Contents Under Pressure

by Edna Buchanan

  “The what?”

  “The gray-top tube. What we have to do now is go back and check the gray-top tube. We preserve a vial of blood from every autopsy we do, whether it’s a fresh case or somebody who was in the hospital for six months. That’s one of our policies, in case something should ever come up later, something like this.”

  I asked a stupid question, forgetting how precisely coded everything is at the medical examiner’s office. “Why is it called the gray-top tube?”

  “The red-top tubes come with nothing, the purple-top tubes contain anticoagulants, and green-top tubes have heparin, another anticoagulant, the gray-top tubes have sodium fluoride, a preservative, the striped-top tubes are used for separating…”

  “I get it,” I said. What a meticulous and brilliant man, I thought. Miami is so lucky to have him.

  “We keep them in the autopsy room. When each body is admitted, a morgue attendant enters the name and case number into the computer, which automatically prints out labels for all the necessary containers. In every case there is a label for the gray-top tube.”

  “So you still have a sample of D. Wayne Hudson’s blood, taken after his death?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “How long will it take to test?”

  “Under the circumstances, we could probably have enough done this afternoon to tell us something.”

  “Shall I call you at noon?”

  “Two o’clock is more realistic.”

  I dialed Major Alvarez at police headquarters and asked his secretary for an appointment to see him later in the day.

  Perky when she answered, she now sounded vague and doubtful. “He’s very busy,” she said. “He, uh, has meetings all day.”

  “I need twenty minutes of his time,” I said urgently, “for an important story.”

  “Why don’t you call the public information office?” she asked brightly.

  “This story is sensitive, it concerns him personally. I think he would much rather speak directly to me.” That was tipping my hand, I knew, but I couldn’t resist, and he might be curious enough to bite the bait.

  She said she’d get back to me later in the day.

  Restless and on edge, I wanted to escape the office. Onnie’s temporary job had ended; I’d heard about a job prospect I wanted to talk to her about, and it would give me a chance to see Darryl. I called her number.

  “It’s me,” I said. “In the mood for a media noche? I’ll stop at La Esquina, and be right over.”

  “Don’t come, Britt.” I could hear Darryl playing in the background. Her words failed to register at first.

  “Don’t come, I said.”

  “Onnie? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s too dangerous.” Her voice was a low whisper. I could scarcely make out the words.

  “Has something happened?” Unconsciously my own voice dropped to a whisper. For a moment I was afraid that Darryl’s father had tracked them down.

  “It’s the streets,” she blurted. “They’re about to boil over. You’re not safe in this neighborhood, Britt. Don’t come.”

  “Come on,” I said, exasperated. “I know things are hot right now, but I’ve been over there a million times and nobody looks at me twice.” Hell, I thought, it’s not the greatest neighborhood, but if Onnie and Darryl can live there, I can certainly visit.

  “Not the way it is now, Britt. Don’t you dare try to come here. No white face is safe in this neighborhood today. I mean it.” Her voice shook. She was serious.

  “Oh, Onnie. I’m so sorry. But it’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

  “The jury is out, Britt. We’ll wait and see what happens.” The words sounded ominous.

  “Give Darryl a kiss for me, and yourself a hug.”

  “Be careful, Britt.”

  Shit, I thought savagely, what the hell is going on in this town?

  I called the medical examiner’s office. Nothing yet. I had hoped to have the ME results first, but decided to fill in Fred Douglas and Mark Seybold. Fred’s office was empty; he’d gone to lunch. I called O’Rourke; but he was out of his office, too.

  Too uptight to eat, even though I’d skipped breakfast, I drank some Cuban coffee from the machine in the third-floor cafeteria, probably the last thing I needed since I was already about to cartwheel off the walls. I sat alone for a few minutes at a window table reserved for the pressmen whose clothes usually leave the plastic chairs smeared with low-rub ink. I drank in the strong brew along with my favorite view, the spectacular panorama of vivid bright blue bay and a cerulean cloud-swept sky, soothing, as always.

