CHAPTER 20 Evelyn

JULY 1984

“What the hell was that?” Evelyn freezes, her pen suspended over the clipboard where she’s reviewing that day’s patient docket. She and Alice were just about to head into the procedure room.

She can hear muffled voices from inside the room. They layer themselves over the strange piercing screech that’s still ringing in her ears.

“Evelyn?” Alice is immediately at her side. “What—?”

The door opens and Nancy emerges, her eyes wide and watering, hands clasped behind her head. Behind her is Evelyn’s next patient, Patricia. Her shirt is pulled up at the beltline and tucked in behind a small black box at her waist. She’s holding a gun in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other, which she now speaks into.

“Suspects are neutralized. Move in.” The static of the walkie-talkie clicks off and she slips it into the back pocket of her denim shorts.

“Fuck,” Evelyn swears under her breath.

“Evelyn.” Alice’s voice is small, afraid.

“I’m so sorry,” Nancy whimpers.

“Quiet!” Patricia snaps. She waves her gun at Evelyn and Alice. “Both of you, get your hands up, same as her.”

Evelyn swallows the harsh reality of this inevitability. Alice’s hands go up beside her, but Evelyn presses her thumb down on the metal clamp of the clipboard, removing the patient docket that lists the names of all the women who are scheduled to receive abortion procedures today. She folds it into quarters.

“I said get your fucking hands up!” Patricia shouts at her.

“I think I’m going to need to see some identification first, Patricia,” Evelyn says, not taking her eyes off the officer’s. Her stomach is sinking into her legs as she feigns boldness.

“Evelyn,” Alice mutters beside her.

The police officer licks her lips. “Don’t move.” She reaches into the purse hanging off her shoulder, and in the fleeting seconds when she takes her eyes off her suspects to fish out her badge, Evelyn slides the paper into the waistband of her jeans.

Patricia holds out her badge and Evelyn nods curtly. She raises her hands up behind her head, heart hammering off the walls of her rib cage. “Well played, Officer.”

“Be quiet.”

The door bursts open and both Evelyn and Alice jump. Nancy yelps.

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Nancy wails as a stream of three, four, five other officers force their way into the apartment. Suddenly it feels smaller and even more oppressive. Evelyn thinks of Doris, who left just before Patricia arrived to escort Kathleen into a taxi three blocks away. She’s due back any minute.

“Who’s in charge here?” one of the officers demands to the room at large.

“I am,” Alice says immediately.

“Alice,” Evelyn snaps, though she experiences a rush of affection for Alice’s loyalty.

“No, she isn’t. That’s the doctor there.” Patricia points to Evelyn, her gun still extended at Nancy, whose eyes close against a stream of tears. The brand-new diamond ring glints in the light from the window. This girl has her whole life ahead of her, Evelyn thinks. She can feel Alice shaking beside her. Alice, who’s supposed to be getting married tomorrow…

“Is that gun really necessary at this point?” Evelyn shouts, her initial terror turning to anger. “Patricia, or whatever the hell your name actually is? You fucking traitor to women.”

“That’s enough, ma’am!” a burly male cop barks at her, his bristly moustache inches from her face.

“It’s Doctor, not ma’am, Officer.”

“It’s Sergeant, not Officer, Doctor.”

Evelyn physically bites down on her tongue to stop the retort she longs to throw at him. This had to happen eventually, she realizes. So why not today? It’s as good a day as any. She stands up straighter, stares with all the hatred she can muster at the female police officer.

Do your worst, bitch.

“What’s your name?” the large sergeant spits at her.

“Doctor Evelyn Taylor. Can we take our hands down now? You know we’re unarmed.”

“Yes, you can, actually. You can all put them behind your backs.”

“Excellent,” Evelyn mutters, as the female officer and two others each handcuff Evelyn, Alice, and Nancy. “And now I’m going to need you to tell me what we’re under arrest for.”

“I’m pretty sure you know what for,” the female cop pipes up. “For inducing miscarriages out of an unregulated medical facility. Illegal abortions.”

“Mmm,” Evelyn says. “And what evidence do you have of that?”

While she fakes confidence, Evelyn’s mind is racing. Alice disposed of the products of Kathleen’s abortion while Nancy was doing pre-op prep with the so-called Patricia. There are medical instruments in the procedure room, but that doesn’t prove anything. The only records they keep for a given day are currently folded neatly in her waistband; she can feel the crinkle of the paper against the backs of her thumbs.

“We have audio of this one”—the female officer gestures to Nancy—“explaining the whole procedure to me.”

