In the Dark

I felt someone connect a chain to my wrist chains and hook it to the floor of the vehicle. The truck lurched and jolted over the road. I almost fell over a few times but the chains painfully prevented that from happening. I could hear traffic moving on either side of our vehicle and the other occupants talking in Thai.

I wondered if Ken was on board this vehicle too or was he still at the airport wondering about me. He might have been killed by these people and now they were going to take me and use me in a state run whore house or something. "Calm the fuck down you stupid bitch," came my mother's voice out of my inner mind. Hers was always the "voice of reason" when I let my imagination run away.

After what seemed like hours we came to a stop. The chain holding me in place was unhooked and I was pulled to my feet by the collar chain. I was pulled out of the vehicle and led into a building. We made several turns and rode an elevator down. I was then led down a long hall and put into a room. They sat me in a chair and chained me to it. I heard them leave and close a door. I could hear a humming sound. It took me a few minutes to realize it was a heater. It had to be 100 degrees outside and it felt like it was as hot or hotter in that room.

I was hot, tired, hungry and scared. I don't know how long I sat there but I know at least two meal times had passed. The chains prevented me from sleeping, I'd start to nod off and I'd choke myself. I couldn't see anything, even the bottom of the bag was tucked in to prevent light from seeping through.

Even though the room was as silent as a tomb, I would have sworn I heard Ken screaming in agony. I could see the image in my head of him being burned or cut by these people trying to get him to confess to something we hadn't done. The longer I sat there the clearer I could hear his pain.

I was about to scream when the door opened. I could hear laughter in the hall but no screams. The man inside the door way seemed to be enjoying his conversation with a colleague in the hall. I realized that Ken's screams had been figments of my imagination.

The door closed and once again the room was silent. Then I could hear someone moving around behind me. Hands reached down and untied the hood I wore and lifted it off of my head. Then they unclasped the gag and removed it from my mouth. The man in front me now wore a suit but I saw a badge clipped to the inside of his jacket. He laid a metal clipboard, like truck drivers use, on the table and sat down.

He had a look of curiosity on his face as if he'd never seen a redhead before. He pulled a few sheets of paper from a compartment in his clipboard. I could see my picture on one page but I couldn't tell what was written there.

I hadn't realized just how thirsty I had become until the gag had been removed. "May I please have some water sir?'

He looked at me for a moment and then he spoke. "I can arrange for you to have a beverage if you are willing to talk to me Mrs. Ingalls.

He motioned to someone standing behind me. A bottle of water was placed in front of me. I reached to get it and realized I was still tethered.

"Oh, you can't reach in with your bindings on. But if you'll answer a few questions I can loosen them."

I nodded. I didn't have a clue as to what he might ask, but I was ready to do anything to get out of this situation. I hoped that Ken had called the consulate already and had help on the way.

"Mrs. Ingalls, will you tell me who gave you the opium you were caught smuggling?"

For a crazy instant I though he asked me about opium. It had to be a mistake because I didn't even have any ibuprofen let alone any illicit drugs like opium. "I beg your pardon. Did you say I was smuggling opium?"

He got an icy look in his eyes. "I know my English isn't close to that of an American, but I know I asked the question clearly. Who are you smuggling opium for Mrs. Ingalls?"

I just sat there stunned. How could they think that I was smuggling anything? I hadn't left my room except to go eat and the night out with Ken and his business partners. "I didn't smuggle anything." I croaked.

Without a word the man stood and walked out of the room. The door slammed and once again I was alone with my thoughts. I was parched and they had left the bottle of water on the table. I tried to reach for it but I was shackled too tightly.

I jerked and jolted and hoped that my bindings weren't as tight as they seemed. All I managed to do was cause pain in my arms and work up a bit of a sweat. All I could do was stare at the bottle as the condensation beaded up and cover the outside of the bottle.

I wanted so badly to even just lick the cool moisture from the outside of that bottle. Several drops became large enough to run down the bottle starting a puddle on the table's surface.

As time passed more of the precious liquid joined the puddle on the table and I grew thirstier. Just as I thought I would scream the door opened and someone entered the room behind me.

