David Kessler - Mercy

He found himself presented with a dazzling and somewhat confusing array of circuit breakers. Eventually he found one marked “main lab.” He was about to throw the switch when he realized that this wasn’t enough. Throwing the switch might cause David Sedaka to leave the lab in consternation, but he would still be hovering about outside, leaving Jonathan no way to get in undetected.

He looked at the top and bottom of the cupboard, eventually finding three large switches at the top. These evidently controlled the main flow. The lab presumably had three-phase wiring and each of these master circuit breakers controlled one phase. To black out the lab entirely he would have to throw all three switches.

But then he realized that even that wouldn’t work. The emergency battery would kick in and the temporary lighting would come on. This wouldn’t be enough to operate the lab equipment, but it would be enough to supply lighting which, again, would render untenable any effort to sneak into the lab.

He struggled to come up with an idea. What could he do that would get David out of the lab and give him free access to the lab? A phone call telling him that something untoward had happened to his father? Forget it! David would simply call his father’s office to verify it.

A fire? That would be a very serious thing to -

Of course! That was it!

Not a real fire, of course, just a fire alarm. The button was there staring him in the face by the basement exit to the parking lot. It couldn’t be simpler.

All it took was a lighter held to the fire and smoke detector and in an instant the klaxon rang out.

He heard voices, questions, puzzlement and heard scurrying footsteps. The footsteps were retreating. No one was coming down to the basement. At some point, they could probably check where the alarm had been set off. But they hadn’t done so yet. He still had time.

He waited a few seconds longer and then started running up the stairs. But he felt self-conscious about the lights being on and so he ran back down and threw the three circuit breakers, plunging the building into darkness. It felt surprisingly long before the emergency lighting came on — although he realized in retrospect that it was barely more than a second.

Again he ran up the stairs to the ground floor, but this time he did not stop. He raced straight into the lab where he had seen David Sedaka working. He saw the computer, but he realized that he didn’t need it. David Sedaka had opened up the casing and taken out the hard drive and dismantled it. It was the platters from the hard disk drive that he needed and they were right there by the computer that David had been using. But that other computer wasn’t Dorothy’s computer. It was a laptop and it was connected up to the scanning tunneling microscope, presumably to control the operations.

Jonathan scooped up the platters in one hand and ran. As he ran out, he felt a hand push against his chest. He felt himself being hurled back and when he had regained his bearings he looked up to see a curly-haired man standing there.

“What are you doing here?” asked the man.

“Nothing.”

“What have you got in your hand?”

Jonathan looked down. The platters seemed so small and fragile, it was hard to believe that anyone could even notice them, especially in this light. But when he looked up he noticed that David Sedaka’s eyes were still on the platters. And he knew what he had to do.

Quick as a flash, his free hand formed a fist and shot out, flooring David Sedaka with a single punch.

Lee Kelly picked up the small rectangular piece of white cardboard that had fallen from the passport and flipped it over. It was a photograph of a young woman in her twenties looking at the camera with a bright, sunny smile on her face.

He couldn’t tell when or where the picture was taken. There were people in the background, but the woman filled the foreground and the people in the background were too small to glean any information from. It looked like it was taken at a party. It had that sort of look and feel to it. But it was impossible to be sure.

For a second or two he thought that it was a picture of Dorothy. But looking back at the passport picture he had second thoughts. The eyes were similar, but the bone structure was different.

But the question was, why was it inside Dorothy’s passport? Just having the passport was suspicious enough, but why the picture? Putting it inside the passport suggested that it was there for safe-keeping — an important picture inside an important document.

But why? Why was it so important?

And who was the woman?

Alex was driving to Jonathan’s place. Juanita had convinced him that he couldn’t just give up on Burrow, but the problem was where to go from here. Jonathan seemed like a potential weak link. Esther had told Alex that she had heard Dorothy and Jonathan talking just a few days before Dorothy vanished — indeed, a few days before Edgar Olsen had committed suicide.

That couldn’t have just been about the rape. The rape was six weeks earlier. So they must have been talking about the pregnancy, rather than the rape itself. But if it was about the pregnancy, then it would probably also have been about the abortion, or at least the question of whether or not to have one.

Jonathan could therefore not have been ignorant of Dorothy’s plans to go to England.

And if he knew, then Alex had to find a way to break him and get him to admit the truth. Clayton Burrow’s life depended on it.

The cell phone rang in the hands-free kit. Alex looked at the display.

“Hi, David.”

“Hi, Dad, listen, you’re not going to believe what’s happened!”

“What?” asked Alex, excitedly.

“Someone broke into the lab and stole the platters from the hard disk!”

“What?”

“We had a little bit of a confrontation.”

“Who?”

“Me and the guy who did it. The fire alarm went off and as I was leaving the building I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I looked round and saw this guy running toward the lab instead of toward the exit.”

“What did he look like?”

“By the time I looked round he was walking away from me so I only saw his back.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Not exactly. I went back myself to see what he was up to.”

“Wasn’t that a bit risky?”

“Well he went in and I couldn’t see what he did, but he came out of the lab like three seconds later holding something in his hand. So I challenged him.”

“That was dangerous.”

“Not really. I mean, he wasn’t so big.”

Alex was surprised that his son was being so blase about it. He wasn’t exactly noted for being the world’s best action hero. Debbie had always been the athletic one. David was the nerd with his nose in a book half the time.

“So what did he say?”

“He said he wasn’t doing anything, but I could see he was holding something in his hand. I wasn’t too sure what it was, but it was clear that it was something he wanted to hold on to.”

“So why did you let him go?”

“I didn’t exactly let him. While I was looking down at whatever it was he had in his hand he caught me with a sucker punch.”

“Holy shit!”

“Don’t worry, I’m okay. I think he just broke my nose.”

“Good God, hadn’t you better get to a doctor?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve broken my nose, Dad. Remember the baseball game?”

“Now you’re not still going on about that, David! You know she didn’t mean it.”

“I’m not blaming her, Dad. All I’m saying if I could take a broken nose as a child from Debbie’s Little League baseball bat, then I can take one as an adult from some punk who manages to catch me with a sucker punch.”