Mercy

“Then I let her go.”

“Weren’t you worried that she’d go running to the cops?”

“I told her that if she did I really would go after Jonathan.”

“And would you have done?”

“Of course not!”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. You were already a rapist. Why stop there?”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“Who said anything about murder?”

“You did-”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I mean, I did!” He looked embarrassed, confused. “I mean, I threatened to kill Jonathan if she told anyone. But I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Do you think she believed you?”

“I … I don’t know.”

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.

16:21 PDT

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?”