I turned my head and saw it was the same officer who had been questioning me a little while before.

"Opium; Mrs. Ingalls. I'm sure you don't really want to see it reaching the youth on the streets of your destination do you?"

"But I wasn't smuggling anything." I barely whispered. He looked perturbed and grabbed the bottle of water and took a big pull from it. I wanted to scream as I watched the level of the water getting lower in the bottle.

He smacked his lips and sighed with satisfaction. "That was good." He said. "As hot as it is in this room, only a cold drink of water can be so satisfying."

If I hadn't have been so parched I'm sure the tears would have flowed. I suddenly understood that if I didn't talk about smuggling opium I wouldn't get a drink. "OK. OK, I'll talk." I managed to gasp out.

I had no idea what to say but an absurd though came to me. I knew Carlos had gone into Bangkok and doubted they could find him. "It was Carlos." I said. "He offered me five hundred dollars to carry half of his opium for him."

"Who is this Carlos Mrs. Ingalls?" he asked.

"He sat next to me on the plane from Chiang Mai. He gave me the opium when we were in the air. I pulled a blanket over us as we transferred it from his bag to mine."

The man looked at me and the pushed the bottle towards me, but he stopped with it an inch away from my grasp. I sobbed with frustration then I looked up at the man. He smiled and said, "So Mrs. Ingalls, you admit to smuggling opium?"

"Yes! Yes, I admit I smuggled the opium." I said as he pushed the water into my hands. I drank deeply as he got up and left the room. As I savored the cool refreshing water, the thought that I had just admitted to a major felony never crossed my mind.

A short time later the door opened and three police officers entered the room. The man who had questioned me earlier was not among them. Two tall and lanky men began removing my tethers from the floor.

One of the men said something to me. I heard my name in what he said but I understood none of it. I just looked at him with a questioning look on my face. He frowned, and then with lightning speed hit me across my face knocking me to the floor.

He pulled me to my feet roughly and repeated his earlier words and then drew back to hit me again. At this point a short heavyset woman came storming into the room and tore into the man. He hung his head as she screamed at him. She turned to me and looked closely at my face. She said something I couldn't understand and the man walked out.

"I apologize for officer Dahking. He won't bother you any longer." She said to me. "We are taking you to central prison to hold you."

I had no time to contemplate her use of the word prison before I was whisked out of the room and down a long hall to an elevator. I wondered if Ken was behind any of the doors or he'd been taken to prison as well.

We rode the elevator down six floors and came to a security door. The woman punched some numbers on the lock pad and the heavy door swung inward. The first thing I noticed was how clean the place was. I had half expected a dirt yard and bamboo cages.

The prison looked like any American prison. Concrete walkways led to steel-doored cells with small windows. All I could see was the cells on this floor.

The next thing that struck me was the aroma of food. I suddenly realized just how long it had been since I had eaten anything. I was about to ask about a meal when we halted in front of a door. The woman said something into a walkie-talkie and the door popped open.

She walked me inside a small room. It was just wide enough that I couldn't reach both walls with out-stretched arms, and it was not so deep that I couldn't stretch on the floor and have my feet on the far wall and my hands on the door. Along one wall was a steel bed with a single blanket on it. There was a toilet in the opposite corner and a small steel basin was affixed to the wall halfway between the toilet and the door.

The woman removed my cuffs and backed out of the cell, slamming the door behind her. "I will see if the food staff is still about." She said through my window. I turned to thank her but she was gone.

After a few minutes, a round faced man looked in my window and spoke in broken English. "You no get food. Fifteen minute late. Food come in morning."

"But I have had nothing to eat today." I said. I have to admit I was dismayed by the whiny tone of my voice. "Please, I'll eat anything."

"Maybe you cooperate with police next time and not be late for food." He said as he walked away. I opened my mouth to protest but realized it wouldn't matter. I splashed lukewarm water on my face and sat on my bed.

It soon dawned on me that I had spent at least 36 hours now in police custody. I wondered where Ken was being kept. I was sure that he would get us out of here quite soon and this would just be a bad memory.

I wondered how long they could keep me before I was allowed to talk to the embassy. I would soon find out just how long it would be.

