Read You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy Online
Authors: David Kessler
What a fool I was, tee hee
Daddy, I know I am guilty
Though someone killed you first
I killed you as surely as if
I had pulled the trigger myself
Bang Bang! All over
And now I have to cross the Atlantic
Because I have to flee
Across the ocean, safe and sound
To where they’ll never find me
At that point, Alex’s concentration was broken by the sound of a helicopter overhead.
Juanita was in shock at what she had just read. She called Alex. She had got the busy signal before. But she had to tell him.
In her haste, she kept fumbling the digits and having to go back and start over. Finally she got through. It rang for a few seconds.
“Hi, Juanita. Listen, I’m kind of busy right – ”
“I just got the fax about Dorothy from the London clinic.”
“And?”
“You’re not gonna believe this, boss. It says she had hormone treatment.”
“Hormone treatment?”
“
And
gender re-assignment surgery.”
There was a gasp at the other end.
“Gender re-assignment?”
“Yes! She had a fuckin’ sex change!”
“I wish I’d known, Nat,” said Alex gently as he left Silva Island behind him.
They’d been sitting in silence for over a minute as Alex drove along the I-101 overpass just past the Planet Day Care and Activity Center. Alex had switched off the MP3 and they’d sat there tensely, each waiting for the other to speak. Alex’s mind was still reeling from what he had just heard. But he sensed that Nat didn’t yet trust his voice, now that the truth was out.
It changed …
everything.
And yet he wasn’t sure how to get through to Nat even now. At this moment, Nat was fleeing for his life and you didn’t argue with a man who feels cornered. Neither could you reason with a man who felt betrayed. All Alex could do was bide his time. To try and break the ice would be suicide. But perhaps he could thaw it slowly.
“I wish – ”
“Take the North Exit to Highway 1,” said Nat, breaking his silence. “We’ll head toward Stinson Beach.”
While Alex was still struggling to take it all in, a change seemed to have come over Nat. Now he looked almost relieved that he no longer had to keep it all bottled up inside.
“I can get you a good lawyer,” said Alex. “I know most of the defense attorneys in the Bay area and I can get you the best.”
“I’m not going to spend my life behind bars,” Nat replied tensely. “I’ve lived most of my life in fear. Fear of the man I thought was my father, when I was a kid. Fear of bullies in high school. Fear when I got pregnant and then fear of being found out these last few years.”
Alex thought about the fact that this last fear was of Nat’s own making. If he hadn’t framed Burrow for murder, the problem need never have arisen. But now was not the time to discuss ethics.
“You can’t get away. They won’t let you. But you can fight it through the system. Do it the smart way.”
“I need to think.”
“It’s too late for that, you must – ”
“Look,
shut up
!”
Alex knew when
not
to push the point.
He let the silence settle between them. In a way he was grateful for this opportunity. It could be the last.
“So what happened when you went to England?”
Nat took a deep breath.
“Well first of all, I sold a diamond ring to raise some cash to open a bank account. Then I sold the rest of the jewelry to other jewelers and dealers in London and got the money paid into my bank account. So now I had a bank account and I could function, but at the same time there was no trace of the money being transferred from my US account so there was no trail for the FBI or anyone else to follow. They didn’t know if I was dead or missing, but as far as they knew I could have been either. Turn left at Highway 1.”
Alex complied, trying to ignore the helicopter overhead and the police cars on their tail. He prayed that the cops wouldn’t challenge them on this narrow two-lane road. It wasn’t that he feared death. It was just that he wanted – needed – to know the rest.
“And what about the medical center? I mean the abortion and the…”
For some reason he found it hard to say the words.
“Well I was able to have the abortion immediately. They just needed to get me assessed by two doctors, and they were able to do that in one day. But the gender re-assignment was more complicated because it has various major legal requirements. One of the formalities is that you have to live for a year in the new gender role to make sure that you’re comfortable with it and really want to go through with it. It’s part of the assessment process.”
“So you waited a year just for the procedure?”
Nat looked uncomfortable with the question.
“Not exactly. I was desperate to escape from the woman’s body that I was trapped in. So I convinced the Chief Administrator to alter the records to make it look as if I’d been living as a man in America. That way I was able to shorten the waiting time for the start of the procedure to seven months.”
“When you say you convinced him…”
“As in, greased his palm.”
“That would explain the large sums of money going out of Dorothy’s – of
your
– account.”
“Actually, no. Most of that money was for the procedure. Hell, it’s an expensive procedure any way you look at it.”
“So how did they do it? I mean, how did they fiddle the paperwork?”
“Basically they exploited the fact that January can be written as J–A-N and June as J-U-N. And we also took advantage of the different date formats when they use numbers. In England they put the day first, instead of the month. They wrote 06-01-98 instead of 01-06-98. That made it look as if I’d been living as a man since January 6, 1998 instead of June first. If anyone had caught it, they would have hidden behind the excuse that there was a mix-up about the dates.”
