Mercy
Was it meant to be a letter of appeasement or a letter of defiance…an apology or a denial? What did he want to write? He didn’t even know that. All he knew was that he was feeling bitter and angry…and afraid…and…
Alone.
That was the worst part. In all his twenty-seven—nearly twenty-eight—years on this earth, he had always been one to surround himself with friends. Or perhaps ‘cronies’ was a better word. He liked to surround himself with people who cheered him on and told him he was an okay guy. Never a great athlete, he was nonetheless a good one, with a muscular build, defined rather than developed. He was also blessed with a smooth, ‘golden boy’ handsome face that belied his rather spiteful nature. And he had enough puerile wit and energetic sporting prowess to be popular with the girls and the guys alike. He was always on the right side in the high school clique, always with the majority in any lynch-mob situation, always in with the in-crowd rather than the geek or freak on the butt end of the bullying—be it verbal or physical.
He was very rarely alone. And that meant a lot to him. It meant more than he ever realized, because he was actually quite afraid of being alone. But he never knew this until he found himself in a situation in which he was unable to avoid it. Throughout his happy, time-wasting, fun-loving years at high school, he had never even had to think about it. Because he was never alone, he never knew how badly it would affect him when he was.
Looking back on it now, he probably had an inbuilt defense mechanism against solitude. Whenever he was alone he would rush to find human company. He was always the first to stride up to a friend or a group and stick his face into the conversation. He was always the one to approach the new kid in the class and size them up as friend or foe: friend to be used as a sounding board, foe to be bullied, or at least harassed.
Even in his own home he avoided solitude. He was an only child, but he always had friends over for sleepovers. More often than that, he slept over at friends’ places. He preferred that because he was embarrassed by his mother. He didn’t know who his father was—neither did his mother.
Now, he had to dwell in solitude for the first time in his life, he had to confront his fears. And this was a young man who had never known fear before.
But his fear of solitude—the fear that had always been there but that he had concealed from himself for so long—was now confronting him like an inner demon who would let him have no peace.
His mother didn’t visit. She had written him out of her life. And his old school friends—the ones whose lives he had brightened up with his antics—seemed to have no desire to share a moment’s company with their fallen idol.
But it wasn’t solitude as such that he feared. Solitude merely opened the door to his own personal Room 101—that secret, terrifying inner chamber where one’s worst fears become a reality. It forced him to engage in introspection. And it was introspection that he feared the most. Human company had merely been a way to stave off the need to look inside himself at the miserable squalor of his own soul. But stripped of that shield, introspection was all he had. Now at last, in the deafening silence of solitude and living under the shadow of death, he had to take a look at himself for what he really was.
And he didn’t like what he saw.
He saw a man who had wasted every opportunity that had presented itself. He saw a man who had been needlessly cruel toward the weak. He saw a man who had achieved popularity with the mob at the expense of the frail and the vulnerable.
But most of all he saw a man who had no chance to redeem himself.
He knew that Dorothy Olsen must also have had inner demons, probably far worse than his. But he had just trampled all over her. And for what? For some cheap puerile thrills that meant nothing to him now.
He wished he could have his life over again. He wished he could have those moments back so that he could make wiser—and kinder—decisions. But God grants no second chances…if there even was a God.
He looked down at the letter and realized how little it really said—how little of what he really wanted to say.
Seized by anger, he picked up the letter and ripped it to shreds.
Through the bars, the cell guard watched with an implacably neutral look on his face.
09:45 PDT
Alex sat there in stunned silence. Whatever he had expected, it had not been this. Clemency? Before he had even put his well-rehearsed arguments? And the mother of the victim had specifically requested it.
Then reality kicked in.
‘She’s asked me to offer your client clemency.’
The words had been chosen very carefully.
‘When you say “asked you,”’ Alex said cautiously, ‘does that mean you haven’t decided yet?’
‘You know my views on the death penalty.’
