Read You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy Online
Authors: David Kessler
“Yes, I knew. I overheard her talking to Jonathan.”
“About the rape?
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“A week before she vanished.”
“Exactly a week?”
“Yes. I mean she vanished on a Saturday and this was the Saturday before.”
Alex was quickly doing the arithmetic in his mind. Dorothy had vanished on the 23
rd
of May. But she was raped on her birthday, April the first. Why would she be telling Jonathan about the rape seven weeks after it happened? He remembered that Jonathan had said “she came to the house in tears.” That must have been on the day it happened.
But on May 19 she had booked a ticket to England and then she vanished a few days later. So when Mrs. Olsen overheard Dorothy talking to Jonathan a week before she vanished, was it the rape she was talking about or the…
“Mrs. Olsen … did you know that Dorothy was pregnant?”
Esther looked at him, surprised. But even before she spoke Alex knew that it was not surprise about the pregnancy: it was surprise that Alex knew about it. Her face betrayed more than she intended. They both knew that the secret was out.
“Yes, I knew.”
“And did you also know that she had an abortion?”
Esther Olsen looked surprised.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“This I did not know.”
She sounded sincere. But this didn’t make sense. Dorothy must have decided on the abortion before she bought the ticket.
“You didn’t hear her talking about it to Jonathan?”
“I heard whispering.”
“And she didn’t mention having an abortion?”
“Yes, she mentioned it.”
“But I thought you said—”
“I said I didn’t know she
had
one. But I knew that she was considering it. She talked about it to Jonathan. Of course he couldn’t really advise her. He was just a child. But I think she was using him as a sounding board for her own thoughts. I wished she could have talked to me about it. She was the loneliest child in the world and she couldn’t come to her mother for advice.”
“Why didn’t
you
talk to
her
?”
“I couldn’t approach her about it. I couldn’t so much as mention it without running the risk that she would accuse me of eavesdropping. We would have had a shouting match and she would have ended up hating me even more. I had to wait for her to come to me. She never did. And that is the biggest regret of my life.”
“What would you have told her?”
“Just being there for her would have been enough. But I don’t know if I could have advised her. We belonged to different generations. My decision was different to hers.”
The words landed on Alex like a punch from a hard-hitting heavyweight.
“
Was
different?”
“When I had to make such a choice, I chose to
have
the baby.”
Alex was stunned by this.
“When you had to…” He trailed off and composed himself. “Wait a minute, you were
raped
?”
“Okay, look, I can’t come round now.” The voice was muted. “I’m expected to keep working as long as there’s a chance of saving him. I’ll try and get away as soon as I can. Love you.”
Nat put the phone down.
The reception area had been empty when the fax arrived. Juanita had gone out to buy sandwiches and he had heard the fax machine from the other room, but hadn’t thought anything of it. He wouldn’t even have bothered to check it if it wasn’t for the fact that he was restless. It was now the end of what would normally have been the working day and, although he often worked overtime when they had a big case coming up in the morning, this was normally the time that he would head home.
But he was wandering aimlessly into the reception area with his umpteenth cup of coffee of the day when he noticed that the paper tray of the fax machine was empty. Juanita must have been so busy that she had forgotten to refill it. He took some new paper out of a half-open packet, fanned it and put it into the tray.
When he slid the tray into place the fax machine came to life and started printing. He realized that there must have been a fax stacked up in the memory. It turned out to be just one page. He picked it up, glancing at it as he walked back across the reception area.
When he saw the letterhead he practically spilt his coffee. And when he started reading it he had to sit down and put the cup on the desk.
This was something that he had not expected – and he was not pleased. He quickly went over to the shredder.
Alex had initially been cool to David’s attempts to analyze the poem. But his interest perked up when David told him about the stylistic resemblance between Dorothy’s poem and the Sylvia Plath poem. In the absence of any other directions, David took this as a green light to continue searching for more verses. If possible, he wanted to find the whole thing.
It might not be of any further help, but there was nothing better to look for. They had found out about the flight to England and the medical center. Further hacking of the bank account was taboo. This was the only thing left.
By now he had the routine down pat. He set the computer to do another search for sequences with several instances of the word “you” in close proximity. In seconds the scanning tunneling microscope and computer combination had thrown up another result.
I knew his name was Jimmy
And he died when he was three
In a car accident, with you at the wheel
No wonder you felt guilty
You never spoke about him
Amazing!
“No, Mr. Sedaka, I wasn’t raped. But it
was
an unwanted pregnancy. I made the mistake of having a one-night stand with a virtual stranger three days before I was married.”
This caught Alex from left of field. Esther Olsen didn’t seem the type. Then again, was there such a thing as “the type?”
