by Randy Alcorn
He drove up to the big red Emergency sign, ignoring parking instructions. He ran up to the double glass doors and into the waiting room.
The blonde receptionist, skittish at the sight of the intruder, held her finger over a panic button and said in her most commanding voice, “Yes? Can I help you?”
“My sister.” Clarence struggled for breath. “She’s here.”
“Name?”
“Clarence Abernathy.”
“I mean your sister’s name.” Clarence thought he heard condescension in her voice.
“Dani. Dani Rawls.”
She looked over some papers, then pushed a few buttons on the computer, looking at the screen. “When was she admitted?”
“I don’t know. Forty minutes ago, maybe. Where is she? What’s happening?”
“We have no record of her. We do have a Rawls though. Felicia Rawls.”
“Felicia? That’s my niece!”
O God, not Felicia.
“Yes. She’s…hold on, I’d better get a doctor. Please take a seat.”
“I’m going in.”
“No! You can’t!” She pressed the panic button. As Clarence pushed open the emergency door a blue-coated doctor said, “Hold on. You can’t come in here!”
“Where’s Felicia? Where’s Dani?”
A uniformed security guard rushed in from the parking lot. When Clarence turned toward him, the guard put his hand on his gun.
“Wait,” the doctor said. He looked at Clarence. “Are you related to Felicia Rawls?”
“She’s my niece.”
“Okay. All right. I think we’ve got it under control, Freddy,” he said to the guard. “I’m Dr. Brose,” he said to Clarence. “Please sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down.” His eyes smoldered. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“Your niece is in surgery.”
“Surgery? Why?”
“To remove the bullets.”
“Bullets? Felicia’s been shot too?”
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Brose said. “I thought you knew. Look, Dr. Mahmoud is doing the surgery. I’m not sure how long it will be.” He craned his neck, looking through the door’s glass window. “There’s a surgery nurse coming out. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
Clarence put his foot in the door, heard hushed whispers in the hallway, then watched Dr. Brose coming with another doctor. This one had blood on his blue scrubs, his brown forehead dripping with sweat.
“This is Dr. Mahmoud,” Dr. Brose said to Clarence.
Great. They couldn’t get an American doctor to treat a little black girl?
“Are you Felicia’s closest relative?” Dr. Mahmoud asked Clarence.
“Besides her mother and…Yeah, I’m the closest.”
“Your niece took two bullets.”
Clarence’s jaw trembled.
“One’s not a problem. It’s in her shoulder. We can get it later if…”
“If what?”
“If we can…take care of the one lodged in her cranium.”
“Her head?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Clarence sat down.
“I got the surgery started. We couldn’t wait for the specialist. Dr. Deumajing took over for me, and I’ve been assisting.”
Deumajing? What is this, a United Nations hospital?
“Was the surgery successful?”
“It’s still going on.”
“Then why are you out here?”
“I’ve been working ten hours straight, been in four surgeries. They pushed me out the door for a break. You don’t want to get punchy. We’ve still got a ways to go. I honestly don’t know how it’s going to come out. It will be another hour at least.”
“Do either of you know where my sister is? Dani Rawls?”
“No,” Dr. Brose said, while Dr. Mahmoud shrugged. “Is she supposed to be here?”
“That’s what I was told. She was shot too. Unless they got mixed up and meant just Felicia. But then Dani would be here. Where is she?”
“I don’t know anything about her,” Dr. Mahmoud said. “I’ve been with Felicia. I need to get a cup of coffee then head back into surgery. You’ll have to ask the receptionist.”
“I did. She doesn’t know anything.” Dr. Mahmoud walked back through the door.
“Where did the shooting happen?” Dr. Brose asked.
“North Portland. Jackson Street.”
“Maybe there were two ambulances. They could have taken your sister to Bess Kaiser.”
“I’ll call them,” the receptionist said, dialing the number without having to look it up.
“Thanks,” Clarence mumbled. He looked at her, wondering why she was on hold so long.
