Hi Sandi. First of all thanks for those suggestions. The way you rewrote the passage does sound more professional. HOWEVER, I should explain that the reason I have the reporter speak in that somewhat arrogant tone of certainty (“Dorothy Hafaman never had a happy life” and “never to be seen again,”) is precisely because the reporter IS arrogant – as her subsequent behaviour will show. I wanted her to talk in the tone of an arrogant “I know everything” kind of reporter, because that’s what she is. I want her character to be consistent when she phones the governor and stalks the lawyer later on in the story.
And thanks for the overall encouragement!
Crime, Thrillers & Mystery / You think you know me pretty well -3rd part
You Think You Know Me Pretty Well
by David Kessler
Copyright © 2007 David Kessler
9:50 PDT (17:50 British Summer Time)
The clinic was quiet in the late afternoon. But the spacious association room, with its well-scrubbed pale blue walls and clean grey leather furniture, was sufficiently sound-proofed and isolated from the wards to have the television on. They had it on all day and all night. The nurses on night duty especially used to take short coffee breaks there, flopping down on the armchairs and watching the late night TV. They preferred the all night news nations to the late night quizzes, which were little more than premium phone line rip-offs.
In practice they had a choice of four: Sky and BBC from Britain or CNN or Fox from the US. In practice most of the nurses preferred the US news stations. They were bombarded with British news all the time and as it was rolling news and nothing much happened at night, it was more interesting to watch the news from the US.
Apart from anything else it gave them the feeling that they were actually in a foreign country. There were sometimes really interesting local stories. Not wars or the economy or international affairs, but scandals involving basketball players or juicy murders like the man who murdered his pregnant wife or the even more lurid case of the woman who tricked a pregnant woman to win her trust, lured her back to her house, murdered her and then conducted amateur surgery to get the woman’s baby.
Some of these cases were quite savage, but they offered a cathartic relief from the stresses of the job. To hear about other people’s troubles in a form so far removed from their own lives and human contacts was in some way a more comfortable experience than dealing with the patients at the clinic. One thing that was particularly reassuring was to realize how lucky they were in England not to be picketed day and night by hordes of anti-abortionists, or “pro-lifers” as they liked to call themselves. So when Nurse Susan White, a large, imposing veteran of the old nursing school, flopped down in front of the TV with a cup of coffee, it was to disconnect from the outside world before the start of her shift in ten minutes time. She certainly had no intention of getting involved in a major, inter-jurisdictional legal dispute.
She liked her coffee strong but milky and the machine never quite got it right. She also liked it sugary, and the machine usually did get that right. It was quite hard for her to get a coffee break, even though she was entitled to three per shift, because the other nurses always came to her with the problems, both personal and professional.
The TV was on in the background, as usual. At the moment it was tuned to Fox News. But the sound was down because there was no one in the room and the last people there had been a trio of nurses who preferred to gossip than to watch the idiot-box. A woman was talking and then a face came on that caught Nurse White’s attention. It was not a talking head, but photograph, almost like a mug shot. Sue White wanted to hear more.
She picked up the remote and pressed the button to increase the volume. The voice over of an American female reported 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. It was as if bitchiness was a required professional quality. Or maybe it was just the hard edge that was required to make it in what once had been a man’s world.
“Dorothy Hafaman never had a happy life. She was bullied at school, her parents broke up when she was in her teens and she never had any friends. It was said that her closest relationship was with her brother. Just over nine years ago, on the twenty third of May, 1998 – the day of her high school prom – Dorothy Hafaman disappeared, never to be seen again.”
The picture changed to that of a man whom the nurse didn’t recognize, and this one looked even more like a mug shot.
“Clayton Burrow is the man accused of murdering Dorothy Hafaman. At the time when she first disappeared, she was classified merely as a missing person. It was widely assumed that the harsh treatment she received at the hands of her classmates, like Carrie in Stephen King’s famous novel, prompted her to run away and go into seclusion or anonymity. There was some speculation that she had committed suicide, although no body was ever found.”
Susan White raised the Styrofoam coffee cup to her lips with a growing sense of unease. The picture of Burrow disappeared to be replaced by the well-groomed, dark-haired reporter in a smart blue suit, with a mid-length skirt and slightly tight jacket, designed to emphasize her firm, athletic figure, without over-emphasizing it.
“Foxy news” was how one of the young male nurses had described it, whenever he saw her. The joke was wearing thin now, although it had sounded clever the first time.
In the background the grim, bland façade of San Quentin state penitentiary was visible.
