by Marti Green
“He’s telling the truth, I’m convinced of it,” Dani said to the others after the waitress left.
Tommy looked at her skeptically. “I hate to burst your bubble, Dani, but he’s been incarcerated seventeen years now. If he didn’t know how to spin a yarn before being sent inside, he certainly learned the ropes over the years. It’s a work of art among the inmates. They take bets on who’ll come up with the biggest lie and carry it off.”
“That man was too broken up to be lying,” Melanie said. “I agree with Dani. Maybe he did an awful thing abandoning his daughter, but I’ll bet anything that body they found in Orland wasn’t Angelina.”
Was it a despicable act to leave his child, sick and alone, in a hospital? Abandoning Jonah, leaving him behind, scared and unable to comprehend the loss of his parents, seemed inconceivable. No matter what, Dani would want to be by his side, to soothe him, to reassure him, even if her words were hollow. She’d keep fighting the system that withheld treatment from him, fight with every fiber of her being. But she recognized that the tools she had in her arsenal were more powerful than those available to George and Sallie. She was educated, trained to be an advocate. If the first answer was no, she had the know-how to keep fighting until the answer was yes, to keep going up the ladder of command until she reached the person able to look beyond standard procedure. She wasn’t saying that, in the end, she would have been able to obtain medical treatment, only that fighting for it would have provided a semblance of hope, eased the feeling of powerlessness that must have overwhelmed George and Sallie.
Tommy leaned back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. “It’s a good thing you gals have me along. One of us has got to be tethered to reality. Face it—there’s absolutely no evidence to support his fairy tale. I guarantee we won’t find doctors’ records or hospital records. And let’s not forget Sallie. Don’t you think she would have thought to mention that they had a dying daughter? Not a word!”
“There’s no evidence because no one looked for medical records.” Dani’s body was flushed from the anger she felt. Whether it was Tommy’s dismissiveness that had raised her ire or a system that would turn away a deathly ill child, she didn’t know. She only knew she wanted to throttle someone. “Why would they, if neither George nor Sallie talked about it? And as for Sallie, she could be so consumed with guilt that to her it feels like they did kill their daughter, that leaving her alone and sick was like a death.”
“Or,” said Tommy, “maybe she truly was sick and they couldn’t handle it, so they killed her.”
Now Dani knew: She wanted to throttle Tommy. She forced herself to calm down. There were still unanswered questions and she’d chosen Tommy for her team because he was the best at ferreting out answers. “Either way, we have to check out George’s story. You’ll need to stay behind and follow up with the doctor and hospital. Hopefully, they still have records from back then.”
Melanie was quiet. Dani could see her struggle with herself. She wanted to believe George, but Tommy had shaken her confidence in her own judgment. Her battle was one Dani had observed before, not only in young women but in older, more experienced women as well. No matter how smart or accomplished women were, they’d been raised to defer to men. It was true that women’s liberation had changed the world; women now could do any job and be taken seriously. Yes, they’d come a long way. For Dani’s mother, smart as she was, becoming a lawyer was something she’d considered to be beyond her reach. Melanie’s mother, on the other hand, had no doubt encouraged her daughter to pursue any career she fancied. When Dani stood in court arguing an appeal, the justices took her very seriously. Still, old stereotypes ran deep, and Dani knew too many women, smart women, who caved in when challenged by men.
Thank goodness Bruce, her boss, wasn’t one of those men in power who, subconsciously or otherwise, viewed women as lesser mortals. Perhaps it stemmed from the professional path he’d chosen: helping the indigent. Power was secondary in this environment, and anyone willing to help was eagerly embraced and equally valued. It was different in the Justice Department, where power was the reward for hard work and long hours and went to those whose commitment was not suspect by virtue of one’s gender. Dani guessed that was the case at the FBI as well, where Tommy had learned his investigative skills. If so, it was inevitable that Tommy had adopted some of the Bureau’s beliefs. She knew he thought she was too soft. Sometimes she wondered herself.
