Dying Declaration (4 page)

But it was the order he did not put in the chart that gave Armistead reason to pause before moving on to the next patient. Should he keep this child at Tidewater General or order a transfer to Norfolk Children’s Hospital?

Conventional wisdom dictated a transfer. Norfolk Children’s Hospital specialized in pediatric care and surgery. They had all the latest technology and the certified specialists who could pull a child through even the most difficult cases. And from everything Armistead could tell, Joshua would be a very challenging case, the sepsis potentially affecting all the major organs.

Just from a pure liability standpoint, which was no small factor, it would make sense to transfer the kid to a hospital like Norfolk Children’s, a hospital with the premier reputation for pediatric care in southeast Virginia. But Armistead personally believed its reputation was not justified. There were good surgeons at Tidewater General, better than most at Norfolk Children’s Hospital. And he hated the thought of transferring this kid to those prima donnas at the big city hospital who would later take all the credit for saving a child that the doctors at Tidewater General couldn’t handle.

And what if the specialists at Norfolk Children’s lost the child? They would certainly blame it on the half hour or so that Joshua sat in the ER examining room before being seen. After three days of total neglect, the hotshots in Norfolk would say it all came down to that extra half hour. Or they would find something else to nitpick, something about Armistead’s orders,
something about the transfer.

No, there was no sense in transferring this patient. Armistead would keep the kid here. Joshua would get virtually the same level of treatment, and Armistead would not open himself up to all the second-guessing.

Transfers took time, and this patient didn’t have much time. Putting aside all of his resentment for the place, putting aside all of the arrogance of the Norfolk Children’s doctors, looking at it solely from the vantage point of the best interest of the patient, it still made sense.

They would operate here. No way would Armistead order a transfer to the same hospital that had five years ago rejected him for its residency program. Twice.

6

WHOEVER DESIGNED
emergency room waiting areas obviously knew nothing about kids. Tiger had already been told three times by his dad to sit still, each time louder than the last. He had really tried. But the magazines for kids had simply failed to keep his attention,
and so his running around the room had earned him a long stretch of sitting in the same chair. Worse, despite some rather loud noises generated when Tiger cleared his throat, his dad seemed to forget all about Tiger being confined to the chair. The possibilities for getting up anytime soon seemed pretty dim.

Just when Tiger was about to give up hope, a chance for escape presented itself when his dad stepped into the men’s bathroom. Tiger looked left and right, ignoring the accusing looks from Stinky, then decided to get up from his seat and take advantage of the momentary lull in supervision to test the operation of the automatic doors at the ER entrance.

Step on the pad, the doors open. Jump off the pad, the doors close. They seemed to be working fine.

“You’re a-posed to be sitting down,” Stinky warned, nervously eying the door of the men’s room.

But Tiger had not exhausted all the options. Jump on quick and off quicker, and you can get the doors to open and close only partway. In fact, just a tap from the heel of a cowboy boot would send the doors springing open. What power! What fun!

Open . . . close . . . open . . . close . . .

“Tiger!” Dad was out of the bathroom. He didn’t sound happy.

Without catching his dad’s eye, the little guy scampered quickly to his seat and hopped up in it. Stinky started furiously reading her magazine. As usual, Tiger was on his own.

For a long moment Tiger just sat there looking down. He sensed a large shadow hovering over him.

“Doggone it,” the shadow huffed. “Didn’t I ask you to stay in your seat?”

Even while looking down, he could sense the other two families in the emergency room watching this showdown. They were probably thinking that the little pistol would finally get what he deserved. They didn’t know they were the only thing saving him.

“Yes, sir,” came his squeaky reply. His voice never worked just right when he was in trouble. Tiger was scared but thought he would probably get by without a spanking. After all, this was a public place, and Dad didn’t usually spank in public, not with others watching. And sometimes, if Tiger was especially lucky, Dad would forget all about the need for a spanking once they got home.

“Then why did you disobey and git outta your seat?” It seemed the shadow had a point.

“I dunno,” Tiger said. It felt like a good idea at the time. In hindsight, he was starting to have second thoughts. “Sorry, Dad.”

“Well, you’ve done earned yourself a time-out, young man.”

And without another word, Tiger climbed out of his seat in the middle of the room, pulled a chair into the corner, and turned it facing the wall. He climbed into it and scootched back so his feet and cowboy boots were swinging freely. He was secretly relieved; it could have been a lot worse.