“However,” the reporter continued, “all that changed just under eight years ago, on the nineteenth of October 1999, when the police, acting on an anonymous call, found parts of Dorothy Hafaman’s body in Clayton Burrow’s freezer. They also found other incriminating evidence, hidden under the floorboards, which Burrow was unable to explain, such as a bloodstained knife with Burrow’s fingerprints and bloodstained panties with semen traces. DNA matched the semen to Clayton Burrow and the blood to Dorothy Hafaman. There was also evidence of a prior conflict between Burrow and Dorothy Hafaman, which the prosecution claimed went to motive.”
Nurse White felt something wet and hot on her wrist and fingers. She realized that her hand had shaken and she had spilt the coffee. She put the cup down and wiped her hand on the front of her uniform. But she didn’t take her eyes off the screen.
“Despite his protests of innocence, Burrow was unable to explain away the evidence against him and on the twentieth of February 2001, he was found guilty of murder with special circumstances. Just over a week later he was sentenced to death. Now he is scheduled to die in just over fourteen hours. Martine Klein, Fox News, San Quentin.”
Nurse White practically fell out of her chair.
9:52 PDT
“As you say, Alex, a quid pro quo.” Dusenbury turned to Mrs Hafaman. “Esther, maybe you’d like to explain.”
Esther Hafaman sat up slowly. It was a struggle, but she forced herself. Alex sensed her difficulty as he watched her painful movements. He adjusted his chair to face her, even moving slightly to make it easier for her to look at him.
“Mr. Sedaka,” – her voice was shaky – “I do not know you, but you are a good man. At least I have been told that you are a good man.”
Alex nodded politely. There was no much he could say really. To agree would be arrogant; to disagree, ungracious. In any case that was clearly just the preamble to what she wanted to say.
“I know that you only came in on this case recently and I know that you have a duty to help your client.”
Again he nodded, trying to make it re-assuring. Whatever she was about to say, he knew that it was painful. It must have cost her a lot to reach the decision to ask the governor to grant clemency to the man who had murdered her daughter.
“Mr. Sedaka, in Hebrew your name means both ‘charity’ and ‘righteousness’ and I hope those are ideals that you live up to.”
Like Esther Hafaman, Alex was Jewish and although he had long ceased to practice the religion of his childhood, he still remembered much of what he had learned about it in the first 14 years of his life. He knew about the meaning of his name, or rather the Hebrew word ‘tsedaka’ from which the family name Sedaka was derived.
“I am dying Mr. Sedaka. I have cancer of the pancreas and the doctors have told me that I have at most a few months left to live. In her lifetime, I was estranged from my daughter, for reasons too complicated to go into. One of my biggest regrets is that we never got the chance to make it up.”
“Was this shortly before she died?”
Alex didn’t know why he had asked it. But he sensed that it was more than just idle curiosity.
“No this was several years before she died. I always thought – I always hoped – that the passage of time would heal the wounds. But it was not to be. We were never reconciled.”
She took a deep breath and appeared to be struggling to speak.
“To outlive ones own children is a terrible thing Mr. Sedaka. But if there is one thing worse than to outlive ones children, it is to part from those we love on bad terms. And that is the pain that I will carry with me to my grave.”
Her eyes were welling up with tears now and Alex almost felt as if he too were about to cry.
“It is too late for me now to be reconciled with my daughter and I do not know if we will be at peace with each other in the next life, because I do not know if there is a next life. But there is one thing that I want to do in this life and that is to give her a proper burial… or… at least to know where she is buried.”
Now, at last, it was all falling in to place. The body was never found, and although the evidence was well-nigh incontrovertible, Burrow insisted that he was innocent.
Alex turned to the governor.
“So let me see if I’ve understood this correctly. You want me to get my client to reveal where he has dispo¬— where he has buried the body. And in return for this, you have asked for Burrow to get clemency and serve a sentence of…”
“Life without parole?”
Dusenbury nodded. Obviously the governor wasn’t going to give Burrow a complete amnesty. Alex turned to Esther Hafaman.
“That is all I ask, Mr. Sedaka. That is a mother’s dying wish.”
Alex lowered his eyes, afraid now that he was going to cry. How, he asked himself, could my client have been so evil as to do what he did? How could he be so cruel as to put a mother through this?
But he quickly cut off the thought. It was not for him to judge his client. It was not even for him to believe that his client was guilty as long as Burrow maintained his innocence. Of course he had a duty to put the offer to his client. Maybe now at last Burrow would come clean. Alex had never really believed that Burrow was anything other than guilty. Of course as a lawyer, Alex had a professional duty to act on his client’s instructions and to argue that his client was innocent as long as that was what the client maintained. But there is no authority on earth that can issue a formal ruling that is binding on human nature, much less on human thought.
