David Kessler - Mercy

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to hurry you,” said the girl.

What name would Dorothy Olsen associate with a dog?

“ Clayton !” David blurted out.

“That’s the one,” said the girl triumphantly.

The guard outside peered in, as if concerned that Clayton’s flare of anger was going to erupt into physical violence. Alex signaled him to back off. The guard sat down and returned to his newspaper.

Clayton was now avoiding the lawyer’s eyes and there was a break in his voice, as if he couldn’t trust his throat to hold it together.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

He didn’t want to talk about it, but Burrow had finally broken and they both knew that he had to.

“It was on April the first … her birthday … her eighteenth birthday. I told her it was a birthday present… a coming-of-age present. It was my idea of a joke.”

“I presume she didn’t see the humor.”

Alex silently cursed himself for saying it. It sounded judgmental — which it was. But it was the wrong time to say it. Judgment was the one thing that Clayton was running away from.

“She didn’t show any emotion at all. She begged and pleaded at first … and then she just stopped. Silence. Like she didn’t feel anything … or didn’t want me to know what she was feeling.”

“That’s it?”

“I think she may have been crying … but you know … like … crying silently.”

“And how did you feel?”

“At the time … or now?”

“Stop jerking my leash, Clayton.”

“I’m not — ”

“You are !”

“At the time I didn’t feel a thing. No, I did feel a thing: I felt satisfaction ! I was angry. She’d got me canned, remember. I was kicked out of high school because of her. I wanted revenge.”

“So how did you do it?”

“I lured her to a construction site that night and raped her.”

“How did you lure her?”

“I told her I’d kidnapped Jonathan.”

“And she believed you?”

“I’d stolen his cell phone. She called the number and I answered. Then she believed me.”

“So you lured her to this construction site and raped her there?”

“That’s right.”

“And then?”

“Then I let her go.”

“Weren’t you worried that she’d go running to the cops?”

“I told her that if she did I really would go after Jonathan.”

“And would you have done?”

“Of course not!”

“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. You were already a rapist. Why stop there?”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“Who said anything about murder?”

“You did-”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I mean, I did!” He looked embarrassed, confused. “I mean, I threatened to kill Jonathan if she told anyone. But I wouldn’t have done it.”

“Do you think she believed you?”

“I … I don’t know.”

Clayton was trapped. To say “yes” meant that he was a plausible murderer, to say “no” would beg the question as to why she didn’t tell anyone.

Alex stepped in to help him.

“She might have been afraid that even if you didn’t kill Jonathan, you might still beat him up. You’d already done so once.”

“Yes,” Clayton rasped, his voice almost gone.

“And also, like many rape victims, she might have felt that she wouldn’t be believed. You could have said that she consented.”

“I don’t think so,” Clayton replied with a wry smile. “She was a lesbian, don’t forget.”

“Did other people know that?”

“It was a more or less open secret.”

“So at the time you raped her, you knew that you were raping her against her sexual preference?”

“I guess.”

“And how do you feel about it now?”

“Now … now…”

He trailed off and broke down sobbing into his hands.

Alex felt a strange mixture of pity and disgust. After a while, the sobbing subsided, but Clayton didn’t look up.

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

Clayton’s head rose slowly. He looked shell-shocked, but held it together well.

“Pregnant? At the time … when I raped her?”

“Probably not.”

“You mean I…”

“Yes.”

Clayton was struggling for breath, like the news had knocked the wind out of him.

“How do you know?”

“Because she had an abortion.”

“When?”

Alex had to think about this. She was raped on April 1, 1998 and she had bought the ticket to England on the 19 thof May, just over six weeks later. Alex thought about the timings. If he had got her pregnant with one shot then it was probably during the most fertile time in her cycle. That would be the midpoint between periods. When she missed her next period, did she realize what had happened? Or did she try to rationalize it away? Did she have irregular periods? Or did she just tell herself that she did?

And then, when she missed her next period, did panic set in? Did she wait a few days to be sure? And when she finally could evade the issue no longer, what did she do? She couldn’t talk to her mother. She certainly couldn’t talk to her father. And she didn’t have a sister.

Who else was there to talk to? Her thirteen-year-old brother? Too young. A high school friend? Did she have any friends? Probably not. That was the problem of the bullied child: no friends to turn to. No one to seek support or advice from. She would have had to face it alone. It must have been terrifying: the decision to have an abortion. So she booked a ticket on the 19 thand flew to England the day after the prom.

But why England? There were abortion clinics all over California.

“You said this morning that you thought Dorothy was still alive and that she set you up.”

“Yes.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was just clutching at straws. But I didn’t kill her.”

“Do you think the rape was her motive? For setting you up, I mean?”

“Why? You starting to believe me?”

“What if I were to tell you that we have evidence that Dorothy was alive the day after she vanished? That she went to London on Sunday the 24 thof May, the day after the prom.”

Clayton looked at Alex, hesitantly.

“‘What if?’ Is that one of those mind games, like the cops play?”

“No, it’s not a mind game — and it’s not a hypothetical. We have such evidence. She went to London and had an abortion.”

Alex was watching carefully to see how Clayton reacted. As things stood now, they knew that she had made it to London, because the nurse had told Juanita that Dorothy had had an abortion. But they knew nothing of what had happened to her after that.

“Well if you know that, can’t you take it to the courts? To the governor?”

All of a sudden, Clayton seemed full of hope, as if he had not only a second chance at life but also a purpose to live. It pained Alex to know that he had to shoot down those hopes, or at least temper them with a dose of realism.

“We are going to the courts. But it’s not quite as simple as that. We can tell the judge that she went to England and had an abortion. But we don’t have it in writing. And we don’t know what happened next. She might have come back to America and tried to blackmail you.”

“That’s garbage!”

“It’s what the DA will suggest. And the next thing he’ll say is that you might have killed her to silence her.”

He met Clayton’s eyes, monitoring them for a reaction.

The DA’s office had felt that they owed Martine Yin a favor for blowing the lid on Dusenbury’s clemency offer. So they decided to return the favor and let her know about the TRO.