Read You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy Online
Authors: David Kessler
“We’ve done our best,” said Alex solemnly. “There’s nothing more we can do.”
For a long while, no one said a word. They could have been Buddhist monks in a state of meditation. As they stood in the reception area, they formed a triangle. Juanita looking at Alex and Alex at Nat. Nat, though, was looking at the ground.
It was Juanita who broke the silence.
“Are we just going to give up?”
There was a hint of defiance in her tone. But what good was defiance when they had run out of ammunition?
Alex spoke softly.
“We’ve tried everything. There’s nothing more we
can
do.”
“What about the medical center in England?” snapped Juanita.
Alex studied Nat for even the slightest reaction. There was none.
“You said the nurse you spoke to is no longer on duty?”
“That’s right.”
“Are any of the administrative staff there now?”
“I doubt it. It’s the wee small hours of the morning in London.”
“Then there’s nothing we can do. Unless David comes up with something.”
“Do you think he will?”
“I don’t know. But he’s still looking. And if he managed to hack into Dorothy’s bank account who knows what else he might find.”
Juanita sniffled, but held back the tears this time. She forced herself to speak.
“Don’t you think someone should be with Clayton now? He must be desperately lonely.”
Alex was touched by Juanita’s compassion. The fact of the matter was they all knew that Clayton Burrow was a rapist as well as a bully who had made Dorothy’s life a misery and who had beaten up her younger brother when he tried to defend his sister. In his youth he had been a truly repulsive character and, whatever suffering he was going through now, it was hard to escape the view that he had brought it on himself one way or another.
And yet … he was still a human being and they couldn’t abandon him. Not because it was their job, not because there was kudos and prestige in saving a man from the death penalty, but because he was a human being and in the years during which he had been under the threat of death, he had changed in some way to become some semblance of a decent person.
“Look, I don’t expect you guys to hang round here,” said Alex slowly. “You can go home.”
Juanita gave Alex a pained look.
“But what if they send a fax through from London?”
Alex shook his head.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“But what if it does?” Juanita persisted.
“Okay, look, I’m not
telling
you to go home. I’m simply saying that you don’t have to stay … either of you.”
“I’m staying!” said Juanita, flatly.
“Nat?”
Nat looked up and met Alex’s eyes.
“I’ll stay too. But I need to do something first. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Alex smiled. Juanita had been right – not with her original suspicions but with the explanation she gave afterward. Nat was trying to get the information from the medical center by pretending to be Dorothy’s legal representative. He couldn’t do it in front of them because it was unethical and could get Alex disbarred. So instead, he was going to stick his neck out and put his own career on the line. He was the same fiery idealist that he had been when he first badgered Alex into giving him a job. He still had that youthful passion that had so impressed Alex.
The trouble was that Alex was not sure if he should allow him to do it. True, they had a client on death row who was just three hours away from execution yet probably innocent. And for an innocent client facing death, a decent lawyer should be ready to go the extra mile. But breaking the law by misrepresentation was a serious matter. What good would it do him to save one innocent man if he lost the capacity to save anyone else thereafter? That was why as a lawyer he could go so far but no further. He could bend the rules but not break them.
And letting Nat go off on his own so that he could contact the medical center and misrepresent himself as Dorothy’s lawyer was bending the rules right the way round.
But what of Nat himself? What if he was caught? Should he lose his budding career for Clayton Burrow? Did Clayton Burrow deserve
that
much help? Hadn’t Clayton Burrow done enough damage?
But at the end of the day, it was Nat’s decision.
“Okay,” said Alex. “You do what you have to do.”
Jonathan was eating a microwave dinner. He knew that he had plenty of time, but he wanted to get to San Quentin early. The place would be crawling with reporters and it might take a long time to get in and he didn’t want to get held up.
It had been a roller-coaster day for him, first hearing the news about the governor’s offer, then seeing the news, before visiting Alex Sedaka and talking to Juanita.
In some ways he felt that he could no longer hate Clayton Burrow. Yes, Burrow was a bastard. Yes, he had deserved to suffer. But it was almost as if he had suffered enough – as if his execution would be an anti-climax. Jonathan still felt the anger that he had felt toward him nine years ago. But somehow he couldn’t experience it with quite the same intensity.
Time heals every wound, so they say.
The phone rang.
“Hallo.”
“Hi, Jonathan.”
Jonathan froze.
“Where are you?”
“I’m in my car.”
“You’re calling me on a cell phone.”
“It’s okay, I’ll keep it brief. Look, everything’s going okay, but from what I’ve been told, someone is getting too close.”
“Who?”
“Alex Sedaka’s son, David.”
“What’s his son got to do with it?”
“He’s a computer geek at Berkeley. He’s got hold of the computer and he’s been reading the wiped files using a scanning tunneling microscope.”
“Oh I know that.”
“You do?”
“Yes, Sedaka told me. But what can he find?”
“I don’t know. I’m probably worrying over nothing. It’s been such a long time. But he’s found quite a lot already.”
“Is there any way we can stop him?”
“Only by getting the computer.”
