You Think You Know Me Pretty Well

by David Kessler

  “And I told her that it’s the way they dress and the things that interest them like cars and electrical things. So she started acting like the way she thought a boy acted. She even got hold of a pair of scissors and cut her hair short so she’d look more like a boy. But the more she did it the angrier it made him.”

  “And this was before Jonathan was born?”

  “Yes, but it carried on after that. You see, after Jonathan was born, he treated Jonathan well and he was bit less cold toward me – even though he knew that he wasn’t Jonathan’s father – but he was just as cold and unkind to Dorothy. And the more he rejected her, the more she tried to act like a boy. When she reached puberty she continued dressing like a boy – and of course by then she had her own allowance so she could buy clothes for herself.”

  “I’d’ve thought that that sort of thing would have made her a target for ridicule from her peers. And that would surely have been a deterrent.”

  “You’d’ve thought so but Dorothy had been so toughened up by the harsh treatment Edgar meted out that she was oblivious to anything her classmates could have thrown at her.”

  “Oblivious?”

  “Well maybe not completely oblivious, but certainly indifferent.”

  “So was it just cross-dressing? I mean, Jonathan didn’t say cross-dresser, he just said ‘her sexuality.’ And Clayton Burrow called her a lesbian.”

  “It started with cross-dressing, but it pretty soon developed into other things. She started getting pictures of pretty girls and putting them on her walls. Edgar tore them down a couple of times, but she just put them back up. And she kept a scrapbook of pictures of girls in swimsuits. He didn’t know that because she kept it under her bed.”

  “Was it just an act or did she really like girls – sexually, I mean?”

  “It probably started as an act, but developed into something more than that. I mean, she did experiment with girls. She found girls online who shared her interest and she even used to date them.”

  “Did you try to stop her – or did Edgar?”

  “He didn’t pay enough attention to her to know what was going on. It was only what she flaunted in his presence that angered him.”

  “But didn’t you think of telling her that she was only making it worse by the way she was behaving?”

  “Yes, but you see, at least this way, she was getting some reaction from him. When she kept a low profile he just ignored her altogether, shunned her. So for her, the choice wasn’t a good reaction from him or a bad reaction: it was a bad reaction or none at all. She chose a bad reaction as the lesser of two evils.”

  “But it must have hurt her. I mean, she wrote a poem that betrays her feelings and shows how much he hurt her.”

  “Oh I’m sure it did. She didn’t show it to anyone round her but the only way I could sense it was by the constant hurt look in her eyes.”

  “But what about him ripping the clothes off of her? Jonathan knew about it, so it must have been when he was old enough to understand. And what was that about the mirror?”

  “Well, as I said, she used to dress up in boy’s clothes. When she got older she was able to buy her own clothes. But sometimes she used to try on Edgar’s clothes and admire herself in the mirror and practice picking up girls. I knew she was doing it, but I didn’t stop her. By that stage she’d already decided what she was. There was no point fighting it. At least I knew that. But Edgar didn’t. He just wouldn’t accept it. He thought that she was in denial, but in reality he was. Then one day – when she was about fourteen – he caught her dressing up in his clothes talking to an imaginary girlfriend and he just flipped his lid. I mean, he just blew a fuse and exploded.”

  “What did he do?”

  Alex already knew, but he had to hear it from Esther Olsen – he had to be sure.

  “He just ripped the clothes off of her, just like you said.”

  “In front of the mirror.”

  “Not exactly. He threw her on the bed and more or less wrestled with her to rip the clothes off her. And he was deliberately hurting her, ‘cause he carried on even when she screamed ‘okay’ and said she’d take off the clothes. But he wanted more than that. After he finished ripping the clothes off of her – and I mean all the clothes, including her underwear – he didn’t just let her go. He dragged her back to the mirror and held her in front of it. He kept shouting at her: ‘You’ve got to accept reality! You’ve got to accept reality.’”

  Alex asked: “What was she doing? I mean, how did she take it?”

  Esther was struggling to speak, as if the memory was still too painful.

  “She was screaming and crying … struggling not to look at herself … or at him. And even when she opened her eyes – and by this stage she was squinting because her eyes were filled with tears – she just crossed her legs and tried to avoid looking at herself. But Edgar wasn’t having it. He was determined to make her see the truth – or rather his truth. So he forced her legs apart and screamed at her: ‘You’re a girl! Not a boy! You’re a fucking girl!’”

  Esther broke down in tears again. But there was something troubling Alex, and troubling him deeply.

  “But you said that you had problems communicating with Dorothy and that she didn’t talk to you about these things.”

  “Yes,” murmured Esther Olsen, faintly.

  “Then how do you know about it?”

  “Because I was there!” she screamed, sobbing.

  “There? What, there in the room?”

  “No … not in the room. At least not at first. But in the house. When it started, I was downstairs in the kitchen. But I heard what was going on. I heard the shouting. And so I crept up the stairs and … saw … what he was doing.”

  “And you did nothing to stop him?”

  “No,” Esther sobbed into her hands. “But it was worse than that.”

  “How could it get any worse?”