  Gretchen was in when I came back to my desk, and I tried to avoid her eyes. I didn’t want to have to explain to her what I was working on. This story was far too important to trust to her judgment.

  She and Ryan were chatting amiably up at the city desk. They had been getting along famously since their triumph with his rafting story.

  I dialed the ME again. The chief took the call immediately.

  “You were right,” he said.

  “What was in the gray-top tube?” I said breathlessly.

  “Barbiturates, a lethal concentration. We’ve gone back to check his hospital records. It took about an hour to pull the file out of the record room and send somebody for it. Barbiturates are sometimes used in head injuries to decrease metabolism and oxygen demands, decreasing damage to the brain. But this concentration is far in excess of any therapeutic use. We double-checked our own lab to see whether we made an error, or used the wrong tube, and I also talked to the donor people to see if they might have done something they didn’t chart as part of the harvesting procedure. We found nothing that changes the bottom line.”

  “Would a lethal dose of barbiturates damage the harvested organs?’’

  “No, only the brain.”

  “How do you think it was administered?”

  “Most likely injected into his IV.”

  “So that, not the head injuries, caused the fatal brain damage?”

  “Correct. Somebody almost got away with it. We’re about to contact the state attorney’s office. It certainly changes the complexion of the trial.”

  “Too late,” I said. “It’s gone to the jury.”

  He paused and I heard a long sigh. “It’ll certainly be grounds for reversal—should there be a conviction. I think homicide and the state attorney’s office will want to talk to you, Britt.”

  “I’m writing the story now. All I have to do is talk to one more person.”

  Excited, I spun around in my chair after hanging up. “Ryan, you won’t believe this…” As he looked up, my phone rang, and I answered impatiently. “Britt Montero.” No one seemed to be there. “Hello?”

  “This is Francisco Alvarez.”

  I nearly dropped the telephone, taken totally by surprise. I had planned to park outside of his office if necessary. I had never expected him to personally return my call.

  “My secretary said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Yes, Major,” I felt flustered. “Can I come over now to see you?”

  “I don’t have time for reporters. Call PIO.”

  “Wait a minute, Major.” I was afraid he’d hang up. “You will want the chance to answer some of the questions in this story. It’s about you.”

  “What about me?” Was it my imagination, knowing what I did now, or was his voice sinister? It sounded slick, deep, and dark, like the man. The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

  I had to push him into saying something quotable, even if it was only an angry denial. Without his comment I had no legitimate way to publicly link him to Hudson’s death, only hearsay from sources who would not, could not, be quoted.

  “Your involvement in the D. Wayne Hudson case.”

  Silence. I was afraid he had hung up. “Major?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “I would like you to respond to the accusations.”

  Silence. “M
ajor, I know about the BOLO, the one you broadcast that night.” Silence. The emptiness on the line seemed to project something—was it fear, or indifference? “I know about your visit to the hospital, with the barbiturates.”

  Silence. “I’m writing the story now,” I bluffed. “Whether you respond or not.” He was too shrewd to say anything. His silence chilled my spine. I would have welcomed threats, curses, or angry denials.

  “Major…” the line went dead.

  Damn! I hit the button, got a dial tone, and began to punch in his office number. Had he not taken me by surprise, perhaps I could have approached him in a more effective way.

  “Not guilty!” The cry echoed in choruses across the newsroom, repeated by everyone who heard it. Janowitz was on line, a bulletin was crossing the wire.

  The jury had returned a verdict in less than an hour, forty-nine minutes to be exact. All had been acquitted. Not guilty. I put down the phone. Not guilty. Knowing what I knew now, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Not guilty. Dazed, I thought of Ted Ferrell and Betsy, thought of Estrada and Machado, and the Blackburns, back in uniform. There would still be administrative charges, but if they fought, they were likely to win back their badges. One of the blessings of my job is that there is never time to think about it.