‘Yes, sir, I do. And I’ve always respected your courage in taking that position.’
He regretted saying this as soon as the words were out of his mouth. It sounded sycophantic, and the governor was too shrewd a politician not to see right through it.
‘And you also know that I’m pretty much my own man, especially now that I’m quitting politics.’
Alex nodded. Like many others, he wasn’t quite sure if he believed this, but now was hardly the time to give voice to his skepticism.
‘Nevertheless, it would be inappropriate for me to set myself up against the will of the legislature and the courts.’
Alex panicked at the thought of this opportunity already slipping away.
‘But you said—’
‘Unless…there was some compelling reason. You see, son, even though I have the luxury of being able to ignore public opinion, I believe that I have a duty at least to respect it. Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson: “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them.” The people who elected me may not agree with my decision. But I owe it to them at least to explain it to them. History will judge me harshly if I fail in my duty to put my reasons on record—and those reasons had better be good.’
Alex took a deep breath and regained his composure, trying to read the governor. He wasn’t sure if the governor was really thinking about his place in history. But now was not the time to get diverted down a blind alley of speculation over his motives. Dusenbury was throwing him a lifeline—or at least waving it in his face. That was all that mattered.
‘So you need reasons,’ Alex edged forward hesitantly, ‘and as yet you haven’t got them.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you want me to supply them.’
‘No, I want your client to supply them.’
Alex was beginning to understand.
‘Is that why you said “offer” my client clemency…rather than “give”?’
Dusenbury smiled.
‘You picked up on that real quick. That’s just what it is, son: an offer.’
‘So presumably,’ Alex pressed on, ‘there’s a quid pro quo?’
09:48 PDT (17:48 British Summer Time)
The clinic was quiet as the late afternoon melted into early evening. But the spacious TV room, with its well-scrubbed pale blue walls and clean gray leather furniture, was sufficiently sound-proofed and isolated from the wards to have the TV on. They had it on all day and all night. The nurses on night duty especially liked to take short coffee breaks there, flopping down on the armchairs and watching late-night TV. They preferred the all-night news stations—British or American—to the late-night quizzes, which were little more than premium line rip-offs.
Susan White, a middle-aged nurse of the ‘old’ school, flopped down in front of the TV with a cup of coffee and started skimming through the channels, trying to catch up on the news. While surfing, she caught the tail end of a report about a clinic in America being picketed by hordes of anti-abortionists, or ‘pro-lifers’ as they liked to call themselves, and realized how lucky she was to be here in Britain.
She liked her coffee strong but milky and the machine never quite got it right. She also liked it sugary, and that the machine usually did get right. It was often hard for her to get a coffee break, even though she was entitled to three per shift, because the other nurses frequently came to her with their problems, both personal and professional. So she made sure to get her caffeine fix before her shift started.
Using the remote, she turned the sound down, mindful of the fact that at this time most of the in-patients were sleeping. On the screen, a well-groomed, thirty-something woman, with somewhat underplayed oriental looks, was talking to the camera. She was wearing a smart blue suit, with a mid-length skirt and slightly tight jacket, designed to emphasize her firm, athletic figure, without over-emphasizing it.
But then a face came on that caught Susan’s attention. A photograph of a young woman, almost like a mugshot. Susan felt an uneasy stirring as her eyes focussed on the screen.
She picked up the remote and turned up the volume. The voiceover of an American female reporter could be heard. It was one of those generic, female anchorwoman voices, the kind that all sound alike, the trained confident voice that always carries a trace of sarcasm or bitchiness, but only the merest hint. Or maybe it was just the hard edge that was required to make it in what once had been a man’s world.
‘Dorothy Olsen never had a happy life. She was bullied at school, her parents broke up when she was in her teens and she never had any real friends. Just over nine years ago, on May 23, 1998—the day of her high school prom—Dorothy Olsen disappeared, never to be seen again.’
The picture changed to that of a man whom the nurse didn’t recognize. This one was definitely a mugshot.
