You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy (22 page)

16:31 PDT

David was frantically trying to regain access to Dorothy’s Compuserve account, checking and double checking that the Caps Lock key was off and that he was typing carefully.

Could I have mistyped the password? he wondered. Quite possibly. I was terribly excited after all.

He realized that there was only one thing to do. He had to go through the same rigmarole again: gain access through the security questions and reminders.

The date of birth and mother’s maiden name questions came up and he answered them. But when the third security question came up it was no longer asking for the name of the high school, it wanted “Dog’s name.”

She set up several security questions here, David thought. The system cycles through them at random.

Smiling, he typed in “Clayton” and found the email containing the User ID and password reminders for the bank. He made a note of them and then logged out.

Next stop, the bank.

He logged on with the user ID and password and started poking round. There weren’t too many transactions. She had started the account with fifty-five thousand pounds sterling. But then he scrolled down to see what she had spent it on.

Sure enough, the Finchley Road Medical Centre was listed. But it wasn’t their name that surprised him. It was something else entirely.

16:34 PDT

“None of this proves that Dorothy Olsen is alive or even that she survived the night of her disappearance.”

The ADA who was addressing the judge was a woman in her late twenties; dark-haired and smartly dressed, she could have been Martine Yin’s older sister, except that she went a little bit lighter on the makeup to underplay rather than exaggerate her femininity. In her line of work, emphasizing her femininity might seem too blatant a ploy, whereas playing it down enabled her to cash in on her appearance, even while appearing not to.

“We concede that she reserved the flight. But that doesn’t prove that she boarded it.”

Dawn Oxenberg was one of several ADAs in the sex crimes unit of the DA’s office. Although her tone was quiet, her manner and tenacity were as intense as that of any man and she fought her corner like a seasoned pro.

Nat rose to speak.

“Your Honor, most people who book or reserve airline flights subsequently board those flights. Not to do so would be the exception. In that sense it is more probable than not that she boarded.”

He was there alone, because Alex was on his way back from the prison. It was ironic that, having served the restraining order on the warden of the prison, Alex was not there to argue the case in person when the restraining order was in danger of being overturned.

“That might be the case if viewed in isolation,” Oxenberg responded. “But the fact that Miss Olsen was never seen again suggests that it is more probable that she did
not
board the flight.”

“Your Honor, while that may be true of the airline reservation, the same cannot be said of the information we obtained from the Finchley Road Medical Centre itself. They confirmed that Miss Olsen was indeed a patient at the center and that she had an abortion there.”

He sat down and again Dawn Oxenberg rose.

“But this is entirely hearsay. Counsel hasn’t even brought along the secretary who allegedly spoke to the medical center – ”

“She’s covering the phones! We’re a small law firm.”

“Or brought along a notarized statement from her.”

“She’s a paralegal and I would have thought that on this point at least Counsel would have the professional courtesy to trust her and myself on this matter.”

“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 Dorothy 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.