Details at Ten (14 page)

“I’m here live with Mabel and Kelly Stewart. They are Butter’s grandmother and mother. You’ve met them before. We’ve brought you continuous coverage of the search for Butter, who has been missing now for three days. Miss Mabel, tell us, what kind of a child is Butter?”

Zeke pushed into a shot of Miss Mabel; her hands were shaking as she sat on Butter’s bed, clutching the girl’s pink pillow with unicorns all over it. “My Butter likes these animals, sitting here. She’s a smart chile, sit here and read books all the time and don’t bother anyone, just curl up wit’ a book and her animals… .”

There were about a dozen stuffed animals, bears, tigers, a hippo against the wall. Zeke panned them with the camera, then pulled back to Miss Mabel.

“… Trip won most of these at one of them street carnivals they begged to go tah. I ain’t have the money. But I found some extra that day … umm-huh … and give the money to the kids so they could go. Butter hugged my neck and said, ‘Thank you, Gran, you the best gran in the world.’ My Butter said that to me.”

Miss Mabel brought her index finger, curled and shaking, to her lips, as if she had a secret to keep to herself. Miss Mabel was clearly trying to hold her emotions in check and it worked for just about five seconds. But all that sadness and fear whipping around inside of her wouldn’t stay put, forcing a tear to go public, freely displaying her pain.

Zeke panned over to Kelly, who was sitting at a little plastic drawing table like a lot of little children have. There were sketches Butter had made on pieces of paper. A house. A horse. A car. Kids on a playground. Kelly looked at Butter’s work, her eyes coming alive. She seemed to be gathering together pieces of happy times, hugging them like a child hugs a favorite toy.

“These Butter’s pictures,” Kelly said softly. “She likes to draw and color. Go broke tryin’ ta keep the girl in Crayolas and books. This her favorite, this house here with the blue top and white bottom. She says, ‘Mama, I wanna live in a pretty house like this one day.’ That’s why I work nights and take my business classes during the day at Kennedy-King College, so I can get my degree and do better for all us. Now I don’t care ’bout nothing, I just want my baby Butter back home …”

Zeke pulled out his shot to include me. I ended the live shot by updating the story: “There have been no signs of Butter. Several reputed members of the Rockies have been brought in for questioning, and the neighborhood has been quiet. The gangs, police say, are hiding underground and tensions are mounting. Georgia Barnett, Channel 8 News, back to you in the newsroom.”

When I ended my live shot, Zeke popped his head out away from the camera lens and winked at me. I smiled just as one of the kids stationed outside by the live truck yelled, “Your car phone is ringing!” I went outside and answered it.

“Georgia, fuckin’ fabulous! Fuckin’ fabulous! That was great. You’re a goddess!” It was Bing, gushing kudos and heaping praise. I was pleased, but in television news I know you’re a hero one minute and a butt head the next. It changed from story to story, from deadline to deadline.

Zeke came out to the truck. I gave him a thumbs-up and he grinned. In the middle of all this my pager went off. It was Doug. I cut Bing off, telling him I had to catch an interview. I hung up and dialed Doug.

“Got a tip for you,” he said.

Finally! I’d been playing by his rules for the longest and now Doug was giving me a play. “What’s going on?”

He began talking about the drive-by shooting case. “That last victim in the hospital? The one in critical?”

“Yeah, the teenage girl.”

“Right. She just died. The Rockies and the Bandits have been cool about this feud ’cause we’ve put so much heat on them. That’s why nothing has jumped off so far. They’ve got Butter and now she’s more than a witness to a drive-by; now it’s murder.”

I pictured Little Cap and remembered his lengthy criminal record. I mumbled, “With Little Cap’s rap sheet, he’ll land on death row. And I don’t mean records. I mean Stateville Prison.”

“Bad joke.”

“Sorry, I’m nervous and sometimes a bad joke will calm me down.”

“Georgia, my bones tell me something’s going to give and give real soon.”

“What does that mean for Butter?” I said, fear rushing up inside of me.

