Mercy

Clayton Burrow raped her once. What are the chances of getting her pregnant with one shot?”

Alex studied Jonathan for a reaction. But there was none. He pressed on.

“And then there’s another thing: we’ve found some files on Dorothy’s computer that suggests some resentment toward her father. I told you about that reference to him ‘ripping the clothes’ off of her, didn’t I? So could it be that Clayton wasn’t the only one who forced himself physically on Dorothy? Could it be that her father routinely forced himself on her?”

There was a ghost of a smile on Jonathan’s face. But it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. Alex continued.

“Dorothy was estranged from both her mother and her … and Edgar Olsen. You told me at our first meeting that Dorothy got a raw deal. When I asked you to elaborate on this all you said was that there are sins of commission and sins of omission. Could one of those sins of omission be a mother turning a blind eye to a husband’s sexual abuse of her daughter?”

“You got any more theories?”

Alex knew that he was playing a dangerous game. Jonathan may not have been violent in the past, but he had zapped him with a taser just now and he had him handcuffed to the radiator.

“Well all of this leads to the question of whether Dorothy believed that it was her father who got her pregnant. And that in turn leads to the question of how she might have reacted to that belief.”

“You think, after years of abuse, she suddenly took it into her head to get revenge?”

“This wasn’t just abuse. Now she was pregnant, remember. A whole different ball game. And it certainly must have thrown her hormones out of whack.”

“Let’s say it’s true. So what? What are you here for? And what does it have to do with Clayton Burrow? You can’t say that my father killed Dorothy, because he died before she did. So it’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t really add up to a hill of beans as they say.”

“No, not in itself. But it would explain a number of things. For example, why did Dorothy go to London to have an abortion? Possibly to get away from the US before she got arrested for murder. Even if they eventually decided that Edgar’s death was suicide, she wasn’t to know that at the time. Those evidence technicians are very good at recognizing when a crime scene has been staged. Maybe she panicked and fled.”

“You said it explains a number of things,” said Jonathan. “That’s only one.”

“Well, then there’s the money. She paid the London clinic forty thousand pounds. That’s a sizeable chunk of her inheritance. Why would she do that? Could it be that they found out what she had done and started blackmailing her?”

“A clinic? Blackmailing someone?”

“Maybe not the clinic itself. Maybe someone on the staff using the clinic as a conduit for the money.”

Alex was staring at Jonathan, still waiting for a reaction. Finally Jonathan smiled.

“It’s a very interesting theory, but there’s just one problem: you’ve got it backward.”

22:11 PDT

Lee Kelly had stayed silent throughout the drive to the police station. It was not like him to get caught doing a job, but to get caught twice in one day was particularly embarrassing. However, it wasn’t professional pride he was worried about. It was prison.

This was a domestic burglary — and they were taken much more seriously. The fact that he did it while out on bail made it all the more grave.

But there was more to it than that. The person whose house he was breaking into was that of his own lawyer’s legal intern, Would that fact come up in the case? And the reason he was doing it was because Alex had asked him to. He was not supposed to breathe a word of this to anyone. It could get Alex disbarred. But was he to think about himself first, or his lawyer? If he kept quiet, could Alex save him? Could Alex keep him out of prison? Would the truth come out in spite of his silence? Did Nat realize the connection?

As they searched him they found the passport — Dorothy’s passport. But the overworked cop at the desk didn’t even bother to look inside it. He just logged it as “US passport” and bagged it along with everything else in Lee’s possession and marked the evidence bag. The only job of the custody officer was to secure the prisoner and inventory the items in his possession at the time of arrest and bag them up and store them until he was released. It was up to the assigned case officers to investigate.

Of course, Lee knew that they might look at it later. But the risk was small. Would Nat tell the police about it? Would he even know it was gone? Nat had seen Lee trying to flee empty-handed. Would he even realize what Lee was there for?

The custody officer had also found the picture of the young woman. He was about to bag it up with the rest of Lee’s possessions when Lee spoke.

“Can I keep that? It’s my mother.”

The custody officer looked at the picture and then back at Lee skeptically. This man was born in the fifties. The picture was in color and looked like it was more recent than that — and it was of a young woman. If it had been this man’s mother when she was young, he would have expected it to be an old black and white picture. But still…

“You’re not supposed to have anything on you other than the clothes on your back when you’re in the lock-up — just in case you try and harm someone, or yourself.”

Lee mouthed the word “please,” and gave the custody officer his most pitiful look.

“Well … okay then.”

The custody officer gave it back and Lee quickly put it away.

“Thank you. Look, would it be all right if I called my lawyer now?”

22:14 PDT

“What do you mean I’ve got it backward?”

They were sitting there eyeball to eyeball. Jonathan had the height advantage sitting on the bed whereas Alex was on the floor. But Alex did not feel as if he were at a disadvantage. It was Jonathan who was angry. It was Jonathan who was afraid.

“Dorothy never thought Edgar got her pregnant. He wasn’t even her father.”

“She knew that?”

“Of course she knew it!”

“And what else did she know?”

“She knew that it was Clayton Burrow who got her pregnant.”

“How could she have been so sure?”

He was wondering if Jonathan was going to say that she knew Edgar Olsen was sterile.

“Because my father didn’t touch her! I mean, not sexually.”

This caught Alex by surprise.

“According to that poem we found, he ripped the clothes off of her.”

“There’s more than one way to abuse a person. He didn’t abuse her physically. He abused her psychologically.”

“Ripping her clothes off doesn’t exactly sound like purely psychological abuse.”

“He only did that once, in a moment of rage. Basically he just snapped because she was flaunting her sexuality in front of him.”

“Okay, so he didn’t sexually assault her. So what did happen? She found out that she was pregnant and you say she blamed Clayton Burrow. But Burrow didn’t die the very next day. Edgar Olsen