David Kessler - Mercy

“My paralegal phoned the medical center. It’s late at night in England, but she spoke to one of the nurses. The nurse confirmed that Dorothy Olsen was there, but for legal reasons couldn’t tell us the dates or what treatment she received. We’d need a court order from a British court for that. And that’ll take time, Your Honor. Probably a few days. That’s why we’re asking for a stay of execution.”

“What about the airline booking? How soon can you get that information?”

“If you can issue an order against them now, Your Honor, we could probably serve it tomorrow morning. But it would still take time to access the records. This was nine years ago, don’t forget, and although the information would almost certainly have been saved, it might be on a back-up tape.”

“How long?”

“Well if we could give them say forty-eight hours to comply and then schedule the hearing for twenty-four hours after that…”

The judge was shaking his head.

“I’m not prepared to go that far. At least not at an ex parte hearing.”

“Well there’s no chance of getting it today. Even if you issued the order now and we managed to serve it, they’d argue that it was too short notice to comply.”

“All right,” said the judge, returning his attention to the documents. “I know this is your first capital case, so I assume you wouldn’t try any cynical shenanigans like some old hands at this get up to. I’m going to take this at face value. I’ll issue a temporary restraining order now and I’ll also schedule a hearing for both parties at quarter past four, when I’ll listen to arguments from the DA.”

“And the airline booking?” asked Alex, tensely.

“I’ll issue an order to American to dig up the details. But they may appeal the short time span.”

Minutes later Alex and Nat were outside the court building on Golden Gate Avenue, looking pleased with themselves.

“I can’t believe how easily we got it!” said Nat.

“It’s too early to start celebrating. There’s still that full hearing in less than an hour.”

“So who’s going to serve what?”

“I’m going to serve the TRO on the warden at San Quentin. I want you to serve the order on the local airline office, then fax the other to the New York branch of Baker amp; Segal. Tell them to serve it on the COO or CEO, basically whoever they can get to quickest.”

“Do you want me for the full hearing?”

“Be available just in case. I might even need you to cover for me. It depends how fast I get back from San Quentin.”

“Okay.”

They split up and went to their respective cars. After Alex drove off, he put in a call to Juanita and she briefed him on her follow-up conversation with the nurse at the medical center, including her probing question to Susan White about the medical center’s true intentions. Alex weighed it up in his mind.

“Do you think they’re stonewalling us?”

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the line before Juanita replied.

“I wouldn’t say that. I’ve checked up on the British Data Protection Act and it is a legal minefield.”

“My question is, do they want to cooperate?”

“I don’t know about the Administrator; I’ve never spoke to him. But I think the nurse genuinely wanted to help. She sounded sincere and I think she’ll try.”

“Okay, well get drafting then. Let’s keep it simple. We want the date Dorothy arrived and the date she left. Ask what treatment she received, but state that this is less important than the dates. State explicitly that if the treatment details are a problem, they shouldn’t delay, just ignore the question and send us the dates. We don’t want to give them any excuse for delaying.”

When the call ended, Alex remembered that David had said he was going to send him the poem that he had found on Dorothy’s computer. He logged onto his email account from his iPhone and found the message with the attachment already there. He clicked on the attachment and it opened:

You dragged me before the mirror

And ripped the clothes off of me

Forcing me to face the fact

That I am not, that I am not

The thing that you want me to be.

Alex felt uneasy as he read the lines. To whom were these words addressed? To her tormentor? To the boy who had bullied her at school? Was this her final message to Clayton Burrow?

…ripped the clothes off of me.

What did it mean? And who did it? Alex knew that he had to find out. And there was one person who could tell him.

By the time the fax from America started coming through, Susan White was already standing by the machine. The wording was pretty much what she had expected. She knew that she would probably get more attitude from Mrs. Lloyd if she called again, but she didn’t have a choice. Aside from that, Stuart had indicated that it would be all right to call him once the request came through. If she didn’t call him, he wouldn’t do anything: not consult lawyers, not ask for advice and not authorize her to transmit the information to Alex Sedaka’s office.

This time, much to Susan’s relief, Stuart answered the phone himself.

“Hi, Stuart. They’ve faxed over the request.”

“What does it say?”

She read it out to him.

“Okay, can you fax it over to me?”

“Sure. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to have to get some legal advice.”

“Do you think you can get it quickly?”

“Look, Susan, I’ll do what I can!”

She hadn’t expected him to snap like that. But was it because he was under pressure or because he didn’t have any intention of doing anything?

“Okay. I’ll fax it over.”

She put the phone down and faxed it to his home. While it was going through, the phone rang again. Another nurse answered.

“What … look, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that…”

She was looking helplessly at Susan, who could hear shouting at the other end of the line. Susan mouthed “I’ll take it,” and the other nurse handed the phone to her.

“Hallo, who is this?”

A chill went up Susan White’s spine when she heard the reply.

“What do you want?”

“I understand that you’ve received a request to send over some information about Dorothy Olsen to the law offices of Alex Sedaka.”

“What of it?” asked Susan defensively.

“Well I’m just calling to tell you that that would be a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality as well as of the Data Protection Act.”

“But there’s a man on death row who’s going to — ”

“I know that.”

“But you can’t just let him — ”

“It’s not for you to decide. You are not authorized to tell them anything. Is that understood?”

“So … you’re just going to let an innocent man die?”

“That’s none of your concern!”

“Look … I know that you have the law on your side. But there’s a human life at stake.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Susan bit her lip as she waited.

“All right, but don’t tell them more than you have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell them about the date of the first consultation or the date of discharge…”

There was a painful pause.

“But you can tell them about the abortion.”

David was feeling bothered by his father’s reaction to the verse that he had discovered. The verse might not have been particularly relevant to their investigation, but they had to work with what they had and David had felt that having found it, it was his duty to pass it on.

However, David wasn’t one to take it personally. It was just that the reaction showed what enormous stress his father was under. He had just over eight hours to save a man’s life and they had found very little. In any case, his father was right. Poems were not going to help them. They needed cold, hard, solid facts — like the fact that she had bought a ticket to England, or the fact that she had downloaded a PDF brochure of a private health center in London.