Shit. The screech. We’ve been bugged.

“I never said anything about an abortion.” Nancy’s soft voice pipes up, her eyes still closed. The tears have stopped.

Silence in the room.

“Excuse me? Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.” Her eyes pop open and her posture straightens. “I asked you if you’d ever had this procedure before, and you said no. I never said anything about any abortion.”

Evelyn’s heart leaps and she feels a shiver of gratitude for her careful, quick-thinking volunteer.

The female officer’s face pales, but she regains her composure almost instantly, addressing her boss, the sergeant. “I’ve got a tape, Barry.”

He nods. “You’re all coming down to the station.”

Evelyn weighs their options and the possible outcomes. If Nancy is right, then the only evidence is the sheet in her waistband: the mention of pregnancy and the patients’ names. Their third patient hasn’t shown up yet. A painful stab of guilt pierces her heart at the thought of that woman not being able to get an abortion today. She’ll show up and, what? Find the place cordoned off with police tape, and be scared off calling Jane again? Get no answer when she dials the buzzer number? There are another four women booked in for next week, and five the week after that. Hopefully the Janes can arrange for other doctors in their network to pick up the slack.

Evelyn turns her mind to the factors at hand, the ones she may still have some influence over. If the police could track down this morning’s patient, Kathleen, with her first name and date of birth, there’s a possibility she would confess and turn them in if the police offered her immunity from any charges. Evelyn knows it’s not the individual patients the authorities want, it’s the Janes and their ringleaders. The ones who provide options when no one else will. The women who dare to say yes.

“Come on,” the large sergeant says to Evelyn, beckoning her forward. She swallows hard and complies. She’s already cuffed; there’s no point railing against them. Not yet, anyway. For now, it’s best to just play along.

They make their way to the door, each of the Janes escorted by a police officer. Evelyn tries twice to make eye contact with the female officer, who is deliberately avoiding her gaze.

Good.

After a silent and painfully uncomfortable walk down to the main floor, the officers shove the Janes out the glass front doors of the apartment building and into the sweltering heat of the blinding afternoon sun. A paddy wagon is waiting for them at the curb, and the reality of their arrest hits Evelyn like a blow to the stomach. She glances left and right. A crowd has also formed, their heads pressed together, mouths moving excitedly. Evelyn wonders what they think has happened, why these three women are being escorted away in handcuffs.

A few paces from the back of the van, where another officer is now opening the doors, Evelyn catches a shock of orange out of the corner of her eye. Doris, her eyes wide underneath her mop of red curls. They lock eyes and Evelyn cocks her head back toward the building.

Clean up.

To her immense relief, Doris understands the gesture. She nods fervently, sinks back into the crowd, and disappears.

The doors to the back of the paddy wagon are open, like the mouth of a whale that’s about to swallow the Janes whole, its insides dark and metallic. A hand shoves Evelyn’s lower back.

“In.”

“Do you seriously think I don’t know that?” she says.

“Watch your mouth, sweetheart.”

“Watch your sexism, asshole.”

She pays for her attitude with a push to the back of the head this time, and falls into the van, smacking her knees on the metal floor and nearly breaking her front teeth as she pitches forward.

“Evelyn!” Alice cries, climbing into the van behind her.

“I’m fine. Just do what they say for now.”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said so far,” the smart-mouthed sergeant tells her.

The last thing Evelyn sees is his smirking face as he slams the doors shut, and the lock slides home. Nancy is panting on the bench across from Evelyn. Alice is beside her, her face stricken. The engine rumbles to life and they each plant their feet as the vehicle lurches forward.

“I’m supposed to be getting married tomorrow!” Alice whimpers, appalled. “What do we do, Evelyn? What do we do?”

“We don’t panic, first of all,” Evelyn says. She tries to rally her team with the same forced bravado she’s been faking since Patricia brought Nancy into the room at gunpoint. She drops her voice, and Nancy and Alice lean in, their three heads close together. The prisoner transport section of the van is completely separate from the cab, but right now Evelyn doesn’t even trust the walls. “Nancy, you’re serious about not using the word ‘abortion’?”

“I’m positive,” Nancy whispers. “I’ve found a lot of girls don’t like to hear the word, so I stopped using it a while ago and just went with ‘procedure.’ I never said it, I’m sure of it.”

“That’s very, very good news.”

“What are they going to do to us, Evelyn?” Alice is always so calm, it hurls Evelyn’s own panic into overdrive to hear her second in command so unnerved.

