The second sheet had been a psychiatric evaluation of Dorothy’s mental state, referring to the fact that she had arrived at the center in a state of hysteria, but how this was not evidence of any sort of psychosis, but rather a consequence of the trauma of being raped and the further trauma of the pregnancy resulting from it.
The page also contained an analysis of Dorothy’s overall mental state and concluded that she was fully compos mentis and generally mentally stable, notwithstanding the depression which the report described as “non-clinical” and resulting from her “underlying circumstances.”
The report continued discussing such questions as “eligibility.” It further stated that she was a “suitable candidate” for a “one-year assessment.”
The language was highly technical and arcane and, although Juanita was streetwise, computer literate and legally savvy, she was hard pressed to understand this medical language.
The third page came out of the machine. She picked it up and started reading it. But when she stumbled across a phrase she recognized, she got the shock of her life.
00:16 PDT
Alex was turning left into the well-lit Sir Frances Drake Boulevard as Nat kept the gun leveled at his head. The muzzle wasn’t up against his temple now. Instead Nat held the gun close to himself in his right hand, supporting his right elbow in his left hand to keep the gun steady. But there was no doubt where it was aimed.
Alex couldn’t yet hear the sirens of the Marin County Sheriff’s Department, but he knew it was only a matter of time. Pretty soon they’d have State Troopers on their tail too.
But that was not what was troubling Alex now. He knew they wouldn’t try anything precipitate. They would know from what the deputies would have told them that this was a hostage situation: that Alex was an innocent man being held at gunpoint and forced to drive. Yes, they would call out a SWAT team and scramble a helicopter. But they would do nothing to endanger his life. They might try to stop the car with a PIT maneuver – or even try to blow out the tires on a flat stretch if no other vehicles were about – but there was no way they’d open fire on the car itself.
What troubled Alex right now was Nat himself. What was he doing? What was he hoping to achieve? He was too intelligent to think that he could get away. In modern police chases, once a vehicle is marked, there was no getting away. They could probably track the police car via satnav. But even if they couldn’t, they could track it through aerial observation. Perhaps, if Nat could make it to a wooded area, he could get away on foot and hide under foliage thick enough to be opaque to thermal imaging. But they were too far from any such foliage. Escape was impossible.
Did this mean that this was going to be Nat’s last stand? And if so, what fate, Alex wondered, did Nat have in store for him?
And there was still that other lingering elusive question: why?
The motive remained as elusive as ever. It was almost as if Nat couldn’t explain his own actions. Then again, this was not so unusual. Even Clayton Burrow had only the vaguest insight as to why he chosen Dorothy as the target for his bullying – and he had had seven years in the shadow of death to contemplate his motives as well as his fate. Self-awareness was not a virtue with which all people were blessed. And generally those who possessed it least were those most inclined toward crime in general, and violence in particular.
But Nathaniel Anderson was no violent criminal. He was not one of those people who stood only a moment from violence at every turn. Such people might lash out at their wives or their children or get into fights with their neighbors. But Nat was not like that. Today was the first time Alex had seen any hint of Nat having a capacity for violence, let alone a propensity.
Maybe he’s a psychopath or a sociopath or whatever the current buzzword is today.
But that was no explanation either. Even practical questions like the disposal of the body had gone unanswered.
His thoughts were interrupted by a call on his iPhone. Alex looked at Nat, unsure of what to do.
Nat reached into Alex’s pocket, pulled out the phone and looked at the display.
“It’s from David,” he said, as if inviting Alex to say what he wanted to do. But Alex knew that he was in no position to decide. Nat was holding the gun as well as the phone. Alex couldn’t hold the phone to talk and he daren’t challenge the gun.
“I’ll put it on speaker.”
And with that Nat answered.
“Hi, David.”
“Nat?” He sounded confused.
“Yes. Your father’s right here. He can’t hold the phone ‘cause he’s driving. I’ll put you on speaker.”
Nat put the phone on speaker and nodded toward Alex.
“Hi, David.”
“Hi, Dad. Listen, I’ve just recovered an MP3 file from the disk.”
Alex didn’t want to hear this right now. By this stage anything David could find would almost certainly be irrelevant. But on the other hand, he didn’t want to tell David that all their efforts had been in vain.
“What, you mean like a song?”
“No. It’s speech. It’s Dorothy. She’s talking.”
“Talking?”
“Yes.”
“What was she talking about?”
“It’s that poem … the one I kept finding extracts from. The one inspired by Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy.’”
“But as an MP3 file this time?”
“Yes. She’s reading it aloud.”
“Can you play it over the phone?”
It was a silly request. He didn’t know why he had asked.
“Well the sound quality won’t be all that good. But I can email it to you as an attachment.”
“How long will that take?”
“Less than a minute.”
“I’m driving.”
“It can wait till you get back home or to the office.”
“Send it now and then go home and get some sleep. I’ll listen when I can.”
