Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,13
degrees, the still air made it feel warmer. Dani loved spring. It carried the hope of warm lazy days ahead, summer vacation with Jonah, and sunlight that seemed to last forever. But this summer would be different. By the beginning of summer, she knew, George Calhoun’s fate would be determined. He would be a free man, released after seventeen years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, or, rightly or wrongly, dead from a lethal injection.
Traffic crawled, as Dani had expected, and she didn’t arrive home until after six o’clock. She was exhausted, barely able to muster the effort to eat dinner. After Jonah fell asleep, she decided to give herself a break for the evening. Her mind was too fried for the tedious scrutiny of the transcript that awaited her. Instead, she settled down in front of the fire, Doug’s arms wrapped securely around her.
“Do you ever regret giving up the U.S. Attorney’s Office?” she asked. Like Dani, Doug had started his law career as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.
It would have been easy for Doug to respond with a quick “no,” but he was too thoughtful to toss off an answer. “Most of the time, no. Teaching has so many rewards, and by and large the students keep me entertained. But sometimes I miss the energy of the agency, the stimulation of getting close to nailing our target, knowing I have the power to stop bad things from happening.”
Power. There were many reasons an attorney joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and one was for the feeling of power. For Doug, that had been a strong draw, one that fueled his interest in law from the outset. There was an adrenaline rush in putting together an investigation, preparing for trial, and securing a conviction, but under all that was an awareness of one’s power. Doug had luxuriated in that knowledge yet gave it up without complaint to spend more time with Jonah.
“I’ve been thinking about Sara recently,” Dani said.
“You haven’t spoken to her in a while.”
“I’ve been so busy. But I’ve been thinking lately how so much of my life now is tied to her, or at least to things about her.”
Dani didn’t grow up expecting to be a lawyer. She wanted to be a psychologist. During her undergraduate days at Brown University, she volunteered for several social action groups. One of them was Fast Friends. Looking back, that choice seemed prophetic, but at the time, it was fueled by a selfish desire to enhance her graduate-school opportunities.
Fast Friends paired volunteers with developmentally disabled “friends.” At the college chapters, volunteer students committed to meeting with their friends at least twice a month, with more regular contact by phone and, nowadays, e-mail. But inevitably it became much more than that. Most of the volunteers were close to their friends, and the benefits of the relationships flowed both ways.
Dani’s friend was Sara Klemson. An unusually pretty, mildly retarded eighteen-year-old, Sara had always found it difficult to make friends. Her overly effusive personality was off-putting to her non-disabled peers, and she had gradually become more withdrawn. She and Dani had hit it off immediately and saw each other regularly. Fast Friends held numerous social activities for the volunteers and their friends, but gradually Dani began to invite Sara to some regular campus social events. One was a fraternity party during her sophomore year.
She didn’t know how it had happened. She swore she wasn’t drunk; she never liked the feeling of being out of control. But somehow she lost sight of Sara and didn’t realize it until it was too late. She found her sobbing in a bedroom, her clothes torn, blood on the sheets. She had been raped. Eventually, two of the fraternity brothers were arrested and tried. With her inappropriate smiling and slow speech, Sara didn’t make a very good witness, and the boys’ expensive attorneys had little difficulty getting a “not guilty” verdict. It was then that Dani decided she’d have more impact as a prosecutor than as a psychologist.
“You would have ended up as an attorney even without Sara,” Doug said as he stroked her cheek. “You’re so naturally suited for it.”
The flames from the fireplace cast a soft glow in the darkened living room. The images in the photographs on the mantle were barely visible, but Dani could see her favorite: seven-year-old Jonah, flanked by his parents, blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, a look of pure joy on