David Kessler - Mercy

Could it be that after all this, Nat Anderson had been Dorothy’s killer and not Clayton Burrow?

That would explain a lot of things. But the one thing it wouldn’t explain was why. Was he some nerdy geek at Dorothy’s school who secretly loved her? Had she spurned him? Had he sought her out and killed her in England in revenge?

Or had the passport been planted on him? Maybe it was Nat who was being set up rather than Burrow. But who would have done it? Certainly not Alex himself: he was a man of the highest integrity.

The real question was, had Nat handled the passport? That would surely be the clincher one way or the other. If he had handled it, then that would show that Lee Kelly — career criminal though he was — was telling the truth.

Suddenly, the phone rang.

He grabbed the receiver.

“Dusenbury.”

“Hallo, Mr. Governor. It’s Grace Nightingale. We’ve got a match on the dabs lifted from the passport.”

“Whose dabs?”

“Nat Anderson! It’s a sixteen-point match.’

The burglar was telling the truth!

“Holy Mary, Mother of God! Clear the line!”

Juanita was standing over the fax machine, watching a fax coming through. It was from the medical center. But the fax machine was one of those slow, lumbering inkjet machines. Alex had promised to get a faster one, but three months after the promise she was still waiting.

The phone rang.

It was on the other side of the room, but she leaped up to answer it. She couldn’t make the fax come through any faster but the call might be important.

“Alex Sedaka’s office.”

“Hallo,” said a voice. It sounded like a man, but she couldn’t be sure. He sounded like he was crying.

“Yes?”

“My mother! She’s dead.”

She realized who it was. And she realized what this meant. The man at the other end of the line — the man who was now crying pitifully — was Jonathan Olsen.

She didn’t want to hurt his feelings and she empathized with his pain. But she needed to get him off the phone so that she could get back to the fax machine and see what was coming through.

Gently, she eased Jonathan off the phone and was just about to go back to the fax machine, when she thought that it might be a good idea to tell Alex. Then again, she realized that there was nothing he could do. It was this fax that might make a difference — if there was still time.

She looked up at the clock and wondered if there was still time.

Clayton Burrow was no longer struggling. Whatever had unsettled him, it had now been drowned out by the strength of the sodium thiopental and the paralyzing drug that had been injected into him. In the spectator’s room next door, the witnesses to the execution sat back in their seats, still tense as the drugs took effect, as Burrow’s breathing became labored, as his chest went into spasm, as life slipped away from him.

In the control room on the other side of the execution chamber the warden watched tensely. The execution had gone reasonably smoothly, but it had not been an easy case.

But he felt in some way surprised that it had come this far. Throughout the day, he had had this feeling that something was going to stop this execution from taking place, even after the temporary restraining order had been overturned.

But in the end, it had gone ahead and in a few moments it would be all over.

The hotline from the governor rang!

The jolt it sent through the warden was sharper than a shock from an electric chair. After a momentary convulsion that was physical as well as psychological, he grabbed the phone.

“San Quentin.”

“It’s the governor! Pull the plug! He’s innocent.”

“Shit!”

Not waiting for anyone else to act, the warden leaped out of his chair to hit the abort button. As the significance of the action became apparent, the room erupted into pandemonium, with deputies spinning the wheel that opened the door to the execution chamber and another running in to rip the tubes out of Burrow’s arms. By this time, the chaos had spread to the spectators.

Alex Sedaka arrived in the reception area just as the spectators were being herded out. He had been allowed into the high security section because of his pass. But they had told him that he couldn’t go in to the spectator’s section because the procedure had already started. He had wanted to give Burrow some comfort in his last moments and he cursed himself for his lateness.

But now the doors to the spectator’s section had been thrown open — somewhat earlier than expected — and people were positively charging out in a state bordering on hysteria. This was not the usual press stampede to phone in their stories. These people were in a state of shock — as if something untoward had happened.

“What is it?” he asked frantically as one man barged past him.

He had heard of things going wrong with executions before, although usually that was with the electric chair, like heads catching fire. With the old gas chamber it was usually frothing at the mouth and going into spasm.

But this was a lethal injection procedure. The worst thing that could go wrong was the prisoner regaining consciousness before the other drugs had taken effect. And that was supposed to have been precluded by the new execution protocol that provided for a continuous dose of sodium thiopental while the other drugs were being administered.

The hysteria all round him was such that he almost forgot his recent discovery, not to mention his concerns about Nat. But what he saw next brought it all flooding back to him. For the last person to emerge from the spectator’s room was Nat. He looked completely unfazed even as he walked up to Alex. There appeared to be not just an air of calm about him, but almost an air of relief, as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

“We found Dorothy’s passport,” said Alex.

Surprise flipped across Nat’s face, followed by fear … followed by a smug calm.

“Oh really?”

“Yes. And the picture of Esther when she was younger.”

“And what conclusions have you drawn?”

“I … I’m not sure. I know that you’ve had an obsession with this case for some time. And maybe even an obsession with the Olsen family. The passport shows that she went to England but never came back here or entered another country. ”

“But you still don’t know what to make of it,” Nat taunted.

“No.”

“And presumably it was your burglar friend Lee who found the passport and picture?”

“Yes. Lee.”

“I should’ve guessed. I should have searched him.”

“I also know about Dusenbury and Jimmy … and Jonathan.”

Nat smiled.

“You really have been doing your homework.”

“But I still don’t understand the rest, what you did … the why and the wherefore.”

“Does it really matter now? Isn’t it more important that the man who tormented Dorothy has finally got what he deserved?”

“Do you mean Clayton Burrow or Edgar Olsen?”

Nat shrugged.

“Both, I guess.”

“To be perfectly honest, Nat, that’s not what concerns me right now. What concerns me is you. I want to know what your interest in this case is.”

“My … interest?”

“Oh come on, let’s not play games, Nat. You badgered your way into my office, battering down my defenses with flattery. You set your sights on working for me and you made it happen. You went about it like a military campaign. You also made sure that I got the Clayton Burrow case. You were working with the Public Defender’s office and you got some con to recommend me to Burrow. Hell, I wouldn’t even be surprised if you persuaded the other law firm to drop the case.”