“Home?”
David sounded tense at the word.
Alex let the air out of his lungs. He wasn’t going to let his son in on his current predicament, but the best way to stop him tuning in to the radio to catch the news was to tell him the outcome with Burrow.
“It’s over, David.”
The line went silent for a few seconds.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“You did your best … we all did.”
“I know. I just wish we could have done more.”
“Get some rest. Goodnight, David.
“Goodnight, Dad.”
Alex looked over at Nat, as if to ask him if was proud of himself. Nat ignored him and ended the call.
“Take the ramp,” ordered Nat. “Get onto Interstate 101 South.”
Alex obeyed, noticing that while he was doing so, Nat was playing with the iPhone.
“What are you doing?”
Nat smiled.
“Downloading the poem. Don’t you want to hear it? It might be kind of cute.”
Alex felt anger at Nat’s callousness. But he kept it in check.
“We may as well … I guess.”
While Alex kept his eyes on the road, Nat logged on to his email to download the MP3 file to Alex’s iPhone.
“Shall I play it?”
Alex swallowed.
“Yes,” he muttered.
Nat touched the area of the screen that started the MP3 file playing.
Dorothy’s voice came over the phone’s speaker. The irony that she was addressing Edgar as “Daddy” was not lost on Alex as he divided his concentration between Dorothy’s words and the road ahead.
I cannot be, can never be
What I thought you wanted me
To be, to be, or so it seemed
When I didn’t understand
What a fool I was, tee hee
Daddy, I know I am guilty
Though someone killed you first
I killed you as surely as if
I had pulled the trigger myself
Bang Bang! All over
And now I have to cross the Atlantic
Because I have to flee
Across the ocean, safe and sound
To where they’ll never find me
At that point, Alex’s concentration was broken by the sound of a helicopter overhead.
00:19 PDT
Juanita was in shock at what she had just read. She called Alex. She had got the busy signal before. But she had to tell him.
In her haste, she kept fumbling the digits and having to go back and start over. Finally she got through. It rang for a few seconds.
“Hi, Juanita. Listen, I’m kind of busy right – ”
“I just got the fax about Dorothy from the London clinic.”
“And?”
“You’re not gonna believe this, boss. It says she had hormone treatment.”
“Hormone treatment?”
“And gender re-assignment surgery.”
There was a gasp at the other end.
“Gender re-assignment?”
“Yes! She had a fuckin’ sex change!”
00:22 PDT
“I wish I’d known, Nat,” said Alex gently as he left Silva Island behind him.
They’d been sitting in silence for over a minute as Alex drove along the I-101 overpass just past the Planet Day Care and Activity Center. Alex had switched off the MP3 and they’d sat there tensely, each waiting for the other to speak. Alex’s mind was still reeling from what he had just heard. But he sensed that Nat didn’t yet trust his voice, now that the truth was out.
It changed … everything.
And yet he wasn’t sure how to get through to Nat even now. At this moment, Nat was fleeing for his life and you didn’t argue with a man who feels cornered. Neither could you reason with a man who felt betrayed. All Alex could do was bide his time. To try and break the ice would be suicide. But perhaps he could thaw it slowly.
“I wish – ”
“Take the North Exit to Highway 1,” said Nat, breaking his silence. “We’ll head toward Stinson Beach.”
While Alex was still struggling to take it all in, a change seemed to have come over Nat. Now he looked almost relieved that he no longer had to keep it all bottled up inside.
“I can get you a good lawyer,” said Alex. “I know most of the defense attorneys in the Bay area and I can get you the best.”
“I’m not going to spend my life behind bars,” Nat replied tensely. “I’ve lived most of my life in fear. Fear of the man I thought was my father, when I was a kid. Fear of bullies in high school. Fear when I got pregnant and then fear of being found out these last few years.”
Alex thought about the fact that this last fear was of Nat’s own making. If he hadn’t framed Burrow for murder, the problem need never have arisen. But now was not the time to discuss ethics.
“You can’t get away. They won’t let you. But you can fight it through the system. Do it the smart way.”
“I need to think.”
“It’s too late for that, you must – ”
“Look, shut up!”
Alex knew when not to push the point.
He let the silence settle between them. In a way he was grateful for this opportunity. It could be the last.
“So what happened when you went to England?”
Nat took a deep breath.
“Well first of all, I sold a diamond ring to raise some cash to open a bank account. Then I sold the rest of the jewelry to other jewelers and dealers in London and got the money paid into my bank account. So now I had a bank account and I could function, but at the same time there was no trace of the money being transferred from my US account so there was no trail for the FBI or anyone else to follow. They didn’t know if I was dead or missing, but as far as they knew I could have been either. Turn left at Highway 1.”
Alex complied, trying to ignore the helicopter overhead and the police cars on their tail. He prayed that the cops wouldn’t challenge them on this narrow two-lane road. It wasn’t that he feared death. It was just that he wanted – needed – to know the rest.
