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

by David Kessler

  “Even if we accept that this Miss…”

  “Cortez.”

  “… Cortez was telling the truth, what does that prove? She spoke to a person on the phone who claimed to be a member of staff at the medical center. This person claimed to be a nurse, not a member of the administrative staff or someone who was likely to have access to the records – and claimed to remember this case that occurred some nine years ago. How do we know Miss Cortez really got through to the medical center? How do we know that the person she was talking to was telling the truth? And if she was telling the truth, so what? The airline reservation showed that Miss Olsen went there in May 1998. Even if she had the abortion a month later that still only pushes her death back a month.”

  The judge – the same man who had granted the temporary restraining order – turned to Nat.

  “She does have a point there.”

  “That’s why we’re trying to get the records from the medical center. But they’re eight hours ahead of us. It’s the middle of the night there. It’s impossible to get this sort of information out of hours – especially in England where they have very strict privacy and data protection laws.”

  “Then why was it left so late in the day?” asked Oxenberg. Her manner was truculent , her tone accusatory. Alex had warned him that she would give no quarter.

  “As we explained at the earlier hearing, we only found out about it because we have a computer expert who was able to recover deleted files from Dorothy Olsen’s computer. And the only reason we have that computer is because Mrs. Olsen gave it to us.”

  “Why didn’t they ask her to give it to them earlier, Your Honor?” asked the ADA contemptuously.

  “We didn’t even know of its existence. And the first time we ever met Mrs. Olsen was today at the governor’s office. Look, let me stress again that the important thing here is that not only do we have written evidence that Dorothy Olsen was intending to go to England, but we have oral evidence that she went there and had an abortion. Yes, I admit that at this stage – at such short notice – we haven’t got it in writing. But even with this time difference between London and California, we were able at least to obtain oral confirmation. And given a little more time we’re confident that we can get it in writing.”

  The judge turned to the ADA.

  “That does seem reasonable, doesn’t it, Miss Oxenberg?”

  “Again we’re moving away from the big picture here. All this evidence proves is that Dorothy Olsen was alive for a short period after she vanished. With the operative words being: ‘a short period.’ No way does that prove that she is still alive and no way does that prove that Clayton Burrow didn’t kill her.”

  Nat took a deep breath.

  “Your Honor, the People’s case was based on certain implicit assumptions. Chief among them was the assumption that Dorothy Olsen had no plans to leave or vanish or run away and that she was either killed round about the time that she vanished or that she was kidnapped at that time and then killed a short while later. If we can show that she not only was not killed or kidnapped at that time but that she went to a foreign country and had an abortion, that suggests that the key presumptions of the prosecution case were wrong. Yet it was on a basis of those key presumptions that my client was convicted.”

  Dawn Oxenberg was shaking her head.

  “None of these assumptions formed any part of the prosecution case, Your Honor. The prosecution case was based on rock solid physical evidence found in Burrow’s home. There was the blood-stained knife and the victim’s underwear. The knife had the victim’s blood, the underwear had the accused’s semen. And to top it all off they found the victim’s breast tissue in the freezer at Burrow’s home. It was an open and shut case based on the physical evidence found in the residential premises where Burrow lived.”

  “Lived with his mother,” Nat interjected.

  Dawn Oxenberg turned to him.

  “Oh come on. You’re not going to suggest that his mother did it?”

  “I’m suggesting that the case against my client was a lot less clear-cut than the prosecution implies. And the fact that we’ve now discovered new evidence that throws the whole prosecution timeline out of whack should at least be investigated further. All we’re asking for is three days.”

  “All right,” said the judge. “I’ve heard enough.”

  Both Nat and Dawn looked at him anxiously.

  16:38 PDT

  Juanita was sitting in the office feeling inadequate and wondering what else she could do. Nat must by now be in Court, arguing the case against the DA. Alex had gone off to San Quentin to talk to Burrow and David was working on recovering more data from Dorothy’s hard drive.

  She had faxed the District Court order over to Baker & Segal in New York to serve on the airline, ordering them to produce the passenger manifest. But for Juanita, there was very little now to do.

  She had spent the last half hour turning over theories in her mind. Currently she was moving increasingly toward the theory that Clayton’s mother did it. When Alex had first proposed the idea, it had seemed unlikely. But now it seemed a lot more plausible. Dorothy’s pregnancy already added a new dimension to it and, when Alex had told her about the rape, things really started to fall into place.

  The house was shared and the space under the floorboards where most of the evidence was found was already there. So it was natural that Sally Burrow would hide the evidence there. According to Nat she wasn’t the brightest button and she probably thought that it was easier to dump the evidence there than to dispose of it. Dorothy had probably tried to blackmail Clayton with the evidence that she’d preserved and Sally Burrow had probably found out and murdered Dorothy to protect her son. Her claim now that she had disowned her son was probably just a pretence. And Clayton Burrow for his part was probably protecting his mother.