“They need something to charge us with. And for that, they need evidence. Nancy says she never used the word ‘abortion,’ and you disposed of the products of Kathleen’s while Nancy was in pre-op with this Patricia, right?”

Alice nods. “Of course, it’s protocol.”

“Okay, so…” Evelyn trails off, images in her mind whipping past at breakneck speed. They probably don’t have far to go until they reach the station. “I saw Doris in the crowd and nodded to her to go clean up. She’ll take out anything that shows we were even there, the instruments, magazines. There really isn’t much. We keep it deliberately sparse.” Evelyn pauses. “So, the only thing connecting us to what we were doing in that apartment is the patient sheet in my pants.”

Nancy and Alice gasp.

“This is going to be a team effort,” Evelyn says, attempting half a smile.

She kneels on the metal floor and turns her back to Alice and Nancy. She slides her thumb and index finger awkwardly into her waistband, straining against the handcuffs. Sweat trickles into her eye from the baking van, but her heart leaps as she grips and withdraws the folded piece of paper.

“Alice, take this.”

Alice looks at the piece of paper for a moment, then leans in and bites down on the fold with her teeth.

Evelyn nearly laughs out loud. “That’s it. Alice, you’re brilliant.”

Alice lets out a guttural sound through the paper that Evelyn takes as “What?”

Evelyn leans forward and Alice’s eyes widen before Evelyn bites down on the paper, too. She twists her face quickly away from Alice’s and most of the piece of paper comes with it. They both snort with laughter. Nancy shakes her head, shimmies toward Evelyn, and bites off her own piece of the sheet.

Evelyn lifts her eyebrows at them both and pulls the piece of paper farther into her mouth with her tongue. It’s dry as all hell and the ink smells and tastes like chemicals. Alice follows suit, and after a groan, so does Nancy. The three of them sit there, moistening the paper with their saliva until it’s soft enough to try to chew it. It’s harsh on Evelyn’s teeth and a few seconds into the process, Nancy gags hers up and has to start all over again.

By the time the van slows to a final stop, all three of them have swallowed their pieces of paper. The last bit of evidence is destroyed. Tears are pouring down Nancy’s face now, but she’s also laughing. Alice and Evelyn join in, and when the burly cop rattles the doors open, ready to intimidate and haul them into the station, he’s met with three sweaty arrestees, their hair plastered to their necks, laughing their heads off like a pack of hyenas.

“I’m not sure what’s so funny here, ladies,” he says, scowling like a Scottish terrier.

“Ohhh, we happen to think it’s pretty funny, Officer. You’ve got nothing to hold us on.” Evelyn flashes a smile at him, but her stomach churns all the same.

“Yeah, we’ll see about that.” His fellow officers pop their heads around the doors of the van; the female cop is nowhere to be seen. “Get them out,” he barks.

They yank the women roughly out of the back of the van and frog-march them into the station. They pass through a hallway that’s lit with harsh halogen strip lighting and smells like rubber, sweat, and cigarette smoke.

“We want to speak to legal counsel immediately,” Evelyn says loudly. “Let me call—”

“She’s already here,” the sergeant snaps at her, wrenching her by the elbow and directing her toward an interrogation room.

“Evelyn!” Alice shouts from behind her. Evelyn cranes her neck over her shoulder; Alice and Nancy are being guided toward a set of hard green plastic chairs set against a painted brick wall. One of the officers shoves Alice hard in the back and she stumbles and falls, barely avoiding landing face-first in the lineup of chairs. He hurls a racial slur at her, and Nancy tells him to fuck off.

“Leave it, Nancy!” Alice snaps, struggling to her feet, hands still cuffed behind her back.

“Why aren’t they coming with me?” Evelyn fires at the sergeant.

“You think we don’t know who’s running the show here, Doctor? Come on.”

“Hold the fuck on—” Evelyn says, doing her best to plant her feet on the slippery tile floor. She wheels to face him. They’re eye to eye.

“What did you just say to me?”

Evelyn takes a deep breath. “Are we under arrest or not? You can’t hold us if we’re not under arrest.”

“Do you want me to arrest you? Because keep talking to me like that, and that’s exactly what you’ll get. Now move.”

He shoves her toward the door and nods to the guard beside it, some rookie kid with no identifying features who unlocks the door. He swings it open and Evelyn is pushed into the harshly lit room.