Alex had assumed that Burrow was guilty before he had even taken on the case, just from the news coverage when the original trial took place and through the long and tortuous appeals process. By the time he was asked to take the case, he already had a pre-disposition of Burrow’s guilt. But he was persuaded to take the case by the pleading of his legal intern and by the formal personal request of Burrow himself, which was made for reasons which Alex had never quite understood.
Although Alex had speed-read the trial transcript, working in an intense pressure-cooker atmosphere as the execution date loomed up ahead, nothing he had read had in any way changed his mind about Burrow’s guilt. Although the case was too complicated to be described as “open and shut” it was certainly sufficiently overwhelming to be reliable. There was no doubt in Alex’s mind: Clayton Burrow had murdered Dorothy Hafaman.
The only question was would he now come clean, now that he had a chance to save his miserable life in exchange for something so small? There was no chance of him being retried and acquitted, no chance of him being released from prison, so it would cost him nothing to tell the truth. And if there was a God, it might even save his soul.
Alex knew better than to approach the matter with anything so presumptuous as expectation. He would approach it, instead, with cautious hope.
But first he had to be sure that he had understood the terms of the deal correctly. He turned towards the governor.
“So let me get this straight. The deal is, if Clayton Burrows reveals where the body is buried, he gets clemency and will serve a sentence of life without parole.”
“That’s right,” Dusenbury responded with a nod of his patrician head.
Alex considered for a moment, asking to have the terms set in writing. But from the look on Esther Hafaman’s face he knew that this would be needlessly cruel. And from his memory of the governor’s firm handshake, it was also unnecessary.
10:03 PDT
“Life without parole,” Alex had said. The man in the car couldn’t believe it. And the governor had replied: “That’s right.”
There was no doubt. The offer was on the table and the governor meant it.
The man’s mind was reeling. When the governor invited Alex to come early for the meeting, he had wondered about what was going down. He had known that it was likely to be something unusual. But he hadn’t expected that.
He kept going over the conversation in his mind, even though he had it recorded and could listen to it at leisure.
His name was Nathaniel Anderson and he was not a G-man. Neither was he a cop, nor a journalist nor a hired assassin nor anything that might in any way be thought of as cloak-and-dagger. He had recently graduated from law school and was working as a legal intern while preparing for his bar exams. He had done a lot of public defender work in his final year of law school, helping indigent client’s plea bargain down their sentences, in the proverbial meat-grinder that was the criminal law system.
It had taken time to win their respect. They saw him as a stuck-up white boy, like most lawyers. But he had worked like a dog and won them over through his sheer tenacity and hard work. And because he worked for the public defender he had also built up a powerful list of contacts in the criminal community. It was a list that had come in useful.
So the governor was offering Burrow clemency in return for revealing where the body was located. He wondered how the public would react to that – wondered also if the governor or Alex Sedaka would publicize it before hearing Burrow’s response.
Probably not.
Nathaniel looked around at the traffic on Golden Gate Avenue. Parked a few cars down the road was a limousine. He looked up. The sun was higher now: the day was wearing on. Just under 14 hours till Burrow was due for the lethal injection. It left him cold. He felt nothing. Neither joy nor regret. All it meant was closure. And it was closure that he really wanted.
He looked back at the limousine and wondered if it was the vehicle that had brought Mrs. Hafaman here. He didn’t want to see her. But that was all right. He knew that he would be gone in a minute.
Keeping his eyes on the rear view mirror, he waited while the next couple of minutes went by. Finally there was activity from the entrance to the building and several people emerged at the same time: Mrs. Hafaman, the limo driver and Alex Sedaka. Alex watched while the limo driver led Mrs. Hafaman back to the limo, opened the door to let her in, closed it behind her and went to the driver’s seat. He continued watching while the limo drove off past him, heading east towards Larkin Street.
As Alex turned away, Nathaniel strained to see the look on his face in the rear view mirror. In fact, Nathaniel could easily have looked back directly, but he preferred not to do so. Instead, he pulled out the earpiece and put it away in the glove compartment.
In the rear view mirror he saw Alex approaching. Nathaniel reached forward for the ignition key as Alex opened the front passenger door and got in.
“The office?” asked Nathaniel.
“San Quentin, Nat.”
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GVaughn reviewed Version 4 -
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I enjoyed reading this chapter. I have not read the previous posts but I was able to jump in as if I had.
