Details at Ten (7 page)

Next to her was a young woman with the same high cheekbones and thick eyebrows, but she was rail-thin with splotchy skin decorated with dark spots and healed-over places. Strands of hair were sticking up here and there, air from the fans trying to comb them into place. She was smoking a narrow cigarette but holding it like a joint, taking deep, burdened-by-the-world pulls off the tobacco. Druggie, I thought.

Then there was a little boy about nine or ten sitting on the floor between the legs of the old lady and the druggie. He had his right arm wrapped loosely around the old lady’s left leg and he stroked her toes lovingly, all the while looking at me with big experienced eyes. He was a cute kid, slim like the rest of his family, keen-featured, smooth-skinned, wearing a blue T-shirt and shorts with a pair of new Nike gym shoes. He had bandages on his right hand and one on his left knee.

I looked at the two women. Could one of them be the woman I had talked to on the phone? I just didn’t think so. I felt no connection to them. Neither spoke; so above all else the aggressiveness of the woman I had talked to was immediately missing.

Then I heard a toilet flush and the snap of a turning door latch. A short woman in her early twenties came out of the rear bathroom. She was using the flat of her palms to adjust the two-piece blue shorts set she had on. Her narrow smooth-skinned face was fair; she had long skinny braids down her back, and she had large bloodshot eyes. She looked dead at me and I got the vibe.

“Kelly?” I asked.

Reverend Walker answered, “Yes, this is the worried mother. May we all be seated.”

Now I respect the church but I hoped Reverend Walker wasn’t going to get in the middle of this too much. We would need his prayers, but Doug and I would also need a free flow of communication between us and the Stewarts. It was obvious that he had prepped the family, the way he had them all sitting around like they were waiting for a prayer meeting to start. I looked at my companions. Zeke dropped his eyes. Doug hunched his shoulders and then introduced himself. “And of course you know reporter Georgia Barnett.”

“Yep!” The little boy smiled at me. Then he said to the druggie, “She the one put us on TV, Ma.”

Butter’s mother made the formal introductions after she moved to sit down on the ottoman at her mother’s side. “Hi, I’m Kelly, and this is my mama, Miss Mabel. That’s my sister, Angel, and her son, Roger.”

“Roger!” The little boy made a loud fart sound through a slender gap in his front teeth. “My name is Trip!”

I smiled at him. “Why do they call you Trip?”

Kelly, Angel, Miss Mabel, and the Reverend, all of them answered at once: “’Cause he always falling!”

That made everyone laugh.

“Trip, young man,” Doug began to ask between chuckles. “Get us some chairs, huh?”

Trip rolled his eyes.

Miss Mabel snapped, “Boy, if you don’t get a move on, you’d better!”

Trip scrambled up, ran behind one of the blankets, and came back hustling with three folding chairs. Doug grabbed one and opened it for me. Zeke declined to take a seat but stood the chair up next to him as he leaned back against the wall. Doug took the third folding chair and sat near Miss Mabel.

While seated I took a long, deep breath and caught Zeke out of the corner of my eye. He pointed down at his camera resting on the floor but I shook my head no. Zeke scowled at me. I thought, I know … I know … you always roll whether you use it or not, but not yet. A little girl’s life was at stake. I asked God to be my guide.

“Kelly,” I began, strong and firm in voice, “I asked Detective Eckart to come here this evening with me. That’s because, well, we think that Butter is in danger.” Now, I sip facts and spew words for a living. But this was the first time that I hated that I was even opening my mouth. I hated hearing my own voice right now because Butter’s mother and grandmother looked like they were about to die from worry.

“She missin’, yeah-yeah, but can’t y’all find her?” Kelly said as she slunk down and sat on the very edge of the ottoman.

Doug leaned forward toward Kelly, “Can we discuss this privately? Just the family?”

Miss Mabel gave Doug a long, hard stare. “That’s all that’s here—and the Lord.”

Reverend Walker released an affirmative sigh.