Besides, who was he to judge? His own youth had been equally reckless. He had got Melody pregnant while she was in the middle of her medical studies. They married in haste four months later. And like Esther Olsen, Melody had carried the pregnancy to term and had the baby. It had almost derailed Melody’s career. Only Melody’s tenacity and determination – together with a supportive mother of her own – had kept it on track.
“How did it happen?”
“It was at one of those drunken frat parties. You know the type.”
“I know the type,” Alex confirmed. “So what was it, you had unprotected sex with a stranger and you got pregnant by him?”
“That’s right.”
“And then when you got married you took precautions?”
It didn’t make sense.
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean, what makes you so sure that it was him? This stranger? How do you know it wasn’t your husband?”
“Trust me, I know.”
“What, you did a DNA test? Or just a blood group test?”
Esther Olsen’s voice rose for a moment.
“
It’s
… not important. The fact is, I know.”
“And you don’t know who the man was? His name, I mean.”
“No. Like I said, it was at a party. I didn’t know many of the people there. We’d both had too much to drink and he was one of the few people who didn’t become obnoxious when he drank. Most men do.”
A thought entered Alex’s head.
“You said you didn’t have an abortion when you had to make the choice?”
She was looking at him, silently. Alex pressed on.
“So the child was…”
“Dorothy,” she confirmed.
“Did she know?”
“It’s not important.”
“Did
your husband
know?”
“It’s
not
important.”
“Help me here … I need to understand.”
“Why does it matter? She was my daughter, even if she wasn’t Edgar’s. And I loved her, even if he didn’t.”
“Can you give me his contact details?”
“You’re a bit late for that.”
“He’s dead?”
“Suicide.”
Alex’s mind was reeling. Could this have something to do with the estrangement from her daughter?
“Did he do it at home?”
That would explain why Esther Olsen didn’t want to talk about it. Alex wondered how many secrets had come out in the Olsen household before he died.
“Not at my house. He’d moved out already.”
“Why?”
“We’d broken up by then. He moved out so he could enjoy his independence.”
“No, I mean, why did he kill himself?”
“He was a troubled man – even before the marriage. He’d lost a son from a previous marriage. He blamed himself for that and he never really recovered from it. It had always haunted him. I think it’s what led to the break-up of his first marriage. Finally the burden got too much.”
“How did he do it?”
Alex wondered if it was something violent, like slashing his wrists, or something more prosaic, like tranquilizers or a hosepipe through the exhaust.
“With a revolver. He blew his brains out.”
David looked at his watch. Time was moving on and he realized that he wasn’t making progress. He’d passed on all the information he’d got, but his father had indicated that it wasn’t enough. They needed some form of documentary evidence that Dorothy was alive – or that someone else had killed her. He could hardly expect to find that on a computer that she had left behind before she went to England. But it might give some indication of where to look for her.
They had used the bank statement evidence, but the judge had declined to grant another restraining order. Apparently they’d have to argue it out at a full hearing, scheduled for half past eight. And even the evidence they had, only showed that Dorothy had been alive a year or so after her disappearance. While this clashed with the original theory that Clayton Burrow had killed her on the night of her disappearance, it didn’t undermine the technical basis of the charge.
The charge was that on some date between Dorothy’s disappearance on Saturday May 23, 1998 and the discovery of the physical evidence on Tuesday October 19, 1999, Burrow had murdered her, dismembered her and buried the body. The latest date when they could prove that she was alive was about the middle of June 1999. That still left a four-month window of opportunity for Burrow to have committed the crime.
Of course, it was possible – notwithstanding the physical evidence – that Burrow was innocent. But the evidence was strong. What mattered was not
when
he killed her, but
if
he killed her. And the evidence still said that he did.
But the one thing that was becoming increasingly apparent was that Dorothy Olsen was a deeply tormented soul and the torment came from more than one quarter. The evidence at the trial suggested that Dorothy was dead. But was Clayton Burrow the murderer or merely the fall guy?
If he had raped her
before
her disappearance, then he would have been the
perfect
fall guy for the murder. And who might have framed him? Obviously the real murderer. But who was the real murderer? David didn’t know. But what he did know was that Dorothy appeared to have had another tormentor in her father. The extracts from the poem that he had found added credence to this theory.
David decided to phone his father now. Maybe it was nothing. But it was for his father to decide what to do with the evidence.
“Yes, David?” Alex answered. David could tell by the background sound, and by the tone of voice, that his father was driving.
“I’ve found another verse.”
“Surprise me,” said Alex.
David read back the last stanza, placing particular emphasis on the line: “No wonder you felt guilty.”
“Yes, I was just talking to Esther Olsen about that.”
“What did she say?”
“She said he blamed himself for his son’s death. That’s why he committed suicide.”
“What?”
“Apparently he killed himself.”
“Good God. What a family.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“But was it definitely over his son’s death?”