“Sorry,” she finally said. “They have no Dani Rawls.”
Clarence went to the phone and called Dani’s number. No answer.
I can’t do Felicia any good here. I’ve got to find Dani.
He ran to his car. He drove toward Martin Luther King Boulevard, praying for Felicia and Dani.
She’s just a little girl, God. Just a child. And she needs her mama. So do I.
Clarence rolled down his window, needing to feel the fresh air and light rain on his face. He whizzed by the graffiti-marred street signs of Brumbelow and Moffat and made a sharp right turn onto Jackson Street, his tires squealing.
What the…
He threw on the brakes and skidded to a stop two feet short of a car parked crossways in the middle of the street.
Who’s the jerk that left his car…
A thin muscular man with what looked like tools dangling from his belt stood stiffly. He’d popped up from behind the parked car and moved cautiously but swiftly toward Clarence’s window.
Clarence jumped out, moving toward the man, his voice agitated. “I need to get to my sister’s.”
“Hold it right there.” The man’s arms were fully extended in front of him. Clarence looked at the gun in his hand.
“Show me both hands. Now! Get ’em up!”
Clarence raised both his hands. He knew the drill.
“Keep ’em up.”
Clarence surveyed the scene, shrouded in semidarkness because of three shot-out streetlights. He now saw a half-dozen people, some of them in robes and nightshirts, gawking at Dani’s house. He looked at the yellow police tape strung across the street behind the police car. He could barely read the bold black letters on the shimmering yellow tape: Crime Scene—Do Not Cross.
“Bend over. Hands on the hood.”
Clarence leaned on his hands, turned his head to the left, and looked toward Dani’s, three houses away. He could see a bustle of activity, at least four people standing on Dani’s front porch, coming in and out the front door.
The uniformed officer patted him down. Though Clarence had never committed a crime other than speeding, this was the sixth time in some twenty-two years living in Portland he’d been patted down by police. He was counting.
The cop turned his neck to the left and mumbled something into a two-way radio microphone on his shoulder, with the curly black chord running down to his belt.
“Can we get this over with, officer? That’s my sister’s house. My name’s Clarence Abernathy.”
“Abernathy? The sportswriter?”
“Yeah.”
And who are you, Elliot Ness?
“All right, take out your wallet,” the officer said. “I need to see some ID.” The cop seemed more relaxed now that the pat down had produced nothing more threatening than breath mints and a credit card receipt.
Clarence remembered his Trib press pass. He turned to lean back through the window and reach into the glove box.
“Freeze!” The officer’s gun followed him like a homing beacon. “Keep your hands out of the car!”
“But my press pass is in—”
“Just show me your driver’s license.”
Clarence fumbled through the wallet and produced his license. The officer shined a flashlight on the picture, a
nd then on Clarence’s face. He made another mental comparison, perhaps to his profile sketch in the Trib.
“Okay, Mr. Abernathy. I’m sorry. But you should drive more carefully. And don’t go jumping out of your car like that. With what happened here tonight I thought… It’s a tense situation.”
“What did happen here?” Tired of not getting answers, Clarence strode toward the yellow tape and stepped right over it.
“Wait. Stop! You can’t go in there.”
“I just did,” he mumbled, not looking back.
Clarence marched toward the house, still sixty feet away, eyeing a second ribbon of yellow tape cordoning off the entire front of the house. If he had just walked into the holy place, he now headed toward the holy of holies. He expected the officer he’d passed to grab him, but instead he heard him talking on his radio in an excited voice.
Out Dani’s front door barged a heavy-jowled, ham-fisted man in plainclothes, maybe six feet tall but an easy 250 pounds. He duck-walked to the top stair, then glided quickly down the steps. He stepped over the yellow tape beneath him and faced off with Clarence.
“Hold it right there, buddy.”
I’m not your buddy.
“This is a crime scene. You can’t come in. You’ve got to leave.”
Clarence stood still, restraining himself and calculating his next move.
