David Kessler - Mercy

Nat’s mind was reeling.

What the hell is going on?

“Look, I need to speak to him.”

“He’ll be here tomorrow morning. He usually arrives by eight thirty.”

“No, you don’t understand: I need to speak to him now .”

“Like I said, that’s not possible. ”

“I need his home phone number then.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible, we’re not allowed to give out the home phone numbers of staff.”

Nat was growing increasingly irritated.

“Okay, well what about his cell phone number?”

“His cell phone?”

“Yeah. His … mobile .”

“Yes, I do know what a cell phone is,’ she replied testily. ‘But we’re not allowed to give that out either.”

“Look, damn it, I need to talk to him!”

“Why now? What’s so urgent?”

“He sent a fax revealing confidential information about one of your patients!”

“I’m sure Mr. Lloyd wouldn’t do such a thing — ”

“Well some one did!”

“I don’t know anything about that. But if you could tell me your name again, I can leave a note for Mr. Lloyd to let him know you called.”

“There’s really no need.”

“Are you sure? I mean, if there’s any problem about that fax — ”

“There’s no need.”

“He blamed himself because he was guilty,” the woman said firmly.

Alex was in the home of the first Mrs. Olsen. Anita Olsen — or Anita Morgan as she now called herself — was a fifty-five-year-old woman with blonde hair, slim and elegant in her appearance. He had recently been “trained” by his secretary to watch people more closely. She told him that to be a good lawyer, he needed a woman’s powers of observation, so when he shook hands with Anita Morgan he looked at her roots expecting them to be dark. They were not. The blonde hair, he concluded, was natural.

Anita Morgan had agreed to see him at short notice, more out of curiosity than anything else. He had told her who he was and what he was doing and she agreed to meet him at her house. She was neutral on the issue of Clayton Burrow’s guilt, not having followed the case all that closely. But she was in no doubt as to her husband’s responsibility for the death of their son.

“How do you mean ‘guilty’? In the criminal sense?”

“Oh no, in the criminal sense it was that drunken lout who swerved across the divider line.”

“Then…?”

“It was the way he responded to it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Instead of swerving toward the emergency lane, he swerved left. The other car slammed straight into the passenger side, killing Jimmy instantly. Edgar was more concerned with saving himself than protecting little Jimmy.”

Anita Olsen sniffled into her handkerchief. He understood her emotions, but the gesture seemed somewhat contrived, a trifle false.

“Jimmy was in the front?”

He couldn’t believe that anyone could have put a three-year-old kid in the front passenger seat, even in those days.

“No, he was in the back, but he was on the right side. I mean, he wasn’t sitting, he was moving round, the way three year olds do.”

“He wasn’t in a safety seat?”

“In 1977? Children’s safety seats were an optional extra back then. He wasn’t even wearing a safety belt.”

For a second the neutral look on her face gave way to a grimace, as if she were about to break down in tears. But she fought them away and regained her composure.

“Did he have time to think about it? Edgar, I mean. When he swerved?”

Anita Olsen looked at him coldly.

“Oh I know what you’re thinking: that it was instinctive … the natural human urge toward self-preservation.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make excuses for him.”

“No, you’re right. It was instinctive. And he probably didn’t even know which side of the car Jimmy was on. When the back seat was empty, Jimmy was all over the place. You couldn’t keep him still. It’s just the fact that he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. That was Edgar’s responsibility and he should have made sure he was wearing one.”

Alex looked round the room. In some ways it reminded him of Jonathan’s place. Not that it was a shrine or anything quite as extreme as that. Just that over the mantelpiece there was an ever changing reminder of little Jimmy. It was one of those digital picture frames — a seven-inch one — and it was showing a rotating selection of pictures of Jimmy from baby, through toddler, to the cute dark-haired three year old he was shortly before he died. One could tell from their grainy look that they had been scanned. Some of them showed little Jimmy together with his father or mother. Sometimes both. There were even a few short video snippets, obviously converted from 8mm movie footage.

Alex wondered if Anita Olsen had put them there for his benefit or if she always had them running through the cycle like that.

Whatever the reason, it was a moving treatment in every sense of the word. But then the pictures changed and various pictures of girls appeared. Again they were toddlers and young children, but then at last some of them were teenagers. Then a woman in her twenties appeared. For a minute, Alex thought this was one of the daughters. But then he realized that it was in fact Anita herself.

“May I ask you a personal question?”

“You can ask. I don’t guarantee an answer.”

She was smiling. He sensed the nervous tension. As a lawyer he was trained to put people at ease, but he realized that in this case he had succeeded in doing the opposite.

“Did you have any more children?”

“Not with Edgar. I had two girls by my next husband.”

“Ah,” he said, grateful for the clarification.

“When did you break up with Edgar?”

“About a year after Jimmy died: early 1978.”

As it cycled back to Jimmy, Alex noticed some footage of the boy playing soccer with a man who was every bit as blond as Anita. He stood up and took a step forward toward the frame.

“Is that him?” asked Alex. His tone was more puzzled than curious.

“Who? Edgar?” said Anita. “Yes. Why?”

“I was just wondering whether he dyed his hair blond to match yours?”

Anita looked surprised at this.

“He didn’t dye it. That’s his natural color.”

“You don’t see many blond Jewish men,” said Alex with a wry smile.

“Oh Edgar wasn’t Jewish.”

Alex shot Anita a surprised look.

“His second wife was, but he wasn’t. I remember he had a kind of fascination with all things Jewish though.”

“What, you mean like … he believed in those silly Jewish conspiracy theories?”

Anita smiled.

“Oh no, nothing quite so dramatic. No, it was more of a fascination that he developed when he was living in New York. He picked up a lot of Jewish expressions and he liked the food. He always used to complain that you can’t find any good kosher delis on the West Coast — at least nothing to beat Richie’s in the Big Apple, he used to say. I think that explains why he became so fascinated by Esther. Apparently she was quite a good cook. But he was of Norwegian origin — like me. That was how we met. There was this club called the ‘Scandinavian Club.’ It was used by rich men to meet beautiful women. But Edgar really was of Norwegian extraction. I think he always thought of himself a bit of a Viking warrior — at least in his business activities.”

Alex walked toward the frame and stared at the images.

“A Viking who was fascinated by Jews,” said Alex with a wry smile as he continued to stare at the frame. “Fascinating.”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“I was just thinking about something in biology — something called … Mendel’s Law.”