Silence.

“Doug, talk to me.”

“Georgia, what do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say that you guys are going to find her. The Chicago PD can’t find a little girl? Now I’m getting like Reverend Walker. Are you guys trying hard enough?”

“The last thing I need is you jumping in my stuff. I’ve got that bad press from Reverend Walker and the chief of detectives is on my back demanding daily updates. Don’t give me grief. You should be glad I called you up to help you out.”

Doug’s salty response made me angry. “One little tip you gave me,” I said. “I’ve been playing your game the entire time, Doug.”

“All you’ve got to deal with is getting your story on the air, Georgia. That’s no big deal! I’m a detective and I’m dealing with some heavy shit here.”

“And I’m not? I’m sent out here every day to look at their faces—Miss Mabel and Kelly, and Trip’s, too. I have to look at Butter’s stuffed animals and her bed that hasn’t been slept in and I’m worryin’ about this child like she’s mine. Hear me, Doug?”

Of course he didn’t. He had hung up on me.

Zeke came walking out of the house. Extra lengths of cable were looped around his neck, arms, and waist as if he’d gotten caught by some black-tailed reptile from Jurassic Park. “What’s next, Georgia?” he asked.

“Community Hospital.”

Z
eke should have been an ambulance driver. One, because we passed an ambulance, beating it to the hospital. And two, because I always seem to need a stretcher after riding in the truck with him. But I can’t complain too much because Zeke got me there in plenty of time to snoop out my story.

We pulled into a no parking zone right in front of the hospital. I eased out of the truck, shaking as usual from Zeke’s psycho driving and unsettled as all get-out because of this latest turn of events.

I may have been unsettled but I didn’t forget how to do my job, how to cover my story. I had called ahead to the hospital media director, who was not available. I called the nurses’ station and got a supervisor who wouldn’t comment and referred me to the media director. I called another source at the cop shop, but my source said to call the hospital. The entire scenario put me in mind of Billy Preston’s song “Will It Go Round in Circles.”

I wanted to reconfirm my tip from Doug that the girl was dead. Not that I didn’t believe him, it was just a habit of mine to double-check everything if I could. I needed background on this new angle of the story. I was not about to get caught with my panties down.

On the day of the drive-by I had the lead story at the scene and another reporter was live at the hospital doing a sidebar story on the five shooting victims. I called back to the station and asked Clarice to go pull the sidebar package from that day. She found the tape, took it into a screening room where she played it, and held the phone up to the speaker so I could hear and take notes.

Reporter Ada Gonzales’s voice sounded rusty coming through over the car phone line:

“And the most critical victim is seventeen-year-old Jackie Martin. She was sitting on her front steps when two bullets hit her in the chest and hip. Doctor Adam Chu says that Martin lost a great deal of blood and that her wounds are life-threatening.”

Then I heard a sound bite from the doctor, who said the next twenty-four hours would be critical for the patient; he noted her youth and said that the bullet was lodged deep in the chest cavity. A few more inches and there wouldn’t be any need for a press conference, he concluded.

Gonzales’s reporter track continued:

“In an ironic twist, two of Martin’s relatives retired from this facility—one as a lab assistant and the other as a janitor. The Martin family is holding vigil here twenty-four hours a day. Family members divide their time between Jackie’s room and this table inside the hospital’s cafeteria. It’s a base, if you will, where relatives wait their turn to visit with Jackie. They say some family member will keep up the vigil here until the seventeen-year-old girl is out of danger… .”

Now I knew right where to go. Zeke and I headed into the hospital cafeteria and went straight to the table of worried-looking people. There sitting huddled together was the family of Jackie Martin.As I approached the table, I told Zeke to roll but point his camera to the floor first. I held the mike at my side and said, “Excuse me. My name is Georgia Barnett, with Channel 8 news. I’m very sorry about the death of Jackie. I know that this is a tough time for the family but we’d”-then I nodded to Zeke who raised his camera—“like to talk to you about this tragedy.”

