David Kessler - Mercy

“First of all, thank you for agreeing to see me.”

Alex was in Jonathan’s living room, the room that looked like a shrine in honor of Dorothy. As he looked round, he felt the full measure of Jonathan’s devotion — or perhaps that should be obsession. But he wondered if such an obsession could have gone sour. Could love have turned to hate?

“Well I reckon if I could drop in on you at short notice, you have the right to do the same with me . And I assume it’s something important.”

To Alex this was a conversation filler: obviously it was important when a man was just seven hours away from execution for the murder of Jonathan’s sister.

“Look, I’ll come right to the point. Did you know about the rape … at the time, I mean?”

Jonathan looked only marginally stunned by the question.

“Yes,” he said reluctantly. “She told me.”

“You would have been … what? Fourteen?”

“Thirteen, nearly fourteen, I guess.”

“And she told you? Or you found out some other way?”

“She told me. She came to the house in tears. She was crying quietly because she didn’t want Mom to hear.”

“Why? Was she sleeping?”

“No, nothing like that. She just didn’t want to tell Mom. She didn’t want to talk to Mom. She’d got to the stage that she hardly talked to Mom at all. They were like strangers in the same house.”

“Did your mom try and talk to her? To break the ice?”

“She made a few half-hearted attempts. But I guess things had already gone too far by then.”

“ What had gone too far?”

“What do you mean?”

“What was the cause of the problem? What was it that had driven them apart?”

Alex remembered that Jonathan had avoided this subject when they had talked in his office.

“It’s something I don’t talk about.”

“Any particular reason?”

Jonathan looked at him with anger and then broke into a smile.

“You never stop being a lawyer, do you? If I tell you why I don’t want to talk about it, then I’d be talking about.”

“I’m a lawyer 24/7.”

He waited for Jonathan to say more. But the look on Jonathan’s face showed that he had said all he was going to say.

“It must have been hard for you.”

“What?”

“The rape of your sister.”

“Hard for me ?”

“Well I mean, thirteen years old … the only person in the world your sister could turn to.”

“I don’t think I was old enough to realize how serious it was. I mean, I knew what rape meant, but there’s a difference between factual knowledge and emotional knowledge.”

Alex nodded approvingly at Jonathan’s insight.

“You were very close to her, weren’t you?”

“Like you said … I was the only person in the world she could confide in.”

Alex was wondering if the rape had undermined this bond between them. She was no longer pure. Someone else had “had” her. Did that matter to Jonathan? Could he have killed her to stop anyone else having her?

“Your mother gave me Dorothy’s computer. We’ve been looking at the contents.” Jonathan looked surprised. “It had been wiped, but my son has been able to recover deleted files using a scanning tunneling microscope at Berkeley.”

He was monitoring Jonathan’s face for a reaction.

“Interesting.”

The tone was as non-committal as the words, but Alex sensed that Jonathan was afraid.

“And one of the things we’ve found is a poem.”

“A poem ?”

Jonathan was smiling with apparent curiosity. Alex sensed that he was toying with him.

“Yes. It read: ‘You dragged me before the mirror / And ripped the clothes off of me.’ We thought that the words ‘ripped the clothes off of me’ had something to do with the rape. But we didn’t understand the words: ‘You dragged me before the mirror.’ I was wondering if you might know what that meant?”

Alex noticed that Jonathan was avoiding his eyes.

“I haven’t a clue,” he replied. But there was a break in his voice. Alex sensed that he was getting somewhere.

“We also have evidence that she went to England.”

“To England?”

“Yes.”

Jonathan turned away.

“I didn’t know it was to England. Your secretary — Juanita — told me she’d bought an airline ticket to somewhere, but she didn’t know where to.”

“Well it was to England, to London in fact … to have an abortion.”

Jonathan whirled round.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Any other information you want to drop on me?”

“Yes … she paid the clinic forty thousand pounds sterling.”

He had been watching Jonathan’s face carefully, monitoring it for the slightest of reactions and for a fraction of a second he thought he saw a fleeting smile. But it was gone in an instant.

“We’re back outside San Quentin prison,” said Martine Yin into the microphone, “where crowds are beginning to gather ahead of the impending execution of Clayton Burrow. As you can see behind me, two groups have formed: one to show their support for the murder victim and voice their approval of the forthcoming execution; the other to protest against not only this execution, but the death penalty in general.”

The camera zoomed out and panned to show one group of demonstrators and then returned to Martine.

“Show us yer tits, babe!” yelled one of the prison inmates in the association room where they were watching the news report on the large TV.

“Earlier today, Eyewitness News exclusively revealed that the governor had offered clemency to Burrow on the condition that he reveal where he buried the body of the victim. However, there is no information to suggest that Burrow has agreed to this deal. Furthermore, a spokesman for the warden of the prison has confirmed that he has received no instructions and that plans for the execution are continuing until he is informed otherwise.”

The image of Martine talking to the camera was replaced by the shots of her unsuccessful attempt to get a statement from Alex.

“Earlier today, this reporter tried to obtain a comment from Burrow’s lawyer Alex Sedaka. But Sedaka preferred to stay mute at this time.”

“Typical of a lawyer,” yelled one inmate as he watched the communal screen. “They never talk when you want ‘em to and they never shut up when you don’t!”

Several of the other inmates laughed at that.

“You know, I recommended him,” said Charlie, another inmate.

A couple of the others looked at him.

“When?” shot back one.

“When I was in the cell next to him. Burrow needed a new lawyer ‘cause the other firm had given up and were trying to ditch the case. So I told him to try this Sedaka guy.”

“Did Sedaka represent you?”

“No, I was represented by some wet-behind-the-ears kid from the Public Defender’s office. But he told me about Sedaka. Sedaka had just won some big case with a drug dealer’s broad and everyone was calling him the next big thing in criminal law.”

“Who was the kid?” asked another inmate with a cheeky grin.

“Why?”

“‘Cause I just want to be sure not to hire him!”

“Why?” asked Charlie irritably.

“‘Cause if he was any good, you wouldn’t be here!”

The other inmates laughed. Charlie merely scowled.

“For your information he must be pretty good, ‘cause he told me that he was working off his notice at the Public Defender’s office and Sedaka had just hired him.”

“As my rabbi used to say to the congregation every Yom Kippur: it’s nice to see you again.”