Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,75

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 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 to not tell anyone about his visit; otherwise they’d jeopardize his investigation. He learned enough to figure out that the investigator would be back after 6 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 6 and enter the home and an hour later saw the investigator drive up. He 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 and got an address but 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.

CHAPTER

27

Four Days

Dani 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 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 bode 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 was the Supreme Court. Unless a stay was 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,