Read You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy Online
Authors: David Kessler
Nat was looking awkward.
“What next?”
“Conference time. We need to work out a strategy.”
Alex followed Juanita into the kitchen, leading Nat the same way. Juanita was putting fresh coffee beans into the DeLonghi Prima Donna, and pressing the button.
“So what happened?” she asked over the rumble of the machine.
Alex quickly filled Juanita in on the events at the penitentiary while the grinding in the background stopped and gave way to an orchestration of burping and frothing.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Well as long as Burrow insists he’s innocent there’s nothing much we can do regarding Dusenbury’s offer.”
Juanita frowned.
“Your throwing in the towel?”
“You
know
I’m not a quitter – but I
am
changing lanes.”
“Meaning?”
“Did you find anything online?”
“Not yet.”
She sounded frustrated.
“The thing is, as I was saying to Nat, we’ve all been assuming that he was guilty. But maybe we’ve been overlooking something.”
“Like what?” asked Juanita.
“Well maybe he’s protecting someone,” Alex ventured.
Juanita screwed her nose up.
“Like who?”
“Or maybe he
was
framed.”
This time it was Nat who made a dismissive gesture.
“That ain’t changing lanes. That’s doing a bootleg one-eighty!”
“I’m not saying he was right… just on the right
track
. Maybe it wasn’t Dorothy who framed him. Maybe someone
else
killed Dorothy
and
then framed Clayton.”
But Nat wasn’t letting up.
“And how did they put his fingerprints on the knife?”
“He slept with a knife under his pillow,” said Alex. “Why shouldn’t it have his dabs?”
“With her blood on the blade?”
“If some one else killed her and framed him, they’d be able to get some of her blood and smear it on.”
As they made their way to the reception area, Alex realized that his theory sounded desperate.
“And presumably they also got hold of her blood-stained panties?” Juanita suggested.
Nat chuckled, but didn’t join in.
“It wouldn’t have been difficult. Why is it any harder to believe than that Clayton was the killer and took them himself?”
“But what about Burrow’s semen?” asked Juanita.
“That’s a new theory I’m working on.”
Juanita raised her eyebrows quizzically.
“Maybe they weren’t such enemies as everyone else assumed.”
Juanita stared at him hard before bursting out laughing.
“Ah come one boss! You don’t think they were screwing do you?”
“Why not. Maybe they were in a secret relationship. Some one else had a thing for her. The other guy got jealous – or maybe the other
girl
– and the next thing you know, Dorothy gets killed and Burrow gets framed.”
“Except that Burrow wasn’t even incriminated until over a year later,” said Juanita. “If the aim was to frame Burrow, they waited a long time.”
“There’s also the small matter of breast tissue in Burrow’s freezer,” Nat chipped in.
“Technically it was his
mother’s
freezer,” Juanita shot back.
“Wait a minute, wasn’t there something about that DNA test they did on the tissue,” said Alex.
“What do you mean boss.”
“I just remember there was something unusual about the DNA. Nothing we could use in court, just something odd… I think.”
Nat and Juanita looked at each other blankly.
“I’ll get the file,” said Juanita, getting up and heading for the broom closet that doubled as the file and records room.
File wasn’t exactly the word. It was several boxes full of files and ring binders. But Juanita’s filing system was so efficient and well-organized that she knew exactly where to look for it. It was the forensic evidence file, with the lab reports. There were several of these, but she found the right one almost immediately and brought it back to the office.
They huddled round it as she flicked through the file.
“Okay, here it is,” she said with delight. “They did a standard nucleic STR DNA test on the breast tissue, comparing it to Esther Olsen and Jonathan Olsen.”
“That would be Dorothy’s younger brother,” Alex said.
Juanita was reading the summary of conclusions at the end of the report.
“Yes. Now there’s a note here that says that the test concluded that the breast tissue came from a
half
-sibling of Jonathan Olsen.”
“Yes that was it,” said Alex, perking up. “How did it compare to Esther Olsen?”
Juanita flipped over a few pages.
“They matched. But they couldn’t do a comparison with Dorothy’s father because he was dead… Ah wait a minute… it says here they also did separate test looking at
mitochondrial
DNA. That’s DNA that’s not from the cell nucleus, but rather from non-nucleic material in the mother’s ovum. And in that test, all three of them matched exactly: the breast tissue, Esther and Jonathan.”
“But I thought mitochondrial DNA was only passed on to girls,” said Nat.
“No, it’s passed on to boys too,” Juanita corrected, “but
they
can’t pass it on any further. That’s because it’s contained in the somatic cells and female germ cells, but not in the nucleus of either. Sons have their mother’s mitochondrial DNA in their somatic cells, but not in their sperm. So they can’t pass it on to the next generation.”
“So if Jonathan, Dorothy and Esther all had the same mitochondrial DNA,” said Alex, “it means that Dorothy and Jonathan are blood siblings and that Esther Olsen was their mother.”
“That’s right,” Juanita confirmed. “But the differences between Jonathan and Dorothy in the nucleic DNA test imply that they had different
fathers
.”
Stuart Lloyd was still frozen with indecision. He had told Susan White that he would look into the matter and get back to her. She had accepted it reluctantly and put the receiver down. But he was still unsure of where to go from here.