  Gretchen appeared at my desk. “We need reaction for the state edition, Britt. Get the police chief, the mayor, and any of the city commissioners you can find.”

  “We may have some trouble on the street, Gretchen. I probably ought to get out there.” Her uncomprehending eyes stared, and her brow began to furrow under the shiny bangs.

  “Trouble?”

  I nodded, gravely.

  “Well, do the reaction story first.” She flicked an invisible speck off the shoulder of her sleek mustard-colored suit and strutted back to the city desk.

  The police chief took my call. His reaction? “The jury has spoken. There is nothing more I can say. We have to have faith in our system of justice.” Discussing whether the men would be reinstated was premature at this time, he said. He expected no problems the department would be unable to handle.

  The politicians’ comments followed along the same lines. I batted out the story, then joined the growing group at the city desk. Fred Douglas was coordinating the coverage.

  “Britt can go out into the black neighborhoods to pick up reaction there. Take a photographer,” he said, turning to me.

  “I’m up,” offered Lottie, who had joined the crowd from the photo desk.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said.

  She glanced at her watch. “We better huggle-de-buck. I’ll catch you downstairs.”

  Gretchen interfered. “I think a man should go with Britt and Lottie. For their protection. Britt says there might be trouble out there.”

  “We don’t need anybody else,” Lottie and I chorused.

  Fred looked preoccupied.

  “Ryan,” Gretchen said, summoning him from his desk. “You go with Britt and Lottie.”

  Lottie and I exchanged glances. “We’ll be okay, just the two of us,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Lottie quickly added. “We don’t need protection.”

  “Ryan,” Gretchen ordered. “Go with them.”

  “He’s got no street smarts,” I said quietly, so Ryan, bounding eagerly from his desk, could not hear. “We’d have to look out for him.”

  “None of this silly feminist rhetoric. This is not the time.” Gretchen sighed aloud at our foolishness.

  We looked to Fred Douglas for help, but he was engrossed in the first copy from Atlanta, which had just appeared on his editing terminal. Janowitz was filing directly from a portable laptop computer right outside the courtroom.

  We read for a moment over his shoulder. Members of the all-white jury had jovially lined up to pump the defendants’ hands after acquitting them.

  “Jesus,” Fred said, shaking his head. He looked up, “You guys get going. We need more reaction and art for the state.”

  “I have to talk to you as soon as we get back. It’s important,” I said urgently, “and we’ll need Mark Seybold to sit in. I’ve got one hell of a story.”

  “Okay, okay,” he waved us off.

  “Hell’s fire, do we have to take Ryan?” Lottie mouthed, looking disgruntled.

  “Fred, we don’t need another reporter…”

  “Will you guys just go?” He pointed impatiently toward the elevator. “Do as Gretchen says for a change.”

  Gretchen looked smug. “Watch out for them, Ryan,” she called after us.

  “Sure thing,” he responded.

  Fortunately, neither she nor Ryan could see us rolling our eyes.

  It got worse. “I’ll take the keys,” Ryan said manfully, when we got to Lottie’s Chrysler under the building.

  “No, Ryan,” she said. “This is my company car. I drive.”

  “I’m the man, I drive.”

  “Oh no!” we shrieked.

  “Look Ryan,” I said, “Lottie and I have both had police combat driving courses.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m going to drive,” he said. “I know what happened to your other cars.”

  “It was only one, and it wasn’t our fault! Ryan, that rafting experience has made you crazy!”

  “I’d like to see you survive a week at sea.” Pouting, he folded his arms and leaned stubbornly against the driver’s door.

  “You’ve become macho,” I cried. I thought of Jessie St. Juste. “I swear I’ll bite off your finger!”

  “What?”

  “Oh hell, Britt.” Lottie had unloaded the camera equipment she needed from the trunk. “We’re wasting too much time as it is. Give him his way. I can shoot pictures, you can take notes.” She tossed him the keys and looked him sternly in the eye. “Damage this car, Ryan, and you are a dead man.”