Then he heard a few soft words of pity from the others in the room, and it almost made him smile. “Aw . . . ,” one of the moms whispered. “He’s sooo cute.”

But cute wouldn’t get him off time-out any faster, that much Tiger knew for sure. And so he simply stared at the wall and began serving his sentence. He was a repeat offender; he had been in for worse. He could do this time standing on his head.

In fact,
he thought,
that’s not such a bad idea. If I could just slide forward far enough, lean down, get my hands on the floor . . .

Across town a first-time offender wondered if he would make it through the night.

Charles Arnold had been fingerprinted and booked. They took his mug shots, one from the front and one from each side. The deputies took his cargo shorts, T-shirt, socks, and sneakers and replaced them with a bright orange jumpsuit and slippers. He felt like . . . well, he felt like a criminal. He supposed that was the whole point.

A deputy grabbed Charles’s arm and yanked him down a tight and dingy hallway, ignoring the catcalls from the jail cells they passed. At the end of the hallway, the deputy opened the door of a large holding cell, shoved Charles inside, then backed away and swung the heavy door shut. It closed with a solid clang.

“Have fun, Professor,” the deputy said as he disappeared back down the hallway.

Charles took a quick inventory of the rough-looking bunch. About a dozen men. Most of them younger than Charles. A handful of blacks, a handful of whites, a couple of Hispanics. Tattoos, dreadlocks, and scowls seemed to be in vogue. The cell was segregated, blacks on one side, whites on the other. The two Hispanics took up residence close to the whites.

The odor hit him first. And the thought that his own oily, slick sweat, brought about by the suffocating humidity of this place, now contributed to it. The cell reeked of unwashed and grungy men—the stench of defeat, frustration, and anger.

The inmates regarded the new fish with looks of disinterested disdain. Nobody spoke for a few moments as Charles shuffled to the African American side of the cell. It was moments like this that Charles wished he were a darker member of the darker nation. For these men, his light brown skin might trigger less than full-fledged membership among the brothers, making him an outcast on both sides of the cell.

“What you in for?” one of the brothers asked. He was a wiry young man, no more that eighteen or nineteen, Charles guessed,
with a grotesque network of bulging veins and tattoos covering every inch of his exposed forearms.

“Cop killin’.” Charles decided to make a good first impression.

“You bustin’ me? You didn’t pop no five-O.”

“Thought about it,” Charles responded, taking a few steps toward the black side of the holding cell. He touched closed fists with one of the brothers. “So they Rodney Kinged me for resistin’ arrest.”

“Shut up, woman. Don’t need no comics in here.”

“Woman”?

The deep voice belonged to a huge brother in the back. He stood up slowly and walked toward Charles. Charles was six-one but gave up at least three inches and a hundred pounds to the guy. Even in a jumpsuit, the man looked buff. He had broad sloping shoulders, massive hands, and a huge forehead that hung like a cliff over his eyes. He sported a buzz cut and a scruffy mustache that merged into a close-cropped Fu Manchu. Despite the dimness of the cell, his gold tooth glistened when he spoke.

Charles didn’t like the implications of the nickname. And nobody had to tell Charles that this man was the de facto leader of the holding tank. He stood just a few feet away, his hands clenching and unclenching.

“Now . . . whatcha in for . . . woman?”

“Woman.”
Fear gripped the preacher’s brain. He had never been in prison before, but he knew all the stories.
“Woman.”

God, help me,
he prayed under his breath. Simple, quick, fervent.

“I told you, bro. Resistin’ arrest and violatin’ a noise ordinance.” As the words came out, Charles was struck with how wimpy the charges sounded. “I’m a street preacher,” he added, hoping this felon might at least have some respect for a man of the cloth.

Hoots and whistles came from the white boys in the cell, followed by some vulgar comments. They were clearly not impressed.

“Pop ’im, Buster,” one of the blacks suggested. Charles was amazed at how quickly alliances shifted in this place. A few of the brothers stood, and others started forming a circle for the outside ring of a fight. “Guard your grill, bro,” someone suggested.

Charles had no intention of guarding his grill. The last thing he needed was a fight with the block of granite in front of him. What had he done to agitate this guy?

“Shut up,” growled the man they had called Buster. He was talking to the other men in the cell but staring straight at Charles. There was instant silence. Buster moved a few steps closer, within striking distance. Charles tensed, ready to duck and dodge and weave, if necessary.