It could just be a coincidence. The name was uncommon, but in a country of three hundred million people more than one person could have it. But Susan had said more than that. She had said that the picture they had shown on TV had looked like Dorothy. She hadn’t been sure, she admitted. It was, after all, nine years ago. But the similarity of the face
plus
the name? And the fact that this girl in America disappeared
nine years ago
.
It was too strong a coincidence to dismiss.
“Is anything wrong, dear?” his wife asked, entering the room.
“Nothing,” he replied. But he knew that his tone was unconvincing.
Elizabeth sidled up to him and put a comforting arm round him.
“What’s the matter?” she asked gently.
He couldn’t tell her – not yet at any rate. Maybe when he was sure. But not yet.
“Just a bit of trouble at the clinic.”
“Complications?”
She meant medical complications. The worst thing that could happen to any private clinic was medical complications leading to death or serious injury. Even if it was covered by the insurance, a successful claim could massively push up the insurance premiums, as well as damaging the reputation of the clinic and decimating its future client base.
“Not that sort. Just a bit of personnel wrangling.”
It was an intentional red herring but he regretted having said it. Firstly, he regretted lying to his wife, on principle. Secondly, he could imagine her now having visions of a cat fight between the nurses.
He went back to the kitchen to finish his
coq au vin
, warming it up in the microwave. But he ate quickly, not savoring it as he had before. And as soon as he had finished, he went to the living room – a quasi space-age environment of white leather, glass and chrome. Flopping down on the couch, he switched on the 50-inch LCD TV using the remote and flipped through several news channels. At first he clicked on CNN, but then remembered that Susan White had said it was Fox News.
His wife wasn’t a great one for TV and was quite happy to read a book while he surfed the channels. But his odd behavior could hardly be expected to pass without comment.
“Why the sudden interest in American news?” she asked.
Stuart kept his eyes glued to the screen.
“I just need to check up on something.”
Then he sat there watching a report about basketball. This was rolling news. If what Nurse White had said was correct, it would come round again.
He had to see for himself.
“No, Mr. Governor, I swear I didn’t leak anything to the press … I don’t know … No, sir, I’m sure it wasn’t anyone in my office … There was a guard outside the cell, but he couldn’t have heard anyth … Well yes, I suppose he might have told the guard … Okay, I’ll ask him … Yes, sir, I will get back to you.”
After hearing of Martine’s report, Alex had expected the governor to give him hell. But even he hadn’t realized just how forceful Dusenbury could be. Crucially, though, the governor had not withdrawn the clemency offer.
Alex wondered who the source of the leak was. It could have been anyone. The governor was right. A careless word from Burrow to the cell guard. A bit of gossip through the prison grapevine … and then someone decided to put in a call to the TV station.
Alex tried to put it aside. He had to focus. Nat was in his office going through the school yearbooks and checking up online to see if he could find out any more about the conflict between Dorothy and Clayton Burrow. Alex had remained with Juanita to discuss the DNA evidence further. All the while, a thought had been nagging away at him.
“Juanita, there was something you said earlier…”
“Yes?”
“About the freezer where they found the breast tissue.”
“What about it?”
“You said ‘technically it was his mother’s freezer.’”
“Well he still lived with his mother.”
“Were his parents divorced?”
“They were never
married
. I don’t think they even lived together.”
“So it couldn’t have been his father who killed Dorothy?”
“Not unless he suddenly came back into their lives, just long enough to murder a girl that his son bullied in school.”
She was smiling to soften the blow. But he could see how silly she thought his idea and realized himself that it was
he
, rather than his client, who was clutching at straws.
“What about his mother?”
“What you mean, like No orchids for Miss Blandish?”
Before Alex could reply, the intercom buzzer sounded.
“Yes?” Juanita answered.
“UPS. We have a special delivery from Sunnyvale.”
Juanita looked up.
“Dorothy’s laptop,” she said. Alex nodded. “Bring it up,” she said into the intercom, pressing the buzzer to open the door.
Five minutes later Juanita was looking through the folders and files on the laptop, while Alex was in the other room with Nat.
“Listen, I was talking to Juanita about Clayton’s mother. I think we should check her out. Clayton lived in the apartment with her and she had access to everything that he had access to.”
“Like what?” asked Nat.
“The knife he kept under his pillow, the floorboards, the freezer.”
“Yes, but she wouldn’t have had access to Dorothy. She’d’ve had to find her and either kill her and dispose of the body, or force her to some location and then kill her.”
“Well maybe she did. I mean, we don’t know when or where Dorothy was killed. Or how.”
“Not to mention the small matter of motive.”
Alex felt like he was facing a wall of resistance on all fronts.
“The point is, we don’t know enough to rule his mother out a hundred percent! And right now it’s all we’ve got!”
Nat backed off from Alex’s display of frustration.
“Okay, so how do you want to play it?”
“I want you to go over there and talk to her.”
“Where does she live?”
“San Pablo. The Circle S Mobile Home Park.”
“The one they’re closing down?”
“Right.”
“You sure she hasn’t moved on already?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
Nat grabbed his keys and jacket and was out the door within five seconds. Alex returned to the reception area to find Juanita pounding at the laptop with an unusual amount of aggression, while peering at the screen with a look of intensity that he didn’t often see in her.