  He grinned. They piled into the front.

  “Lottie,” I said, settling in the backseat, amid all her packets of pictures, “you should have let me bite off his finger.”

  “Hell, Britt, you don’t want to do that. He’s not a policeman. And he needs them all to count”

  We rolled out from under the building into the brilliant afternoon air.

  “It’s nice to get out of the office for awhile,” Ryan said happily, as if on a pleasure jaunt. “Where to, girls?”

  Lottie and I stared at each other.

  We stopped to interview several people at a Liberty City bus stop. All had heard the verdict. Radio and TV news bulletins had swept the city. Even older women, on their way home from day jobs, seemed wary and hostile. A lanky youth approached us, angry and jabbing his finger. “The pigs,” he cried, his eyes wild and wet with rage. “They beat up on the easy targets, they let the bad people go! They’re dead!” he shouted, referring to the defendants. “They’re dead!”

  We thanked him and moved on.

  “Ryan, lock your door, and be careful,” I said.

  “If we yell go, you floor it,” added Lottie.

  “Okay?”

  “Sure, sure.” He was smiling, enjoying this. “How about them?” He nodded toward a corner bar with a small knot of men outside.

  “No point in trying to open a dialogue with a bunch of drunks.”

  Lottie agreed. “No point in stirring ‘em up.”

  They shouted, raising fists as we passed.

  We stopped at a small corner grocery, where there were women and kids. Ryan pulled to the curb. Lottie and I stepped out and approached a small group of people. “We’re from the News, have you heard about the verdict in the Hudson case?” I said.

  “You better get outta here,” a heavyset woman said. Her eyes slid back to the store. I took a step toward the door, hoping to interview the owner.

  Two men lurched from inside, shouting. “White mothafuckers,” one screamed. One lunged for Lottie’s camera, arm outstretched as though he was a baseball player diving for a line drive.

  �
��Go, Ryan!” we yelled, scrambling back into the Chrysler. He had switched off the ignition, which we had warned him not to do. He fumbled with the keys. “Go!” I screamed, engaging in a tug of war with one of the men over my car door. I finally yanked it closed as the man beat on the window with his bare fists.

  “Go!” Lottie yelled. She had managed to slam her door. The man after her camera spat on the window, then dropped his eyes, scanning the gutter. We knew what he was looking for, something heavy enough to break glass.

  “Go!” we screamed.

  Ryan floored it, first in reverse, throwing us forward, then he slammed it into drive, grinding gears, hurling us back into our seats and screeching through a stop sign.

  “That’s it!” I said. “I’m driving.”

  “Dad blasted right,” Lottie said, rolling down her spit-streaked window and leaning out to shoot a picture of the shouting group on the corner we had just escaped.

  Ryan looked shocked. “Why didn’t you just tell ‘em that you’re the one who broke the story, Britt? Those cops wouldn’t have been arrested if it hadn’t been for you.”

  “You try telling them,” I said. “I doubt these people are our subscribers, Ryan.”

  The smell of smoke hung on the air, and I vaguely wondered where it came from. A bottle smashed in the street in front of us. Ryan swerved and hit the brakes.

  “Don’t stop,” I yelled.

  “Keep going, keep going, keep going,” Lottie said.

  “Don’t panic,” Ryan said. “I’m driving.”

  I rolled my window down an inch. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah.” Lottie’s face was taut.

  “What, what?” said Ryan.

  “Those loud pops. That’s gunfire. Must be a sniper.” I scanned the upper floors of the buildings around us.

  Ryan gripped the wheel. Black smoke up ahead, cascading down the street. For a moment it cleared and we saw what was burning. A late-model car in flames, overturned and totally engulfed.

  “Man oh man,” Lottie was muttering. I heard the click and whirr of her shutter.

  Ryan stomped the brake, face stunned. Two crumpled bodies were sprawled in the street near the flaming car. Between them and us was a mob of about thirty or forty people, some carrying weapons.