David Kessler - Mercy

“I was wondering if it might be worth checking out further.”

“It’s not as important as the medical center Juanita. Anyway, how can we check at short notice?”

“You could ask Mrs. Olsen.”

“I’d rather not. Not unless we have to. She’s a frail old woman and she doesn’t need that kind of heavy-duty problem.”

“Maybe we can just Google ‘Edgar Olsen’ and see what comes up.”

“Okay. But first talk to the medical center ASAP.”

“Okay, boss.”

“Okay, let’s kick some judicial butt!” said Alex, forcing an artificially enthusiastic smile.

Minutes later, Alex and Nat were gone and Juanita was on her own. She was calling the Finchley Road Medical Centre on the speakerphone with one hand, and, being adept at multi-tasking, Googling “Edgar Olsen” with the other.

Why delay? she thought. I’m a woman. I can do two things at once.

It might even be a complete red herring. But it was still hanging over them. They were whistling in the dark and had to grab hold of any lifeline that came their way.

Several items came up that referred to a “car crash.” Most of these were from local newspapers and they dated back thirty years. Juanita was amazed that newspaper editions from long before the existence of the world wide web had been digitized and made available online. However, in order to access them one almost invariably had to register with the newspaper or organization.

Juanita had a dummy email account just for this sort of thing, to avoid getting spam in her main mailbox, but she still had to go through the whole process of registering and confirming her membership before eventually being able to log on and find what she was looking for.

February 17, 1977 — Pomona, CA — A three-year-old boy was killed when the car his father was driving collided with a pick-up truck on Route 66. Jimmy Olsen was in the back seat of the car traveling east when a driver headed west swerved across the median line. Edgar Olsen, the boy’s father, tried to avoid the pick-up truck but was hit from the side. The boy was taken to Pomona Valley Hospital a short time later but pronounced dead on arrival. The driver of the pick-up truck was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.

So the late Edgar Olsen had two dead children.

Susan White was at the nursing station when the call came. But it was another nurse who took the call.

“Yes… it comes through to here when the switchboard is closed … I’m afraid the Chief Administrator isn’t here now. It’s almost midnight — well twenty past eleven … I don’t think that would be practical … What do you mean a matter of life and…?”

The nurse noticed Susan White looking at her, like a puma coiled to spring into action, almost as if Susan could hear the other side of the conversation.

“Look, wait a minute, there’s someone else here who may be able to help you.”

The nurse covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with her hand.

“It’s some woman with a foreign accent. She says she needs to speak to someone in a position of authority and it’s a matter of life and death. She sounds a bit…”

“Okay, I’ll deal with it.”

Susan virtually snatched the phone away.

“Hallo, my name is Susan White. To whom am I speaking?”

“I’m Juanita Cortez. Are you in the administration?”

“No, I’m a staff nurse here. All the admin staff have gone home. May I ask what this is about?”

“I work for Alex Sedaka. He’s a lawyer and he’s representing a client on death row for the murder of a girl called — ”

“Dorothy Olsen!”

“You know about it?”

Susan struggled to keep her breathing under control. This was not what she had been expecting. Before, she had been paralyzed by fear. Now she was almost relieved.

“I saw a report about it on the news.”

“Then you must know that time is of the essence.”

“I know.”

“So can you give me some more information?”

Susan White was about to blurt something out, but she held back. There were data protection issues involved. She couldn’t just discuss a patient’s details over the phone with a complete stranger, not without some sort of formal authorization.

Who was this person? Was she who she said she was? Did she have standing to receive any information at all? Maybe she was a member of one of those religious “pro-life” organizations in the American Bible Belt. Could a nurse give out the information? Did the disclosure need some kind of authorization from the Data Protection Registrar? Or the courts? Or the patient — if indeed the patient was still alive?

Susan White had never wanted to think of herself as a “jobsworth” — but to disclose information about a patient over the phone was truly more than her job was worth — especially this particular patient … in the light of what had been done.

She took a deep breath and spoke.

“Look, I can’t give out information over the phone — I mean, I’ll need to speak to the Administrator-”

“But you said-”

“I’ll call him at home!” She decided not to mention that she had already spoken to him at home — and about precisely this case. “But in the meantime, can you tell me what information you need?”

“As much as you can give us. When she arrived. When she was discharged.”

“Okay, I’ll speak to our Chief Administrator and see what I can do. What’s your number?”

Juanita gave the number.

“Okay, I’ll call him and get back to you.”

“Thank you. Please hurry. It really is a race against time.”

“Okay, if she doesn’t call back in the next fifteen minutes, call her again.”

“Yes, boss.”

Juanita had called Alex while he was on his way to the Northern California Federal District Court, to brief him on what the nurse at the medical center had said. She also filled him in on what she’d found out about Edgar Olsen’s son by his first marriage and the tragic accident. Alex’s reaction to Jimmy Olsen’s death had been that it was interesting but almost certainly irrelevant.

The District Court was in fact in the same building as the governor’s San Francisco office. Alex and Nat were going in separate cars this time, so that afterward one could drive to Marin County to serve the restraining order while the other would be able to return to the office or remain at the court, depending on subsequent developments.

Alex debated with himself whether to call the governor. There was a doctrine — favored by most DAs and not a few judges — that last-minute evidence of this kind should be addressed by gubernatorial clemency rather than tying up valuable court time. But the governor had made an offer contingent upon Burrow revealing the whereabouts of the body.

Alex thought that he wouldn’t have much luck if he went back to the governor with a new appeal for clemency based on such radically different grounds as a claim of innocence based on new evidence. It would call for quite a mental adjustment from the governor. When they had met in the morning, the tacitly agreed premise was that Burrow was guilty. Now Alex was moving to the view that he might very well be innocent. It still wasn’t a strong conviction, but it was growing inside him.

The response from the clinic seemed to confirm their suspicion that Dorothy had got there. But even if she had, she might still have been killed afterward. The fact was that she had vanished off the face of the earth and there was still strong circumstantial evidence that she had been murdered.

At this stage all they could prove was that she was planning to go to London. Until they got something in writing from the clinic, there was nothing to prove — in court — that she had got there. The statement over the phone to Juanita would not be admissible. And even if Alex assured the governor that he would have the proof shortly, what good would it do him when — as far as he could say — Dorothy had still fallen off the edge of the earth after that?