The flight back to New York was uneventful. When the plane landed, Dani headed back to HIPP. Before she had removed her jacket, Bruce popped into her office.
“How was your first field trip?”
Daily phone calls had kept him abreast of her findings. Now he fished for her reaction to being out front, cutting through the tangle of information to discern the truth, and making the decision to take on a client. Fear and excitement alternated within her. “Unsettling. Tell me, when you’ve interviewed prospective clients, how do you know when they’re handing you a line?”
Bruce chuckled, the easy laugh of someone who’d faced the question untold times. “Starting to doubt your initial impression?”
During most of the flight back from Indiana, Dani had wrestled with the question, weighing Tommy’s impression against her own and trying to dissect George’s story from every angle. “No, I still think the girl in the woods isn’t George’s daughter. But we may never know for sure. There’s no DNA sample in the police kit, and who knows if we’ll find any hospital records?”
“Well, without DNA, you can never be certain. You just have to trust your instincts. If the evidence trail that led to conviction is flawed, then there’s good reason to think the verdict may be flawed.”
“You know, Tommy disagrees with me.”
“That’s good. It helps to have someone take the other side. It’ll push you harder to find the truth.”
“Sure, but…”
Bruce raised one eyebrow, a trick she’d never been able to master herself.
“He thinks I’m just being a softy. I am a softy—I know that about myself. And watching George tell his story was heart wrenching. That’s not why I believe him, though. At least I don’t think it is. It’s just—the look in his eyes, the heartache from wondering what happened to his daughter—it seemed real to me.”
Bruce looked at the calendar on the wall. “You don’t have the luxury of waiting until Tommy finishes investigating to decide whether we take on George’s case. Execution is less than five weeks away. If you believe he’s innocent, then you have to keep going. Do we have a basis for appeal?”
“Sure. His case could have been handled by a high schooler for all the work put into it. It screeches ‘ineffective counsel.’”
“It’s your case, Dani, and your call. What do you want to do?”
“I want to believe him. I want Tommy to find evidence that makes it right to believe him.”
“And if Tommy can’t find that evidence?”
“My gut says he’s innocent.”
“Then go with what your gut tells you.”
As Bruce left her office, Dani knew it wasn’t as simple as he’d suggested. Once, before she began working at HIPP, her instincts led her to believe in the truth of a defendant’s confession. Over time she’d learned that even something so clear should be questioned. Sallie had confessed. George had given them a reason to doubt her. In the end, trusting her gut only meant making hard decisions.
Most people Dani met assumed she was not a big supporter of the death penalty. Why would she work for HIPP otherwise? And they were right, of course. She’d learned from experience that mistakes were made too often. She hadn’t always been an opponent of the death penalty, though. She staunchly supported it when she started her career as an assistant US attorney, prosecuting defendants who were the scum of the planet. It was easy to lack sympathy for people who preyed on the weakness of others. Remove them from the future gene poo
l, so they didn’t continue to pollute the Earth, she rationalized. The gratitude of the victim’s family when she secured a conviction, the relief that washed over their faces when the jury imposed a sentence of death, reinforced her belief in the justness of that penalty.
Until Darryl Coneston. Darryl was the nephew of Jenny Slenku. From Dani’s toddler years, Jenny had cared for her while her parents worked. She greeted Dani with fresh-baked cookies when she returned from school, got dinner ready before her parents arrived from their respective jobs, and kept their house tidy. She had immigrated with her parents and her older sister before the beginning of World War II, from Bucovina, in the northern region of Romania, where she was called “Jenica.” Although she’d been in this country for over thirty years before becoming Dani’s caregiver, she still carried the vestiges of her Romanian accent. Jenny’s cheer and exuberance spilled over onto anyone around her. She doted on Dani, filling her with Romanian delicacies like covrigi and gogosi and, on special occasions, cozonac, a rich fruit bread that was a traditional Christmas treat in her homeland. She thought Dani could do no wrong, and Dani adored her. By the time Dani entered high school, it was no longer necessary to have an adult waiting for her at home, but Jenny had become a part of Dani’s family and it would have been inconceivable to let her go.
