Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green

Chapter

7





Tommy searched through the mini-refrigerator in his hotel room for a shot of scotch. With none in sight, he settled for a Coors, twisted off the cap, and sank into the cushioned vinyl chair in front of his desk. Dani worried him. Before even talking to George, she’d already thought him innocent. And that was bad. Most of the men on death row were guilty and deserved to die. While he understood that it was important to make sure a mistake hadn’t been made, you needed to investigate with a clean slate. At this stage, the presumption of innocence was crap. As far as he was concerned, presume guilt and search for any evidence otherwise. This was Dani’s first investigation, and her inexperience showed. At least to him. She was smart, all right. When the evidence showed that an inmate was innocent, no one did a better job of marshaling the facts into a top-notch brief. And he’d watched her argue cases before appellate courts, even the Supreme Court. Damn, she was persuasive, looking like a fox but sounding like a tiger.

Sallie may have mixed up her story along the way, but it always came back to the same culprit: George. Maybe she’d taken part, maybe not. That didn’t matter. It was George who was being readied for execution, George who was their client. And so far it looked like the jury had gotten it right. Still, he needed to check out every lead, no matter how far-fetched. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Hammond Police Department. How can I direct your call?”

“Is Detective Hank Cannon in?” Tommy waited several minutes before he heard a loud raspy voice answer.

“Cannon here.”

“Detective Cannon, my name is Tom Noorland. Jimmy Velasquez said you could help me.”

“How do you know Jimmy?”

“We worked together at the Bureau back in the ’90s. I’m retired now, working with the Help Innocent Prisoners Project in New York.”

“Got to be pretty slow work for you. I don’t know many innocent prisoners.”

Tommy laughed. “I’m with you there. But this one’s got a needle waiting for him in five weeks. We just want to make sure he deserves it.”

“Didn’t a jury already decide that?”

“C’mon, detective. You know sometimes they slip up. Most of the time it’s letting a bad guy off. Once in a while it’s the other way around. Nothing’s perfect.”

“What do you need from me?”

“You investigated a missing-child case back in ’90. Name of Conklin, Stacy Conklin. Do you remember that?”

Tommy could hear a sigh at the other end of the line, then silence. He took another swig of Coors and waited. When the voice at the other end next spoke, it was more subdued.

“You know how some cases just stick with you? You work them and work them and no matter how hard you look, you just get nowhere? That’s Stacy Conklin. It’s buried in the department as an unsolved case, but it’s not buried in my head. I wish it was. I got just two years left till retirement and I sure don’t want to spend my days wondering about what happened to her.”

“Were there any leads? Any witnesses still around?”

“No. She disappeared from her bed in the middle of the night. The parents were asleep, and when they woke up she was gone. No fingerprints, no sign of forced entry, but it was summer and the bedroom windows were open. We got a list of people who’d been around their house, but nothing panned out.”

“And the parents themselves—they checked out?”

“Well, they were pretty hysterical when it happened. Anyone seeing them could tell it had hit them hard. They weren’t putting on a show, if you know what I mean. When that body turned up right next door, in Indiana, we took the parents in for an ID. Seeing that burned body of a little girl near killed them. The mother couldn’t even look at her. I stood right next to them. Thankfully, it wasn’t their daughter.”

“How could they be sure, with the body so badly burned?”

“Different size, different weight. And some hair was still left. It wasn’t the same shade as their daughter’s.”

There was no reason to think the Hammond police force hadn’t done its job right, especially considering Detective Cannon’s zeal for closure on the case before he retired. Tommy decided to press further anyway. “Was any forensic testing done to confirm she wasn’t their daughter?”

“Like DNA?”

“Yeah, like DNA. Anyone compare the victim’s DNA to the Conklins’?”

“You’ve got to remember, this was back in ’90. DNA testing wasn’t routine then.”

Tommy didn’t want to risk alienating Cannon. He’d need his help if this was a thread worth pursuing. “Okay, I keep forgetting that.”

“Why are you asking about Stacy, anyway? Do you have some information about her?”

“Nope. Just checking all loose ends for a guy on death row. By the way, do you know where the parents are living now?”

“Sure. Same house they were in when Stacy was taken. I tell you, I wouldn’t have stayed there. I still keep in touch with them. Nice couple. They never got over their daughter, though. Never had any more kids.”

Tommy thanked the detective for his help. Nothing for nothing, he thought to himself as he hung up.