Between the Lines

"I understand. But still, considering that in recent polling of voting age people in your state, particularly young people, where almost seventy percent of respondents believe in a woman's right to choose her own reproductive destiny, I'm curious how this law came to be."

"I'm not sure what you're implying, Mr Lawton."

"Really? Well then, I guess it seems, to an outsider like myself anyway, that a narrow political agenda is being enforced -- at the expense of a truer, more representative and certainly a more democratic expression of the will of the people."

"As you say, you are an outsider here, aren't you?" Baxter's eyes were now cold and hard.

"Well, be that as it may, but do you really feel that imposing the death penalty on a physician performing a medically justified procedure is truly warranted?"

"Again, Mr. Lawton, I'm just a civil servant doing the job I was elected to do."

"That sounds suspiciously like the justification employed time and time again by Nazi concentration camp guards at the Nuremberg Trials."

Baxter smiled. "Concentration camps? What on earth are you talking about?"

"Mr. Baxter," Angela Eastman said, "do you think it would be possible for me to interview either Miss Polk or Dr. Washburn while I'm here?"

"I might be able to get you in, Miss Eastman," the DA said, though by that time he was pointedly ignoring Peter Lawton's presence in the conference room, "providing you don't use any material from either Mr Lawton or his network."

"Certainly, sir," she smiled coquettishly. "I'd never do such a thing without your explicit approval and authorization."

"Do you have a camera crew with you?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

Baxter smiled. "Well then, won't you please come with me?"

Angela stood and followed the DA from his conference room, leaving Lawton and Templeton to pack up their gear, while her cameraman, Brad McNaughton, broke down his kit and put the expensive camera in a bright yellow Pelican case -- yet all the while McNaughton glowered and moped.

"What's with the attitude?" Templeton asked McNaughton as they loaded their gear in the van a few minutes later.

"What a prick!" the cameraman snarled.

"Oh?" Lawton said.

"Don't tell me you weren't picking up on that vibe, man. He was spitting in your face, Mr Lawton. I mean, don't get me wrong, I not a fan of your politics but he's a public servant, not..."

"He is what he is, Brad," Lawton said, cutting him off, "but he's also not the story." He turned to Templeton and nodded. "Are we getting a clear signal out here?"

"Loud and clear," Templeton said, "and it looks like we have a solid feed on the recorder."

The three stepped inside and moved to the editing and transmission module in the middle of the van, and after Templeton plugged the feed into the main data recorder a grainy video appeared on one of the module's screens, and then, finally, there was Dr. Elise Washburn onscreen. And while the image was less than perfect the audio was crystal clear.

She'd grown up in Jackson in the good graces of the Catholic Church, which was in itself unusual, and then she'd gone on to Loyola in New Orleans, then to medical school at Tulane. She'd gone on to Johns Hopkins for her internship and residency, yet she'd always known she'd come home to practice medicine. She'd taken and passed her Boards in Obstetrics and Gynecology before taking a staff position at UMMC, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, in Jackson -- but as soon as Roe v Wade was struck down, the State of Mississippi declared an outright ban on abortion, and soon made it illegal to even teach the procedure.

As a staff physician at a teaching university medical center, Washburn needed to be able to teach the procedure if only to ensure that physicians trained at UMMC could pass all of the core procedures and exams related to the safe practice of Obstetrics, yet now there was simply no way to do that. Legally, that is.

The fact that Washburn was a practicing Catholic made no difference, as the most radical evangelical Christian groups also happened to be Catholic and these groups had all been pushing for a complete ban on the procedure for decades. The fact that Roe was finally struck down as a result of litigation between the Jackson Women's Health Organization and Thomas E. Dobbs, the lead state health officer with the Mississippi State Department of Health, was a small irony not lost on Washburn or any of the other Ob-Gyns practicing in the state.

Then Eastman asked Washburn about Fay Polk, and you could see the change come over the physician as she recounted her first encounters with the girl. Fay had just turned eighteen years old and told Washburn that she had been repeatedly raped, and after questioning it turned out to have been by a family member. As she had been receiving basic obstetrical care through Medicaid, the federal government's medical insurance program for the impoverished, the baby's underlying medical condition had been found. The fetus would develop along somewhat normal lines, yet it's brain would not, and once born the child might conceivably live as long as five minutes -- as once the umbilical cord was cut the child would simply suffocate.