Dani remembered vividly returning from band practice one bright autumn day in her junior year, still tingling from the attentions paid to her by the dashing trumpet player, his smile as dazzling as the pure, sharp notes of his instrument. She walked into the kitchen and found Jenny sobbing at the kitchen table. Her short, round body and mass of tightly wound, graying curls shook like the contents of a blender turned up high. Throwing her arms around her vibrating body, Dani asked, “What’s wrong, Jenny. What happened?”
Jenny could barely speak through her anguish, but over the next hour Dani pieced together the cause of her despair. Jenny’s only nephew, her sister’s son, had been arrested and charged with the brutal rape and murder of a teenage girl. The enormity of the event would have been enough to send Jenny over the edge, but what had rendered her dumbstruck was this: He had confessed to the crime. Dani comforted Jenny as best she could, but inside she seethed with righteous satisfaction that he would not escape punishment for such a heinous act.
Over the next several weeks, Dani often overheard her parents discuss his plight with Jenny. It was a mistake, a miscarriage of justice, a travesty. Darryl was a good boy, studious, always considerate of others. A friend of the victim had mistakenly identified him as the person last seen with her.
“Why did he confess?” Dani heard her parents ask.
“They beat him—they made him,” Jenny answered, her shoulders sagging, her once cheerful smile lost. “They wouldn’t let him call his mother; they wouldn’t let him eat or drink or go to the bathroom. They told him if he didn’t confess, he’d get sentenced to die. He’s just a boy. What did he know?” With the smug certainty of a teenager, Dani knew he must be guilty, knew that an eyewitness couldn’t be wrong, knew that an innocent person wouldn’t confess.
Jenny finally stopped working for her family when Dani began law school. She was in her sixties by then, ready to stay home with her husband and tend to her grandchildren. She had never truly recovered from her nephew’s incarceration. At Dani’s law-school graduation, which she attended as a valued member of their family, she took Dani aside. “You’re a lawyer now, you can help Darryl. Please, show them he’s innocent, that he didn’t do such a horrible thing.”
“But he confessed,” Dani reminded her.
“No, no, they made him; he told me so. Help him. You’re the only one I can ask.”
The years in law school hadn’t changed Dani’s view of the criminal justice system. She believed eyewitnesses were reliable. She knew innocent people didn’t confess, no matter how seriously they were mistreated. But Jenny was family. Dani promised she’d see what she could do. Being a new lawyer, first studying for the bar exam and then caught up in the energy of a new job; falling in love with the man who would become her husband; struggling with the demands of motherhood—it was easy to forget a promise amid all that. Once in a while, Jenny would call and ask, “Anything yet? Did you find anything?”
“No, I’ve been looking, but nothing yet,” Dani would answer with only the mildest twinge of guilt about her deception.
And then Jenny became ill, riddled with cancer that spread from her breast to her lymph glands and then her brain. Dani had left the US Attorney’s Office by then, devoting her full attention to Jonah. When she visited Jenny in the hospital and Jenny clutched Dani’s hand in hers, looked at her with her rheumy eyes and whispered, “Please, before it’s too late, help him,” Dani knew she couldn’t avoid it any longer.
Darryl had been sentenced to life in a Florida state penitentiary. True to the cops’ promise, he’d avoided a death sentence through his confession. By then, Dani’s parents had retired to Florida, and she planned a trip with Jonah to visit them and arranged to meet with Darryl while she was there. As a result of that meeting, she began to question her previous assumptions.
Darryl had been nineteen when the police picked him up for questioning about the rape and murder of Janice Priestly, a sixteen-year-old high school student working part time at a local Burger King. It was one of the many fast-food restaurants frequented by students at a nearby college, where Darryl earned straight A’s and edited the college literary magazine. He readily admitted to having been at Burger King that night, along with his friend Lance, planning the next steps for a shared research project. He hadn’t noticed any of the employees and left shortly after eight. But according to Janice’s friend and coworker Rona McAfee, Darryl had been flirting with Janice, and when she finished her shift at eight, both Darryl and Lance followed her out the door.