“I’m Detective Ollie Chandler.”
Well, I’m the Prince of Wales. Wait a minute. Ollie Chandler?
The uniformed officer appeared from behind, looking back nervously at the assigned post he’d deserted in pursuit of Clarence.
“I warned Mr. Abernathy not to come in,” the officer said.
“Look,” Detective Chandler said to Clarence, “the yellow tape there—you might have read it as you crossed it—it’s the one that says a kazillion times Do Not Cross? It’s to keep the rubbernecks away from a crime scene that needs to remain undisturbed. So please, Mr. Abernathy…hang on. Clarence Abernathy? From the Tribune?”
“Yeah.” Clarence felt a glimmer of satisfaction. Recognition had gotten him in a lot of places. Maybe now he’d get an apology.
“Well, then,” Detective Chandler said, “you’re especially unwelcome.”
“What?”
“Nobody messes up a crime scene like a reporter. They think they’re above all the rules. Guess you’re a case in point, aren’t you?”
“This is Dani’s house. This is my baby sister’s place.”
“Dani Rawls is your sister? I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I just came from Emanuel Hospital. My niece is there, but I can’t find my sister. Did they take her somewhere else? Is somebody with her? What’s going on?” The voice now sounded more pleading than demanding, and Ollie Chandler’s defenses dropped. He looked down at the dark pavement, sighing deeply.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Abernathy. Your sister—”
“What? What?”
“She’s…dead.”
Clarence dropped down knees first to the sidewalk. Another man in plainclothes, a young Hispanic, moved quickly toward him, obviously concerned about Clarence disturbing evidence. Ollie waved the man off. “I’m really sorry,” Ollie said to Clarence.
Clarence looked up, he and the Hispanic now eyeballing each other. “This is my partner, Manuel,” Ollie said.
Clarence didn’t hear the introduction. He stood slowly, in disbelief. He looked from the porch to Dani’s bedroom. He gazed at the window that had the duct tape on it, the one he was going to fix next week. Wait, had someone already fixed it? He blinked hard. No, it only looked okay because the glass had been obliterated. There was barely a shard left hanging from the edges. All that remained were shreds of vanilla blinds hanging limply on the far side of the window frame.
The whole front right side of the house looked like a piece of meat that had been tenderized, then picked at with a filleting knife. It appeared an explosion within the wall itself had popped parts of it outward.
Clarence looked up at the porch, which extended three or four feet out from Dani’s bedroom window. It was covered with yellow triangular markers, each with a bold black number. At first Clarence thought they must be some of the twins’ playthings.
“What are those?” he asked weakly.
“Evidence markers,” Ollie replied. “One for each shell casing.”
The highest number he saw was forty. “But…there’s forty of them?”
“Yeah.”
Forty shells? It couldn’t be.
“Did they take her away?”
“Not yet. They’re waiting,” Ollie said. He pointed past the yellow tape crossing the street eighty feet on the other side of the house. Clarence saw a beige paneled van with someone putting away a small box behind the driver’s seat. “We have to finish a couple of things before we move her. We’re using a laser unit to document the crime scene before anything gets disturbed.”
“I’m going in to see her.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Abernathy. You can’t. No way.”
Clarence raised his foot above the yellow tape at the bottom of the stairs. Manuel stepped right in front of him, glaring up at his eyes, which had the effect of waving the red cape in front of a bull. Without lifting his arms Clarence moved forward, pushing the smaller man back.
A uniformed officer on the porch pulled a big .45 from his holster and said “Hold it.” Manuel opened a fanny pack at his waist and smoothly pulled out a smaller gun, a nine millimeter, with his right hand and cuffs with his left.
“Hands behind your back. Now!”
“Hold it, hold it,” Ollie said. “Back off, Manny.”
“He’s disturbing evidence. Interfering with an investigation. Assaulting a police officer.”
“I’ll handle it, Manny. I said back off.”
