Read You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy Online
Authors: David Kessler
You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy (43 page)
“I know and I’m sorry. But this is really important. I wouldn’t be calling all the way from America if it wasn’t.”
“All I can do is leave her a message for when she’s next on duty, which’ll probably be in just over two hours.”
“No, wait! There’s something I need you to do.”
“What?” asked Nurse Michaels, through gritted teeth.
“Did Susan White go home?”
“Yes, a few hours ago.”
“Does she live nearby?”
“Yes.”
There was a heavy sigh at the other end of the phone.
“Okay, now listen, I wouldn’t normally ask you to do this, but, like I explained before, we have a client who’s going to be executed in just over ten minutes unless we can save him. From the information she’s given us, we think we may be able to save him. We just need some urgent paperwork. And she seems to be the person who knows where it is.”
“But like I said, she’s not here.”
“I know, and what I want you to do is call her. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t a matter of life and death. Get someone else to cover your post if necessary.”
“Leaving my post isn’t the problem! I can’t just wake her up because someone calls up from America and tells me about someone on death row.”
“She’d
want
you to do it!”
“What do you mean?”
“She tried to help us before. I think she even sent us something. But we have a problem with our fax machine. We need it to be sent again.”
“I thought you said last time you called that it was the Chief Administrator who sent it?”
“Well he must have authorized it. But I think
she
was the one who actually sent it. The point is she’d
want
to help us. She was
trying
to help us. She probably doesn’t even know that we had a problem with our fax machine. If she knew, she’d probably be over in a flash.”
“Look … how do I know that you’re not just bullshitting me?”
“I can’t prove it. I mean, if you turn on your TV to CNN or Eyewitness News you’ll see about the impending execution. Either you take my word or you don’t. But we have client whose life depends on your decision.”
The nurse thought about it – but only for a moment.
Jonathan Olsen was sitting in front of the TV screen glued to the report about the impending execution. He was beginning to wonder if he had done the right thing, giving Nat the pass to witness the execution. He had waited years for the chance to see the look on Clayton’s Burrow’s face as he breathed his last breath. It was poetic justice – the bully who had beaten him up when he was younger and had subjected his sister to years of mental torture,
finally
getting what he deserved.
In a way it eased his conscience about his father. He hadn’t intended to kill him. But in retrospect, that was poetic justice too. His father had also been an abuser, even if his abuse had been borne of his own guilt and suffering.
He wondered what Alex would do with the knowledge. It wasn’t directly relevant to Dorothy’s fate, but, now that Alex knew, the knowledge was out there. Of course they couldn’t prove anything. Whoever had set things up to make it look like suicide had done too good a job for that. The authorities could hardly re-open the case now.
The thing that troubled Jonathan more was that he had been too close to Dorothy. She had blamed her mother for turning a blind eye to Edgar’s abusive behavior and, after that day with the mirror, had never spoken to her again.
But was she being fair?
Certainly their mother should have done more to rein in her husband’s excesses. She wasn’t some old-fashioned 1950’s housewife who greeted her husband with a hot dinner as soon as he came home from work. She had a duty to protect her daughter.
But looking back on it now, it was never quite so clear-cut. Edgar Olsen had been an extremely forceful personality and he could be a holy terror when roused. Esther had tried to encourage Dorothy to act in a way that would placate Edgar. And when that failed, she tried to persuade Dorothy to stop. But Dorothy had a mind of her own. And their mother was definitely a junior partner in the practice. She was also constantly being put on the defensive because of her infidelity. Although technically it wasn’t infidelity. The one-night stand that had brought Dorothy into the world had taken place
before
the marriage.
But that hadn’t prevented Edgar Olsen from using it as a bludgeon against both Esther and Dorothy. When it was Esther he was angry with, “whore” was the epithet that he threw. And when Dorothy crossed him, he called her a “little mamzer”
-
the Jewish word for a bastard. Edgar Olsen loved to lash out verbally and cause pain to others to numb himself to the pain of guilt that he felt over the death of his three-year-old son.
But Jonathan now felt guilty about his unquestioning alliance with Dorothy.
Was it right to punish his mother? Was it right to snub her?
Unlike Dorothy, he had continued to speak to Esther after the incident with the mirror, but always coldly and without emotion.
The phone rang. It jolted him. He sensed that this was no ordinary call. It was something special. Perhaps it was the time that alerted him. No one would call him at this time in the ordinary course events. And yet it was too early for the execution.
“Hallo?”
“Hi is that Jonathan Olsen?” asked a man’s voice.
“Yes, it is,” he said nervously.
“My name is Rodrigo Alvarez. I’m calling from the Idylwood Care Center.”
Susan White opened her eyes and tried to adjust to the light that was streaming into the room, even with the blinds half closed. The phone … that infernal noise … it wouldn’t stop.
Her hand groped for the phone, eventually finding it. She managed to pick up the handset without knocking over everything on the bedside cabinet.
“Yes!” she practically shouted.
“Susan … Susan!”
“Wha … what is it?”
“Sorry to wake you. Listen. It’s important.”
