Lee mouthed the word “please,” and gave the custody officer his most pitiful look.
“Well … okay then.”
The custody officer gave it back and Lee quickly put it away.
“Thank you. Look, would it be all right if I called my lawyer now?”
22:14 PDT
“What do you mean I’ve got it backward?”
They were sitting there eyeball to eyeball. Jonathan had the height advantage sitting on the bed whereas Alex was on the floor. But Alex did not feel as if he were at a disadvantage. It was Jonathan who was angry. It was Jonathan who was afraid.
“Dorothy never thought Edgar got her pregnant. He wasn’t even her father.”
“She knew that?”
“Of course she knew it!”
“And what else did she know?”
“She knew that it was Clayton Burrow who got her pregnant.”
“How could she have been so sure?”
He was wondering if Jonathan was going to say that she knew Edgar Olsen was sterile.
“Because my father didn’t touch her! I mean, not sexually.”
This caught Alex by surprise.
“According to that poem we found, he ripped the clothes off of her.”
“There’s more than one way to abuse a person. He didn’t abuse her physically. He abused her psychologically.”
“Ripping her clothes off doesn’t exactly sound like purely psychological abuse.”
“He only did that once, in a moment of rage. Basically he just snapped because she was flaunting her sexuality in front of him.”
“Okay, so he didn’t sexually assault her. So what did happen? She found out that she was pregnant and you say she blamed Clayton Burrow. But Burrow didn’t die the very next day. Edgar Olsen did!”
“How do you know?” asked Jonathan, fear now in his voice.
“Because your mother heard you talking about it on the 16th May. Edgar Olsen died on the 17th.”
Jonathan lowered his head. He appeared to be going through some inner turmoil. Finally he raised his head, dry eyed, but with a hardened expression on his face.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s true, Dorothy came to me on the 16th when she finally realized she was pregnant. I’d known something was up before then because of the way she was acting. But that was when she finally told me – about the rape and about the pregnancy. She’d only just found out for sure that she was pregnant, although she’d suspected it for some time. I tried to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. There was nothing I could say. She was both afraid and angry – afraid because she wasn’t sure what she was going to do about the baby and angry with Burrow at what he had done. She must have brooded about it all night, because the following day she decided to kill him.”
“To kill him?”
“Yes.”
“To kill Burrow?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“With my father’s gun.”
“And what? She went to Edgar’s place to get his gun and he caught her?”
“No, not exactly. You see, my father bought the gun way back in the eighties when there were all those crime scares. But by the late nineties crime was going down and he more or less forgot about the gun. So it just sat there at the back of the closet at our house.”
“Wait a minute. I thought he was no longer living at the house?”
“That’s right, he wasn’t. He’d moved out into a condo. But he didn’t take all his stuff with him. I mean, he took the important stuff, but he didn’t go through everything.”
“And one of the things he left behind was the gun?”
“Like I said, things had changed. I guess he wasn’t so paranoid by then. Or maybe he just forgot it ‘cause it was at the back of a closet. At any rate, for whatever reason, he didn’t take it.”
“And Dorothy found it?”
“Found it. Looked for it. Knew it was there. Whatever. The following day she came to my room with the gun and told me she was going to kill Burrow.”
“So what made her kill your father instead?”
“Did I say she did?”
“Well he died, didn’t he? And the cause of death was gunshot wounds from his own gun. Or are you going to tell me that it really was suicide?”
“I wanted to stop her.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want her to do it.”
“Why not? You hated Burrow. He beat the crap out of you. And now he’d raped your sister.”
“I didn’t give a shit about Burrow! But I didn’t want Dorothy to get into trouble for it. I may have only been a kid but I knew that people who commit crimes like that usually get caught. Rape you can get away with because rapists can always say the girl consented. But amateur murderers usually get caught. And she was an amateur. I knew that if she killed him she’d get caught.”
“And what? You thought you could do it and get away with it?”
“Hell, no! I knew that with my luck I’d’ve botched it big time. I may have been a bit hot-headed but I knew my limitations.”
“So what did you do?
“I persuaded her to give me the gun. I told her that we should think about it and plan it properly. I was going to put it back.”
“But you didn’t put it back, did you?”
“Not back in our house, no. You see, I knew that if I put it back in the closet or wherever – the way she was feeling – she might take it again and kill him and get caught. So I decided to take it to my dad’s place.”
“And what? Just give it to him without an explanation?”
“I didn’t exactly have a clear plan. I just knew I had to get the gun out of the way – to stop Dorothy using it. When I got to his place, I told him I missed him and wanted to see him. He invited me in. He was usually happy to see me. He never treated me badly the way he did with Dorothy. Then, when he went to the bathroom, I crept into his bedroom and tried to hide the gun in a closet there. But he caught me and demanded to know what I was doing. He accused me of snooping. He could do that, you know, go from being friendly one minute to being angry the next. He didn’t usually do that with me, but he did with Dorothy and he knew that Dorothy and I were close. Then he saw the gun.”
