Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,79

The roads were clear and she made good time on Interstate 65, arriving at the prison by eleven o’clock. She’d already arranged with Warden Coates to spend the day with George, a stark departure from the usual prison practice. Despite the daily violence in the other sections of the prison, where seventy-five percent of the inmates were there for murder and where even the visiting chaplains wore protective vests, death row was relatively tranquil. As a precaution, she’d been required to sign a waiver of liability protecting the prison against any lawsuit, despite Coates’s confidence that George wouldn’t harm her.

Melanie stood by in the office and waited for a ruling from the Supreme Court. Dani had the phone number of Joe Guidry, the governor’s chief of staff, programmed into her own phone. A push of a single button would reach him.

There was no cell-phone service in George’s cell, so the warden had agreed to get her when Melanie called his office with word from the Supremes.

After Dani was processed through the visitor’s entrance, a guard escorted her to George’s jail cell. The concrete corridors had a musty odor, and her nose twitched as she held back a sneeze. She endured the expected catcalls as she walked past the cells. The roominess of the enclosures surprised her. Then she remembered Coates’s telling her that death-row inmates, who occupied their cells alone, were given more space because the rooms encompassed their entire world. No job duties, no library, no group meals. Just their cells all but a half-hour each day. She passed a cell whose walls were covered with paintings as good as some she’d seen in museums. Another cell looked like a greenhouse, with dozens of plants below a small window. At the end of the row, she heard a squeak as she passed, and looked up to see a snow-white rabbit sitting on a small table and an open cage in the corner.

“The prisoners are allowed pets?” Dani asked her escort.

“Only on death row. These men, they know they’re going to die. It helps some keep depression at bay.”

Dani passed through a security gate at the end of the row and was led down a separate corridor where inmates were placed within twenty-four hours of their execution. Unlike the other sections marked by a constant hum of blended noises, this area was eerily quiet. George looked up as he heard footsteps approach, and a hopeful smile broke out on his face when he saw Dani.

“I don’t have any news for you yet,” she told him after the cell door had closed behind her and the guard had left. “But Melanie will get word to me as soon as we hear from the Supreme Court.”

George nodded slowly. “I don’t expect much.”

“There’s still time. Executions have been stopped with just hours to go.”

George’s hands rested on his lap. He had a look of determination on his face. “I’m ready for it to be over. I did what I had to and I’m okay with that.”

She hadn’t told George about the nurse at the Mayo Clinic. She felt torn. She didn’t know how he’d react. Would it heighten his anguish to think his daughter was alive and not be able to find her? Or would it bring him peace? Dani concluded that it was wrong for her to withhold information from him.

“George, it’s possible that Angelina is alive.”

George’s shoulders shot back and his body became taut. “Have you found her?” he asked in a choked voice.

“No, not yet.”

“But she’s alive?”

“We’re not certain. But we believe she may be.”

Dani told him about the nurse at the Mayo Clinic. She described the efforts they’d made to track down Sunshine Harrington. As she spoke, George slumped into his chair as if a pin had been stuck into his body and all the air had escaped.

She put her hand on his. “I’m sorry.”

George sat upright again. “No, it’s good. It’s good. My beautiful angel is alive. It means what I did meant something. It mattered.”

They didn’t know yet if that was true, but if George did walk to his death tonight, Dani preferred that it be with the belief that Angelina had survived.

Unlike the cells she’d passed along death row, this one was bare. A bed, a small table and wooden chair, and a toilet in the corner—nothing more was needed in quarters meant to be used for less than twenty-four hours. Every now and then a guard walked by, his footsteps echoing in the hallway. Once,