‘Clayton Burrow is the man convicted of murdering Dorothy Olsen. At the time she first disappeared, she was classified as a missing person. It was widely assumed that the harsh treatment she received at the hands of her classmates, which drew comparisons with Stephen King’s famous novel Carrie, prompted her to run away. There was speculation that she had committed suicide, although no body was ever found.’
Susan White raised the Styrofoam coffee cup to her lips with a growing sense of unease. The picture of Burrow disappeared, to be replaced by the reporter.
‘Foxy news’ was how one of the young male nurses had described it, whenever he saw her. The joke was wearing thin now.
In the background the grim, bland entrance to San Quentin State Prison was visible.
‘However,’ the reporter continued, ‘all that changed just under eight years ago, on October 19, 1999, when the police, acting on an anonymous call, found parts of Dorothy Olsen’s body in Clayton Burrow’s freezer. They also found other incriminating evidence hidden under the floorboards, which Burrow was unable to explain, such as a blood-stained knife with Burrow’s fingerprints and blood-stained panties with semen traces. DNA matched the semen to Clayton Burrow and the blood to Dorothy Olsen. There was also evidence that Dorothy Olsen had bought some expensive jewelry with money from her trust fund shortly before she disappeared. But none of it has ever been found.’
Nurse White felt something wet and hot on her wrist and fingers. She realized that her hand was shaking and she had spilt the coffee. She put the cup down and wiped the front of her uniform. But she didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
‘Despite his protests of innocence, Burrow was unable to explain away the evidence against him and, on February 20, 2001, he was found guilty of murder with special circumstances. Just over a week later he was sentenced to death. Now he is scheduled to die in just over fourteen hours. Martine Yin, Eyewitness News, San Quentin.’
Nurse White gripped the arms of the chair tensely, her heartbeat picking up speed.
9:50 PDT
‘As you say, Alex, a quid pro quo.’ Dusenbury turned to Mrs Olsen. ‘Esther, maybe you’d like to explain.’
Esther Olsen sat up slowly. It was a struggle, but she forced herself. Alex sensed her difficulty as he watched her painful movements. He adjusted his chair to face her, moving slightly to make it easier for her to look at him.
‘Mr Sedaka,’—her voice was shaky—‘I do not know you, but you are a good man. At least, I have been told that you are a good man.’
Alex nodded. There was not much he could say really. To agree would be arrogant; to disagree, ungracious. In any case that was clearly just the preamble to what she wanted to say.
‘I know that you only came in on this case recently and I know that you have a duty to help your client.’
Again he nodded, trying to make it reassuring. Whatever she was about to say, he knew that it must be painful. It must have cost her a helluva lot to reach the decision to ask the governor to grant clemency to the man who had murdered her daughter.
‘Mr Sedaka, in Hebrew your name means both “charity” and “righteousness” and I hope those are ideals that you live up to.’
Like Esther Olsen, Alex was Jewish and, although he had long ceased to practice the religion of his childhood, he still remembered much of what he had learned about it in the first fourteen years of his life. He knew about the meaning of his name, or rather the Hebrew word ‘tsedaka,’ from which the family name Sedaka was derived.
‘I am dying, Mr Sedaka. I have cancer of the pancreas and the doctors have told me that I have at most a few months left to live. I was estranged from my daughter, for reasons too complicated to go into. One of my biggest regrets is that we never got the chance to make it up.’
‘Was this disagreement shortly before she died?’
Alex didn’t know why he had asked it. But he knew that it was more than just idle curiosity.
‘No, this was several years before she died. I always thought—I always hoped—that the passage of time would heal the wounds. But it was not to be. We were never reconciled.’
She took a deep breath, struggling to speak.
‘To outlive one’s own child is a terrible thing, Mr Sedaka. But if there is one thing worse than to outlive one’s child, it is to part from those we love on bad terms. And that is the pain that I will carry with me to my grave.’