There’s a woman standing beside the metal table, tall and broad-shouldered and also wearing heels, so she positively towers over Evelyn and Sergeant Moustache. The mop of brown curls piled on top of her head adds several inches to her height. She’s dressed in a smart navy skirt and suit jacket; the crisp white lapels of her shirt collar are ironed to perfection. She’s an intimidating presence, and Evelyn isn’t surprised to feel the sergeant loosen his grip on her arm.

“Selena Donovan,” the woman says. Her voice is booming yet efficient in its delivery. “I’ll shake your hand once these kind officers remove your handcuffs.”

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.

“Counselor, please.”

“Excuse me?”

“You may call me Counselor 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 Counselor.”

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.

The machine crackles with a sound like static, then Evelyn hears the officer’s soft voice mumble, “Testing. Testing. Testing.” She clears her throat. Some rustling, likely the microphone being adjusted on the inside of her blouse. A few minutes pass with no sound at all, then there’s the distant screech of the streetcar and quiet children’s laughter, barely audible. The waiting room.

Evelyn, Selena, Sergeant Moustache, and Officer Heinz all breathe quietly together, staring at the box. Four actors waiting for their cue to start the scripted argument at center stage.

The click and creak of a door being opened.

“Patricia?” Nancy’s voice pops into being. A rustling of papers, and a long pause. A high-pitched screech fills the room, shrill and piercing.

“Jesus,” Sergeant Moustache mumbles. Evelyn’s ears are ringing from it.

“Feedback,” Heinz replies, shrugging.

“Shh.” Selena hushes them as the recording plays out. Evelyn tries not to smile at her lawyer. What a badass. Definitely a Jane.

Nancy’s voice comes through again. “Have you ever had this procedure?”

A small cough. “Um, no. No, I haven’t.”

They all lean forward as they listen in on the conversation. Evelyn holds her breath.

“…I’d like to hear it step-by-step. If that’s okay,” Officer Heinz says.

What a scam, Evelyn thinks. She can feel the heat starting to rise up her neck, but this time it’s rage, not fear.

Suddenly the sound begins to waver, a low hum blocking out most of the conversation. “…medic… stretch… into your… then…” The piercing screech causes all four of them to wince.

“What…?” Nancy’s voice on the tape is crackly but recognizable, confused.

“Shit…”

Click.

Evelyn looks up from the black box. Selena is grinning in the most accurate impression of the Cheshire Cat she’s ever seen.

“Well, then!” Selena says brightly, pushing her chair away from the table and standing up. “If that’s all you’ve got, Sergeant, my clients and I will be on our way.”

“What the fuck was that, Heinz?” the sergeant shouts at his officer.

“Barry, I don’t know, it happened in that room, there was so much feedback, I—”

“We can go, Evelyn,” Selena says under her breath, cocking her head toward the exit.

“Where do you think you’re going, Counselor?”

Selena pulls her shoulders back and leans over the sergeant. He shrinks back an inch. “Are you quite serious? You have no evidence whatsoever to hold these women, place them under arrest, or charge them with anything. Have a nice night, Sergeant, Officer.”

She sweeps open the door for Evelyn, who wanders out in a daze, and Selena closes the door against the stunned faces of Evelyn’s interrogators.

“That’s it?”

“Just keep walking; waaaaaalk walk walk walk walk walk.” Selena presses her hand into Evelyn’s bad shoulder, moving her forward.

“Evelyn!” Alice and Nancy jump up from the chairs they’ve been slumped in across the hall from the interrogation room. They’ve been uncuffed. No doubt someone finally had the sense to acknowledge that they didn’t pose a threat.

“Come, come!” Selena calls to them, eyeing Alice in particular. “Quickly, now. Quickly quickly.”

They scurry along in her wake, trying to keep up with her long strides. Once out on the street, they all blink, their eyes watering in the bright summer sunlight.

“All right, then,” Selena says, ushering them down the busy sidewalk to nowhere in particular. “You understand you now have to abandon that location, correct?”

They all nod.

“All right. Now we need to think beyond today. Is there anything else anywhere? Any files? Patient records? Where do you keep those?”

“We don’t,” Evelyn says. “We only have one patient docket per day, just for that day’s use, then it gets shredded.”

“Where’s the one for today?”

There’s a single beat before Evelyn answers. “We ate it.”

Selena halts in her tracks, turns to face the other three women with her hand in the air like a stop sign. Both Nancy and Alice nearly plow into her. “Excuse me?”

“We ate it. In the van.”

“Ate the what?”

“The record.”

“The paper record?”

“Yes.”

Selena’s eyebrows pop up. “Huh. Well… it sounds like you could all use a cold beer to wash it down, then. My treat. Let’s go find a patio.”