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

by David Kessler

  “Oh they are.”

  “So these are not originals – and they’re not bank-certified copies?”

  “No, they’re new printouts. You see, Dorothy Olsen used internet banking—”

  “Did they have that in those days?”

  “It’s been around since the eighties but it took off in the mid-nineties.”

  “How did you get these?”

  “From Dorothy’s online account.”

  “The bank gave them to you?”

  “No, Your Honor. My boss’s son – David Sedaka – is a computer expert and he was able to – ”

  “He hacked into the bank?”

  “Not exactly, Your Honor. Hacking directly into a bank’s computer system is quite hard. But when the bank provides online banking to its customers, the weak spot is the customer themselves. You can’t just hack into a bank’s computer, but the bank offers online banking to customers and David Sedaka was able to obtain her user ID and password and, armed with this information, he was able to log on to Miss Olsen’s bank account in England.”

  “That was highly illegal and could result in federal charges.”

  The judge sounded like a teacher lecturing a student who had just been caught cheating in an exam.

  “We know that, Your Honor, and David Sedaka has indicated that he accepts responsibility and is ready to face the consequences. But in the meantime, the evidence exists and it does present the case in a whole new light.”

  “If the State was here, they’d no doubt be arguing the fruit of the poison tree.”

  “With a man’s life hanging in the balance?”

  “They can be ruthless at times,” said the judge with a smile.

  “The question is, are you?” asked Nat.

  “How do we know that this actually was Miss Olsen making the payments? Maybe this was some form of post-mortem embezzlement. She could have already been dead.”

  “The payment went out to an established and respectable medical center. They’ve already confirmed that she went there for an abortion and – ”

  “Hold on a minute! This wasn’t for an abortion!”

  “We know that. And it could even be that the account was being milked by someone else. But that in turn could mean that she died during the procedure and they covered it and then milked her account.”

  The judge looked irritated at this.

  “Now we’re back in the realms of speculation, aren’t we?”

  “Okay, I take your point, Your Honor. But the one thing we can be sure of is that money was leaving her account – which she opened in England – for more than a year after she was supposedly dead. And that suggests that she was alive during that period at least – while at the same time choosing not to get into contact with those she would normally have been in contact with.”

  “Suggests it, Mr. Anderson, but doesn’t prove it.”

  “True. But it does present the case in a radically new light, Your Honor.”

  17:19 PDT

  After his father’s unexpectedly harsh reaction to his hacking into Dorothy’s bank account, David decided to return his attention to the computer and the deleted data from the hard disk.

  From the feedback he had received, it was clear that the poem he unveiled had caused quite a stir, notwithstanding his father’s initial skepticism. The consensus now was that this was Dorothy’s expression of rage toward Clayton Burrow. It had even enabled Alex to get a confession out of Burrow for the rape of Dorothy Olsen, although he still denied murder.

  So it made sense for David to try and unearth the rest of the poem. It was obvious that the verse was just a fragment of a poem, because it had no title. Normally a writer, even an amateur, would give their literary work a title and, even if it was on their own computer, would add their name as the author.

  The fact that there was nothing before or after the verse relating to it, suggested that it was a fragment from an earlier save, not the final version. But where was the rest? It was probably there, it was just a question finding it. He thought about the words for a minute.

  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

  Presumably the whole poem was written in that style. But he was a computer scientist not a linguist or a poetry expert. How could he search for a particular style? How could he describe the style in a computer program?

  Then it hit him. The verse was addressed to someone referred to only as “You.” The rest of the poem was probably written in the same style. So the trick was to write a program that would look for two or more instances of “you” in close proximity! He could create a search application in C++, the very powerful, high-level language used to create fast-running programs.

  In a matter of minutes the search program was running and the master program was feeding it text from the sectors of the disk platter considered to be the most likely candidates for the rest of the poem.

  It wasn’t long before he found another verse.

  You crushed the hope out of me

  Not in cold blood but angrily

  And only when you died

  Did I resolve the mystery

  Of your vicious assault on my dignity

  More words of reproach aimed at her tormentor.

  David could see that this was not just the work of the same hand but probably the same poem as the other verse. This was Dorothy’s expression of anger and bitterness toward an enemy who had made her life a misery.

  He had to tell his father. Again, he made his way to the office just outside the lab where he had left his cell phone. He had keyed in the number and was about to press the green button when something struck him. He put the phone down and went back to the computer. For a few seconds, he just stood there in front of the terminal, staring at the words on the screen.

  “Only when you died… only when you… died.”

  His father’s speculation was wrong.

  “Only when you dieD.”

  Past tense!

  But Clayton Burrow wasn’t dead.

  Whoever this poem was addressed to, it was not Clayton Burrow.

  17:27 PDT

  “Alex Sedaka’s office … hallo?”