“You know, I don’t understand you, boss.”
Alex and Juanita were sitting in the reception area with mugs of coffee.
“How do you mean?”
“Well you don’t want to pretend to the London clinic that we represent Dorothy, to get them to send the paperwork from when she was there, but you’re ready to get a burglar to break into someone’s house to check him out – even though you trust Nat now.”
“Christ, I forgot all about that!”
Alex went for the phone and started keying in a number.
“What do you mean?”
“I want to call it off!”
“But I thought you wanted to be sure?”
“I
am
sure! It’s obvious that Nat’s going to call the medical center again. He just doesn’t want
us
to know. Or rather he doesn’t want
me
to know. He doesn’t want to compromise my position … Damn it! Straight to voicemail. Kelly’s probably switched it off.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I guess he doesn’t want his phone going off when he’s doing a burglary.”
“I notice you dodged my question – about the irony of the situation.”
“I guess it’s a case of the exposure risk.”
“I thought you said the exposure risk was low in the case of what Nat’s doing.”
“It is. But it would be like a time bomb ticking away – or like the sword of Damocles. That’s an old Greek legend about – ”
“I
know
what the sword of Damocles was!”
“Sorry,” said Alex, blushing.
“You’d better try again,” said Juanita. “Calling Lee, I mean.”
Her tone was muted by guilt ... or was it fear?
The light was ebbing and the area round the lab was deserted. The front entrance was locked. Jonathan could press the button and ask to be admitted, but then he would be challenged for ID. He could try forcing an entry. But that would only set off an alarm and alert others long before he had the chance to do what he had come there for.
There was, however, one other way he could gain access. He knew that the fire exits were sometimes left open. In theory they were locked from the inside and could be opened with a handle mechanism inside the door. They were also supposed to close automatically behind people when they left that way. But in practice, the mechanism to close them didn’t always work properly. The doors closed, but they didn’t always click shut. And they had such exits on every floor by the fire stairs.
The area by the fire stairs at the back was used as a small parking lot. The dumpsters were also there. But people didn’t really hang round there and people who were leaving for the day would hardly waste time if they happened to look up and chance upon the sight of a man walking up – rather than down – the outside fire stairs.
So he knew it would be perfectly safe to enter the building that way.
He tried the fire door on the ground floor, but it was locked. The same was true on the first floor and the second. But it was open on the third. That was all he needed.
Miles away, another, somewhat more professional, burglar was breaking into the small rundown house rented by Nathaniel Anderson.
But, unlike the man who had entered the lab at Berkeley, Lee Kelly didn’t have any clear idea what he was looking for. His brief was broader than that. He was here to look for anything that might have a bearing on Nat’s origins or past. And anything that might explain his interest in Clayton Burrow or the Finchley Road Medical Centre.
Normally when he did a burglary he was looking for valuables and he knew exactly where to look. Prior to the introduction of the “three strikes” statute he
had
,
in fact, done some domestic burglaries, but never been caught in the act. He knew that jewelry was stored either in a dresser or the bottom of a wardrobe, sometimes in a box under the bed and occasionally – rarely – in a safe. The procedure for searching drawers was to start with the bottom one and work your way up, not closing them. That way time was kept to a minimum.
When he came for electronic goods, it was even more straightforward. But on those jobs he brought a pick-up truck for easy loading, not a motorbike for a fast getaway.
In this case he had to look and make decisions fast. Alex had told him a bit but not much: an employee who was acting suspiciously, the need to check up on his background and whether he had any contact with the press or any prior involvement with the case. Did he grow up in the same town as Dorothy Olsen – the victim of the crime in the case that Alex was working on? Did he know Dorothy or anyone else in her family? Did he know Clayton Burrow?
But how do you check these things out? Photographs, documents, a diary … It was hard to know where to begin.
Lee started with the obvious hiding places: shoe boxes, whether in the wardrobe or under the bed. They were the classic hiding places for documents. But that was only if the person was actually trying to
hide
the documents. If he was not, then they could be in other more practical places, like a desk drawer or writing bureau or a bedside cabinet.
There were a couple of shoe boxes, but all they contained were an old pair of sandals and a hardly-worn pair of sneakers.
In the living room, there was a writing bureau – he had passed it on the way in. He flicked through several piles of papers quickly. There were bills, credit card statements and such like. Another contained legal briefs, case notes and things obviously to do with his work.
Then he felt something hard against his palm, something rigid. He pulled it out from amid the papers. A passport. He opened it to look at the name and when he did he got a jolt of surprise.
The passport didn’t belong to Nat. It belonged to the dead girl: Dorothy Olsen.
Gaining access to the building on the third floor had been straightforward enough. But Jonathan still had to get to wherever the computer and the scanning tunneling microscope were located.
He thought that at this time it would be easy, that there wouldn’t be many people about. But the trouble was there were a few – and that made it even harder. During the day, when lots of people were about, an unfamiliar face wouldn’t attract any attention. But when there were fewer people, it was the exact opposite. And some of the people who were about, were security people. They didn’t just guard the entrances: they patrolled the corridors.