Her eyes were welling up with tears now and Alex felt a lump in his own throat.
‘It is too late for me now to be reconciled with my daughter and I do not know if we will be at peace with each other in the next life, because I do not know if there is a next life. But there is one thing that I want to do in this life and that is to give her a proper burial…or…at least to know where she is buried.’
Now, at last, it was all falling into place.
Alex turned to Mrs Olsen.
‘So let me see if I’ve understood this correctly. You want me to get my client to reveal where he has dispo—where he has buried the body. And in return for this, you have asked for Burrow to get clemency and to serve a sentence of…what?’ He turned to the governor. ‘Life without parole?’
Dusenbury nodded. Obviously the governor wasn’t going to give Burrow a complete amnesty. Alex looked to Esther Olsen.
‘That is all I ask, Mr Sedaka. That is a mother’s dying wish.’
Alex lowered his eyes, overwhelmed by his own emotions. How, he asked himself, could my client have been so evil as to do what he did? How could he be so cruel as to put a mother through this?
But he quickly cut off the thought. It was not for him to judge his client. It was not even for him to believe that his client was guilty as long as Burrow maintained his innocence. Of course he had a duty to put the offer to his client. Maybe now at last Burrow would come clean. Alex had never really believed that Burrow was anything other than guilty. Of course as a lawyer, Alex had a professional duty to act on his client’s instructions and to argue that his client was innocent as long as that was what the client maintained. But there was no authority on earth that could issue a formal ruling that is binding on human nature, much less on human thought.
Alex had assumed that Burrow was guilty before he had even taken on the case, if only from the news coverage when the original trial took place and through the long and tortuous appeals process. By the time he was asked to take the case, he was pre-disposed toward the idea of Burrow’s guilt. But he was persuaded to take the case by the pleading of his ambitious legal intern and by the formal personal request of Burrow himself, for reasons which Alex had never quite understood.
Although Alex had speedread the trial transcript, working in an intense pressure-cooker atmosphere as the execution date loomed up ahead, nothing he had read had in any way changed his mind. Although the case was too complicated to be described as ‘open and shut’ it was certainly sufficiently overwhelming. There was no doubt in Alex’s mind: Clayton Burrow had murdered Dorothy Olsen.
The only question was, would he now come clean, now that he had a chance to save his miserable life in exchange for something so small? There was no chance of him being re-tried and acquitted, no chance of him being released from prison, so it would cost him nothing to tell the truth. And if there was a God, it might even save his soul.
Alex knew better than to approach the matter with anything so presumptuous as expectation. He would approach it, instead, with cautious hope.
But first he had to be sure that he had understood the terms of the deal correctly. He turned toward the governor.
‘So let me get this straight. The deal is, if Clayton Burrow reveals where the body is buried, he gets clemency and will serve a sentence of life without parole.’
‘That’s right,’ Dusenbury responded with a nod of his patrician head.
Alex considered for a moment asking to have the terms set in writing. But from the look on Esther Olsen’s face he knew that this would be needlessly cruel. And, from the governor’s firm handshake, it was also unnecessary.
10:03 PDT
‘Life without parole,’ Alex had said. The man in the car couldn’t believe it.
There was no doubt. The offer was on the table.
The man’s mind was reeling. When the governor had invited Alex to come early for the meeting, he had wondered about what was going down. He had known that it was likely to be something unusual. But he hadn’t expected that.
He kept running over the conversation in his mind.
Nathaniel Anderson was not a G-man. Neither was he a cop, nor a journalist, nor a hired assassin. He had recently graduated from law school and was working as a legal intern while preparing for his bar exams. He had done a lot of Public Defender work in his final year of law school, helping indigent clients plea bargain down their sentences in the proverbial meat-grinder that was the criminal law system.
