You think you know me pretty well (an Alex Sedaka thriller)

by David Kessler

  “But you said—”

  “I’ll call him at home!” She decided not to mention that she had already spoken to him at home – and about precisely this case. “But in the meantime, can you tell me what information you need?”

  “As much as you can give us. When she arrived. When she was discharged.”

  “Okay, I’ll speak to our Chief Administrator and see what I can do. What’s your number?”

  Juanita gave the number.

  “Okay, I’ll call him and get back to you.”

  “Thank you. Please hurry. It really is a race against time.”

  15:27 PDT

  “Okay, if she doesn’t call back in the next fifteen minutes, call her again.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Juanita had called Alex while he was on his way to the Northern California Federal District Court, to brief him on what the nurse at the medical center had said. She also filled him in on what she’d found out about Edgar Olsen’s son by his first marriage and the tragic accident. Alex’s reaction to Jimmy Olsen’s death had been that it was interesting but almost certainly irrelevant.

  The District Court was in fact in the same building as the governor’s San Francisco office. Alex and Nat were going in separate cars this time, so that afterward one could drive to Marin County to serve the restraining order while the other would be able to return to the office or remain at the court, depending on subsequent developments.

  Alex debated with himself whether to call the governor. There was a doctrine – favored by most DAs and not a few judges – that last-minute evidence of this kind should be addressed by gubernatorial clemency rather than tying up valuable court time. But the governor had made an offer contingent upon Burrow revealing the whereabouts of the body.

  Alex thought that he wouldn’t have much luck if he went back to the governor with a new appeal for clemency based on such radically different grounds as a claim of innocence based on new evidence. It would call for quite a mental adjustment from the governor. When they had met in the morning, the tacitly agreed premise was that Burrow was guilty. Now Alex was moving to the view that he might very well be innocent. It still wasn’t a strong conviction, but it was growing inside him.

  The response from the clinic seemed to confirm their suspicion that Dorothy had got there. But even if she had, she might still have been killed afterward. The fact was that she had vanished off the face of the earth and there was still strong circumstantial evidence that she had been murdered.

  At this stage all they could prove was that she was planning to go to London. Until they got something in writing from the clinic, there was nothing to prove – in court – that she had got there. The statement over the phone to Juanita would not be admissible. And even if Alex assured the governor that he would have the proof shortly, what good would it do him when - as far as he could say - Dorothy had still fallen off the edge of the earth after that?

  Besides, Dusenbury was probably still pissed off about the leak. Even if it had been just a careless word from Burrow to a prison guard, it was still Alex’s responsibility. He was not exactly in the governor’s good books. Dusenbury may have been willing to spare Burrow in return for the location of the body. But if it was a case of “Burrow is innocent – and we’ve got new evidence to prove it” then the governor would probably say that that was the business of the courts.

  It was frustrating, but Alex realized that he’d have to wait it out.

  Dvorak’s New World Symphony rang out on Alex’s iPhone.

  “Hi, David. What’s up?”

  “I’ve found something else on the hard disk.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s a poem.”

  “A poem?”

  “Or at least part of one.”

  Alex felt a trace of irritation.

  “I’m looking for evidence to prove that Dorothy Olsen went to England and you’re giving me poems?”

  “This isn’t just a poem. It’s something very personal and I think it might be relevant to her disappearance.”

  “Why? What does it say?”

  “I think it’ll be better if you see it. I’ll email it over.”

  “Okay.”

  Alex put the phone down, feeling guilty that he had snapped at his son.

  15:29 PDT (23:29 BST)

  Susan White had hesitated before calling the Chief Administrator. Stuart Lloyd had said he would call her back hours ago, but he hadn’t. She had tried to put it out of her mind, but that call from Juanita Cortez had brought it all to the forefront again.

  The phone in her hand felt cold and the clock on wall looked forbidding.

  How would he react to being called at this time?

  But then again he had promised to call her back and hadn’t. If she disturbed him now it would surely be his own fault.

  There was no alternative. A man’s life was on the line and, as Juanita had told her, it was now a race against time.

  Taking a deep breath, she dialed the number.

  “Yes!” a female voice snapped.

  “Hallo, Mrs. Lloyd. It’s Susan White here. Could I speak to Mr. Lloyd?”

  “Do you know what time it is!”

  She was about to apologize when she heard a man’s voice in the background.

  “I’ll take it.”

  There was a brief, muffled exchange and then Lloyd came on the line.

  “Hallo.”

  “Hallo, Stuart. It’s Susan here.”

  “I know. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you. But the truth of the matter is we really can’t tell them anything.”

  “But they called!”

  “What? Who?”

  “The lawyers … of the man on death row. They called and asked us about Dorothy.”

  “They know?”