“Danielle?” said Susan, recognizing the voice. “What is it?”
“We had another phone call from that woman.”
“What woman?”
“In America. At that law firm.”
“Juanita?”
“I think so.”
“What about her? Did she get it?”
Susan was now rubbing her eyes and stretching her arms.
“Get what? Wait a minute. Listen! She said that you or someone sent her something but that she didn’t receive it. They were having trouble with their fax machine.”
Susan White sat bolt upright.
“They didn’t get the fax?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you now to take your seats. There will be no standing during the procedure and anyone who stands up or speaks while the procedure is in progress will be asked to leave. The curtain will be opened in a few minutes.”
They had filed in and taken their seats. The execution procedure had already been explained to them and there would be no further explanation of the technical side.
There had been some recent changes in the execution procedure in the State of California. It was still a three-drug procedure consisting of an initial injection of sodium thiopental, a barbiturate sedative to render the prisoner unconscious, followed by pancuronium bromide to paralyze the muscles and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.
The spectators – witnesses on behalf of society, officially – took their seats, avoiding each other’s eyes. Even among those who approved of the death penalty, there was a kind of guilty embarrassment about being part of the procedure. That was why the executioner’s identity was kept secret and not
-
as was sometimes falsely claimed – to protect him or her from revenge at the hands of the prisoner’s family.
Nat took his place at the end, positioning himself in such a way so that he was close to where he thought Burrow’s head would be.
“When the curtain is opened, the death warrant will be read out and the prisoner will be allowed to make a brief final statement. Members of the press may transcribe the final statement and, depending on the prisoner’s arrangements with the warden, written copies may be given out. Finally, we would ask that if any spectators experience any discomfort during the execution procedure, to leave the observation room as quietly as possible.”
“Can’t you stick the pieces of it together?”
Susan White had been incredulous when Juanita told her what had happened to the letter that she had faxed over. So she had hastily thrown on the minimum clothing to comply with the laws of decency and raced down the road to the clinic.
“I’ve been trying,” Juanita replied. “But we’ve only got four minutes. I need you to fax it over again.”
“I…”
Susan froze with fear. She could easily print out another copy. She knew that. But it was risky – in some ways riskier than the first time. At least it felt like that. She had been frightened enough yesterday. But now she was off the hook. If she printed another copy and signed it, she would be inviting trouble. It was forgery, whatever the excuse.
But still … it was a man’s life.
“Look, I didn’t tell you this before … but…”
She looked up. Nurse Michaels was a few feet away. She didn’t appear to be paying attention to the conversation, but she was still within earshot.
“Listen … it wasn’t all it seemed.”
“What wasn’t?” asked Juanita. “I don’t understand.”
“The letter … it wasn’t … look, it’s hard to explain.”
Juanita had pieced together enough of the letter to see the signature.
“Is Stuart Lloyd there?” she asked desperately.
“Not yet. None of the admin staff is. They should arrive between eight and nine.”
“Was he there last night? When the fax was sent?”
The hesitation was slight but noticeable.
“No.”
This the time the hesitation was on Juanita’s end of the phone line.
“It wasn’t from Stuart Lloyd, was it?” said Juanita. “The letter you faxed over, I mean. It was from you.”
Susan White lowered her voice, realizing that the truth could be concealed no longer.
“Look, I could lose my job.”
“I’m sorry … but we have a man here who could lose his
life
.”
Susan White thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t a case of weighing up the rights and wrongs. She was simply trying to pluck up the courage to do what she
had
to do.
“Okay, I can’t get you a signed letter. But I can get you something else.”
“What?”
The nurse was thinking frantically about what she could gain access to that wasn’t under lock and key.
“Dorothy’s records.”
“Will it show the dates? When she was there? When she was discharged?”
“Yes. All of that.”
“Please hurry. We have only minutes.”
“All right.”
Susan White ended the call and raced over to the filing cabinets. But the files were numerical. She had to look up the name in the card index to get the file number. Then she realized that the cabinets were locked.
The staff at the fingerprint lab were taking this case very seriously – especially after what the governor had told them.
They had cut the pages out of the passport and put them in the chamber. They had filled the chamber with cyanoacrylic vapor. They had evacuated the chamber of the toxic gases. The lab technician – at twenty-two, a quintessential picture of a science nerd – thought it ironic that were using a “gas chamber” to decide if a man was to be spared lethal injection. He had even made a joke to that effect to the girl who worked with him. She had smiled politely, but he could tell that she didn’t find it amusing.
Now the fingerprint expert at the lab – a slightly older man than the technicians – was doing the comparison, noting points of comparison one by one with the thumbprint that had been sent over electronically from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
Most of the prints on the passport had been eliminated very quickly. But there were a couple that required a close look – those that were clearly thumbprints. And as the fingerprint expert looked, he was counting the number of points of comparison. And what he found amazed him.
After a few more seconds, he looked up as if a light bulb had gone off in his head. In the pregnant silence that followed, the sound of the three of them breathing could be heard. The others knew what he was about to say, from the look on his face.