Manny hesitated, then self-consciously gestured, a disgusted look on his face. His look seemed to say, “I followed procedure—we get in trouble for this and you’re on your own.”
“Look, Mr. Abernathy” Ollie said. “Trust me. You don’t want to go in there anyway. It isn’t pretty.”
“I have to see her.”
“I can’t let you in.” Ollie glanced around, assessing the situation. He looked at a few of the worker bees. “We’ve done all the work on the steps, right? You got that footprint, right Bo?”
A nonuniformed man carrying a little kit nodded.
“Okay, Mr. Abernathy. I’m not supposed to do this, but if you promise to stay right here, you can sit on the steps. If you let us finish our job they’ll…wheel her out in a few minutes.”
Manuel shook his head in disbelief. He pulled Ollie aside.
“We can’t let him…” Clarence heard them arguing. At one point he heard Ollie say, “We’re done with the steps. They’re history. If it was my sister…” The voices trailed off, then he caught a few more snatches.
“The lieutenant hears this and he’s gonna have a fit,” Manny said.
“It’s my case, my call. I need to talk to the medical examiner. Ken, watch Mr. Abernathy, okay?”
Ken, the uniformed officer up on the porch, stood in front of the door like a jackal guarding an Egyptian tomb. Clarence watched several bursts of light come from Dani’s bedroom. A few minutes later he saw the police photographer through the open door, kneeling down to change film.
“Clarence!” The sobbing voice called to him from across the street, inside the outer cordoned zone. Clarence stepped over the inner yellow tape and embraced the big woman, Hattie Burns, who ran past another frustrated uniformed officer.
“I’ve got Ty and Celeste,” Hattie said. “How’s Felicia?”
“She’s in surgery. They’re trying to take out the bullet…,” his face suddenly distorted, “from her head.”
Hattie’s arms surrounded him again. Clarence didn’t know whether the moan that reverberated through him was his or hers. He pretended he was hugging Mama again, after all these years.
“What happened, Hattie?”
“It was an explosion that went on and on. I looked out the window. Saw someone up on the porch, hard to see with just the streetlights. Think I saw a big rifle in his hands. He ran to a car in the middle of the street, got in, and they were gone, just like that. Why would they do this? What’s wrong with those gangbangers?”
Clarence wanted to ask her many questions, but not now. He stood silently, not sure of the whats, but certain he would never understand the whys.
He looked across the street and saw Ty standing on Hattie’s porch, numbly looking over the situation. The air hung wet now, little droplets moving from mist to shower. He walked from Hattie and went toward Ty. Clarence hesitated as if there was something he needed to apologize for, then tried to put his arms around his nephew. Ty resisted, as though he was trying to be tougher than he was. Suddenly the raindrops on the boy’s face were joined by tears.
“Why they do this to my mama?”
“I don’t know, Ty. I don’t know.”
They stood in awkward silence for a few minutes, until Mrs. Burns joined them. “I’ll take care of the children till…till we figure out what to do. Don’t worry about them.”
“Thanks,” Clarence said, his face feeling as if it had been shot with novocaine. He crossed the street and went back up the stairs, scrutinized by Officer Ken. He started to sit down, then something caught his eye. The shredded blinds that had been hanging so precariously a few minutes ago had dropped out of sight. He could now see part of Dani’s bedroom. He leaned to his right over the stair railing, trying to look in. Suddenly he went up the final stair and strode the eight feet to her window.
“Hold it. I don’t think you’re supposed to come past the stairs, are you?” Officer Ken sounded uncertain.
Clarence gazed into the room through the windowless window. His first sight was the familiar needlepoint wall hanging made by his mother, with a green lettered quote from Martin Luther King. “We must spread the propaganda of peace.”
He squared up with the window frame and stared directly into the room. Glass and wood chips and chaos permeated it. Mama’s prize brocade chair lay splintered, one leg ripped off as if severed by the jaws of a monster. He saw Detective Chandler leaning over what appeared to be a mannequin lying on the floor.