Read You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy Online
Authors: David Kessler
Clayton was trapped. To say “yes” meant that he was a plausible murderer, to say “no” would beg the question as to why she didn’t tell anyone.
Alex stepped in to help him.
“She might have been afraid that even if you didn’t kill Jonathan, you might still beat him up. You’d already done so once.”
“Yes,” Clayton rasped, his voice almost gone.
“And also, like many rape victims, she might have felt that she wouldn’t be believed. You could have said that she consented.”
“I don’t think so,” Clayton replied with a wry smile. “She was a lesbian, don’t forget.”
“Did other people know that?”
“It was a more or less open secret.”
“So at the time you raped her, you knew that you were raping her against her sexual preference?”
“I guess.”
“And how do you feel about it now?”
“Now … now…”
He trailed off and broke down sobbing into his hands.
Alex felt a strange mixture of pity and disgust. After a while, the sobbing subsided, but Clayton didn’t look up.
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
Clayton’s head rose slowly. He looked shell-shocked, but held it together well.
“Pregnant? At the time … when I raped her?”
“Probably not.”
“You mean I…”
“Yes.”
Clayton was struggling for breath, like the news had knocked the wind out of him.
“How do you know?”
“Because she had an abortion.”
“When?”
Alex had to think about this. She was raped on April 1, 1998 and she had bought the ticket to England on the 19
th
of May, just over six weeks later. Alex thought about the timings. If he had got her pregnant with one shot then it was probably during the most fertile time in her cycle. That would be the midpoint between periods. When she missed her next period, did she realize what had happened? Or did she try to rationalize it away? Did she have irregular periods? Or did she just
tell herself
that she did?
And then, when she missed her next period, did panic set in? Did she wait a few days to be sure? And when she finally could evade the issue no longer, what did she do? She couldn’t talk to her mother. She certainly couldn’t talk to her father. And she didn’t have a sister.
Who else was there to talk to? Her thirteen-year-old brother? Too young. A high school friend? Did she
have
any friends? Probably not. That was the problem of the bullied child: no friends to turn to. No one to seek support or advice from. She would have had to face it alone. It must have been terrifying: the decision to have an abortion. So she booked a ticket on the 19
th
and flew to England the day after the prom.
But why England? There were abortion clinics all over California.
“You said this morning that you thought Dorothy was still alive and that she set you up.”
“Yes.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was just clutching at straws. But I didn’t kill her.”
“Do you think the rape was her motive? For setting you up, I mean?”
“Why? You starting to believe me?”
“What if I were to tell you that we have evidence that Dorothy was alive the day after she vanished? That she went to London on Sunday the 24
th
of May, the day after the prom.”
Clayton looked at Alex, hesitantly.
“‘What if?’ Is that one of those mind games, like the cops play?”
“No, it’s not a mind game – and it’s not a hypothetical. We
have
such evidence. She went to London and had an abortion.”
Alex was watching carefully to see how Clayton reacted. As things stood now, they knew that she had made it to London, because the nurse had told Juanita that Dorothy had had an abortion. But they knew nothing of what had happened to her after that.
“Well if you know that, can’t you take it to the courts? To the governor?”
All of a sudden, Clayton seemed full of hope, as if he had not only a second chance at life but also a purpose to live. It pained Alex to know that he had to shoot down those hopes, or at least temper them with a dose of realism.
“We
are
going to the courts. But it’s not quite as simple as that. We can tell the judge that she went to England and had an abortion. But we don’t have it in writing. And we don’t know what happened next. She might have come back to America and tried to blackmail you.”
“That’s garbage!”
“It’s what the DA will suggest. And the next thing he’ll say is that you might have killed her to silence her.”
He met Clayton’s eyes, monitoring them for a reaction.
The DA’s office had felt that they owed Martine Yin a favor for blowing the lid on Dusenbury’s clemency offer. So they decided to return the favor and let her know about the TRO.
It didn’t really help their cause. Those who wanted Burrow dead wanted him dead regardless of any District Court decisions and those who opposed the death penalty weren’t going to change either. But it made strategic sense to keep Martine Yin onside – especially after Sedaka had alienated her with his boorish reaction to her attempt to get a quote from him as he left his office.
So the clerk who had taken the call from his counterpart at the District Court – acting on his own initiative and hoping that it would win him a few brownie points from his masters – put in a quick call to Martine. He had got the cell phone number from the TV station after introducing himself, and he got through to Martine herself within seconds.
“Martine Yin,” said the woman on the other end.
“Oh, er,” he stuttered nervously. “Is that Martine Yin?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently.
“I’m calling from the DA’s office. I was wondering if you got the news about the temporary restraining order.”
Martine was an old pro who was used to people trying to excite her with the promise of big news.
“What temporary restraining order?” she asked, her tone level.
“The Federal District Court granted it just over half an hour ago.”
