Valerie Nkemdirim was arrested the same morning at eleven, at her office, quietly, at her attorney’s request, after a phone call at seven in which she was told what was happening and given four hours.

She was eight months pregnant by then.

I have thought about that a great deal and I am not going to write what I think about it, because it is not mine.

The searches happened simultaneously — the hotel room, the office, the study in my house, which I let them do and which took nine hours and which I could not be present for.

They took the computer, the drawer, the eleven pages of a legal pad.