  Juanita put the phone down angrily just as Nat entered the office.

  “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.

  “Just spit it out, jackass!”

  “They refuse!”

  “The TRO?”

  “Final?”

  Nat took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.

  “Refused to grant it ex parte. But they’ve scheduled a full hearing for eight thirty. If we’re successful, they’ll grant a stay of execution. The DA’s been notified. We’ve given them copies of the bank statements, so hopefully they’ll see reason and agree to reopen the case.”

  Juanita smiled but then frowned.

  “I’m not sure with this DA. He seems to be using the case as a résumé builder.”

  Nat went into the kitchen to make some coffee.

  “Do you want a cup?” he called out to her.

  “Yes … and make it strong.”

  He started making the coffee for her while she carried on typing.

  “So who was it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “On the phone just now.”

  “What?”

  “When I came in. You were talking to someone.”

  “Some idiot. They keep calling and hanging up.”

  “Maybe there’s a problem with the line. Maybe they can’t hear you.”

  “No, they keep hanging up after I speak. If they couldn’t hear me, they’d speak.”

  “Maybe it’s the other way round. Maybe you can’t hear them.”

  “They’re not staying on the line long enough to be talking.”

  “So call them back.”

  He was bringing in
the coffee.

  “I can’t. They’re withholding the number.”

  “Oh really?” Nat was surprised now.

  “That’s why I think it’s deliberate. I keep seeing ‘number withheld’ on the display when it rings and then, when I answer, they give me the silent treatment.”

  “Okay, if they call again, let me answer.”

  “Why?” she asked with a grin. “You think the caller’s a misogynist?”

  “Or maybe just a gynophobe,” he replied, smiling back at her.

  “Have you been taking one of those correspondence courses again?”

  “Ha fuckin’ ha.”

  When the phone rang again, she instinctively reached for it. As she scooped it up she noticed from the caller display that it was again from a withheld number. She quickly waved her other hand to alert Nat. He leaned over and took the receiver from her.

  “Alex Sedaka’s office,” said Nat.

  “We need to talk,” said a familiar voice.

  17:34 PDT

  Alex hadn’t made any further headway with Jonathan. He knew that Jonathan was lying, or at least holding back something. But he couldn’t force it out of him. He had to remember that Jonathan Olsen was the brother of the girl that his client had been convicted of murdering. Whatever new evidence there was to show that Dorothy was alive a year later, it didn’t prove that she was alive now. And whatever Jonathan knew, there was no reason to assume that he was wrong in blaming Clayton Burrow for his sister’s death.

  But what Alex wondered was how much Esther Olsen knew. True, she and Dorothy were estranged at the time of Dorothy’s disappearance and hardly talked to each other. But they had still been living under the same roof. Could Esther Olsen have been so oblivious to what was going on in Dorothy’s life?

  And the issue had now taken on a new urgency because of the deterioration in Esther’s condition. Juanita had told Alex that she was now in hospital and that she had been asking for him. So now he was driving to the Idylwood Care Center in Sunnyvale to visit her.

  Dvorak’s New World Symphony blared out and David’s name flashed up on the display.

  “Hi, David.”

  “Hi, Dad. Quick newsflash.”

  “What’s up?”

  “More poetry.”

  Alex smiled.

  “Anything significant?”

  “I think so.”

  “I can’t read anything right now. I’m on the road.”

  “Want me to read it out to you?”

  “If you think it’s significant.”

  “You tell me. First of all I found one verse earlier. It went like this: ‘You crushed the hope out of me / Not in cold blood but angrily / And only when you died / Did I resolve the mystery / Of your vicious assault on my dignity.’ Note the five-line pattern and note also how it rhymes round the sound ‘ee’ in four of the five lines.”

  “Okay, you said that was earlier.”

  “That’s right and I was going to call you right away. But then I noticed the line ‘And only when you died.’ That’s the bit that doesn’t make sense. Clayton Burrow is still alive.”

  “Not for much longer unless we get a move on.”

  “Okay, but at the time she wrote this, assuming it was before she went to England, it was never in question that he wasn’t. And that means that it’s addressed to someone other than Burrow. But at the same time, it’s clear from the language and the tone that she has a grievance against this person. She blames this person for making her suffer.”

  “I see what you mean. In fact, when I asked Jonathan about why he said that Dorothy got a raw deal from her mother, he came back with a rather cryptic reply. He said ‘there are sins of omission as well as commission.’”

  “Yes,” David persisted, “but this isn’t about a sin of omission. You can tell from the language that this isn’t just someone who let her suffer. This is addressed to someone who actively made her suffer. But that’s not all. I found another two verses. Just listen to this: ‘Because I was too young to understand / You were only trying to set me free / You didn’t really want to change me / You wanted an alternative reality / You wanted to turn back the clock.’ That’s one verse. And then the next. ‘And resurrect a child of three / But I saw things differently / My needs were shaped more selfishly / I had to escape my cell / I had to escape my shell / And find my own path to liberty.’ That’s it.”

