Mercy

They ended the call and Juanita sat there for a long time, not moving. The phone rang again.

“Alex Sedaka’s office.”

“Hi this is the Idylwood Care Center. Is it possible to speak to Alex Sedaka?”

Juanita tensed up.

“He’s not in the office at the moment. I’m his paralegal. May I take a message?”

“I’m calling on behalf of Esther Olsen. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

16:41 PDT

If Clayton Burrow can’t tell me about this “mirror” business, then maybe Jonathan Olsen can.

Alex had just passed the Paradise Drive exit for Corte Madera on his right and was painfully aware of the passage of time. The phone rang.

“Hi, Nat.”

“I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

“Fuck!”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Nat.

“Look, I’ll be back at the office ASAP, but there’s something I’ve got to do first.”

They left it at that. Alex wasn’t normally one to swear. But he felt the shock and pain and anxiety about the deadline now looming before him. And there was only so much he could do in so short a time.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough hands to do the work, it was just that he was no longer sure what else he should be doing. He had never handled a capital case before and he couldn’t escape the feeling that there were other things that he ought to be doing that he had not yet done.

Of course, he knew that one isn’t supposed to leave anything till the last minute so the fact that he had little more to do was a good sign. It meant that all the important and proper things had been done already. It wasn’t really a case of him forgetting something: it was a case of him having done all that could be done and there being nothing else left to do.

But the thought of spending Burrow’s last day doing nothing troubled him.

However, there was still one lead to follow and that was the one his son had provided with that brief extract of poetry from Dorothy’s computer. This new line of inquiry was quite promising. Dorothy couldn’t confide in her mother and didn’t have any friends, so she confided in her computer in much the same way as Anne Frank had confided in her diary.

But the trouble was that David’s progress in getting information off the hard disk was painstakingly slow. And some of the things he found were quite cryptic. So Alex needed an interpreter. But what interpreter could there be when the whole point of talking to the diary was to make up for her inability to talk to anyone else?

Alex reasoned that even if she didn’t confide in other people, there was one person who might be able to provide some insight into the way her mind was working at the time; and that was her brother Jonathan.

It was for this reason that Alex was driving to Daly City now. Of course there was no guarantee that Jonathan would cooperate. But it was worth a try.

It was then that the phone in the hands-free cradle started flashing and blaring out Dvorak’s New World Symphony. The name in the display said “David.” Alex felt a stab of hope as he answered.

“Hey, Dad, listen! I’ve found her bank account in England!”

“What?” he asked.

“She opened a bank account in London!”

“Great! We’ve got to get a court order for it before-”

“There’s no need! I’ve hacked into it!”

“What do you mean? I mean, why?”

Alex hadn’t asked him to do that. He would never ask anyone to do anything illegal, let alone his son.

“So that we can get proof that she got there. Opening a bank account and conducting bank transactions proves that.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that! It’s blatantly illeg-”

“Yes, I know! It’s illegal. And you didn’t ask me and I didn’t tell you I was going to do it beforehand. So you’re in the clear and I’m ready to put it in writing.”

Alex was angry.

“It’s not as simple as that. I’m an officer of the court. I’m not allowed to sanction an illegal act, even after the fact. I’ll probably have to report what you told me — even though you’re my son. I may even be compromising my position by continuing this conversation. I shouldn’t be allowed to derive benefit from the information.”

“Look, let’s not pussyfoot round, Dad! You’ve got a client on death row and time is of the essence. So let’s save the recriminations for later!”

Alex felt the force of his son’s reciprocal anger. In any case, David was right. Saving the client was the highest priority. And the dilemma wasn’t quite as bad as Alex had implied. Ethically he was allowed to derive benefit for his client once he had heard what David had said, but he was also obliged to report his son’s illegal act at the first reasonable opportunity thereafter. The only admissions of illegal acts that he could keep to himself — and indeed was obliged to keep to himself — were those made by his client referring to acts that had taken place in the past.

“Okay, you hacked in. I won’t ask you how. But did you find anything — anything useful, I mean?”

“I sure did. I basically phoned the bank helpline using voice changing software and pretended to be-”

“I said I didn’t want to know how!”

“Okay, I’m sorry. But I found something that I think may be relevant.”

“Spill it!”

“After the date when she was supposed to have gone to England, she made a whole series of payments to the Finchley Road Medical Centre at various intervals over the next year or so.”

“What sort of amounts are we talking about?”

“Well it was a few thousand at a time — the two biggest of which were ten thousand British pounds each.”

“Ten thousand?”

Alex was in shock.

“Yes.”

“So how much was the total?”

“I added it up and it came to nearly forty thousand British pounds.”

“Holy shit!”

“I hope it helps,” said David, after a brief pause.

“It does and it doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well first of all, if I use it, then it’ll mean you’ll have to admit to what amounts to committing a criminal offense.”

“If it’ll save an innocent life, I’m ready to take my chances, Dad. Maybe I can get away with it because it was in England. They’re not likely to extradite me.”

Alex smiled. David was so much like his mother, emotional but fully committed to helping others. Ironically, Debbie was like her father, only more so: professionally ambitious and ego-driven. The truth of the matter was David could be tried for the offense in the US, because he had logged on from the US. But Alex didn’t want to worry him by telling him that now.

“I’ll need you to print it out and fax it over to my office ASAP. I’ll call Juanita and tell her to expect it.”