Yet Fay herself was not in good health. Chronically undernourished, Washburn discovered the girl was diabetic and had a complex endocrine-metabolism disorder and had experienced difficulty digesting food, so carrying this fetus to term was itself ill-advised on those grounds alone.

Yet the latest law passed by the State Legislature was clear. No abortions would be allowed in the state, period. Not in cases where the life of the mother was in jeopardy and not in cases of rape or incest. Further, the latest law stated that the procedure could not even be conceptually taught or discussed in any facility owned by the state, which of course included the University Medical Center.

It was one thing, Peter Lawton felt, to listen to these things discussed in the abstract, yet quite another to see the empathy and compassion of Elise Washburn run headfirst into the steamroller of evangelical political radicalism that was now coming to take her life, and he simply couldn't process what he was seeing with his own eyes. He was an Episcopalian and had been all his life, yet he had been overseas on one assignment or another for at least the last ten years, but what he saw at work here was a withering meanness. And this, he thought, wasn't just the usual close-minded Southern Redneck mentality at work, either. This was national in scope, and quite suddenly he was beginning to feel as if he'd stepped into some kind of bizarre, off-the-wall medieval drama, or maybe a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale -- as told by William Faulkner.

Yet one thing was clear. Quite clear. Elise Washburn was a kind soul full of compassion who had done nothing more or less than the Right Thing, and now the state wanted to kill her. Lawton, Templeton, and McNaughton sat in silence listening to the physician's story, and by the time Angela Eastman wrapped up her interview even McNaughton was blind with red-faced rage.

Yet when Eastman came out of the County Jail about a half hour later, and just as she crossed Tombigbee Street on her way to the van, a marked patrol car cruised by ever-so-slowly, the patrolman inside eyeing her carefully as she passed.

Third Act

Sitting in the station's editing suite an hour later, Cheryl Templeton and Brad McNaughton were piecing together Eastman's surreptitiously acquired quotes in painstaking order, while an audio engineer -- Carol Hoffman was her name -- tried to clean up some annoying background noise in the hastily stitched-together audio file. Lawton and Eastman had been at the Inn for at least an hour, grabbing lunch and changing into casual clothes before coming back to the station to add commentary to the audio track.

"Man," McNaughton sighed, "this sounds like a hit piece."

"What do you mean?" Cheryl asked.

"It sounds very biased to me, almost like it's conspicuously trying to present just one side of the story."

"Well, it is one person's version of events. It's Elise Washburn's version, right? What else should we include?"

"What about Baxter's point of view?"

Brad was incensed: "What? Are you serious? Mister I'm Just Enforcing The Law..."

"It doesn't seem responsible not to include his position," Carol added. "And I'll tell you what else is missing. Fay Polk's part of this story is missing. That very basic human element is missing from this story."

"And guess what?" Cheryl barked. "Baxter won't let us near her."

Hoffman looked up from her DAT recorder and smiled. "Well then, there's your story. Or at least half of it. Why do you think he's doing that?"

"Half?"

"Well, if Baxter isn't going to give you access to her you'll just have to get the next best thing, and the only way you can get that is to interview Fay's friends and family. The other thing I'm not hearing is structured questions. Who provided background to Lawton?"

"I did," Cheryl pouted, instantly growing defensive. Hoffman had gone to Duke and she was the real deal, and management knew it. Cheryl, on the other hand, had gone to Ole Miss and had only been interviewed here at the station after her father intervened -- and even then she hadn't landed a job. She did eventually land a gig at a small station in Gulfport, but it had taken her four long years to get back up here to Jackson; now Peter Lawton was here on a National Story and Cheryl had to know this was her 'one big chance,' maybe her last chance at the big time. "I pulled everything I could off Google," she added.

"Google, huh," Hoffman said flatly. "Imagine that." She looked at Brad and saw him grimace, then shake his head in apparent disgust. She looked over at Cheryl and saw the pastel-colored polo shirt and the penny loafers and she knew Cheryl was still going out to dinner with her parents several times a week, and now the only thing she think of was Google. No thought of trying to run down an interview, no attempt to do a little detective work, just use other people's unverified work to fill out a bio for a national reporter coming to town to cover the story. "Well, okay, I've got the file cleaned up. What's next?"

"Well, I..." Cheryl had just started to speak when Peter Lawton walked in, and when she could see he didn't look happy she stopped talking.