“Excuse me!” A hand grabbed my mike. It was the hospital security guard. “Did you get clearance to be inside here?”

“Of course,” I lied instantly.

“I don’t see any passes!”

I picked up one that was on the edge of the table. “See?”

The security guard knew something wasn’t right and he looked confused.

“Go, Georgia, we’ve got a deadline,” Zeke said, stepping in front of the guard, who backed off and left.

I had to burn rubber now. The guard was going to go check my story. I had to get as much as I could before he came back to toss us out on our tails. I turned to a slim young brother in his early twenties with large sleepy eyes, caramel-colored skin, and wispy, high-arching eyebrows. He was sitting in the booth, his arm limp behind the split vinyl of the seat. He turned to me and said, “I’m Jackie’s brother, Jason.”

“With Jackie’s death,” I asked gently, “what do you want people to know about your sister?”

“Jackie was going to be somebody. She went to school and got good grades and was in no trouble whatsoever. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“With the wrong person you mean!” This from a woman who was sitting at the head of the table, her shoulders slumped down, slim hands resting on her forearms. Dark lines creased her cheeks and her skin was the shiny, baked brown of pie crust. She had the solemn demeanor that was expected of a senior citizen placed in a dire situation such as this. “Jackie hung out with that no-good Negro entirely too much!”

“Ssssh, Auntie Vee—” someone whispered.

“Ssssh, nothin’, if she hadn’t been sittin’ there with that no-good T-Bob—you better believe they was shootin’ at him. I’m tired! Hear? Tired. Now Jackie is gone. And Lord knows what’s happened to little Butter.”

“Don’t air that part about T-Bob,” Jason said in a low yet stern voice. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Do you live in the same neighborhood?”

“They do. I got sent to live in Connecticut with some cousins eight years ago when the gangs tried to jump me in. I’ve been living there ever since. I have my two-year degree and I’m working for a real estate broker. The first thing I want to do after the funeral is look for a house and move my family out of Chicago, away from the old neighborhood.”

I got a couple of more sound bites from Jason. No other family member wanted to talk. I asked him, off the record, about T-Bob.

“T-Bob was nothing but a little shorty when I left.” Jason laughed. When his voice stopped I could hear the crinkle of stubble as he rubbed an emerging beard. For a young man, he was looking very old right now. “T-Bob hung out with Jackie and her best friend, Karen, all the time,” Jason went on. “I know he was trying to get some play from one of them, but I couldn’t figure out which one. Now my family is down on T-Bob because he hasn’t come ’round since Jackie got shot. He was sitting in the middle of the girls when the drive-by happened. I heard T-Bob grabbed them around the neck and tried to roll out of the way, but Jackie was on the outside and got caught.”

“You say your family is hard on him. Obviously you don’t feel the same way?”

“I know it’s rough out there … I know the streets are bad … but T-Bob, yeah, he could have come to visit her. But it’s tough. I’m not saying it’s his fault because I was on the streets once and I know how the pressure can get to you. But T-Bob could have called the house or something, you know?”

“You’re sure he’s gangbanging?”

“In that neighborhood? What teenager isn’t?”

“Hey!” The security guard was back. “Let’s go!”

I gave Zeke my “Think he’s mad?” look as we started to make a quick exit. “Jason, do you have a picture of Jackie?” I managed to ask.

“Umm, no. But my auntie might.”

The guard was pushing us out. “Hey! Hey!” Zeke yelled. “Get your hands off my fanny!”

A few of the cafeteria workers started laughing, while I shouted over my shoulder, “Bring it outside, please?”

Jason waved okay.

We went outside to kill time before our ten o’clock live shot, when we ran into Reverend Walker. “Georgia Barnett! You’re everywhere,” he said politely.

“And so are you,” I answered back just as politely. “You know the Martin family?” I asked, and out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed Zeke already on the case changing videotapes so he could start rolling as soon as possible.

“Of course. The Martin family attends services at my church. I also have a door-to-door ministry. I’m familiar with all the families in the neighborhood.”