Mercy

The hesitation was palpable.

“I’m afraid not. We’re still waiting for clearance. But you have to understand it’s very difficult at the moment. It’s after midnight here.”

“Okay, but you are still trying?”

“Oh yes.”

This time there was no hesitation. Susan felt guilty about lying. But she didn’t know what else to do.

“Thank you. And if you fax us the paperwork for the whole year — not just the abortion — we’d be grateful.”

Susan broke out in a sweat.

“What do you mean the whole year?”

“Well she was there for a whole year, wasn’t she?”

“Who told you that?”

“She paid nearly forty thousand British pounds … over the course of a year.”

“That doesn’t mean she was…”

Susan knew that she had been said too much. But she realized how desperate these people were, and understandably so. She wanted to help, but her hands were tied. Finally, she decided to spill her guts. If she couldn’t tell them the whole truth, the least she could do was stop wrong-footing them with vain hope.

“Look … I’m sorry if I’ve messed you round. But I don’t think my boss is doing anything about it. I think he’s decided that there’s nothing he can do. I mean … I think he’s probably just gone to bed.”

“To bed?”

“I’m sorry.”

“So you’re just gonna let our client die?”

“Look, it’s not my decision!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to attack you.” Juanita’s voice was conciliatory. “Could you at least tell us … even if you can’t send anything in writing?”

“I’ve already told you: she had an abortion.”

“Yes, but we have conclusive evidence that she paid you forty thousand pounds sterling — I mean, she paid the medical center.”

“I can’t confirm or deny that,” the nurse replied timidly.

Juanita was gentle in her response.

“You don’t have to. We already know it. What we need to know is, what was that money for?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Susan felt for Juanita. She could understand her helplessness. She couldn’t even blame her for trying emotional blackmail. But it was clear that the sympathy game had gone as far as it could go.

Juanita spoke again.

“Look … what if we could obtain the consent of Dorothy Olsen’s mother … or her brother … or even both?”

The seconds ticked by.

“It wouldn’t make any difference. There’s nothing I can do.”

“I don’t understand. Surely if we can obtain the consent of Dorothy Olsen’s surviving relatives-?”

“There’s nothing I can do!”

There was silence on both ends of the line.

“Okay. Well thank you anyway.”

Juanita knew that there was no point flogging a dead horse. But she wondered why Nurse White had suddenly turned so hostile … and then so … guilty.

16:53 PDT

“First of all, thank you for agreeing to see me.”

Alex was in Jonathan’s living room, the room that looked like a shrine in honor of Dorothy. As he looked round, he felt the full measure of Jonathan’s devotion — or perhaps that should be obsession. But he wondered if such an obsession could have gone sour. Could love have turned to hate?

“Well I reckon if I could drop in on you at short notice, you have the right to do the same with me. And I assume it’s something important.”

To Alex this was a conversation filler: obviously it was important when a man was just seven hours away from execution for the murder of Jonathan’s sister.

“Look, I’ll come right to the point. Did you know about the rape … at the time, I mean?”

Jonathan looked only marginally stunned by the question.

“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “She told me.”

“You would have been … what? Fourteen?”

“Thirteen, nearly fourteen, I guess.”

“And she told you? Or you found out some other way?”

“She told me. She came to the house in tears. She was crying quietly because she didn’t want Mom to hear.”

“Why? Was she sleeping?”

“No, nothing like that. She just didn’t want to tell Mom. She didn’t want to talk to Mom. She’d got to the stage that she hardly talked to Mom at all. They were like strangers in the same house.”

“Did your mom try and talk to her? To break the ice?”

“She made a few half-hearted attempts. But I guess things had already gone too far by then.”

“What had gone too far?”

“What do you mean?”

“What was the cause of the problem? What was it that had driven them apart?”

Alex remembered that Jonathan had avoided this subject when they had talked in his office.

“It’s something I don’t talk about.”

“Any particular reason?”

Jonathan looked at him with anger and then broke into a smile.

“You never stop being a lawyer, do you? If I tell you why I don’t want to talk about it, then I’d be talking about.”

“I’m a lawyer 24/7.”

He waited for Jonathan to say more. But the look on Jonathan’s face showed that he had said all he was going to say.

“It must have been hard for you.”

“What?”

“The rape of your sister.”

“Hard for me?”

“Well I mean, thirteen years old … the only person in the world your sister could turn to.”

“I don’t think I was old enough to realize how serious it was. I mean, I knew what rape meant, but there’s a difference between factual knowledge and emotional knowledge.”

Alex nodded approvingly at Jonathan’s insight.

“You were very close to her, weren’t you?”

“Like you said … I was the only person in the world she could confide in.”

Alex was wondering if the rape had undermined this bond between them. She was no longer pure. Someone else had “had” her. Did that matter to Jonathan? Could he have killed her to stop anyone else having her?

“Your mother gave me Dorothy’s computer. We’ve been looking at the contents.” Jonathan looked surprised. “It had been wiped, but my son has been able to recover deleted files using a scanning tunneling microscope at Berkeley.”

He was monitoring Jonathan’s face for a reaction.