Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,67

killed her?”

Sallie stared at her, her eyes alive for the first time with a burning intensity. “We did kill her. We left our baby alone and sick with no one around to love her and take care of her. That’s murder, isn’t it?”

“No, Sallie,” Dani said. “I don’t know whether it was right or wrong, but it wasn’t murder.” She let the words sink in. “Did you want to be punished for what you and George did, for leaving Angelina at the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think George should be killed for doing that? For making you go along with it?”

Sallie remained silent for a long time. Again, her arms were wrapped tightly around her body, the skin under her hands beginning to turn purple with bruises.

“Sallie? Can you answer my question?”

Sallie looked at Dani with lifeless eyes. “I will hate George for the rest of my life for what he did.” She stood up to leave and Dani thought she was finished, but she stopped at the door and turned to her. “Yes, I think George should die,” she said and left the room.

Dani had nurtured a dim hope that, with the truth out in the open, Sallie would agree to give her an affidavit, a sworn statement that confirmed what she and George had done with Angelina. But it was obvious that she wouldn’t, and Dani didn’t even ask. Instead she now knew that George’s tale was absolutely true. Had there been a kernel of doubt that she’d pushed away, it no longer existed. Now it wasn’t her belief that George was innocent—it was a fact.

Three robed judges sat behind a raised mahogany bench. The small courtroom had only six rows of seats behind the swinging gate. Dani, Melanie and Tommy sat in the third row. Their case was fourth on the court’s calendar, and they waited while oral argument took place in the cases before theirs. Two of the cases were civil, one a criminal matter. As Dani listened to the arguments, it became apparent that this was a “hot” bench—the judges had read the briefs submitted beforehand and were actively engaging the attorneys in questioning.

“People versus George Calhoun,” the bailiff called out sooner than Dani expected. She and Melanie took their seats at the defendant’s table. Ted Landry seated himself at the prosecutor’s table.

“Are you ready?” asked the chief judge, sitting between the two other judges.

“Yes,” Dani said. She walked to the lectern between the two tables and arranged her note cards.

“Let me remind you that when the yellow light comes on, you have only one minute left. When the red light comes on, your time is up.”

“I understand. Your Honors, George Calhoun has been on death row for seventeen years, convicted of murdering his daughter, after the body of a young girl, estimated at between three and four years old, was found in the woods in Orland. From the very beginning, Mr. Calhoun has consistently and repeatedly denied that the child’s body was his daughter. At the time of his trial, DNA testing was not widely used. That’s no longer the case. Now—”

“Isn’t it true that Mr. Calhoun’s daughter had disappeared about the same time?” asked the judge on the right, a woman with brown hair pulled back into a bun.

“Yes, that’s true, and although my client failed to explain her disappearance at that time, he had compelling reasons for doing so.”

“Yes, I’ve read your papers. He now claims he abandoned her at the Mayo Clinic as an act of mercy.”

“More like an act of desperation. His daughter was dying and needed treatment that he couldn’t pay for and that no one would provide without payment.”

“Doesn’t Medicaid pay the medical costs for indigent families?” asked the judge on the left, an elderly man with dark horn-rimmed glasses.

“His income was too high to be eligible for Medicaid but too low to afford insurance. Although the state of Indiana now has a program to provide low-cost health insurance for children whose parents fall into that category, it didn’t exist nineteen years ago. DNA testing is now routine and widely accepted. Even with bones that are nineteen years old, it can conclusively determine whether the child was Angelina Calhoun. Shouldn’t—”

“How long would it take for DNA results to come back?” the right-side judge asked.

“It’s possible to obtain results in five days.”

“Assuming the lab isn’t backed up, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“It seems to me,” the chief judge said, “that you have a fundamental problem. The defendant has already exhausted his