Unintended Consequences (24 page)

It had been his eighteenth birthday. They were both juiced up, having downed shots at the bar all night. The law said he couldn’t drink until he turned twenty-one, but Charlie was the law, and no bartender refused him drinks for his little brother. When they left, Charlie began ragging him again, calling him a no-good loser over and over. He’d taken enough from him, and when he swung his arm around and his fist connected with Charlie’s jaw, he thought, “Good, that’ll shut him up for a while.” Charlie just lay there, his face buried in the gravel, his arms under his body. “Get up, you big jerk,” he’d yelled at him. “You don’t like it when your little brother gets the best of you, huh? Well, tough shit. Just lay there like the stupid-ass coward you are.” When Charlie didn’t move, he helped him to his feet. As he lifted his brother off the ground, he caught a glimpse of the knife in his hand. He managed to swerve just as Charlie spun and came at him, the blade glistening in the moonlight. Instantly, he sobered up. “Hey, bro, put that thing down,” he said. Charlie glared at him, his eyes black with hatred, and rushed at him again. He grabbed his hand and managed to wrench the knife away, but that inflamed his brother even more.

Charlie then swung at him and caught him in the gut. He doubled over, gasping for breath. “You fuckin’ crybaby,” Charlie said. “I’ll teach you to fuck around with me.” Charlie pulled him up and punched him several times before losing his balance. He took advantage of the slip and fell on top of Charlie, hitting him hard over and over. When Charlie no longer fought back, he rolled off him, exhausted. When he got up and offered a hand to his brother, Charlie’s face was a bloody pulp. “You look like shit,” he said. But Charlie didn’t move. His dead eyes stared up at him, frozen with the realization that he could no longer push his little brother around.

“C’mon, stop playing games.” He crouched next to his brother and laid his head against his chest. He heard nothing. He picked up Charlie’s wrist and checked for a pulse but felt nothing. Charlie was dead.

He knew everyone would blame him. Charlie was a cop. It didn’t matter that he was a bully, had always been a bully. It didn’t matter that they were brothers and they’d both been drunk. He knew he’d go to jail for this. He had looked toward the bar. A few stragglers were still inside. The loud music had drowned out the fight.

He did what he had to do. He drove Charlie’s car to Devil’s Turn, the aptly named road that curved sharply around the hill, nothing but cliff on the other side. It was late and no one was around to see him get out of the car, place Charlie in the driver’s seat and push it over the cliff. After it landed at the bottom, he scrambled down, rolling part of the way so his body would be bruised, and lay just outside the car as if he’d been thrown from it. A tragedy, everyone said. Charlie had had such a promising future.

Charlie’s badge had been at his house. He’d told the precinct he couldn’t find it, but that wasn’t true. He’d kept his brother’s badge as a reminder of what he’d lost.

Now that badge would come into use. He spotted the investigator in the parking lot and watched him walk into the building. He followed him to the cafeteria, keeping a safe distance. He didn’t need to hear what the nurse said to him. He’d find out later. When the nurse left, he followed her into the elevator. “Ma’am, I’m a detective from the Hammond, Illinois, police,” he said and flashed the badge. “The man you were talking to, he’s a person of interest to us. We need to know what you told him.” The woman readily cooperated. He didn’t need to follow the investigator. He knew just where he would go next: to the home of Trudy Harrington.

After getting Trudy’s address from the information operator, he got in his car and headed to Byron. No one was home at 4 Aspen Road, so he waited and watched. Having spotted no activity by nine o’clock, he checked into a local motel. At 6:00 a.m., he returned to Aspen Road. When the investigator finally showed up, he watched him ring the Harringtons’ doorbell and then walk around the house. He watched him go up and down the block, knocking on doors. He watched him leave.

He retraced the investigator’s footsteps, showing his badge at each door, asking about their conversation. When he left each home, he cautioned the residents not to tell anyone about his visit; otherwise they’d jeopardize his investigation. He learned enough to figure out that the investigator would be back after six to talk to Laura Devine. He returned at 5:30 and waited in his car a discreet distance away. He watched a woman drive up a little after six and enter the home, and an hour later he saw the investigator drive up. The investigator stayed inside for longer than he had at the other homes, and when the investigator drove away, he knocked on the same door.