Martine listened to the details with growing excitement.
The girl at the call center had told David that the details would be sent to “her” last stored email address. That was no problem for David as he already had the account details and the password. When he had hacked into the Compuserve account with the security questions, the first thing he had been required to do was reset the password to something memorable. He had set it to “1eibbeD” which was “Debbie1” backward. It was his idea of a little joke at his big sister’s expense.
So now it was with excitement that he logged on and typed in the password. But a second after hitting the “Enter” key he got the shock of his life when he was greeted by the words “Incorrect password.”
How the hell could that be?
“Silence her?” Burrow echoed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? The legal issue isn’t whether it did happen, but whether it
could
have happened. We can show that she was still alive for a short period after she vanished. We can even show that she went to another country of her own accord. But that still doesn’t prove that that you didn’t kill her. And it
certainly
doesn’t prove that she framed you.”
Clayton was still struggling to make sense of it all.
“But the whole basis of the prosecution’s case was that I killed her
on the night she vanished
and buried the body that same night! They implied that I was jealous on the night of the prom while she went to celebrate and I was out in the cold.”
“That may have been the
implied
motive. And given sufficient time we could argue that this new evidence undermines the entire basis of the prosecution’s case. But time is the one thing we haven’t got. And the courts don’t usually like last-minute appeals like this.”
“But it’s like a basic flaw in the prosecution! I mean, it just blows a hole in their case.”
“It would if we had it in writing.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve got evidence on a computer that she booked a ticket. And we’ve got an
oral statement
from a nurse confirming that she
had
the abortion. But we haven’t yet got the passenger manifest to show that she actually
boarded
the flight. And the nurse can’t give us anything in writing to confirm that Dorothy had the abortion. It’s just an oral statement over the phone at this stage.”
“
Why
can’t the nurse give us it in writing? I mean, surely they must have some records of the abortion in England.”
“They do, but they also have certain bureaucratic obstacles. We may be able to get the records in time, but there are no guarantees.”
Clayton’s breath was slowing down.
“So why did you come here?” The tears were about to start again. “To raise my hopes and then smash them against the rocks?”
Alex had to think about this. Why
had
he come here? Was it just to ask about the rape that he’d suspected from the poem? Or was there more to it than that? Some nagging doubt in his own mind? But a very strange, nagging doubt.
“I need your help, Clayton. I need to understand some things.”
“Like what?”
“Like, why me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“How did I get to be running the final stages of your appeal? A one-man band with no track record in capital cases.”
Burrow shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“What do you mean? I thought you wanted the case.”
“I
did
want the case. It was an important matter of principle and I was ready to give it my all. But why did you
choose
me? Why did
you
want me? There were other law firms lined up to take it –
big
law firms,
prestigious
law firms. You could’ve had your pick. Yet you chose me. I mean, I’m flattered, but I still don’t understand why.”
Burrow appeared to be struggling to remember, like it was some distant, faded memory that no longer mattered to him.
“Well … I didn’t know much about you. But I think some other prisoner recommended you. I only have limited association with other prisoners, but I’m not completely isolated. Some other prisoner recommended you … and what did
I
know about law firms? I needed advice and someone offered it.”
“Do you remember his name? The prisoner?”
Alex was wondering which of his clients was currently in San Quentin.
“Not really.”
“Did he say he was my client?”
“No. But he said he’d seen you on TV. You’d just won some big case, remember. Some drug dealer’s girlfriend had got a long stretch because of her boyfriend. And you took the case to appeal and blew the prosecution apart.”
“Estella Sanchez.”
It was a statement not a question.
“But you didn’t hear about the case directly … someone told you, someone recommended me?”
“That’s right.”
“But you don’t remember who?”
“I don’t think he ever told me his name. In this place you don’t always use names. He was just the guy in the cell next to mine.”
Alex nodded. There was nothing sinister in it. Just one prisoner trying to help another with a bit of advice. And Alex happened to be the man of the moment, because of his success in the Sanchez case.
But there was still another question nagging away at Alex.
“In the poem, Dorothy said: ‘You dragged me before the mirror / And ripped the clothes off of me.’ Do you know what she meant by that?”
“I guess I ripped her clothes off.”
“You ‘guess’?”
Alex was beginning to get a bit irritated with Clayton’s “guessing.” But then again, he realized that Clayton wasn’t trying to run away from morality as such, merely from moral judgment. It was too late to take back what he had already done. All he could do was run away from moral condemnation. But the worst condemnation – the most damning judgment – came from his own conscience. Thus it was from his own conscience that he was fleeing.
“I mean, I did.”
“But what about the mirror?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there a mirror where you raped her?”
“No … it was in a shed.”
“So, when you raped her, you didn’t drag her in front of any mirror?”
“No.”
Alex looked into Clayton’s eyes and knew that he was telling the truth. So what the hell was Dorothy talking about in the poem?