David Kessler - Mercy

David was frantically trying to regain access to Dorothy’s Compuserve account, checking and double checking that the Caps Lock key was off and that he was typing carefully.

Could I have mistyped the password? he wondered. Quite possibly. I was terribly excited after all.

He realized that there was only one thing to do. He had to go through the same rigmarole again: gain access through the security questions and reminders.

The date of birth and mother’s maiden name questions came up and he answered them. But when the third security question came up it was no longer asking for the name of the high school, it wanted “Dog’s name.”

She set up several security questions here, David thought. The system cycles through them at random.

Smiling, he typed in “Clayton” and found the email containing the User ID and password reminders for the bank. He made a note of them and then logged out.

Next stop, the bank.

He logged on with the user ID and password and started poking round. There weren’t too many transactions. She had started the account with fifty-five thousand pounds sterling. But then he scrolled down to see what she had spent it on.

Sure enough, the Finchley Road Medical Centre was listed. But it wasn’t their name that surprised him. It was something else entirely.

“None of this proves that Dorothy Olsen is alive or even that she survived the night of her disappearance.”

The ADA who was addressing the judge was a woman in her late twenties; dark-haired and smartly dressed, she could have been Martine Yin’s older sister, except that she went a little bit lighter on the makeup to underplay rather than exaggerate her femininity. In her line of work, emphasizing her femininity might seem too blatant a ploy, whereas playing it down enabled her to cash in on her appearance, even while appearing not to.

“We concede that she reserved the flight. But that doesn’t prove that she boarded it.”

Dawn Oxenberg was one of several ADAs in the sex crimes unit of the DA’s office. Although her tone was quiet, her manner and tenacity were as intense as that of any man and she fought her corner like a seasoned pro.

Nat rose to speak.

“Your Honor, most people who book or reserve airline flights subsequently board those flights. Not to do so would be the exception. In that sense it is more probable than not that she boarded.”

He was there alone, because Alex was on his way back from the prison. It was ironic that, having served the restraining order on the warden of the prison, Alex was not there to argue the case in person when the restraining order was in danger of being overturned.

“That might be the case if viewed in isolation,” Oxenberg responded. “But the fact that Miss Olsen was never seen again suggests that it is more probable that she did not board the flight.”

“Your Honor, while that may be true of the airline reservation, the same cannot be said of the information we obtained from the Finchley Road Medical Centre itself. They confirmed that Miss Olsen was indeed a patient at the center and that she had an abortion there.”

He sat down and again Dawn Oxenberg rose.

“But this is entirely hearsay. Counsel hasn’t even brought along the secretary who allegedly spoke to the medical center — ”

“She’s covering the phones! We’re a small law firm.”

“Or brought along a notarized statement from her.”

“She’s a paralegal and I would have thought that on this point at least Counsel would have the professional courtesy to trust her and myself on this matter.”

“Even if we accept that this Miss…”

“Cortez.”

“… Cortez was telling the truth, what does that prove? She spoke to a person on the phone who claimed to be a member of staff at the medical center. This person claimed to be a nurse , not a member of the administrative staff or someone who was likely to have access to the records — and claimed to remember this case that occurred some nine years ago. How do we know Miss Cortez really got through to the medical center? How do we know that the person she was talking to was telling the truth? And if she was telling the truth, so what? The airline reservation showed that Miss Olsen went there in May 1998. Even if she had the abortion a month later that still only pushes her death back a month.”

The judge — the same man who had granted the temporary restraining order — turned to Nat.

“She does have a point there.”

“That’s why we’re trying to get the records from the medical center. But they’re eight hours ahead of us. It’s the middle of the night there. It’s impossible to get this sort of information out of hours — especially in England where they have very strict privacy and data protection laws.”

“Then why was it left so late in the day?” asked Oxenberg. Her manner was truculent, her tone accusatory. Alex had warned him that she would give no quarter.

“As we explained at the earlier hearing, we only found out about it because we have a computer expert who was able to recover deleted files from Dorothy Olsen’s computer. And the only reason we have that computer is because Mrs. Olsen gave it to us.”

“Why didn’t they ask her to give it to them earlier, Your Honor?” asked the ADA contemptuously.

“We didn’t even know of its existence . And the first time we ever met Mrs. Olsen was today at the governor’s office. Look, let me stress again that the important thing here is that not only do we have written evidence that Dorothy Olsen was intending to go to England, but we have oral evidence that she went there and had an abortion. Yes, I admit that at this stage — at such short notice — we haven’t got it in writing. But even with this time difference between London and California, we were able at least to obtain oral confirmation. And given a little more time we’re confident that we can get it in writing.”

The judge turned to the ADA.

“That does seem reasonable, doesn’t it, Miss Oxenberg?”

“Again we’re moving away from the big picture here. All this evidence proves is that Dorothy Olsen was alive for a short period after she vanished. With the operative words being: ‘a short period.’ No way does that prove that she is still alive and no way does that prove that Clayton Burrow didn’t kill her.”

Nat took a deep breath.

“Your Honor, the People’s case was based on certain implicit assumptions. Chief among them was the assumption that Dorothy Olsen had no plans to leave or vanish or run away and that she was either killed round about the time that she vanished or that she was kidnapped at that time and then killed a short while later. If we can show that she not only was not killed or kidnapped at that time but that she went to a foreign country and had an abortion, that suggests that the key presumptions of the prosecution case were wrong. Yet it was on a basis of those key presumptions that my client was convicted.”

Dawn Oxenberg was shaking her head.

“None of these assumptions formed any part of the prosecution case, Your Honor. The prosecution case was based on rock solid physical evidence found in Burrow’s home. There was the blood-stained knife and the victim’s underwear. The knife had the victim’s blood, the underwear had the accused’s semen. And to top it all off they found the victim’s breast tissue in the freezer at Burrow’s home. It was an open and shut case based on the physical evidence found in the residential premises where Burrow lived.”

“Lived with his mother ,” Nat interjected.

Dawn Oxenberg turned to him.