He used the same introduction and gave the same caution he’d given at the other homes. Laura told him about Nancy, told him where she lived. He made some calls, got an address, and didn’t wait to drive to Minneapolis. There he knocked on doors near Nancy’s apartment and hit pay dirt at the fourth door. The occupant of the apartment, a friend of Nancy’s, told him all about her trip, even showed him the brochure for the tour company. She had been thinking of taking the same trip herself, but Nancy’s decision to go was too sudden. She couldn’t get away on such short notice. He took the brochure with him. There was so much information on the web that he could probably figure out exactly where Nancy would be without even talking to anyone from the tour company.

Yes. God had watched over him again.

C
HAPTER

27

Four Days

D
ani wondered if George, sitting in his jail cell, felt as if the hands of the clock were speeding toward Tuesday, the day the state of Indiana had set for his execution. Unless she succeeded in getting him freed, or at least obtaining a stay of execution, he would be placed in a special cell Monday. He would be provided meals of his choice all day. If he should so desire, a clergyman would visit him. Dani would be there that day as well. She would sit with him in his cell and hold his hand. Sometime after midnight, he would be taken to the room of his death, where he would be prepared for the three injections that would kill him. Indiana law mandated that the execution take place before 6:00 a.m. By custom, it would occur shortly after midnight. She would take her place in the viewing room and watch him die.

For Dani, the hands of the clock were painstakingly slow. She awaited a decision from the federal court of appeals on the denial of the writ of habeas corpus
.
They did not want to hear oral argument; the papers were sufficient, they said. She didn’t know whether that boded well or ill for George. She only knew it was agonizing to sit and wait for the call from the clerk’s office.

Today was Friday. The loss of their appeal to exhume the child’s body had been devastating. If they lost the appeal on the writ of habeas corpus as well, their last hope would be the Supreme Court. Unless a stay were issued, that meant an emergency petition to the highest court of the land, a rarely successful gambit. The tragedy was compounded by the fact that time—the same time that was speeding forward for George and had slowed to a crawl for Dani—was the salvation they needed. Time for the Mayo Clinic to uncover Sunshine Harrington’s medical records; time for Nancy Ferguson to return from her rafting trip; time for Tommy to find Sunshine Harrington—or whatever her married name was; time to run a DNA test to confirm what they all now believed to be true: that Sunshine was the daughter George and Sallie Calhoun sacrificed their lives for.

Busywork spared Dani from utter paralysis, but it didn’t stop her from looking at the clock every five minutes. The papers for an emergency writ to the Supreme Court were completed, should she need them. No pressing matters were on her desk. Still, she couldn’t leave.

“Go home, Dani,” Bruce had said an hour ago, obviously able to see her exhaustion. He knew that, should they lose, there would be no rest for her until Tuesday had passed. “I can’t,” she’d told him. He understood.

As the hands of the clock inched toward five o’clock, Dani’s heart sank. Could the decision be sitting in a pile on the desk of a clerk who was unaware that time was slipping away? Perhaps she was thinking about her child’s birthday party the next day or was going through a stack of decisions in the order they’d been put on her desk, routine decisions given the same priority as life-or-death decisions. Whatever the reason, it seemed inconceivable to her that the court would leave this undecided on the Friday before his execution.

She picked up the phone and dialed the clerk’s office. A male voice answered. “This is Dani Trumball with the Help Innocent Prisoners Project. We have an appeal pending on a capital case. I just wondered if there’s been any decision yet.”

“Hold on a moment.”

A crisp female voice came on the line. “Ms. Trumball, I was just dialing you when you called. I have the decision and I’ll fax it over to you now.”

“Can you tell me—how was it decided?”

Her voice softened. “I’m sorry. It was denied.”

“And the stay?”

“Also denied.”

