David Kessler - Mercy

“That implies there was something in them worth deleting.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Alex leaned forward, peering at the screen with growing excitement.

“Making it all the more important that we recover their contents.”

“Which would be very nice, except there’s no way we can do that.”

“Maybe there is.” The phone was already in his hand by the time he said it. “Let’s call my son.”

“The one at Berkeley?”

Alex’s son David was a theoretical physicist.

“I only have one son.”

“How do you know?” she asked with a cheeky grin. Alex sensed that there was more to Juanita’s displays of impertinence than mere mockery. Melody had been just like that. It was her way of flirting with him. He wondered if it was the same with Juanita. She had certainly given him a few hints. He wondered how much of it was real and how much was just his imagination.

The lawyer in him knew that office romance was a dangerous game at the best of times — especially with a subordinate. If he did decide to go down that road, he’d have to tread carefully. But in any case it was a bit too early: the pain of losing Melody was still too raw … and today was hardly a day to be thinking about that sort of thing.

Juanita pressed the speed dial button and then handed Alex the phone.

“Hi, Dave … Yes, I am, but I need your help … We have a computer with a hard disk that’s been wiped … No, I don’t mean reformatted, just the deleted files have been overwritten … How many passes?”

Alex looked inquiringly at Juanita. She shook her head.

“We don’t know. But what I want to know is … it is ? Scanning tunneling…”

Juanita mouthed the word “microscope” to show that she understood.

“You mean only if she just wiped it once? Oh I see. Okay, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’ll courier it over.”

And with that he put the phone down.

“He can recover the data,” said Juanita.

“How d’you know?”

“When I hear one side of a phone conversation, I can usually figure out the other. Read Godel, Escher, Bach.” She started walking away.

“I tried. I couldn’t get beyond the dialogue between Achilles and the Turtle.”

“Besides — you’re smiling.”

“Mrs. Burrow?” Nat called out nervously through the closed door of the mobile home. No answer. “Anyone home?” Still no answer.

Nat opened the door, tentatively, and gingerly stepped inside. Technically it was trespassing, but the door was unlocked and time was of the essence. He looked round nervously. The living room was a mess. Surveying the ashtrays and half-empty plates with three-day-old, dried-out food encrusted on them, the words “trailer trash” came to mind.

He was about to start looking round when he was shocked to hear the sound of a flushing cistern — and he realized that he was not alone after all. For a few seconds, he waited with some degree of trepidation, looking in the direction of the bathroom and wondering if he was going to be confronted by a Stanley Kowalski type in a wifebeater.

To his relief, the figure that emerged was female, albeit the female equivalent of Stanley Kowalski. Sour-faced and borderline angry, she was closer to her mid-century than her youth. Under her eyes, the bags were noticeable, and although she wasn’t currently smoking, she looked as if she ought to have a cheap cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Who are you ?” she sneered.

“My name is Nathaniel Anderson.”

He held out his business card. Her eyes dropped to his outstretched hand, but she made no effort to take the proffered card, or even gave any indication that she was interested in looking at it. He put it away in his breast pocket.

“Are you Sally Burrow?”

“Who wants to know?”

He realized that she was just being melodramatic, but a little clarification was called for.

“I work for a lawyer called Alex Sedaka.”

“I don’t like lawyers,” she snarled.

“Neither do I,” he replied, trying to sound chummy. “But a man’s got to earn a living.”

Her face remained as sour as ever. He debated making a second attempt to break the ice, but rejected the idea on the grounds that the humor would probably go over her head.

“So, are you Sally Burrow?”

“Last time I checked,” she said.

“Mr. Sedaka — the man I work for — is representing your son.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Sedaka … Alex Sedaka.”

“No, I mean, who d’you say he’s representing?”

“Your son.”

“I don’t have no son.”

“Clayton. Your son Clayton.”

“He ain’t no son of mine!” she shouted, flopping into a chair. “Not anymore.”

Nat looked at her, trying to assess the situation, unsure of how to proceed. He decided to sit down too, taking the fact that she was seated as tacit permission to do likewise.

“I presume you disowned him after he murd- after he killed Dorothy Olsen.”

“You can call it murder if you like,” she said, finally taking out and lighting the cigarette that ought to have been in her mouth all along. “I believe in calling a spade a spade.”

Nat realized that Sally Burrow was a lot more astute than he had given her credit for. The fact that she had picked up on his reluctance to use the word “murder” proved that. He realized that he would have to tread carefully and not underestimate her intelligence, or at least her cunning.

“And that was when you disowned him?”

“Not immediately.”

“But that was why you disowned him.”

“Right.”

“When did you decide he was guilty?”

“I don’t really remember. I guess it happened … kind of gradually.”

“Well what did you think when he was arrested?”

“I didn’t know what to think.”

“Did you stand by him during the trial?”

“I didn’t go to the trial.”

“So you already thought he was guilty by then.”

“What else was I supposed to think? With her panties under the floorboards in his bedroom and her blood on them? And his jizz!”

“You don’t think it could’ve been planted?”

“Gimme a break!”

“Okay, so let’s say he’s guilty. That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t stand by him.”

“Why the fuck should I?”

“I mean … he is your son.”

“I already told you. I ain’t got no son.”

“Did you have one before the murder?”

Sally Burrow’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was wondering if maybe you saw the signs of the way your son was going before he killed Dorothy Olsen.”

“Are you tryin’ to make out that I … knew what he was gonna do? Like I’m some kind of a … accessory to what he done?”

“No, I’m not suggesting that you knew he was going to kill Dorothy. I was just wondering if there were any early signs of Clayton turning into the sort of person that he eventually turned into … if you see what I mean.”

“We didn’t talk much. He had his life and I had mine .”

Nat seemed to be having trouble digesting this.

“Didn’t talk?” he echoed.

“Didn’t talk,” she confirmed, drawing on her cigarette.

What he said next surprised even him.

“Has it occurred to you that if you’d given him more attention and affection he might not have become what he became?”

He didn’t know afterward what had possessed him to say it. But in some strange, indefinable way, he was glad that he had.

Sally Burrow looked as if she’d just been pole axed. Her lower jaw dropped open and the cigarette fell to the floor.