  But there were some things that didn’t make sense. Why the mutilation of the body? It might have been to give the police the impression that it was a sex crime by a maniac and not an attempt to silence a potential accuser. But why then was the body never found? The disappearance of the body would imply deliberate concealment. But then why retain the body parts? Why not dispose of them?

  Suddenly Juanita found herself gripped by a thought that was even more sinister.

  Maybe Sally Burrow’s relationship with her son was even more complicated. Maybe she retained the evidence in order to give her a hold over her son. Maybe there was some incestuous attraction. That might explain the bad blood between them now. I mean, what if it finally dawned on Sally Burrow that Clayton didn’t reciprocate her perverted love? It would be a case of … what was that phrase Nat had used? …“heaven hath no rage like love to hatred turned.”

  But there was something else that didn’t make sense: why would Dorothy use the evidence for blackmail rather than just to bring Clayton to trial? Could the semen-stained panties be used to support a successful prosecution? If so, then why not do so? Why try to blackmail him? Indeed, what would be the point of blackmailing him? He was the only son of a deadbeat, trailer-trash mother, whereas Dorothy came from a family with money. She’d inherited eighty-six thousand dollars from her grandfather. What could she possibly hope to get out of Burrow through blackmail?

  So maybe it wasn’t blackmail for money. Maybe Dorothy was trying to make him squirm … to make him suffer as he had made her suffer. But then Sally Burrow found out and killed Dorothy to protect her son and tried to make it look like a sex killer – hence the mutilation. Then Sally Burrow told Clayton what she had done, thinking that this, at last, would drive him into her arms and satisfy her sick lust for her son.

  But he didn’t want that … didn’t want her in that perverted way and hadn’t wanted her to kill Dorothy. Maybe he was already feeling guilty … guilty that he had made Dorothy suffer and guilty that he had inadvertently brought about her death. Or maybe he just feared that he would become a suspect. So he went back to where his mother had told him she had killed Dorot
hy and moved the body and buried it so it wouldn’t be found. And he thought he was safe.

  But he didn’t know that his mother had retained the other evidence. And in her anger at what she saw as her son’s betrayal, she phoned the police, disguised her voice and tipped them off about the evidence. She couldn’t reveal where the body was buried because she didn’t know. But she could tip them off about the evidence that she had retained. The rest was history: the police raid, the discovery of the evidence, the arrest, trial and conviction.

  There wasn’t any hard evidence for it – other than as an alternative interpretation of the evidence against Clayton. But as a theory, it was complete and consistent! It even explained Sally Burrow’s volatile reaction to Nat’s tough questions. It wasn’t that she felt insulted at the suggestion that she had turned her son into a murderer: it was the fear of a guilty person at the prospect of being found out. She knew that close questioning might lead Nat to the answer and she feared saying something that might give her away. So, after she couldn’t drive him away with her initial hostility, she seized upon the first excuse to engineer an argument and then chased him out of her home and up the street.

  To Nat, Sally Burrow was just an ignorant redneck, no better than her son. But Nat was a man. He didn’t always see things clearly. Juanita understood the Sally Burrows of this world. Clayton’s mother was a devious woman who used her cunning to protect her son in the hope that it would bring him to her bed and when that failed she punished him for that rejection by framing him for the murder that she had committed.

  But Clayton, for his part, still felt guilty that he had brought about the whole calamity and in this final, desperate, last-minute effort to salve his conscience, he resolved to take the rap and become the sacrificial lamb.

  That was the theory. The question was, could they prove it? The answer was … that the answer was out of their hands. Now all they could do was hope that one of their lines of inquiry would yield some results.

  Just then, the phone rang. Nat’s name flashed up on the display.

  “Hi, Nat.”

  “Bad news.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “I’m sorry. I fought like a tiger, but so did the DA.”

  “Did the judge say why?”

  “He babbled for two minutes, but ultimately it boiled down to res judicata.”

  “Did you tell Alex?”

  “Not yet. I haven’t been able to reach him. Anyway, I’m on my way back. Look, Juanita … I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. You did your best.”

  “Then why don’t I feel I did?”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Nat.”

  “I’d better tell Alex.”

  “Okay, bye.”

  They ended the call and Juanita sat there for a long time, not moving. The phone rang again.

  “Alex Sedaka’s office.”

  “Hi this is the Idylwood Care Center. Is it possible to speak to Alex Sedaka?”

  Juanita tensed up.

  “He’s not in the office at the moment. I’m his paralegal. May I take a message?”

  “I’m calling on behalf of Esther Olsen. I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  16:41 PDT

  If Clayton Burrow can’t tell me about this “mirror” business, then maybe Jonathan Olsen can.

  Alex had just passed the Paradise Drive exit for Corte Madera on his right and was painfully aware of the passage of time. The phone rang.

  “Hi, Nat.”

  “I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

  “Fuck!”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Nat.

  “Look, I’ll be back at the office ASAP, but there’s something I’ve got to do first.”