“And what happened? Did he grab it?”
Jonathan hesitated for a second and his lips twitched upward. It was nearly a smile – but not quite.
“I wish I could latch on to that excuse. But he didn’t. Instead he just demanded to know what I was doing with it.”
“And what did you tell him?”
Jonathan took a deep breath.
“I told him the truth.”
“The truth?”
“Yes. Everything. I told him I was putting the gun there so it would be out of Dorothy’s reach. And I told him why.”
“You told him about the rape?”
“Yes, I told him about the rape!” Tears were now welling up in Jonathan’s eyes. “And you know what he did? He laughed.”
Jonathan choked back his tears.
“Laughed?”
“And he said…” Jonathan swallowed the lump in his throat. Even after these years, the memory evidently still pained him. “He said: ‘With any luck it’ll cure that bull-dyke bitch.’”
He broke down in tears. Alex hated to press him, but he had to know the rest.
“And then what happened?”
“Then what happened? I… I just snapped at that point. I swung the gun round to his head and he turned away in fear. It all happened too quickly: I just didn’t think.” Alex said nothing. As a lawyer, he knew that this was not the time to put words into someone else’s mouth. “I … I pulled the trigger. The next thing I knew, his brains were splattered all over the wall.”
22:20 PDT (06:20 BST)
Alone in the office, Juanita was getting worried. Nat still hadn’t come back and she couldn’t reach Alex on the phone. If Nat was really trying to get the clinic to send the papers, then wouldn’t he have done it by now? W
hat was taking him so long?
And where was Alex?
Time was running out and so were their options. One by one the doors had been slammed in their faces and it felt like they were boxed in on all sides. Unless they could come up with something fast, Clayton Burrow would be dead in less than two hours.
Juanita wanted to have another try with the medical center herself. They had evidently faxed over something, according to the journal, so someone at the center must have been cooperating with them. The problem was that she didn’t know what Nat had been doing in the meantime and she didn’t want to step on his toes. If she phoned them up and contradicted something that he said, it would be disastrous.
But the problem was she couldn’t call Nat either. If she asked him about his progress with the medical center then she would have to admit that she knew what he was doing. This would be all right if she was correct. But what if she was wrong? She still couldn’t be sure. And, if she was wrong, then she was just wasting time by holding off.
She knew what she had to do. She couldn’t wait any longer. If he had called them in the guise of Dorothy Olsen’s legal representative, it would be to tell them to give the information to Alex Sedaka’s law firm. And if that was the case, then there was no reason why she shouldn’t call them as Alex Sedaka’s secretary and ask them for the information again.
She dialed and tapped her fingers nervously while she waited for an answer.
“Finchley Road Medical Centre.”
“Hallo, my name is Juanita Cortez. I’m calling from the law offices of Alex Sedaka in San Francisco.”
“Oh hi, I spoke to you earlier.”
“Yes, you’re not Nurse White, are you?”
“No, like I told you, she’s off duty.”
“Listen, it’s not actually Nurse White I need to speak to. It’s the administration. As I explained to Nurse White, we desperately need that information about Dorothy Olsen.”
“And, as I explained to that man who called earlier, we cannot release that information without authorization.”
Juanita got angry.
“You do understand that this is a matter of life and death, don’t you? You do understand that we have a client who’s scheduled to be executed in less than two hours for the murder of Dorothy Olsen unless we can prove that she was alive after the date he’s supposed to have killed her!”
“I can’t give out that information without permission. It would be more than my job’s worth.”
“Well in that case, can you let me speak to someone in authority – someone who can make a decision?”
“The best person to talk to would be Stuart Lloyd. He’s the Chief Administrator.”
“So can I talk to him?”
“Well he isn’t here yet. I mean, it’s only six twenty. But he should be here by eight o’clock.”
“But that’ll be too late! Our client is scheduled to die at one minute past midnight.”
“Well that’s plenty of – ”
“I mean our time! That’s eight o’clock in the morning your time!”
“Look, there’s nothing I can do. If you like, you can give me your number and if he comes in early then he can call you.”
Juanita was about to give it, when a call came through on another line. She looked at the display and saw that it was from Nat.
“I’ll have to call you back.” She pressed another button on the switchboard. “Hi, Nat.”
“Hi, Juanita. You sound harassed.”
“I’m holding the fort alone here. Where are you?”
“I’m sorry. I went home for a change of clothes.”
“A change of clothes?”
She was incredulous.
“Yes, I was feeling uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”
“Well are you coming back now?”
“Not yet. I have something else to do.”
“I don’t suppose you can tell me what this ‘something else’ is?”
“Not right now. Look, Juanita, there was an incident at my house.”
“What sort of an incident?”
“There was a burglar.”
“A burglar? What is this, an epidemic?”