“Of course, ma’am,” Doug quickly agreed before getting right to the point. “We think that Butter might be being held against her will—”

“Kidnapped?” Reverend Walker’s eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Who’d wanna kidnap a baby like Butter?” her grandmother asked. “And what fah?”

“She saw the drive-by the other day,” Doug answered.

Please, Doug, break it to the family a little easier.

“Butter,” Doug explained further, “saw the shooter and basically described him on television.”

“Dear God.” Reverend Walker gasped. “She’s an eyewitness and they know it.”

Instantly Miss Mabel and Kelly reached for each other’s hands. Kelly said softly, “Oh Mama.”

Angel cursed under her breath, her right hand balled up an empty cigarette package, and she slung it across the room. Kelly was breathing heavily when her eyes met mine. “Is that what caused all this mess? Butter being on TV?”

“It was a mistake to put her on, but I had no idea—”

“Bullshit!” Angel shouted. “It’s your fault. You shoulda known better than to put a baby on TV talking about a gangbanger!”

I held my head up, but I felt very bad. What could I say? I’m sorry? I’d jump down my own throat for making a lame remark like that. So I apologized in my heart and explained from my head. “It was not intentional and I’m here to do whatever I can to help—I wanted to help even before I realized who Butter actually was.”

“That’s right,” Zeke spoke up for the first time, trying to have my back. “Georgia fought for the story all day from the minute you called. We only figured out the connection a few minutes ago back at the police station.”

“It’s still her bad!” Angel snapped, smashing her cigarette butt against the top of a can of cream soda.

“Angel!” Kelly said, grabbing the end seams of her shorts. “Just shut your smart mouth up, okay?!”

“Who you? You don’t run me!”

“Listen here!” Miss Mabel shouted.

“Everybody cool down,
now!”
Doug took charge. “This is not the time for fighting or blaming”—he leaned forward—“it’s about getting Butter back safe and unharmed.”

“Oh my God!” Miss Mabel whispered. It finally really hit her. She closed her eyes. “Y’all have to do something!”

“Are they gonna hurt my baby?” Kelly asked, clenching her fist as her face quickly paled.

“No,” I blurted out. Could I will it so? A good reporter follows instinct. I had that and then some. I was born with a caul, what the old folks in the South call a veil. Sometimes … sometimes … I could feel things. I knew Butter was alive, for some reason, although mainly the reasons that Doug had explained to me earlier. “Tell them, Doug.”

“We believe Butter is alive. The Rockies—”

“They better not hurt my grandbaby!” Miss Mabel hissed, sweat beading across her forehead.

“—they aren’t going to kill her. They’re just trying to scare her and let things cool off until they get the shooter out of town. That’s it.”

“We must get the word out to the public,” Reverend Walker said, leaning forward, pointing. “Let those thugs know that we want Butter back and safe.”

“No, that’s just what we’re
not
going to do,” Doug countered.

Huh? What’s Mister-man thinking? Everyone in the room was surprised, including me. I had assumed that we were going to pump up this story and aim it dead at the Rockies. I waited, we all waited, for Doug’s reasoning.

“We don’t want to rattle them, make them do something rash. If we put a story on about Butter being kidnapped by the Rockies they might get nervous and do something stupid.”

“So how do you want me to handle the story?”

“You just do a straight missing child story, drop the gang references and that will keep the Rockies off-balance and buy our guys enough time to hit the streets.”

Everyone seemed okay with the idea except Reverend Walker. He bugged out. “That’s no way to deal with these thugs! You’ve gotta go at them. Subtle is nowhere in their vocabulary. They need fear—fear of what will happen to them if they hurt that child. Force to force is all they understand.”

“Mama, Reverend Walker is right.” Angel jumped in. “The cops don’t really care no’way!”

Doug slowly turned his stare toward Angel. It was the dirtiest, most hateful look I’ve seen in a long time. Angel was an angry person, combative. She didn’t punk out under Doug’s stare. I could really feel an edge to this woman. And that fact was working my last nerve. I was about tired of Miss Angel already.

