around the corner, slowing to let the children out. “Sorry! Sorry!” she breathed silently as she careened around its STOP arm. A big kid grabbed the little one who was about to cross.
“In 300 yards, turn left,” a sweet female voice said. Thank God. The GPS would take her back to the office, where the Rescue protesters were still thinking she was safely ensconced. Omigod, it was the expressway. The GPS didn’t know she’d never driven on an expressway before. Larry’s fancy car raced up the ramp like it was a skateboard and onto the highway. An enormous truck swerved into the left lane and Lucy was on the Maryland Route 295. She could see the hotels around the big airport flying by.
“Stay right,” the voice from the dashboard cautioned. A black stain on the entry ramp from the Beltway began to move toward 295, forming itself into a pair of SUV’s. Before she could make a move, the first SUV road onto the highway in front of her. The other fell behind. “Pull over at once,” the bullhorn from the second car said. “Get in the right lane and pull onto the shoulder of the highway.” She swerved into the left lane, accelerating and trying to pass the SUV. Ninety, ninety-five. Good thing Larry Glass liked fancy cars. A Chevy in the third lane, over again. SUV right behind her, she swerved suddenly in front of the slow moving Chevy, leaving her with just the SUV up front in the far right lane. Damned if she was going to stop for them. Damn federal agents in their black SUVs. The road crossed the Patapsco River. Welcome to Baltimore County sign.
“Prepare to exit, on the right,” the voice said. Oh no! She was all the way in the left lane and the SUVs were behind and in front. “Right exit in 200 feet,” the SUV commanded. No way. I 895 flew past, all hope of getting back to the office passing with it. “Recalculating,” the voice said reprovingly. God damn it she was going to get off at the next exit and go back to the turnoff for the office if it killed her. She started scanning madly for signs of an exit ahead as she flew along. “Stay right” her electronic companion commanded. With the federal SUV in the right lane, as if. “Lane change ahead, lane change ahead!” it squawked protestingly as the 295 ended and morphed into Russell Street, an ordinary city street filled with slow moving cars. Her lane disappearing under her, Lucy stood on the brakes of Larry Glass’s Mercedes so hard they started pumping. She was down to forty when she crashed into the car in front and the air bag exploded in her face.