You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy (4 page)

For a few seconds he hovered, unsure of what to do next. The normal procedure was for the lawyer for the condemned man to meet the governor either alone or, more usually, with one of the governor’s staff present. But the sight of Mrs. Olsen in this room had thrown his entire game plan out the window.

“Well sit down, sit down,” said the governor amiably, pointing to a chair.

Alex shuffled awkwardly toward the vacant chair. He sat down and looked straight at the governor – anything to avoid meeting Mrs. Olsen’s unforgiving eyes. Dusenbury spoke again.

“I’ve been following the Burrow case closely. I was most impressed by your work.”

“Most of the work was already done. I only came in on it six weeks ago.”

Dusenbury, Alex remembered, was a lawyer by training, and by all accounts a wily old bastard.

“Well all I can say is that you’ve been pretty busy in those six weeks,” said Dusenbury. “If the press reports are anything to go by.”

“Mr. Governor – ”

“Chuck,” the governor interrupted. “
Everybody
calls me Chuck.”

“Sir…” He couldn’t bring himself to address this man as Chuck. “I know this is going to sound rather rude, but I was expecting this to be a meeting in which I could plead the case for clemency for my client. This isn’t usually the way it’s done.”

Alex gave Mrs. Olsen a quick glance to make sure that she hadn’t taken offense at his remark. Her eyes remained neutral, but there was the merest hint of a nervous smile, as if she were reaching out to him in a way that he couldn’t understand.

“I know, son, I know,” the governor responded. “But this is an unusual case, ain’t it?”

Alex couldn’t argue with that.

“I’ll put it to you real simple,” said the governor. “The reason Mrs. Olsen is here is because she’s asked me to offer your client clemency.”

09:43 PDT

There are things I have done in my life that I’m not proud of. There were things I shouldn’t have done. I was a product of my upbringing. I wasn’t always taught right from wrong. And I was taught to hate people for things they had no control over or for things that I thought were bad because that’s the way I was brought up.

But whatever wrongs I am guilty of, murder is not one of them. I may have been a bully in my youth, but I was never a murderer. Dorothy Olsen suffered at the hands of many people, myself included. But I did not kill her.

Clayton Burrow stopped writing and put the pen down, his hand aching. He opened and closed the hand several times to alleviate the cramp. But it was nothing compared to the pain inside: pain … fear … guilt? He didn’t really know. He just had this constant urge to cry. He wouldn’t do so of course – at least not now. Crying was unmanly and, with a prison guard stationed outside his cell twenty-four hours a day, he wasn’t going to let the bastards see him broken. But at night, when the lights were dimmed (they never switched them off altogether on death row) he would bury his face in his pillow and give in to the weakness that he managed to hide from others in the light of day.

He looked down at the letter and scanned the words. At the time of writing, it had felt like the right thing to say and the right time to say it. But re-reading his words now, all he could think was how pathetic it all sounded. This was to be his final letter, to be read out before his execution. Or was it? Maybe it was to be his final plea for clemency to the state governor. Maybe it was to be his letter to Mrs. Olsen if his request for clemency was granted. He wasn’t really sure.

Was it meant to be a letter of appeasement or a letter of defiance … an apology or a denial? What did he
want
to write? He didn’t even know
that
. All he knew was that he was feeling bitter and angry … and afraid … and …

Alone.

That was the worst part. In all his twenty-seven – nearly twenty-eight – years on this earth, he had always been one to surround himself with friends. Or perhaps “cronies” was a better word. He liked to surround himself with people who cheered him on and told him he was an okay guy. Never a
great
athlete, he was nonetheless a
good
one, with a muscular build, defined rather than developed. He was also blessed with a smooth, “golden boy” handsome face that belied his rather spiteful nature. And he had enough puerile wit and energetic sporting prowess to be popular with the girls and the guys alike. He was always on the right side in the high school clique, always with the majority in any lynch-mob situation, always in with the in-crowd rather than the geek or freak on the butt end of the bullying – be it verbal or physical.

He was very rarely alone. And that meant a lot to him. It meant more than he ever realized, because he was actually quite afraid of being alone. But he never knew this until he found himself in a situation in which he was unable to avoid it. Throughout his happy, time-wasting, fun-loving years at high school, he had never even had to think about it. Because he was never alone, he never knew how badly it would affect him when he was.

Looking back on it now, he probably had an inbuilt defense mechanism against solitude. Whenever he was alone he would rush to find human company. He was always the first to stride up to a friend or a group and stick his face into the conversation. He was always the one to approach the new kid in the class and size them up as friend or foe: friend to be used as a sounding board, foe to be bullied, or at least harassed.

Even in his own home he avoided solitude. He was an only child, but he always had friends over for sleepovers. More often than that, he slept over at friend’s places. He preferred that because he was embarrassed by his mother. He didn’t know who his father was – neither did his mother.

Now, he had to dwell in solitude for the first time in his life, he had to confront his fears. And this was a young man who had never known fear before.

But his fear of solitude – the fear that had always been there but that he had concealed from himself for so long – was now confronting him like an inner demon who would let him have no peace.

His mother didn’t visit. She had written him out of her life. And his old school friends – the ones whose lives he had brightened up with his antics – seemed to have no desire to share a moment’s company with their fallen idol.