  “Good work, David.”

  “So is it significant?”

  There was something about that line ‘and resurrect a child of three” that rang a bell in Alex’s mind.

  “Edgar Olsen lost a child of three in a traffic accident,” Alex said, thinking out loud.

  “Edgar Olsen being?”

  “Dorothy’s father. He had a child by his first marriage and the boy was killed in a car accident.”

  “That’s interesting because there was one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “Well note the variations in the rhyming pattern. It always rhymes round the sound ‘ee’ but in different places depending on which verse – something that a poetry critic would probably analyze to death.”

  “I thought you weren’t into all that ‘liberal arts crap’ – as you used to call it.”

  “I’m not. I am, however, a scientist with a methodical approach and I did some checking on the internet.”

  “Let’s hear the punchline.”

  “I found a poem by Sylvia Plath with a similar five-line structure and irregular rhyming pattern built round a single vowel phoneme. It’s called ‘Daddy’.”

  17:42 PDT (01:42 BST)

  Susan White was going through a crisis of conscience. Stuart had promised her that he would try to get some sort of legal clearance or assurance that they could disclose the information and then call her back. But since then she had heard nothing ... and the silence was deafening.

  Was it because the answer he got from his advisers was negative? Or hadn’t he even bothered to seek advice?

  He probably went back to sleep!

  She wondered if she dared call him back. She had been afraid to before. Butnow she realized that she had nothing to be afraid of. If he was awake and still working on it, he could hardly blame her for asking for an update. If he was asleep and got angry with her she could take him to task for breaking his promise – especially with a life on the line.

  She could, perhaps, justify it by telling him that she had additional information. Since they last spoke, the woman from the law firm had revealed the fact that they knew about how much money Dorothy had handed over to them.

  That’s it! He can’t blame me for that!

  She pressed the quick-dial key for Stuart’s home number. It rang seven times before being picked up. During every one of those rings, Susan came perilously close to hanging up.

  How would he react to being called at this time?

  But she held her nerve. She kept telling herself that she had justice on her side.

  “Hallo!” said an angry, female voice. Stuart’s wife had answered. This was what Susan had been afraid of – one of the things at any rate.

  “Hallo, could I speak to Stuart – Mr. Lloyd?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Susan White … from the medical center.”

  “Have you gone mad?”

  “I’m sorry. Mr. Lloyd said he’d call me back. It’s urgent.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  She didn’t know how much Stuart had told his wife, but she figured she owed this woman at least some explanation.

  “He’s gone to sleep.”

  “To sleep?”

  “Yes, to sleep! It’s … nearly two in the morning.”

  “But it’s eight hours before that in California.”

  “What’s California got to do with it?”

  She realized that Stuart hadn’t told his wife anything.

  “Who is it?” said a tired, disorien
ted man’s voice in the background.

  “It’s no one. Go back to sleep.”

  When Susan heard these words, she was furious. She realized what was going on. But she wasn’t sure how to handle it. Mrs. Lloyd evidently didn’t know about the man on death row. She didn’t realize that Susan had meant it literally when she had said it was a matter of life and death.

  She must think I’m just a hysterical nurse.

  The truth of the matter, she realized, was that it was with Stuart that she should really be angry. He was the one who had broken a promise. He was the one who knew the score yet had chosen to do nothing about it. He was the one who was turning a blind eye while a man’s life hung in the balance.

  Susan realized that if she could explain the latest developments to Stuart he might change his mind. The call from America telling them not to pass on the information … then the call from the law firm revealing that they knew about the forty thousand pounds. But she couldn’t tell him unless she could speak to him and she couldn’t speak to him unless she could get past the gatekeeper.

  She considered telling Mrs. Lloyd about the man on death row, the phone calls, everything. Stuart would be furious and it would be a flagrant breach of confidence. If Stuart hadn’t told his wife about the case, then it was hardly Susan’s place to do so. But if she didn’t tell her then she would never get to him.

  Any way she looked at it, her choice was simple: let an innocent man die or make her boss extremely angry – and she wasn’t ready to let an innocent man die. But if she was going to make him angry, why do it with a half-baked gesture? Why not make sure that her action at least yielded the right result?

  In that moment she decided what to do.

  “Okay, I’m sorry for disturbing you, Mrs. Lloyd.”

  “Goodnight!”

  Susan put the phone down. The time for talking was over. She went to the office and sat down at one of the computers. She was never much of a typist, but the computer had a word processing program and it was easy to correct errors. The letter she typed stated the dates when Dorothy had been at the medical center, both her arrival and discharge. She decided not to mention anything about the money or medical details. The woman had said they only needed the dates.