David Kessler - Mercy

He remembered what Nat had told him about how he had expressed himself so forcefully to Sally Burrow, criticizing her hands-off parenting technique that had left her son Clayton bereft of any sort of moral guidance. At the time, he had chided Nat — albeit mildly — for his loose tongue and lack of tact. But now when he thought about it again he realized that Nat was right — that there is a time to speak out and tell the other person what one really thinks of them … and why.

He could still see Nat ahead of him, accompanied by the two county deputies, and was determined to have his say. He wanted Nat to know what he thought of him. It was a futile, fruitless gesture, but he was determined to go through with it.

He hastened his steps, lengthening his stride to close down the distance between them. By the time he reached the entrance area, he had caught up with them. But he didn’t want a scene inside the prison gates. Instead he waited until the entrance security staff had let them out into the floodlit courtyard, where the two groups of demonstrators were still assembled, kept apart by lines of law enforcement officers. Then, as the deputies escorted Nat to the waiting police car, Alex strode up to them.

Sensing his approach, all three turned to face him. The two cops bridled at his proximity. Only Nat remained calm.

“I just want you to know that not only have you deprived an innocent man of his life, you’ve also deprived a mother of peace and resolution of her grief.”

“What are you talking about?” Nat scoffed. “If Clayton was innocent, then he couldn’t have told her where the body was in any case.”

“No, but you could.”

“Maybe I still can.”

“No, you can’t! Esther Olsen died half an hour ago.”

Alex didn’t understand why of all the things he had said to Nat in this confrontation, this was the first thing to really touch him.

There was an uncomfortable twitching on Nat’s face and then the man who had been so arrogant only moments before broke down in tears, crying like a baby, his nose running pathetically. The arresting officers looked embarrassed and the older one took pity on him and unlocked the handcuffs so that he could reach for his handkerchief, while the younger officer was opening the driver’s door.

Removing the handcuffs was strictly against the rules, but Nat had been passive until now and his comparatively small size made him look unthreatening. But the cop had misread the situation. For in a second, Nathaniel’s grief had turned to rage. His knee shot out like lightning, catching the older officer square in the groin.

But Nat wasn’t finished yet, for he followed up by reaching out to the officer’s belt, snapping open a press stud and yanking out a can of mace. The officer made a grab at it, but not in time to stop Nat letting off a burst that burnt his eyes and left him screaming.

By this stage, the younger cop had reacted, hearing the commotion behind him. He turned but only in time to see the cloud of vapor shoot out from the can and into his face. As he spun away, closing his eyes against the searing pain, Nat jumped him, smashing his face down on the trunk of the car. With his field of vision populated by stars and his head spinning, he was powerless to resist when he felt Nat reaching for his holster and yanking out his gun. He slumped to the ground as Nat gripped the handle of the sidearm, effectively leaving the gun in Nat’s hands.

Alex, who after a moment of stunned surprise had tried to help the older officer, turned to see what Nat was doing. He was just in time to see Nat swinging the gun in his direction. He realized in that moment that he still didn’t know what Nat’s motives had been and therefore what his current intentions were. For a split second he thought that he was doomed, as if Nat had some grievance with him too.

But instead Nat just smiled.

“We’re taking a ride.”

“They’ll never let you get away with it. They’ll scramble a helicopter!”

Nat took a step forward and brandished the gun in Alex’s face.

“I said, let’s go.”

And with that, he grabbed Alex’s arm and hustled him into the driver’s side of the police car. He zipped round and got in the other side, pointing the gun at Alex through the windshield to make sure that the lawyer didn’t get any smart ideas.

The keys were in the ignition, where the young cop had just put them. But Alex hesitated.

“Do you really want to do this, Nat?”

Outside the car, the officers were on the ground and the prison guards had now reacted, some of them racing toward the car from the prison gates.

Nat raised the barrel of the gun to Alex’s temple.

“Move!” he barked.

Alex knew that now was not the time to argue. He gunned the engine and drove off.

The second sheet of paper had come out of the machine and the third was now printing. Juanita had read the first page, but all it contained was a brief summary of Dorothy’s abortion, how the patient had consulted two doctors, signed a consent form and how the procedure had gone smoothly.

The second sheet had been a psychiatric evaluation of Dorothy’s mental state, referring to the fact that she had arrived at the center in a state of hysteria, but how this was not evidence of any sort of psychosis, but rather a consequence of the trauma of being raped and the further trauma of the pregnancy resulting from it.

The page also contained an analysis of Dorothy’s overall mental state and concluded that she was fully compos mentis and generally mentally stable, notwithstanding the depression which the report described as “non-clinical” and resulting from her “underlying circumstances.”

The report continued discussing such questions as “eligibility.” It further stated that she was a “suitable candidate” for a “one-year assessment.”

The language was highly technical and arcane and, although Juanita was streetwise, computer literate and legally savvy, she was hard pressed to understand this medical language.

The third page came out of the machine. She picked it up and started reading it. But when she stumbled across a phrase she recognized, she got the shock of her life.

Alex was turning left into the well-lit Sir Frances Drake Boulevard as Nat kept the gun leveled at his head. The muzzle wasn’t up against his temple now. Instead Nat held the gun close to himself in his right hand, supporting his right elbow in his left hand to keep the gun steady. But there was no doubt where it was aimed.

Alex couldn’t yet hear the sirens of the Marin County Sheriff’s Department, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Pretty soon they’d have State Troopers on their tail too.

But that was not what was troubling Alex now. He knew they wouldn’t try anything precipitate. They would know from what the deputies would have told them that this was a hostage situation: that Alex was an innocent man being held at gunpoint and forced to drive. Yes, they would call out a SWAT team and scramble a helicopter. But they would do nothing to endanger his life. They might try to stop the car with a PIT maneuver — or even try to blow out the tires on a flat stretch if no other vehicles were about — but there was no way they’d open fire on the car itself.

What troubled Alex right now was Nat himself. What was he doing? What was he hoping to achieve? He was too intelligent to think that he could get away. In modern police chases, once a vehicle is marked, there was no getting away. They could probably track the police car via satnav. But even if they couldn’t, they could track it through aerial observation. Perhaps, if Nat could make it to a wooded area, he could get away on foot and hide under foliage thick enough to be opaque to thermal imaging. But they were too far from any such foliage. Escape was impossible.