But it wasn’t solitude as such that he feared. Solitude merely opened the door to his own personal Room 101 – that secret, terrifying inner chamber where one’s worst fears become a reality. It forced him to engage in
introspection
. And it was introspection that he feared the most. Human company had merely been a way to stave off the need to look inside himself at the miserable squalor of his own soul. But stripped of that shield, introspection was all he had. Now at last, in the deafening silence of solitude and living under the shadow of death, he had to take a look at himself for what he really was.

And he didn’t like what he saw.

He saw a man who had wasted every opportunity that had presented itself. He saw a man who had been needlessly cruel toward the weak. He saw a man who had achieved popularity with the mob at the expense of the frail and the vulnerable.

But most of all he saw a man who had no chance to redeem himself.

He knew that Dorothy Olsen must also have had inner demons, probably far worse than his. But he had just trampled all over her. And for what? For some cheap puerile thrills that meant nothing to him now.

He wished he could have his life over again. He wished he could have those moments back so that he could make wiser – and kinder – decisions. But God grants no second chances … if there even was a God.

He looked down at the letter and realized how little it really said – how little of what he really
wanted
to say.

Seized by anger, he picked up the letter and ripped it to shreds.

Through the bars, the cell guard watched with an implacably neutral look on his face.

09:45 PDT

Alex sat there in stunned silence. Whatever he had expected, it had not been this. Clemency? Before he had even put his well-rehearsed arguments? And the mother of the victim had specifically
requested
it.

Then reality kicked in.

“She’s asked me to offer your client clemency.”

The words had been chosen very carefully.

“When you say ‘asked you’,” Alex said cautiously, “does that mean you haven’t decided yet?”

“You know my views on the death penalty.”

“Yes, sir, I do. And I’ve always respected your courage in taking that position.”

He regretted saying this as soon as the words were out of his mouth. It sounded sycophantic, and the governor was too shrewd a politician not to see right through it.

“And you also know that I’m pretty much my own man, especially now that I’m quitting politics.”

Alex nodded. Like many others, he wasn’t quite sure if he believed this, but now was hardly the time to give voice to his skepticism.

“Nevertheless, it would be inappropriate for me to set myself up against the will of the legislature and the courts.”

Alex panicked at the thought of this opportunity already slipping away.

“But you said – ”

“
Unless …
there was some compelling reason. You see, son, even though I have the luxury of being able to
ignore
public opinion, I believe that I have a duty at least to
respect
it. Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson: ‘a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them’. The people who elected me may not
agree
with my decision. But I owe it to them at least to
explain
it to them. History will judge me harshly if I fail in my duty to put my reasons on record – and those reasons had better be good.”

Alex took a deep breath and regained his composure, trying to read the governor. He wasn’t sure if the governor was really thinking about his place in history. But now was not the time to get diverted down a blind alley of speculation over his motives. Dusenbury was throwing him a lifeline – or at least waving it in his face. That was all that mattered.

“So you need reasons,” Alex edged forward hesitantly. “And as yet you haven’t got them.”

“That’s right.”

“And you want me to supply them.”

“No, I want your
client
to supply them.”

Alex was beginning to understand.

“Is that why you said ‘
offer
’ my client clemency … rather than ‘give’?”

Dusenbury smiled.

“You picked up on that real quick. That’s just what it is, son: an offer.”

“So presumably,” Alex pressed on, “there’s a quid pro quo?”

09:48 PDT (17:48 British Summer Time)

The clinic was quiet as the late afternoon melted into early evening. But the spacious TV room, with its well-scrubbed pale blue walls and clean gray leather furniture, was sufficiently sound-proofed and isolated from the wards to have the TV on. They had it on all day and all night. The nurses on night duty especially liked to take short coffee breaks there, flopping down on the armchairs and watching late-night TV. They preferred the all-night news stations – British or American – to the late-night quizzes and casinos, which were little more than premium line rip-offs.

Susan White, a middle-aged nurse of the “old” school, flopped down in front of the TV with a cup of coffee and started skimming through the channels, trying to catch up on the news. While surfing, she caught the tail end of a report about a clinic in America being picketed by hordes of anti-abortionists, or “pro-lifers” as they liked to call themselves, and realized how lucky she was to be here in Britain.

She liked her coffee strong but milky and the machine never quite got it right. She also liked it sugary, and that the machine usually
did
get that right. It was often hard for her to get a coffee break, even though she was entitled to three per shift, because the other nurses frequently came to her with their problems, both personal and professional. So she made sure to get her caffeine fix before her shift started.

Using the remote, she turned the sound down, mindful of the fact that at this time most of the in-patients were sleeping. On the screen, a well-groomed, thirty-something woman, with somewhat underplayed oriental looks, was talking to the camera. She was wearing a smart blue suit, with a mid-length skirt and slightly tight jacket, designed to emphasize her firm, athletic figure, without
over
-emphasizing it.

But then a face came on that caught Susan’s attention. A photograph of a young woman, almost like a mug shot. Susan felt an uneasy stirring as her eyes focused on the screen.

She picked up the remote and turned up the volume. The voiceover of an American female reporter could be heard. It was one of those generic, female anchorwoman voices, the kind that all sound alike, the trained confident voice that always carries a trace of sarcasm or bitchiness, but only the merest hint. Or maybe it was just the hard edge that was required to make it in what once had been a man’s world.