Details at Ten by Ardella Garland Read Free Book Online

you interviewed!”
    I recalled the events of that day and struggled to picture the little girl.
Oh wait!
Then I got an ugly connection in my mind. “Kelly, let me get back to you, okay?”
    I hung up the phone and yelled, “Zeke!”
    “What?” he yelled back. Zeke came from around the other side of the truck. He was holding a long black strand of cable used to set up our live shot. Zeke’s right arm went up like a waiter holding a tray and he began looping the cable around his open palm and his elbow so it could be stored easily.
    “Did you record that newsbreak I did at the drive-by?”
    “No, I didn’t have time. But I had them roll on it back at the station. I always like to grab the tape later to take a peek, to make sure I got you guys lookin’ good.”
    “Is it here in the truck?”
    “Yeah, it’s here, somewhere.” Zeke started searching through a stack of black Beta tapes on the floor of the live truck. “Here!” he said, holding it up. Then he played it for me.
    “Cue it up again!” I ran back inside the cop shop and grabbed Doug by the arm. “You’ve got to see something.”
    The urgency in my voice forced him to follow. We reached the news truck and I told Zeke, “Play it.”
    There I was and there was little Butter on tape. “I seent a car. This real dark black boy with a scar, he was dressed all in yellow, and just shooting his gun!”
    Zeke looked at us and we looked at Zeke. He rewound the tape, played it again, then froze it.
    “That’s the missing girl, Doug. That’s Butter.”
    Doug’s face lost a shade of color and gained a stony cast. “Butter saw the shooter and admitted being a witness on live television. That’s how the word got out on the street who the shooter was in the drive-by. Now the one person who really saw it all and could be a witness in court is missing.”
    “Tell me again, Doug, which gang uses the color yellow?”
    “The Rockies. That’s our suspect, a top-ranking punk in the Rockies. I’m going to Butter’s house to see her mother.”
    “That makes two of us,” I said. “Because I’m right on your heels.”

S I X
     
    B utter Where Are U?
    That was the message written in white chalk on the sidewalk in front of the two-story frame house where Butter lived.
    Butter Where Are U?
    All the other front porches on the block were crowded with people because it was too hot to be cooped up inside. But no crowd was on the front porch of Butter’s house. There was no one.
    Doug and I stopped at the gate and waited for Zeke to get all of the equipment out of the truck. Doug used a hankie to wipe the sweat off his neck. “Damn, it’s hot!”
    It was, too. The air seemed to bubble inside my lungs every time I took a breath. But I wasn’t thinking about the heat. I was thinking about Butter. Dog, I was feeling guilty as the devil. I was the one who put Butter on-air. Yes, Bing was yelling in my ear and he said to go with it but I’m no rookie reporter. I didn’t start doing this at sunrise today. I’m a veteran and I should have just pulled my earplug out and done the live shot the way I wanted to; the way I planned to. But Bing is my boss and he’ll have major input on whether or not I sign a new contract with WJIV. It makes me angry that I have to cater to him and his bogus news ideas but what can I do? It’s his newsroom. I can only buck him so much and survive.
    Butter Where Are U?,
I read again.
    Was she alive? Did they kill her? I’d been thinking about that on the way over. Finally, standing at the gate, I got the nerve to ask Doug his opinion.
    “Well,” he spoke softly, then glanced up at the sky. “She’s been gone a day. The Rockies aren’t sophisticated. They’re upstarts. The other times they’ve killed it’s been in shoot-outs, drive-bys, and robberies. They leave bodies out in the open, front and center.”
    “So what do you think?”
    “Best-case scenario?”
    “Please.”
    “I think they’ve got Butter and don’t quite know