“Officer.” Miss Mabel drew Doug’s eyes toward her. They instantly filled with sympathy. “I feel like you care. We’ve got to be careful for Butter’s sake because these gangboys are low-down as can be.”

“We have to have control of the situation,” Doug spoke gently to Miss Mabel and Kelly. “I don’t want anything to happen to Butter. Who would want that? No one. From my gut, I’m telling you this is the way to handle the situation.”

Quiet became the new person in the room. I looked up at Zeke, who tapped his watch with his pinky finger. Yeah, we had to get rolling—shooting, interviewing, all that for our ten o’clock package. I decided to muscle it.

“I’ve said that I will do all that I can to help. But all of us in this room know that we have to work together to get Butter back. I say we try Detective Eckart’s way because I can always turn my coverage up a notch but you can’t tone it down. Still, Butter is your little girl so it’s your call.”

Kelly looked at me, then Doug, and nodded. Reverend Walker got up and fanned himself with the open palms of his gnarled hands. “Well, I’m no longer needed. I’ll call you later, Miss Mabel.”

“Reverend, don’t leave.” Miss Mabel reached out to him.

He simply clutched her hands before walking out. The Reverend was mad. But what could we do? It wasn’t time for egos right now.

Kelly pulled out a bulky photo album and showed me pictures of Butter. There was the first-grade class photo—being tall she was standing in the second row. Kelly had a picture of Butter at age three on Santa’s lap at the Montgomery Ward store at Evergreen Plaza Shopping Center.

I went to the bedroom Butter and Trip shared. On Butter’s side were certificates taped to the wall: perfect attendance, spelling contest second place, and good conduct. Trip pulled out a VCR tape that the family had—Miss Mabel had won a video recorder in the church raffle but eventually sold it when they ran short of money one month.

The picture was fuzzy, the audio scratchy, but there was Butter reciting Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech for Sunday school. She had on the same pink and white cotton dress, but it was new.

Then the tape blurred and there was Butter again, the dress more worn and slightly shorter, as she stood in the school auditorium for the spelling bee crying after missing the word
aquarium
.

Then the shot panned away to the crowd, the tape stopped, and there was Butter on the stage holding a certificate and wearing a big T-shirt she’d just won. It was black with white letters,
BE
#1. It fit Butter like a formal gown. She looked so cute, I thought. Look at that baby!

Then there was another bad spot in the tape, and then there was Butter, same pink dress with the sleeves removed and the hem let out, playing outside. She was dodging in and out of a spray of water from the corner fire hydrant. Butter couldn’t help but smile as Trip sprayed her flush in the face and she fell, bouncing off a wave of water on the street, full of laughter.

Zeke was shooting the family watching the home video, then he shot the home video as it played on the television. I talked to Kelly, Trip, and Miss Mabel. Angel agreed with Reverend Walker’s position and refused to be interviewed, which was more than fine with me. I didn’t want to deal with her ’tude right now.

Doug briefed the family again on how he wanted to handle Butter’s disappearance then asked me to walk with him to the door. We promised to share any information we got on the case. Then Doug handed me a card with his home phone number on the back. “Use it, Georgia, if you need to.”

I took the card and handed him mine, which also had my home phone number on the back, and said, “You do the same.”

After Doug left, I got on the case. I got busy writing my story. Zeke and I went back to the truck and set up a signal; we fed all the tape we’d shot and my voice track back to the studio to be edited together. I was ready to go live.

Standing outside the house, I began to concentrate. I gave a mike check then refused the IFB earplug and told Zeke, “You cue me.” He set up a monitor at my feet so I could watch my package on television just as the people at home were seeing it.

Zeke cued me: “Three, two, and … Go!”

“I’m Georgia Barnett, live outside of the Stewart house on the South Side. Inside, the family is distraught and anxious as each member deals with the disappearance of a six-year-old girl named Kelly whom everyone here calls ‘Butter.’”

Back at the studio they hit the tape and I watched on the monitor. The piece opened with the home video of Butter.

“I have a dream today,” Butter said, smiling, her hands motioning out to the audience.