Alex thought about this. That would explain why the medical center had been so reticent about confirming Dorothy’s stay there: it might open a whole can of worms regarding their breach of protocol, not to mention the law.
“And in all that time since you came back, you never once contacted Jonathan?”
“I couldn’t afford to. Turn left! All it needed was for one message to be traced.”
“You thought he was being watched?”
“No, of course not. But I didn’t know what had happened at Edgar’s place. I knew they thought it was suicide. But I didn’t know why. To me it was like a time bomb that could explode any time.”
“They’re sticking to CA-1!” said the helicopter observer to his ground controller, watching the white moving rectangle in the heads-up display.
“That means they’re probably headed for tree cover.”
“Affirmative, Joe,” said the observer. “But they’ve still got a couple of miles before that. Any chance of CHIPS taking them out with Stop Sticks?”
Nowadays, most California Highway Patrol units were equipped with devices that stop fleeing vehicles with spikes that puncture the tires. The devices were designed in such a way as to cause the tires to deflate gradually rather than suddenly – thus avoiding the danger of a blow-out at high speed. The problem was that at this time of year, California roads got so hot that tires could blow out at the slightest stimulus.
However, it was now night time and, despite the heat wave, the roads had cooled somewhat.
“That’s a negative, Larry – at least not till they come out the other side of Tamalpais.”
“But if they make it to the Valley then he can ditch the car and run for tree cover.”
“Come off it, Larry, people show up on thermal imaging better than cars. He won’t get far.”
“Okay, but I haven’t enough fuel to stay up here all night.”
The ground controller seemed to ponder this for a few seconds.
“He probably knows we’ve got thermal imaging. My guess is he’s trying to make it to the coastline.”
Larry laughed.
“You think he’s gonna try and swim the Pacific Ocean?”
“I don’t know
what
he’s gonna do. I don’t think he’s really too sure either. My best guess is he’s going to try and make it to Stinson Beach or Bolinas and then blend in with the locals at dawn.”
“So why not get CHIPS to stop him?”
“We can’t set up the Stop Sticks in time. Not before Muir Beach. We haven’t got a unit close enough.”
“Okay, well try and stop him at Muir Beach, ‘cause if he makes it to Stinson or Bolinas he might take other hostages.”
“Ten-four.”
“And let’s pray he doesn’t get out on foot at Tamalpais.”
“If he does, it’ll mean he’s killed the hostage. Either that or abandoned him. He won’t take him at gunpoint if he’s hiding in the trees.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“It means we can send in a SWAT team and take the bastard out.”
“Okay, so you had hormone treatment to change your features and genital reconstruction?”
“Yes. And I had my breasts removed.”
Nat was more relaxed now, and Alex knew that if he could keep him talking, there was a chance that they could end this peacefully. He could see the cops in the rearview mirror. And the ever-present humming of the helicopter’s rotor blades still rumbled in the night sky overhead.
“So how come they let you keep the breast tissue?” Alex prompted. “That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it?”
“One of the good things about having the Chief Administrator in your pocket is that you can get away with things that you wouldn’t normally. I told them I wanted it and they gave it to me – in a refrigerated bag. You have to remember that they were kind of vulnerable. They’d broken the law by doing the gender re-assignment. I hadn’t broken any law by having it done.”
“And then you used the breast tissue to frame Burrow.”
“That’s right. I went back to his place, broke in easily enough and planted the breast tissue at the back of the freezer. You know people never look in the back of their own freezer. They leave stuff there for years.”
“But once in a while they clean it out.”
“But not very often – especially trailer trash like Burrow.”
“And what about the panties and the knife?
“I’d kept the panties from the rape because I was originally considering going to the police.”
“And the blood on the knife?”
“It’s no big deal to get a small amount of one’s own blood.”
“But how
did
you get back? I mean, you couldn’t have used your old passport anyway – not once you’d had the sex change.”
“I had enough money left over to pay for a forged passport. With modern computers and printing technology it’s a lot cheaper than it used to be.”
“That’s why there was no return stamp in your passport.”
“That’s right. I got a new passport in my new name. Turn left. I want to stay on Highway 1.”
“Any particular reason for that name – Nathaniel?”
Nat smiled.
“What do you mean?”
“Well I was just thinking. After Esther told me about my name – “Sedaka” – meaning charity or righteousness, I found this website where you can look up the meaning of names. I started looking up names with a view to working out what Dorothy might be calling herself. I noticed that Jonathan – from the Hebrew Yonatan – means ‘God gave.’ And Dorothy comes from Doro Thea. That’s Greek for ‘God’s gift.’ It’s like Theodore in reverse. I thought there might be some significance in that.”
“And?” prompted Nat smiling.
“Well I also noticed that Nathaniel also means God’s gift – in Hebrew. It uses another of God’s Hebrew names: El. Natan-El, God gave. At the time I thought it was just a coincidence that you had a name with the same meaning as both Dorothy and Jonathan and didn’t give it a second thought. I was too busy thinking about what Dorothy might be calling herself if she was still alive. Only now I’m wondering…”