"How much do you have," Lawton asked Cheryl.

"I don't...I'm not sure...maybe a minute?"

"Play it, now."

McNaughton hit play and the segment began rolling, and the longer it played the angrier Lawton grew.

"Well, congratulations Miss Templeton. You've succeeded in making me look like an idiot. An uninformed idiot. Thanks for driving me by their house this morning, but have you actually spoken to anyone in Fay's family?"

"No, sir. They weren't home," Templeton said.

"Who are you?" Lawton asked the girl behind the editing console.

"Carol Hoffman. Working audio today, Mr Lawton."

He looked her over and nodded. "Uh-huh. Cheryl, would you go get me a coffee?"

"Black?"

He shook his head, exasperated. "Cream and Splenda, same as yesterday."

"Right away, sir."

After the door closed behind Templeton he turned to Carol. "School?"

"Duke."

"Jewish?"

"That's right."

"And Cheryl's keeping you down, right?"

"No shit, Sherlock," Brad said, grinning.

Lawton looked at the boy, then back at Carol. "Know your way around town?"

"Well enough."

"Brad, grab a camera, preferably something small, and let's get out of here."

By the time Templeton returned to the editing suite the rest of her crew was long gone.

+++++

"2400 block of Brown Street, right?" Brad asked.

"Yup. Turn right on Yates, should be the next street," Hoffman replied.

Lawton and Eastman were in the back seat of Carol's little SUV, a green Subaru of some kind, and both were shellshocked as they looked out their windows at the houses in these neighborhoods. Most of the houses had been built in the 1920s, and even by those shabby standards it appeared as if these houses had been quickly slapped together using the cheapest materials their unscrupulous builders could lay their hands on.

"They're all the same," Angela said. "Every one of them. Little shacks made of tarpaper."

"The asbestos shingles are a nice touch, though," Carol sighed. "Kept some of the rats out, I imagine, at least when they're not causing lung cancer."

"And the cancer in?" Eastman asked. "Well, look at that. A swimming pool."

"No water in it the last five or so years. Last time they tried raw sewage came out of the water pipes," Brad said as he turned on Yates Street. "So, this is her sister's place?" he said as Carol read off the address again.

"Yup."

"Her name is Keisha, right?" Brad asked as he pulled onto the barren front yard.

Carol and Lawton exited the Subaru and walked up to the front door and knocked, and a few moments passed before the door cracked open a few inches.

"Keisha?" Peter asked. "My name is..."

"I know who you are."

Peter nodded. "How are you doing?"

The woman shook her head and shrugged, and as Angela walked up to the door she guessed Keisha weighed maybe ninety pounds.

"Could we speak to you?" Peter asked. "About your sister?"

"What's there to talk about, Mr Bad Newsman?"

"We're trying to understand what's happening down here, why this happened to your sister...?"

"Really? Don't know much about Mississippi, do you?"

"Only what they don't teach in the history books," he said, trying his best to project some measure of empathy.

"Funny," Keisha said. "Ha-ha..."

"Do you know what was wrong with Fay's baby?"

She nodded and looked away. "Called it Edwards Syndrome, or trisomy something."

"Trisomy-18?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"Anything else they tell you about your sister or her baby?"

She nodded. "Yeah, some kinda cyst growing in it head so his head couldn't grow right, then it heart was growing all wrong and doctors know it ain't gonna live, and all that time Fay gettin' sicker and sicker. Throwin' up all the time and couldn't eat nothin' and her kidneys was gettin' sick too. They talkin' like she have to go on dialysis to have that baby because it against the law to not have the baby but it gonna be dead as soon as he come out, ya know? Didn't make no sense, I guess, but nothin' much do."

"So, did Dr Washburn tell you that getting an abortion was necessary?"

"Oh yeah, but that the funny thing. She say no more doctors do it here because of the law, and it even against the law to teach other doctors how to. She almost last doctor left here that can do it, but everyone know they just waitin' to get her."

"You think they were trying to set up Dr Washburn?"

"Naw, no need for that. It gonna happen sooner or later so they just wait for her then they snatch her up."

"I tried to speak with your parents this morning, but..."

"They gots the Alzheimer's, Mister Bad Newsman, but that ain't the funny part."

"Funny?"

"Yeah. They sendin' they bills to them but they give 'em to me. Wanna see?"

"Yes, if you don't mind."

Peter looked at Angela and the BBC reporter simply shook her head, then quietly turned away.