  “Because she saw me. She saw me … and she knew that I did nothing … nothing to stop him … and she never spoke to me again … never one word. If she wanted to say anything to me after that … she said it through Jonathan.”

  At this point, Esther broke down completely and could talk no more.

  So that was it, Alex realized. The great sin of omission. That was how Dorothy became estranged from her mother.

  Alex patted Esther’s arm gently. He wanted to comfort her. Even though he had only met her that morning, he felt as if in some way there was a bond between them.

  “Mrs. Olsen, there was something else I wanted to ask you. It’s to do with Edgar’s death.”

  “I could probably have done it myself. If she hadn’t done it. He was the one who was responsible for Dorothy hating me. He deserved to die! I accept my share of the blame. But if he hadn’t treated her like that … it would never have happened.”

  “But why do you think Dorothy did it?”

  “I heard them talking about it afterward. I mean, it was all in whispers and I only heard fragments. But I heard them talking about the body and his brains being splattered and then Dorothy said something about her fingerprints being on the bullets.”

  “Mrs. Olsen, it wasn’t Dorothy. It was Jonathan.”

  She was shaking her head.

  “I … I don’t understand.”

  “He went there to put the gun there, to get it out of Dorothy’s reach. Dorothy took the gun from the closet and was going to kill Burrow because of the rape – because he’d got her pregnant. But Jonathan talked her out of it. Only he was afraid that she’d try again, so he decided to take the gun to Edgar’s place and hide it there. But Edgar caught him and there was a confrontation. Some harsh words were said and it ended up with Edgar being shot.”

  “But why did Dorothy…?” Esther trailed off.

  “Because her fingerprints were at the crime scene. She’d loaded the revolver. In preparation for killing Burrow.”

  “My God! And all this time I thought it was Dorothy who…”

  She tr
ailed off. But there was something Alex still didn’t understand.”

  “The thing I don’t understand, is why the police thought it was suicide. And why was the gun found in Edgar’s hand? Jonathan said that he dropped it on the floor.”

  Esther raised her head, now suddenly stronger than before, as if this latest revelation had breathed new life into her.

  “That was me. I got him to help her. I just didn’t know that was the way he’d go about it.”

  23:27 PDT

  “Okay, you’re clean,” said the patrolman, looking at the breathalyzer.

  Of course I’m clean, thought Nat. He knew perfectly well that this was harassment. Nat hadn’t touched a drop and there was no smell on his breath that could have been mistaken for liquor. This was a complete farce and he had half a mind to make an official complaint about it. But right now he had more important things to think about.

  The thing that had made it annoying was that it had taken the patrolman several attempts to activate the breathalyzer device. And in every one of those minutes, Nat was squirming and fidgeting resentfully, which had probably made him look even more guilty.

  “Is that it, patrolman? Can I go now?”

  “Not quite, there’s just one more thing.”

  “What is it now?”

  “I’m still going to have to write you up a citation for the reckless driving.”

  For the next two minutes Nat stood there while this pain-in-the-ass patrolman wrote out the citation.

  “Just sign here.”

  Nat signed, gritting his teeth against the anger. The signature entailed no admission of guilt or liability. It simply confirmed that he had received the citation and knew what it meant.

  “Thank you very much, sir. Have a nice day. And drive carefully now.”

  Nat got back into his car and drove off, fuming. He looked at the dashboard clock and saw how little time he had to get there. He wanted to floor the gas pedal but he knew that if he did, he was quite likely to be stopped again for speeding. He put his foot down as far as he dared, but his eyes kept darting down to the dashboard to make sure that the needle didn’t cross the wrong line.

  23:33 PDT

  “Who, Mrs. Olsen? The way who went about it?”

  Alex was still reeling from what Esther had told him. But then again, she was reeling from what he had told her. And Alex suspected that the surprise was bigger for her. She had carried around – for nine years – the belief that it had been Dorothy who had killed Edgar. Now she knew that it was her son Jonathan.

  “I thought that she needed a lawyer. So I called an old friend. I mean, he was originally a personal friend of Anita’s and a professional friend of Edgar’s. I’d first met him at the wedding. Edgar invited him. But by the time I called him for his help over the killing I had something of a relationship with him myself.”

  “Wait a minute, would this be the old friend that you and Anita Morgan called in when you wanted to have a son?”

  “Yes. But you have to understand that it wasn’t as coldly clinical as you make it sound. We’d met a few times over the years at social and business events. Anita was often there too. And I think she may have picked up on the fact that there was some sort of chemistry between us.”

  “You loved him?”

  “I think I did. But we never really let it get to that stage… the stage of acknowledging our feelings to ourselves or to each other.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was a young ambitious lawyer with political aspirations, and he had a young pregnant wife at the time. It wouldn’t do for him to play the role of home-wrecker – especially as I wasn’t just married by then but also had a daughter. So we carried on in secret for a while, kidding ourselves that it was just wild, physical passion with no strings attached… until we decided that it would only end up hurting both of us. And then we ended it amicably… by mutual agreement.”

  “And what happened? With Edgar’s death and the cover-up, I mean.”