No major flaws jumped out at me. Pacing was good, sentence structure and word selection was fine…good character development of the lawyer. Describing the lawyer as a “white boy” was a little odd. Is that because he was dealing with minorities and that is how they saw him? Otherwise I think the assumption is that he is white unless otherwise noted. Good narrative…felt as if I was reading a published novel.
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oknapp reviewed Version 4 -
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Very engaging, realistic characters and easy to follow so far. Ther scene where the nurse sees the mug shot draws the reader in.
Dorothy Hafaman never had a happy life. She was bullied at school, her parents broke up when she was in her teens and she never had any friends. It was said that her closest relationship was with her brother. Just over nine years ago, on the twenty third of May, 1998 – the day of her high school prom – Dorothy Hafaman disappeared, never to be seen again.”
Dorthy Haffmen’s life was never a happy one According to those who knew her her. Those closest to her say her problems had begin after her parents divorce. A teenager then, Haffmen was a bit of a loner and was often bullied by her fellow students. Sources claim that Haffmen maintained a close friendship wuit her brother. Please. please don’t get mad at me for this suggestion. I am a journalism minor and i thought this way might sound as sophisticated as the rest of your writing. Also o wouldn’t say dissappeared never to be seen again. You might say she dissapeared and has not been seen by anyone since (name a date.). Ok i am interested an engaged. I can’t wait to see what the connection between nurse white and the accused is. Your writing is clean and easy for the most part. i am enjoying the mystery that must continue Sandsi
Enigma28 reviewed Version 4 -
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This chapter enthralled me. You really have a great talent. I saw no underlying gramatical errors. Your character development was excellent. You gave a great insight into the mind of your main character and reflected emotions well. You had great descriptiveness, it was like watching TV.
Great piece
Jodie
jessrod87 reviewed Version 4 -
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Wow I must say I think your one of my new fav writers lol. Now I should also say im not gona comment on the wrong placement of commas or watever that’s wat spell check is for. I will say I’ve only read a lil bit of your story and already I wanna read more. You set up a scean nicely and you deff have a way with words. I would only have 2 say keep workin at it as that’s wat I live by, the more you write and the more you work on it the better you get and your already really good :)
paigemc reviewed Version 4 -
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Overall- I didn’t like the changing POVs between the two different attorneys and then the nurse in England. Her piece was the least cohesive because it seemed to be in a very loose third person, whereas Alex is a tight third person. Nathanial—he is a confusing third person because all the references to “he” and “the man in the car.” If it is supposed to be mysterious, to me it failed. It was just unfocussed. Only because I liked the first two chapters would I continue reading based on this chapter.
they were.. or “pro-lifers” as they liked to call themselves. Misplaced article. The “they” in the primary sentence is the nurses, the next ‘they’ you mean the pro-lifers, but I think grammatically it would be the nurses
the grim, bland façade of San Quentin state penitentiary was visible. How does the British nurse know this is San Quentin prison?
Too much duplication of Alex’s thoughts on Burrow’s guilt. I think you told us at least three different times that Alex thought Burrow was guilty, even though …
“Life without parole,” Alex had said. The man in the car couldn’t believe it. And the governor had replied: “That’s right.” These sentences are confusing. Who is the man in the car? If this entire paragraph is ALex talking, or in Alex’s head, it needs to be more clear. If there are two people in the car, then this needs to be more than one paragraph. Okay- I read on and discovered it was Nathanial.
BigMamaMags reviewed Version 4 -
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This is yet another great installment of your story. There was a good continuation from the last chapter to this one. The situation in the office was what might have been expected, but the addition of the nurse in England as well as the Televised news report, gave some background as well as question the validity of Burrows guilt. I have an underlining feeling that Alex is still working through some personal issues, although I’m not sure exactly what those are. Also his driver, Nathaniel is a bit of a curiosity. I hope he’s one of the good guys after all. This continues to be a good story that peaks my interest. I will continue to follow this story to see where it leads.
SwordMistress reviewed Version 4 -
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This is really getting exciting. I can’t wait for the next chapter. I love how you leave us hanging with the introduction of Nurse White and the info about Nathaniel. This gets better with each chapter. All I could find to improve upon was one sentence.
“But the spacious association room, with its well-scrubbed pale blue walls and clean grey leather furniture, was sufficiently sound-proofed and isolated from the wards to have the television on.” Awkward.
Jacamo reviewed Version 4 -
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This reads very well as part and parcel of a full length murder mystery.The nurses in England are a very good twist hinting at international intrigue.The language is good and contributes to the readability overall.I think that the setting for the Governors office should have been in Sacremento(the Capitol) just to add to the urgency and time constraints,just my opinion!! But the story is good and tends to draw the reader in.
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