“What’s that?” he asked, apparently oblivious to Juanita’s use of humor to relieve the tension.
“Nothing. So what did this burglar get away with?”
“He didn’t get away at all. I caught him.”
“Oh my God! Are you all right?”
Juanita realized now who the burglar was – and she was worried.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“When you say you caught him?”
“He was kind of old and he didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“So what happened? Did you call the police?”
“Yes. They arrested him. And I’m supposed to go to the station to make a statement.”
“Can’t it wait?”
There was a brief hesitation. Then Nat spoke again.
“Is there anything that I can do at this stage anyway? I mean … look, I don’t mean to say this, but we seem to have run out of options.”
Juanita was silent. She was trying to read his words … and his tone. Had he really given up? Had he tried to get the medical center to give the information? Had he run up against the same obstacles as she had? And what about the burglar? It must have been Lee Kelly. Alex hadn’t been able to contact him to call it off and now he had been caught red-handed. Would he snitch on Alex? Or would Nat figure it all out? He may not be an experienced lawyer like Alex, but he’d been round the block a few times.
“Okay, look, you do what you have to,” said Juanita. “I’ll see you when I see you.”
“Okay. Wait, listen, did you say you were holding the fort alone?”
“Yes, why?”
“So did Alex go back to San Quentin?”
Juanita wasn’t sure whether to answer this. If Nat had figured out that Alex had sent Lee to spy on him, then it might be better to hold back, or even lie. But on the other hand, if their suspicions were unfounded, then wouldn’t it be better to rebuild the bond of trust by telling him the truth?
“No, he went to see Jonathan Olsen.”
“What for?”
Juanita noticed the unusual intensity in his voice.
“He thinks Jonathan knows about Dorothy’s flight to England.”
“When did he go there?”
“About forty minutes ago.”
“Has he called in yet?”
“No. And I can’t call him either. It’s like his phone’s switched off.”
“Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
When Nat rang off, the feeling of desolation returned to Juanita. She wanted to do something. But they had already tried everything. She had hoped that she might get somewhere with the medical center, but had run up against the same brick wall as before.
The thing that was nagging away at her was that they had sent something. That meant that someone at the medical center was trying to help – or had at least seen fit to send them something in writing.
But the fax wasn’t there now.
So where was it? Had Nat taken it? Thrown it away? Shredded it?
Of course!
She raced over to the shredder, lifted off the grinding mechanism and began fishing out papers. She remembered reading how the Iranian students at the American embassy had spent hours sticking shredded documents together at the time of the embassy siege in 1979 after Khomeini seized power in Iran. They had hoped to find things that they could use to embarrass the United States. But most of what they found was mundane material like requisition orders for stationery.
The point was that they kept at it, laboriously re-assembling every page.
It can be done.
And if Nat had shredded the fax, then it would be among the strips at the top of the pile.
22:24 PDT
Jonathan was sitting on the bed, looking down at his hands. He was no longer crying. Whatever mixture of emotions had coursed th
rough him – guilt, regret, fear – had all passed now. All that was left was a kind of exhausted passivity, as if he could now accept anything else that life threw at him.
“Jonathan, I can’t condemn you for what you did. I think I understand the pain and torment your father put Dorothy through. And it must have pained you no end to witness it. And to see it at such a young age yourself, must have made it all the more painful. But there are some things that I need to understand. Like, how did you shooting your father lead to Dorothy running away to England?”
Jonathan looked up.
“After I shot him, I went into a complete panic. But some kind of self-preservation instinct kicked in. I wiped the gun and dropped it near the body. I wasn’t trying to stage the crime scene or anything like that. I mean, I didn’t think to make it seem like suicide. I just didn’t want to leave any evidence pointing to me. So I just wiped the revolver, dropped it and ran.”
Something in these words didn’t quite make sense to Alex.
“Wait a minute. You didn’t stage it to look like suicide?”
“No. I didn’t think of that at the time. I didn’t think of anything other than saving my skin. I just wanted to get out of there.”
Ordinarily, Alex would have known better than to interrupt a man when he was in the full flow of a confession. But he needed clarity.
“Okay, so what happened then?”
“I ran home, terrified. And I told Dorothy what had happened. She got me to wash my hands to make sure there was no gunshot residue and throw my clothes in the washing machine to make extra sure. She also made me take a shower.
“By the time I got out of the shower I’d already calmed down and I began to think I’d got away with it. Even though the gunshot was loud, no one had come out of their apartments to see what it was. No one had seen me leaving and no cops had come knocking on the door. I’d remembered to wipe the prints off the gun and washed away any evidence that might have been on me or my clothes. I mean, I was naïve enough to think I had. If I’d come under suspicion, they’d probably have found some evidence.
“I know now that there’s a limit to what you can wash away. There were probably traces of my father’s brains on the T-shirt. The trouble was, while I was over the hysteria, Dorothy had just hit panic mode.”
You Think You Know Me Pretty Well Page 25