When brought in for questioning, Darryl assumed that it must have been a mistake and saw no need to have a lawyer present. After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong. Twenty hours later, Darryl understood that his innocence was irrelevant. During his interrogation, he had been beaten in the head, the chest, and the legs, never on the face, and always with a phone book held against his body so as not to leave evidence of the brutality. They threw a chair at him and repeatedly slammed his head on the table. When the abuse failed to produce a confession, the police told him Lance had confessed and would soon implicate Darryl. They told him he’d receive the death penalty unless he too confessed. They showed him photographs of death row. They held a hypodermic needle to his arm and said, “This is how we’ll kill you.”
At that moment, Darryl knew his only two choices were life in prison or death. He chose the former. The police had lied about Lance; he hadn’t confessed, nor had he implicated Darryl. But to escape the death penalty, Darryl had agreed to testify against his friend. They were both sentenced to life in prison.
Twelve years later, the governor of Florida received a letter from a convict on death row in Georgia, saying two innocent men were in prison for the rape and murder of Janice Priestly, a crime for which the letter-writer took sole responsibility. Instead of interviewing the convict, Florida police interviewed Darryl in prison. Fearful that asserting his innocence would harm his chance for parole, Darryl reaffirmed to the police that he had committed the crime.
Now he sat before Dani, looked her straight in the eye, and said, “I’ve never hurt anyone in my life.” She believed him. When Darryl had been convicted, DNA testing was in its infancy. By the time she’d met him, it was proven technology. Over the next few months, Dani tracked down evidence files from his trial and discovered that biological specimens from the victim still existed. She filed a motion for DNA testing. The state objected. After a hearing, she prevailed. Testing was conducted and it showed conclusively that neither Darryl nor Lance had raped Janice.
Jenny died two days after Dani told her of the DNA results, comforted by the confirmation all these years later of
her nephew’s innocence and reassured that an injustice would soon be rectified.
Dani expected that his story would have a happy ending. She filed a joint petition with the state of Florida to set aside the convictions of Darryl and Lance on the grounds of actual innocence. After fifteen years in prison, both would become free men. Before that happened, though, an inmate viciously beat Darryl, and he suffered irreversible brain damage. He needed the constant care of a group home. Although freed from prison, his future, which once held so much promise, was gone forever.
When Jonah got older and Dani wanted to return to work, she sought out HIPP. Her view of the world had changed because of Darryl Coneston, and working at HIPP became her atonement for her earlier blindness and arrogance.
CHAPTER
12
Hunched over a small table at a Dunkin Donuts shop, Tommy brought the paper cup filled with hot coffee to his lips. Still too hot. He drank his coffee black, no cream, no sugar. Coffee should be hot, steaming hot, but damn, this coffee in his hand would scald his tongue and leave him with an annoying burn on the roof of his mouth that would pester him the rest of the day. Better to wait and let it cool off. No need to rush. A wild goose chase—that’s what he was on. Still, it was his job to follow the trail, no matter how far fetched. He had to admit he’d been wrong before. Not often. Hardly ever, in fact. Dani seemed so sure this guy was innocent, but Tommy knew she was a marshmallow inside. Maybe outside, too. It took the kind of experience Tommy had to harden up and realize how perps lied so convincingly. He’d seen that plenty at the Bureau.
He tried his coffee again. “Mmm,” he said out loud. “Just right.” He broke off a piece of his cinnamon Danish, dunked it into the coffee, and then took a long sip of the rich brown liquid. His favorite breakfast: not eggs or bacon or pancakes, just a good cup of java and a Danish. Maybe sometimes a splurge with a bagel and cream cheese. He believed in keeping fit. Working out regularly at the gym and eating healthy—well, maybe the Danish wasn’t so good, but surely better than bacon—were part of his regular routine. Traveling broke that routine and put him out of sorts. When he’d miss more than two days at the gym, he thought it must be what withdrawal felt like. He’d done his share of traveling with the Bureau. Now he preferred settling in at home.