Dani sat in Bruce’s office, sobbing. He was perched on the edge of his desk, facing her. He handed her a tissue and tried to console her. Dani knew she should remain professional. She understood the importance of keeping her emotions in check in order to best represent her client. And she was keenly aware of being considered “soft” because she was a woman. None of it mattered now. The news devastated her.

“You’ll file your petition with the Supreme Court first thing Monday morning,” Bruce said. “It’s not over yet.”

Bruce was being kind. They both knew that the odds of getting the Supreme Court to review the case, much less overturn it, were minuscule.

“Go home. Put this out of your mind for tonight. Tomorrow we’ll both come in and tighten up the petition to the Supremes,” he said.

As she stood to leave, Tommy walked in. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “I just got off the phone with Jack—you know, the guy from the Sharpsburg police who ran the fingerprint check for me on that note left on my car. He decided to send it over to the FBI, since they have an expanded database. The prints were run again and a partial match came up. With Stacy Conklin.”

“Isn’t that the little girl who disappeared around the same time as Angelina?” Dani said.

“You got it.”

“How would a young child’s fingerprints get into a database?”

“My guess is her mother or father took her to one of those mall events where kids get fingerprinted in case something bad should happen to them. It helps the police if they’ve got them on file. It was pretty commonplace back then.”

“So it’s Stacy’s fingerprint on the letter?”

“Not hers. Only part of it matched. But the person who threatened me is related to her, closely related. Her mother or father, most likely.”

“Oh my god! You just met with them the day before. You obviously struck a nerve.” Dani practically danced with excitement. “Now we know who’s buried in that grave. It’s Stacy Conklin. It must be.”

“Hold your horses,” Bruce said, ever the pragmatist. “Don’t get carried away with yourselves too quickly. It’s possible that, losing their own daughter the way they did, the thought of a child-murderer getting off on what they might view as a technicality was too much to bear.”

Her joy deflated.

“Why don’t you call the cop that handled that investigation?” Bruce said to Tommy. “If he bites, then he can ask a local judge for an order to exhume the body. If it’s part of an ongoing police investigation, he shouldn’t have any trouble getting it.”

“Sure. I always had a bad feeling about Mickey Conklin, so I’ve been keeping in touch with Cannon all along.”

Bruce turned to Dani. “And you should start reaching out to the governor. Let’s alert her to what’s going on and ask her to be available on Monday to consider at the least a stay.” Colleen Timmons was the governor of Indiana, the first woman elected to that position in that state. She’d run as a tough-on-crime candidate and hadn’t changed since being in office. Dani hoped it wouldn’t come down to relying on her compassion.

She and Tommy headed to their respective desks. With Indiana time an hour earlier than New York time, they were hopeful they’d still be able to reach the people they were looking for. Dani pulled out her reference guide to each state’s gubernatorial office and dialed the number for Joe Guidry, the governor’s chief of staff. He answered the phone directly. She identified herself and filled him in on what had happened with George Calhoun. She finished with her purpose in calling: “Joe, this guy is innocent, and if we have one more week, I’m sure we can prove it beyond any doubt whatsoever. We’re hoping that Governor Timmons can stand by on Monday in case the Supreme Court turns us down.”

All she heard was Joe’s breathing.

“You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m just thinking. Let me understand. You’ve been turned down by two federal courts; your request of the state court for exhumation has been turned down; and if the big Court turns you down, you want the governor to put her neck out there and give this convicted child-murderer a break. Does that about sum it up?”

“It’s not exactly how I’d put it. I’m not asking her to let the guy go free, not yet anyway. All I need is seven days. Seven days to wrap it up with a nice bow and ribbon, and I’ll throw in the real murderer, who’s been living unpunished for nineteen years.” Dani realized she’d probably gone too far. Bruce was right; she shouldn’t jump to conclusions about the Conklins. Still, she didn’t pull back the pledge. If that’s what it took to get a stay, she’d say anything at this point.

“I don’t know what the governor will want to do. The best I can promise you is that she’ll listen to you on Monday. Call us after the Supreme Court rules.”

It was the most she could hope for—Governor Timmons would hear her out. She walked back to Bruce’s office and saw Tommy inside. “Did you reach Cannon?” she asked.