“And what about the medical center? I mean the abortion and the…”
For some reason he found it hard to say the words.
“Well I was able to have the abortion immediately. They just needed to get me assessed by two doctors, and they were able to do that in one day. But the gender re-assignment was more complicated because it has various major legal requirements. One of the formalities is that you have to live for a year in the new gender role to make sure that you’re comfortable with it and really want to go through with it. It’s part of the assessment process.”
“So you waited a year just for the procedure?”
Nat looked uncomfortable with the question.
“Not exactly. I was desperate to escape from the woman’s body that I was trapped in. So I convinced the Chief Administrator to alter the records to make it look as if I’d been living as a man in America. That way I was able to shorten the waiting time for the start of the procedure to seven months.”
“When you say you convinced him…”
“As in, greased his palm.”
“That would explain the large sums of money going out of Dorothy’s – of your – account.”
“Actually, no. Most of that money was for the procedure. Hell, it’s an expensive procedure any way you look at it.”
“So how did they do it? I mean, how did they fiddle the paperwork?”
“Basically they exploited the fact that January can be written as J–A-N and June as J-U-N. And we also took advantage of the different date formats when they use numbers. In England they put the day first, instead of the month. They wrote 06-01-98 instead of 01-06-98. That made it look as if I’d been living as a man since January 6, 1998 instead of June first. If anyone had caught it, they would have hidden behind the excuse that there was a mix-up about the dates.”
Alex thought about this. That would explain why the medical center had been so reticent about confirming Dorothy’s stay there: it might open a whole can of worms regarding their breach of protocol, not to mention the law.
“And in all that time since you came back, you never once contacted Jonathan?”
“I couldn’t afford to. Turn left! All it needed was for one message to be traced.”
“You thought he was being watched?”
“No, of course not. But I didn’t know what had happened at Edgar’s place. I knew they thought it was suicide. But I didn’t know why. To me it was like a time bomb that could explode any time.”
00:26 PDT
“They’re sticking to CA-1!” said the helicopter observer to his ground controller, watching the white moving rectangle in the heads-up display.
“That means they’re probably headed for tree cover.”
“Affirmative, Joe,” said the observer. “But they’ve still got a couple of miles before that. Any chance of CHIPS taking them out with Stop Sticks?”
Nowadays, most California Highway Patrol units were equipped with devices that stop fleeing vehicles with spikes that puncture the tires. The devices were designed in such a way as to cause the tires to deflate gradually rather than suddenly – thus avoiding the danger of a blow-out at high speed. The problem was that at this time of year, California roads got so hot that tires could blow out at the slightest stimulus.
However, it was now night time and, despite the heat wave, the roads had cooled somewhat.
“That’s a negative, Larry – at least not till they come out the other side of Tamalpais.”
“But if they make it to the Valley then he can ditch the car and run for tree cover.”
“Come off it, Larry, people show up on thermal imaging better than cars. He won’t get far.”
“Okay, but I haven’t enough fuel to stay up here all night.”
The ground controller seemed to ponder this for a few seconds.
“He probably knows we’ve got thermal imaging. My guess is he’s trying t
o make it to the coastline.”
Larry laughed.
“You think he’s gonna try and swim the Pacific Ocean?”
“I don’t know what he’s gonna do. I don’t think he’s really too sure either. My best guess is he’s going to try and make it to Stinson Beach or Bolinas and then blend in with the locals at dawn.”
“So why not get CHIPS to stop him?”
“We can’t set up the Stop Sticks in time. Not before Muir Beach. We haven’t got a unit close enough.”
“Okay, well try and stop him at Muir Beach, ‘cause if he makes it to Stinson or Bolinas he might take other hostages.”
“Ten-four.”
“And let’s pray he doesn’t get out on foot at Tamalpais.”
“If he does, it’ll mean he’s killed the hostage. Either that or abandoned him. He won’t take him at gunpoint if he’s hiding in the trees.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“It means we can send in a SWAT team and take the bastard out.”
00:27 PDT
“Okay, so you had hormone treatment to change your features and genital reconstruction?”
“Yes. And I had my breasts removed.”
Nat was more relaxed now, and Alex knew that if he could keep him talking, there was a chance that they could end this peacefully. He could see the cops in the rearview mirror. And the ever-present humming of the helicopter’s rotor blades still rumbled in the night sky overhead.
“So how come they let you keep the breast tissue?” Alex prompted. “That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it?”
“One of the good things about having the Chief Administrator in your pocket is that you can get away with things that you wouldn’t normally. I told them I wanted it and they gave it to me – in a refrigerated bag. You have to remember that they were kind of vulnerable. They’d broken the law by doing the gender re-assignment. I hadn’t broken any law by having it done.”
You Think You Know Me Pretty Well Page 32