"Oh God I want to go home!" I cried. I cried for the next few days.

October 2003

For the first three weeks of my incarceration I never left my cell. I got two meals a day, usually a rice porridge and some kind of vegetable, and once a week I got a third snack consisting of a sweet rice cake.

I tried to keep myself as clean as I could, but the water from the small basin was only on for a few minutes each evening. I knew I smelled like the Green Bay Packers' locker room, but there was very little I could do about that.

From what I could tell, very few of the people occupying the cells around me were never let out either. Several days after I got there, I heard the person next to me be taken from her cell for around three hours but she hasn't been moved again since.

About an hour after this morning's meal, a portly woman opened the portal on my door and ordered me to back up to the door to be cuffed. I became a bit nervous, but did what I was told. After I was cuffed, three officers, the woman and two men marched me down a hall to a large shower facility.

"Strip!" the woman said. The two men stood there watching me seemingly more curious than anything else. I was about to protest having to strip in front of the men, when I noticed the rather large baton the woman was carrying.

I knew if I didn't comply, I would feel the business end of that baton. I stripped my putrid clothes off and was pushed into the shower area. The taller of the two men grabbed a hose and began spraying me. The water was mildly warm and was high pressure. It hurt my skin and I quickly discovered that I had raw patches from the lack of bathing. I was also in desperate need of a shave.

After a couple of minutes of being soaked with the hose, the shorter of the men handed me a small cake of soap. I immediately lathered myself up with the soap. I washed my hair and body with the same soap.

As soon as I was covered with the thin film o\f suds, they tuned the hose on me again. It seemed the man spent a little longer than necessary hosing off my ass, but I kept my mouth shut.

When he stopped hosing me down, the short man handed me the soap, and the woman said "Again."

After a third repeat I was handed a hand-towel sized piece of cloth similar to bed sheet material to dry off with. Once I was reasonably dry, I was handed a plain tan muslin shift, and a pair of sandals.

Once I was dressed, I was re-cuffed and led to the elevator. On the way down the woman said to me in a conversational tone, "You want to be careful of what you say about your stay here. It can get worse."

"How odd?" I thought to myself. I hadn't said a word to anybody and she was acting like I was a complaint machine. They led me to a room with a small wooden table. The room was small, but it was two stories tall, and had portals for guards to watch over the room from above.

Shortly after my guards left, two different guards appeared in the portals. Moments later the door opened and a man resembling a disheveled Dennis Franz entered the room. He wore a red and green Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, a cheaply made straw hat and a pair of Ray Ban Wayfarers straight out of the 80's. He carried an old beat up attaché case which he dropped on the table as he sat across from me.

"Damn it's hot out there today. I swear." He said with a slight British accent as he pulled a folder of papers from his case and began perusing them. "Darlene Ingalls; age 32, registered Democrat from Oakland California, married to one Kenneth Lawrence Ingalls for ten years. Mmm Hmm." He continued scanning through and then his eyebrows shot up in an almost comical fashion. "Confessed to opium trafficking." He looked up at me over his Ray Bans. "Mrs. Ingalls, if you'll pardon my French; it looks like you are in deep shit."

I was suddenly pissed off that my husband would hire such an incompetent boob to represent me on such serious charges. "Did Ken hire you to represent me?" I asked him.

He gave me a funny look and chuckled. "Oh no Mrs. Ingalls. Excuse my lack of manners. I am Ian Buchanan with the U.S. embassy here in Bangkok. I should have been here weeks ago, but your file just hit my desk two days ago."

"Well what about Ken? Have you seen him? Is he here too?"

"I'll have to look into that Mrs. Ingalls. I haven't received anything on him." I suddenly wondered why it had taken so long for me to talk to a representative of my government, and why he didn't know anything about my husband.

We talked for maybe half an hour before he hit me with it. "Mrs. Ingalls, the main reason I am here is because the high prosecutor of Thailand has notified us of their intention to put you on trial before Christmas. I need to ask you if there is anyone in The States that can hire an attorney to represent you."