  “They know that she came to the medical center. They know that she had a ticket to England and that she came to the center.”

  “How do they know?”

  “They must’ve found records of some sort.”

  “So what do they need us for?”

  “They just need some sort of confirmation or proof.”

  “We can’t give it to them.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “All the files are on the computer so we can tell them that it’s covered by the Data Protection Act. ”

  “But there’s a human life at stake, Stuart!”

  “That may be. But we have to be careful about what we give out. Aside from the data protection issue, this could open a whole can of worms about how we cut corners – ”

  “I know about that! So what are we going to do? Just let an innocent man die?”

  “I took a look at some of the coverage on one of the American news channels. He’s not so innocent.”

  “It’s not for us to judge. We’re sitting on evidence that his lawyers need! We don’t have the right to play God!”

  She was breathing so heavily that only now when she held her breath did she realize that Stuart was short of breath too.

  “Okay, look, what I think we should do is tell them to submit their request in writing. Then we’ll try and get a lawyer to give us some advice.”

  “At this time?”

  “We’ll wake someone up if necessary. But get them to fax us in writing exactly what information they need.”

  “Okay. I’ll call them now.”

  As soon as she had broken the connection, she started dialing again: 00 1 415…

  “Alex Sedaka’s office.”

  “Hallo, is that Juanita?”

  “Yes.” The voice was excited.

  “It’s Susan White here. Nurse White. I’ve just spoken to our Chief Administrator and he told me to ask you to put in a request in writing stating exactly what you want.”

  “Are you…?”

  The voice sounded embarrassed and had trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Look, I’m sorry for asking it this way. But are you stonewalling us?”


  Susan White didn’t know what to say. This woman at the other end of the line had twigged it perfectly and it would be futile to deny it. But Susan had to play it carefully.

  “I … I know it might seem as if we’re being a bit … It’s just we have certain laws here to do with confidential data. You can get court orders, but it takes time.”

  “Just tell me this: will we get this information in time?”

  Susan White hesitated for a moment.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  15:36 PDT

  “Your Honor, the airline booking receipt clearly shows that on May 19, 1998 – less than one week before Dorothy Olsen vanished – she booked an airline ticket for London.”

  Alex was speaking, while Nat sat there quietly with the documents, ready to hand them over when Alex introduced them.

  “The date of the flight was the 24th of May, just one day after she vanished. And remember that she vanished in the evening. So she could have hidden the night before or gone to the airport.”

  The District Court judge – a man in his sixties who had pretty much seen it all – looked skeptical.

  “Did she take a suitcase or any baggage with her?”

  “Not as far as we know, Your Honor. But she had received an inheritance from her grandfather and she had just turned eighteen less than two months before that. That would have given her enough money to buy new clothes wherever she ended up.”

  The judge sighed wearily.

  “Is there any evidence that she took the money? Where was this trust fund?”

  “It was at a bank, Your Honor. She liquidated the trust fund a few days before she vanished and bought some expensive jewelry with the money.”

  “Expensive jewelry?” the judge repeated, surprised.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And was any of this known at the time of the trial?”

  Alex hesitated. He would have loved to answer this question in the negative. But as an officer of the court, he couldn’t lie.

  “It was known about the trust fund and the jewelry – including the fact that it disappeared.”

  “So it doesn’t qualify as new evidence.”

  The judge sounded almost disappointed.

  “Not the trust fund or the jewelry. But the airline booking is new. We’ve only just discovered that – and that was through sheer luck. There was no way we could have known it. The police or FBI should have discovered it when they quizzed the airlines. They apparently limited the search to flights from the US. It appears that she drove to Mexico and then caught the flight.”

  “And what about this medical center you mentioned?”

  “Well there again, it was a matter of luck. We only obtained Miss Olsen’s old laptop computer today. We didn’t even know of its existence until today.”

  “But none of this actually shows that she was on the flight. All it shows is her intentions. Maybe someone stopped her. Maybe she was trying to get away with someone.”

  “My paralegal phoned the medical center. It’s late at night in England, but she spoke to one of the nurses. The nurse confirmed that Dorothy Olsen was there, but for legal reasons couldn’t tell us the dates or what treatment she received. We’d need a court order from a British court for that. And that’ll take time, Your Honor. Probably a few days. That’s why we’re asking for a stay of execution.”

  “What about the airline booking? How soon can you get that information?”

  “If you can issue an order against them now, Your Honor, we could probably serve it tomorrow morning. But it would still take time to access the records. This was nine years ago, don’t forget, and although the information would almost certainly have been saved, it might be on a back-up tape.”

  “How long?”

  “Well if we could give them say forty-eight hours to comply and then schedule the hearing for twenty-four hours after that…”

  The judge was shaking his head.

  “I’m not prepared to go that far. At least not at an ex parte hearing.”