  “Well like I said he was a lawyer. I thought he could represent Dorothy in court. Remember, I thought it was Dorothy who killed Edgar. But he just asked me for the address and various other details. He said he was going to check with the local police to see what they knew already. It turned out that at that time they hadn’t had any report about shots being fired in that area. They didn’t know about the shooting. They didn’t know that Edgar was dead. And then he called me back afterward and said it was all sorted out and I didn’t need to worry. I asked him what he meant, but he just repeated: ‘Don’t worry. It’s all taken care of.’ When the body was found, I was informed that my husband had committed suicide. And then I realized.”

  Alex was incredulous.

  “You think a lawyer staged the crime scene to look like suicide?”

  “I don’t think he did it himself, but he was a criminal lawyer. He probably had lots of criminal friends to do the dirty work for him. Come to think of it, he probably had quite a few crooked cops in his pocket too.”

  “And who was – ”

  Before he could finish the sentence, the door flew open and three people entered: the security guard that Alex had floored with that beautifully executed combination, and two of San Francisco’s finest, one of them female.

  “There he is!” said the security guard, evidently proud of himself for stating the obvious.

  It was the female police officer who had the presence of mind to flip the light switch.

  As the strip lights flickered to life over the course of three and a half seconds, Alex froze in panic. But it wasn’t the cops or the security guard that sent the shivers up his spine and gave him goose bumps. It was the framed picture by Mrs. Olsen’s bed. That framed picture was one of Esther Olsen’s wedding pictures, where the couple go round and have themselves photographed with each of the guests. Not that the sight of the young Esther or the moderately youthful Edgar Olsen sent a jolt through Alex. What shocked him to the core was the wedding guest between them with his arms round both of them.

  The man was Chuck Dusenbury!

  23:34 PDT

  Nat had decided to take a chance and speed up after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. He figured that the cops in Marin County wouldn’t be so aggressive and pushy as those in San Francisco. He had in fact no basis for this belief other than wishful thinking. But he reasoned that if they did pull him over, he would just tell them the truth about going to the execution and hope that they would wave him on.

  The problem wasn’t the police, however: it was the heavy traffic. Even at this late stage, people were going to the prison to demonstrate either for or against the execution. And in addition to that more reporters were turning up. The local press had covered it since this morning, but now, as it was becoming clear that the execution was going ahead, reporters and cameramen from all over the country were converging on San Quentin. Maybe because it was likely to be one of the last executions in Dusenbury’s term of office. Maybe because Dusenbury had become increasingly vociferous in his reluctance to send people to the death chamber. Or maybe because of Martine Yin’s leak of Dusenbury’s clemency offer.

  Whatever the reason, this case had suddenly aroused a lot more interest and Nat was struggling to get to the prison in the face of this column of traffic.

  He still had half an hour to go. But he was beginning to wonder if he would make it.

  23:37 PDT

  Slowly the realization was filtering through, seeping through into Alex’s consciousness.

  The politically ambitious lawyer. The man who was ready to throw the rulebook out the window and violate all protocol to grant Esther Olsen’s dying wish. The man who was ready to spare Clayton Burrow from the death penalty – but only on the very specific and narrow condition that he reveal the whereabouts of Dorothy’s body.

  He wasn’t just a lame duck governor who was free to speak his mind and act his conscience. Dusenbury was a man who had long loved a woman, but hadn’t been free to fulfill that love.

&
nbsp; Alex could imagine the feelings that Dusenbury must have had for Esther over the years, possibly losing contact with her as he climbed the political ladder, possibly falling out with Edgar. He idly speculated whether Edgar would have ever found out. Certainly the man was no fool. He knew – despite his self-denial – that none of “his” children were actually his own: not Jimmy, not Dorothy and not Jonathan. Did he figure out the rest? Did he realize that it was his friend who had cuckolded him behind his back?

  For a moment Alex entertained the way-out idea that perhaps Edgar had survived Jonathan’s gunshot and been finished off by Dusenbury or his henchman. He dismissed the thought as rapidly as it arrived in his mind as just too ludicrous for words. Jonathan had seen Edgar’s brains splattered all over the wall. The possibility that Dusenbury had contributed to the killing, as opposed to the cover-up, just wasn’t on the cards.

  But still, it was becoming clearer now to Alex what had occurred that day.

  The two cops walked up to Alex and he rose to meet them, but he had to be sure.

  He turned to Esther Olsen and looked into her eyes.

  “It was Dusenbury, wasn’t it - the old friend?”

  Esther looked at Alex with pitiful eyes and moved her mouth as if she was trying to speak. She mouthed the word “yes” and then started gasping for breath. She appeared to be trying to say something. But all the lawyer could make out was something like “yewer.” Alex turned back to the police.

  “She’s hyperventilating! Call a doctor! Now!”

  23:38 PDT

  Juanita was now finding it harder to match up the shredded strips to the part of the letter that she had already reconstructed. The first strips had been easy because a handful of shredded strips had stayed together at the top of the pile. But others had got separated.

  She reckoned that she had reconstructed at least a third of the letter. She could make out some parts of sentences like “I can conf…” She could also make out fragments of dates on the letter, and she knew it was important to remember that these dates were in the British format.