Free You Think You Know Me Pretty Well aka Mercy by David Kessler

him.
    “Has it occurred to you that if you’d given him more attention and affection he might not have become what he became?”
    He didn’t know afterward what had possessed him to say it. But in some strange, indefinable way, he was glad that he had.
    Sally Burrow looked as if she’d just been pole axed. Her lower jaw dropped open and the cigarette fell to the floor.
    “You’ve got a fuckin’ nerve comin’ into my home and talking to me like that!”
    “All I meant was—”
    “I don’t need you preachin’ to me! Get the fuck out of here! ”
    She was on her feet now, lurching toward him, and he noticed that she was not a small woman by any stretch of the imagination. He twisted sideways like a corkscrew as he rose from the seat to avoid her menacing onslaught and sprinted the few steps to the doorway.
    She was still chasing him out in the yard when he had opened up a distance of twenty yards between them. Puffing through her smoker’s lungs, to be sure, but still chasing.
    He was just glad she didn’t have a gun.
     
     
     

12:31 PDT
     
    The young man sat cross-legged on the floor before the shrine in his apartment in Daly City, his eyes closed. He was trying to remember Dorothy, remembering her kindness toward him even when he was at his lowest ebb. He remembered one time when she had faced particular brutality. He had watched from a safe distance but had been too frightened to say a word. Afterward he had run into her arms crying and it had been she who had comforted him . There were tears in his eyes now as he opened them.
    He looked at the clock on the wall. It wouldn’t be long now. Soon he would have closure. In his pocket he had a piece of paper that was most precious to him. It was a spectator’s pass that allowed him to go to San Quentin and witness the execution.
    The TV was on in the background. But the sound was turned down. He wanted to be left alone with his thoughts until it was time to go to San Quentin. But at the same time, he wanted to stay in touch, to hear about further developments on the case.
    Clayton Burrow had a very savvy and tenacious lawyer, he had heard. And a smart and savvy lawyer wasn’t going to give in until the fat lady sang. He wondered how Burrow was feeling as he awaited execution. What was going through his mind? Was he afraid? Terrified? Or maybe he was just resigned to it. Maybe he just didn’t care. Just like he didn’t care about others or how much pain he had caused them.
    Stop it! He ordered himself.
    But he couldn’t stop it. It had been in the news so much these last few days that it was hard to think about anything else.
    On the rolling TV news, Dorothy’s face appeared for the umpteenth time. It gave way a few seconds later to that of Martine Yin, with the governor’s San Francisco office as her backdrop. Jonathan would have ignored it, but the words “breaking news follow-up” flashed up, causing him to grab for the remote control. In haste he pressed the button to turn the sound up.
    “So far the governor’s office refuses to confirm even that there is an offer on the table. But we can confirm that Burrow’s lawyer Alex Sedaka visited Burrow in prison right after his meeting with the governor and left the prison less than half an hour later. At this time we have no information on whether Burrow has accepted the offer.”
    The young man’s face was dissolving into confusion as he struggled to understand what Martine Yin was saying.
       Offer? What offer?
    “Similarly, we have been waiting outside the governor’s office for any word of the outcome from this quarter. One thing we do know is that even if Clayton Burrow were to reveal where he buried the body, they would still have to dig it up and confirm that it was the body of Dorothy Olsen before granting him clemency, but – ”
    “ No !” the sound echoed from the young man’s mouth, partly the plaintive whine of a frustrated child, partly the angry roar of a wounded lion. Blinded by