  They left it at that. Alex wasn’t normally one to swear. But he felt the shock and pain and anxiety about the deadline now looming before him. And there was only so much he could do in so short a time.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t have enough hands to do the work, it was just that he was no longer sure what else he should be doing. He had never handled a capital case before and he couldn’t escape the feeling that there were other things that he ought to be doing that he had not yet done.

  Of course, he knew that one isn’t supposed to leave anything till the last minute so the fact that he had little more to do was a good sign. It meant that all the important and proper things had been done already. It wasn’t really a case of him forgetting something: it was a case of him having done all that could be done and there being nothing else left to do.

  But the thought of spending Burrow’s last day doing nothing troubled him.

  However, there was still one lead to follow and that was the one his son had provided with that brief extract of poetry from Dorothy’s computer. This new line of inquiry was quite promising. Dorothy couldn’t confide in her mother and didn’t have any friends, so she confided in her computer in much the same way as Anne Frank had confided in her diary.

  But the trouble was that David’s progress in getting information off the hard disk was painstakingly slow. And some of the things he found were quite cryptic. So Alex needed an interpreter. But what interpreter could there be when the whole point of talking to the diary was to make up for her inability to talk to anyone else?

  Alex reasoned that even if she didn’t confide in other people, there was one person who might be able to provide some insight into the way her mind was working at the time; and that was her brother Jonathan.

  It was for this reason that Alex was driving to Daly City now. Of course there was no guarantee that Jonathan would cooperate. But it was worth a try.

  It was then that the phone in the hands-free cradle started flashing and blaring out Dvorak’s New World Symphony. The name in the display said “David.” Alex felt a stab of hope as he answered.

  “Hey, Dad, listen! I’ve found her bank account in England!”

  “What?” he asked.

  “She opened a bank account in London!”

  “Great! We’ve got to get a court order for it before—”

  “There’s no need! I’ve hacked into it!”

  “What do you mean? I mean, why?”

  Alex hadn’t asked him to do that. He would never ask anyone to do anything illegal, let alone his son.

  “So that we can get proof that she got there. Opening a bank account and conducting bank transactions proves that.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do that! It’s blatantly illeg—”

  “Yes, I know! It’s illegal. And you didn’t ask me and I didn’t tell you I was going to do it beforehand. So you’re in the clear and I’m ready to put it in writing.”

  Alex was angry.

  “It’s not as simple as that. I’m an officer of the court. I’m not allowed to sanction an illegal act, even after the fact. I’ll probably have to report what you told me – even though you’re my son. I may even be compromising my position by continuing this conversation. I shouldn’t be allowed to derive benefit from the information.”

  “Look, let’s not pussyfoot round, Dad! You’ve got a client on death row and time is of the essence. So let’s save the recriminations for later!”

  Alex felt the force of his son’s reciprocal anger. In any case, David was right. Saving the client was the highest priority. And the dilemma wasn’t quite as bad as Alex had implied. Ethically he was allowed to derive benefit for his client once he had heard what David had said, but he was also obliged to report his son’s illegal act at the first reasonable opportunity thereafter. The only admissions of illegal acts that he could keep to himself – and indeed was obliged to keep to himself – were those made by his client referring to acts that had taken place in the past.

  “Okay, you hacked in. I won’t ask you how. But did you find anything – anything useful, I mean?”

  “I sure did. I basically phoned the bank helpline using voice changing software and pretended to be—”

  “I said I didn’t want to know how!”

  “Ok
ay, I’m sorry. But I found something that I think may be relevant.”

  “Spill it!”

  “After the date when she was supposed to have gone to England, she made a whole series of payments to the Finchley Road Medical Centre at various intervals over the next year or so.”

  “What sort of amounts are we talking about?”

  “Well it was a few thousand at a time – the two biggest of which were ten thousand British pounds each.”

  “Ten thousand?”

  Alex was in shock.

  “Yes.”

  “So how much was the total?”

  “I added it up and it came to nearly forty thousand British pounds.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “I hope it helps,” said David, after a brief pause.

  “It does and it doesn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well first of all, if I use it, then it’ll mean you’ll have to admit to what amounts to committing a criminal offense.”

  “If it’ll save an innocent life, I’m ready to take my chances, Dad. Maybe I can get away with it because it was in England. They’re not likely to extradite me.”

  Alex smiled. David was so much like his mother, emotional but fully committed to helping others. Ironically, Debbie was like her father, only more so: professionally ambitious and ego-driven. The truth of the matter was David could be tried for the offense in the US, because he had logged on from the US. But Alex didn’t want to worry him by telling him that now.

  “I’ll need you to print it out and fax it over to my office ASAP. I’ll call Juanita and tell her to expect it.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it right away. There’s just one thing, Dad.”

  “Yes?”

  “You said it does help and it doesn’t. What did you mean by that?”

  Trust a scientist to pick up on the minutiae!

  “It means that it doesn’t make sense. The nurse at the clinic told us that Dorothy had an abortion. Since when does it cost forty thousand pounds sterling for an abortion!”

  “I can think of a few theories,” said David.