  “Well there’s no chance of getting it today. Even if you issued the order now and we managed to serve it, they’d argue that it was too short notice to comply.”

  “All right,” said the judge, returning his attention to the documents. “I know this is your first capital case, so I assume you wouldn’t try any cynical shenanigans like some old hands at this get up to. I’m going to take this at face value. I’ll issue a temporary restraining order now and I’ll also schedule a hearing for both parties at quarter past four, when I’ll listen to arguments from the DA.”

  “And the airline booking?” asked Alex, tensely.

  “I’ll issue an order to American to dig up the details. But they may appeal the short time span.”

  Minutes later Alex and Nat were outside the court building on Golden Gate Avenue, looking pleased with themselves.

  “I can’t believe how easily we got it!” said Nat.

  “It’s too early to start celebrating. There’s still that full hearing in less than an hour.”

  “So who’s going to serve what?”

  “I’m going to serve the TRO on the warden at San Quentin. I want you to serve the order on the local airline office, then fax the other to the New York branch of Baker & Segal. Tell them to serve it on the COO or CEO, basically whoever they can get to quickest.”

  “Do you want me for the full hearing?”

  “Be available just in case. I might even need you to cover for me. It depends how fast I get back from San Quentin.”

  “Okay.”

  They split up and went to their respective cars. After Alex drove off, he put in a call to Juanita and she briefed him on her follow-up conversation with the nurse at the medical center, including her probing question to Susan White about the medical center’s true intentions. Alex weighed it up in his mind.

  “Do you think they’re stonewalling us?”

  There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the line before Juanita replied.

  “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve checked up on the British Data Protection Act and it is a legal minefield.”

  “My question is, do they want to cooperate?”

  “I don’t know about the Administrator; I’ve never spoke to him. But I think the nurse genuinely wanted to help. She sounded sincere and I think she’ll try.”

  “Okay, well get drafting then. Let’s keep it simple. We want the date Dorothy arrived and the date she left. Ask what treatment she received, but state that this is less important than the dates. State explicitly that if the treatment details are a problem, they shouldn’t delay, just ignore the question and send us the dates. We don’t want to give them any excuse for delaying.”

  When the call ended, Alex remembered that David had said he was going to send him the poem that he had found on Dorothy’s computer. He logged onto his email account from his iPhone and found the message with the attachment already there. He clicked on the attachment and it opened:

  You dragged me before the mirror

  And ripped the clothes off of me

  Forcing me to face the fact

  That I am not, that I am not

  The thing that you want me to be.

  Alex felt uneasy as he read the lines. To whom were these words addressed? To her tormentor? To the boy who had bullied her at school? Was this her final message to Clayton Burrow?

  …ripped the clothes off of me.

  What did it mean? And who did it? Alex knew that he had to find out. And there was one person who could tell him.

  15:42 PDT (23:42 BST)

  By the time the fax from America started coming through, Susan White was already standing by the machine. The wording was pretty much what she had expected. She knew that she would probably get more attitude from Mrs. Lloyd if she called again, but she didn’t have a choice. Aside from that, Stuart had indicated that it would be all right to call him once the request came through. If she didn’t call him, he wouldn’t do anything: not con
sult lawyers, not ask for advice and not authorize her to transmit the information to Alex Sedaka’s office.

  This time, much to Susan’s relief, Stuart answered the phone himself.

  “Hi, Stuart. They’ve faxed over the request.”

  “What does it say?”

  She read it out to him.

  “Okay, can you fax it over to me?”

  “Sure. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to have to get some legal advice.”

  “Do you think you can get it quickly?”

  “Look, Susan, I’ll do what I can!”

  She hadn’t expected him to snap like that. But was it because he was under pressure or because he didn’t have any intention of doing anything?

  “Okay. I’ll fax it over.”

  She put the phone down and faxed it to his home. While it was going through, the phone rang again. Another nurse answered.

  “What … look, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that…”

  She was looking helplessly at Susan, who could hear shouting at the other end of the line. Susan mouthed “I’ll take it,” and the other nurse handed the phone to her.

  “Hallo, who is this?”

  A chill went up Susan White’s spine when she heard the reply.

  “What do you want?”

  “I understand that you’ve received a request to send over some information about Dorothy Olsen to the law offices of Alex Sedaka.”

  “What of it?” asked Susan defensively.

  “Well I’m just calling to tell you that that would be a breach of doctor-patient confidentiality as well as of the Data Protection Act.”

  “But there’s a man on death row who’s going to – ”

  “I know that.”

  “But you can’t just let him – ”

  “It’s not for you to decide. You are not authorized to tell them anything. Is that understood?”

  “So … you’re just going to let an innocent man die?”

  “That’s none of your concern!”