It had taken time to win their respect. They saw him as a stuck-up white boy, like most lawyers. But he had worked like a dog and won them over through his sheer tenacity and hard work. And because he worked for the Public Defender he had also built up a powerful list of contacts in the criminal community. It was a list that had come in very useful.
So the governor was offering Burrow clemency in return for revealing where the body was located. He wondered how the public would react to that—not that the governor or Alex would reveal it until it was a done deal.
Nathaniel looked round at the traffic on Golden Gate Avenue. Parked a few cars down the road was a limousine. He looked up. The sun was higher now: the day was wearing on. Just under fourteen hours till Burrow was due for the lethal injection—unless Alex could save him.
He looked back at the limousine and wondered if it was the vehicle that had brought Mrs Olsen here. Her proximity left him feeling uneasy. But that was all right. He knew that they would both be gone in a minute.
Keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror, he waited while the next couple of minutes went by. Finally there was activity from the entrance to the building and several people emerged at the same time: Mrs Olsen, the limo driver and Alex Sedaka. Alex watched while the limo driver led Mrs Olsen back to the car, opened the door to let her in, closed it behind her and went to the driver’s seat. He continued watching while the limo drove off past him, heading east toward Larkin Street.
As Alex turned away, Nathaniel strained to see the look on his face in the rearview mirror.
As Alex approached, Nathaniel pulled out the earpiece and put it away in the glove compartment. He reached forward for the ignition key as Alex opened the front passenger door and got in.
‘I assume you got all that, Nat?’ said Alex, pointing to Nat’s cell phone.
‘Every word. So what’s it to be? The office?’
‘No, I think we’ll pay a little visit to San Quentin first.’
10:05 PDT
A shrine.
That was the only way you could describe it: a shrine that radiated outward from the mantelpiece above the mock fireplace.
The picture sat there in the center of the mantelpiece—a teenage girl smiling at the camera, or at least trying to smile. With Dorothy you could never tell if the smile was real, because she had learned from an early age to wear her face as a mask. Was it a smile of joy? Or the painted greasepaint smile of the clown who had to go on and perform even when she was grieving on the inside?
The picture was flanked by a pair of candles and the surrounding area of the wall was adorned by her tennis certificates and poems. Round the room trophies were liberally distributed across several coffee tables and glass-fronted cabinets.
Apart from the memorabilia, the only furniture in the room was an armchair and a small TV set.
The young man stood before the picture, staring into Dorothy’s eyes, trying to decipher the enigma. Were they happy? Had she ever been happy? Had she ever had the chance to be?
She had always treated him with love and kindness, however badly she was treated herself. He felt the tears in his eyes. Why couldn’t they have loved her as she loved him?
He felt himself choking and he switched on the TV to distract himself. There was bound to be rolling news about the impending execution of Clayton Burrow. He looked at his watch. It would all be over in less than fourteen hours.
10:08 PDT
‘Do you think he’ll bite?’ asked Nat, keeping his eyes on the road. He had just taken the first left at Larkin Street and was about to take another at Turk.
‘I don’t see why not. He wants to live…I think.’
‘Even if it’s behind bars? For the rest of his life?’
‘He’s a narcissist,’ Alex explained. ‘He likes to be the center of attention and to be told what a great guy he is. He wants to be The Fonz.’
‘The Fonz?’
‘Fonzie…from Happy Days.’
‘Happy Days?’ echoed Nat, betraying his youth, as they hung a right at Van Ness.
Nat was half-pretending. In truth, he enjoyed watching the re-runs of it and he knew perfectly well who ‘The Fonz’ was. But he still didn’t see what it had to do with his question about Burrow taking the deal.
‘The Fonz was the local school drop-out who didn’t care about anything except being cool. That was his trademark phrase. The thing was, everybody liked him, the guys and the dolls.’
‘And this is relevant because…?’
‘Because that’s what Clayton Burrow always wanted to be. Cool. A hit with the clique. Numero Uno. Mister Popularity. In with the in-crowd. Like I said—a classic narcissist.’