"No I don't. My parents died ten years ago. My sister and I had to sell all of their possessions to cure their debts, then Louise hooked up with a guy and ran off. I wouldn't even know how to find her. My husband and I have money if you can get access to it."

He stood to leave and the thought ran through my head to ask him if I could be moved to a better facility. Just as I was about to open my mouth I saw both guards intently watching me. I thanked Ian for his attention and he promised to see what he could find out about Ken. He said he'd also look into an attorney for me.

He stood and the door opened. In no time he was gone and the three guards were in the room cuffing my hands again. They didn't say a word as they ushered me to the elevator and back to my cell. I was thankful that I got to keep the shift since my old clothes were pretty much hazardous waste.

I cried myself to sleep every night for the next three weeks. I knew Carlos had to have planted the opium in my bag. I didn't know why, but I prayed they'd catch him and he'd confess and clear my name so that I could go home. I felt even worse that my infidelity had gotten my beloved Ken into trouble. What must he think? Unless he and his company were smuggling drugs he had no clue why this had happened.

I didn't think Ken was a drug smuggler though. We had a few times when we struggled to make payments, and we didn't often have money to splurge. Drug dealer have cash to spare and I know we didn't. I was scared that Mr. Buchanan would tell me that Ken and I didn't have enough money to hire a competent Bangkok attorney. It took one month for me to get an answer.

November 2003

I was awakened by a baton banging on my cell door. I had been sick for the past three days, and there was no compassion to be had from the jail staff. I had resorted to flushing my meals down the toilet when I wasn't hungry after I was force fed by three of them on the first morning of my illness. As I came awake I realized that I didn't feel nearly as bad as I had the day before.

A cold fear ran through me that somehow they had discovered that I was flushing my food and were here to punish me for that. I felt my stomach clench and I broke out in a cold sweat.

Then I realized that this was a transportation detail. I backed up to the door and was cuffed. I was once again taken to the shower room and hosed and soaped several times. Again I was given a clean shift, but not new sandals, and led to the same room where I had talked to Mr. Buchanan before.

Moments later the door opened again and Ian Buchanan walked through followed closely by another man. Today Ian was wearing a paisley print button shirt and blue shorts. He wore the same hat and Ray Bans and carried the same attaché case.

Following him was a short balding Asian man. He had an open and friendly face, but his eyes were very businesslike. He was dressed conservatively and carried a pair of yellow legal notepads.

"Darlene Ingalls, allow me to introduce Kenji Kasagawa. He's an attorney in town from Nagasaki to defend a Japanese national who is accused of prostitution, amongst other things, and he has agreed to defend you as well."

Mr. Kasagawa bowed to me and then sat down. Ian opened his attaché case and looked up at me as I sat. "I have not been able to find anything out about your husband through local official channels. I have requested that the State Department look into it, but with the holiday season arriving I doubt we'll know anything before your trial, unless the Thai government tells us."

I felt my stomach drop. I knew that these foreign governments sometimes made Americans disappear, and I fear that had happened to Ken.

"I also tried to look into your financial situation." Ian said. "Your bank accounts are closed, whether they have been seized, which is likely given the situation, or not seized, the bank couldn't tell me. I have a request into the State Department to find out the answer to that as well."

So there it was. I was penniless, imprisoned in a foreign country, and my husband was missing. I doubted things could get worse. Then Mr. Kasagawa started spelling out what he knew.

"Mrs. Ingalls, I will defend you to the best of my ability, but I tell you it will not be easy. I had my people get ahold of the police files, but I still need you to tell me your side of this ordeal."

For the next thirty minutes I told him all about Carlos and how I thought he must have slipped the drugs into my bag as we flew. I didn't tell him of our sexual activities, I didn't want him thinking I was a whore. When he asked how I was being treated, I even told him about life in the jail. I completely forgot the guards watching from above.

December 2003

The past two days are the first days I have gotten regular meals since the day I talked to Ian and my attorney. The guards heard every word I told Mr. Kasagawa and quickly told my handlers.

The handlers did nothing as they escorted me back to my cell. A different woman than the one who led me to the interview room led me back to my cell. As I entered the cell she entered with me. She removed my cuffs, and the last thing I remember was a searing pain in the side of my face.