“If you a street preacher, why they callin’ you professor?”

Good question,
Charles thought.
Maybe this guy’s smarter than I thought.

“I teach constitutional law at Regent Law School,” Charles said, putting on his best air of professorial authority, despite his nervousness. “I teach law students how to spot and exploit violations of constitutional rights. You know, like Johnnie Cochran.”

The name of Cochran evoked the desired awe among some of the felons in the cell. But Buster just furrowed his huge brow, still looking skeptical.

“And I’m Judge Ito.”

Charles fought back panic and rose to his full professorial stature. He calmly looked the big thug right in the eye, but stayed on the balls of his feet, ready to duck if necessary. At least this time the big gorilla had not called him a woman.

“The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right against unreasonable searches and self-incrimination. It applies to the states by virtue of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Charles spit the words out rapidly,
confidently, like a computer, all the while keeping a wary eye on his new nemesis. “Rights like Miranda warnings are actually the outgrowth of case law by the Supreme Court, in particular, the case of Miranda versus Arizona, decided by the Supreme Court in 1966, with the majority opinion written by one of my all time favorites, Justice William Brennan, may he rest in peace.” Charles paused to catch a breath. He saw the confusion in Buster’s eyes.

“You any good in court?” Buster asked, still clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Only the best teach. The others do what we train them to do.”

“If you train the public defenders, I wouldn’t be braggin’,” one of the long-haired white kids said from the other side of the cell.

Buster shot the kid a glance, and Charles sensed a chance to reconfigure alliances. After all, this guy Buster
was
a fellow member of the darker nation.

“They’re only as good as the cases they get,” Charles said to the white kid.

Buster unclenched his fists. “The cops violated my rights.”

“Word up,” said one of the brothers standing in the outer circle. “Mine too.”

Buster shot him a glance, and the man shot his palms up—
I’m backing off
.

“Look,” lectured Charles, who now had the undivided attention of everyone, “I don’t have time to litigate every constitutional violation that ever occurred. I’ll bet five-O dissed half the brothers in this room.” There were nods and murmurs of agreement.
“But if you give me some time and space, I’ll interview those of you who think you may have a constitutional claim. I can’t promise anything, but if you’ve got a case, I’ll help your public defender and maybe even handle a motion to suppress hearing.”

Several heads nodded. Buster’s was not yet among them.

“Let’s start with you,” Charles suggested.

Buster stuck out his jaw and then slowly nodded his head. “’At works for me.” He glanced around the cell at the other men.

“Give the prof some room,” Buster ordered, and the men who had been standing in a circle around Buster and Charles returned to their earlier spots. Charles and Buster then huddled in a corner of the cell while the others eavesdropped, pretending not to listen.

By the time he completed the interviews, Charles had determined that only one of the men in the cell had a case that deserved Charles’s constitutional expertise. That man was Buster, who had, according to Charles, been the victim of a gross disregard of constitutional rights by the V-town po-lece.

Charles knew he would hate himself in the morning if he actually took a role in Buster’s defense. He had participated in the defense of a few criminals during his six years as a law school professor, but they all had credible claims of innocence. The prospect of putting Buster back out on the street repulsed him. But not nearly as much as the thought of trying to survive the night without Buster as an ally. And Charles took comfort in the fact that there was actually little chance of springing Buster early.

Buster said he had been innocently cruising the main drag in V-town—the inmates’ slang for Virginia Beach—alone in his Cadillac Escalade SUV with tinted windows. He drove a few laps around the block, then pulled over to the curb where a couple of young African American men joined him in the car. After another lap around the block, he dropped them off at the same place where he had picked them up.

For this innocuous conduct, the cops had pulled him over and begun their harassment. They accused Buster of selling drugs and ran the serial number on his vehicle. They ordered Buster out of the car and then claimed they had seen some small Baggies with a white powder substance in plain sight sticking out from under the front seat.

Not true, Buster said. He assured Charles that the drugs were tucked safely away in the glove compartment and trunk. He was not a fool, Buster said, and he knew better than to leave the drugs in plain sight.

It was Buster’s third offense, and he was looking at serious time under Virginia’s “three strikes and you’re out” sentencing guidelines. He had already spent three years of his life in jail on drug charges and was not looking forward to spending the next decade behind bars. “I’m a changed man,” he told Charles. “I learned my lesson this time. You get me outta here, I’ll make like Mother Teresa.”