"Here they is," Keisha said, handing over a stack of letters from the hospital.

He flipped through them, noting that the latest bill -- received a few days ago -- was for almost a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. "Mind if I take pictures of these?" he asked.

Keisha shrugged. "Ain't gonna matter much one way or another, is it? That what they do. Send bills then come the collections people, and they buy the bills from the hospital and then the lawyers come and pretty soon the real estate lady come by and put up a For Sale sign in the front yard. Drive around and look at the signs. Same real estate lady, too. Husband work at the hospital, brother work at the courthouse. Yeah, Mister Bad Newsman, you got lots to learn about the way things is down here, but that the way it been and that the way it always gonna be."

She slammed the door then, but she left the stack of bills in his hand.

"And that's the way it is," Lawton sighed, thinking of the way Walter Cronkite signed off at the conclusion of each broadcast, then remembering Cronkite announcing Kennedy's assassination. "And here we are, right back where we started from. It's like the Civil Rights Movement never happened."

He turned and started for Carol's Subaru but a sudden reflection caught his eye and he squinted a bit -- and he could just make out a Ford SUV with two men up front, and one of them was pointing a large white camera lens their way.

"Carol," he said gently, "you better drive, and don't go even one mile an hour over the posted limit."

"We pick up some company?" Angela asked. "Like maybe the KGB?"

"Wrong country," Peter sighed, "same tactics."

Brad had seen the flash, too, and now he was more than a little scared. So scared, in fact, that he took out his iPhone and did the one thing he'd sworn to never do again.

He called the meanest human being he knew; a man who, once upon a time, had been his father.

Fourth Act

"What did he say?" Peter Lawton asked McNaughton.

"That he would make a few calls," the cameraman said. His hands were now shaking so visibly that even Angela Eastman had asked if he was okay.

"What does he do?" Lawton asked the kid.

"I'm not real sure."

"What? He's your dad, right? Not like a step-father?"

McNaughton nodded his head slowly as Carol Hoffman pulled out into traffic.

"The cops in a dark gray Explorer?" she asked -- no one in particular.

"Yeah," Lawton said, turning his head just enough to see the 'photographers' pull in behind her Subaru -- but still a few hundred yards back, "that's them."

"Okay, we go straight to your hotel," Carol said, "then you guys need to stay out of sight for a while."

"Assuming, you mean," Eastman added, "they let us get there."

"They're staying back," Carol said. "We'll be okay."

"Standard protocol," Lawton sighed, "will be for them to call in a marked squad car if they want to do a traffic stop."

"So as soon as I see one of those," Carol moaned, "we're toast, right?"

"Pretty much," Lawton nodded. "Brad, did your father say what we should do?"

The cameraman just shook his head. "Just that he'd make a few calls."

"Do you at least know where he is?"

"He lives in Florida. Somewhere in Miami, I think."

"You guys don't talk much, do you?"

Brad shrugged.

"But you think he can help?"

"If anyone can -- he's the one I'd call. That's his job, I think."

'So,' Lawton thought, 'the guy lives in Miami and he gets things done that no one else can do, and his son is covering for him. And the kid is too straight-laced to come from a mob family...and McNaughton...is that Scotch or Irish? Irrelevant. The kid's dad is in law enforcement...but in Miami? No way he's a local yokel, which means he's a Fed. Which means the kid's dad is either Bureau or...Miami...? DEA? Could he be DEA? Or is he an intel weenie working the Cubanos...?"

When Carol pulled up to the Inn unmolested everyone felt relieved, and after Angela climbed out of the back seat Lawton slid across and got out too, but Carol and the kid remained up front.

"Should we go back to the station?" Carol asked.

Lawton looked around, saw the gray Explorer parked two blocks away under a barren tree with both men still inside, and the older man in the passenger seat was not even attempting to conceal what he was doing -- which in Lawton's experience meant this was an exercise in intimidation -- but by who? Or for whom? "Park in the lot, over there," Lawton said without taking his eyes off the Explorer, "and we'll wait for you here."

A minute later they walked into the Inn and went straight up to the rooftop bar, and despite it being January the weather was quite nice out, more like a late summer afternoon in New England. Brad's phone chirped and he saw it was Cheryl calling -- for the tenth time in the last two hours -- but he picked it up this time, so Lawton walked over to the edge of the roof and looked at the Explorer.