No Way Out

by David Kessler

  This was unfair, and they both knew it. They both understood the desire for revenge all too well. But it was strange how guns always counted for more than bandages on the human balance sheet.

  Now it was Andi who assumed a tone of sympathy.

  “You’ve got something on your mind haven’t you?”

  The voice was gentle. It was one of those spontaneous mid-conversation role reversals that characterized their relationship. Before, it had been Gene playing the firm but loving mother to Andi’s frustrated daughter. Now Andi was playing the sympathetic wife to Gene’s tormented husband.

  “I had a case this morning...”

  She trailed off, but Andi could read the rest of the sentence in the silence.

  “They threw you in at the deep end?” This was something that Andi had been hoping for in her own job. But it wasn’t to be. Instead it was Gene who had the dubious privilege.

  “Wha’d’you expect. Like I said, we’re understaffed.”

  Andi put a gentle hand on her lover’s bare arm and noticed a scratch there.

  “What’s bugging you? You’ve seen it all before. You know the score by now.”

  A pained expression flipped briefly across Gene’s face.

  “I’ve seen this before all right,” Gene muttered bitterly. “It’s the kind of case that sets off the talking heads on TV. Feminism versus race politics. A white girl raped by a black man.”

  Andi, who had been taking a sip of her orange juice, gulped and put the glass down.

  “The press’ll have a field day. It’ll probably turn into another ‘black rights versus women’s rights’ circus.”

  “And don’t I know it Andi! The defense will raise the specter of the Scottsboro Boys and the prosecution will use everything they can throw at the defendant from Mike Tyson to O J Simpson.”

  Andi nodded sympathetically.

  “The old political correctness conundrum.”

  “And caught in the middle of it is one frightened little girl, not yet out of her teens.”

  “You think you can handle it?”

  “Oh I can handle it all right. I’ve been there before, remember. The question is can the victim?”

  “And can she?”

  Gene shook her head, sadly.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for.”

  “Have they got a suspect?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has she ID’d him?”

  “Yes. Only they released him pending DNA results.”

  Andi sat forward, part eager, part concerned. She had known Gene long enough to pick up the nuances in her words as well as her tone.

  “Well if she ID’d him then maybe she’s tougher than you think.”

  “She’s not tough. She’s just naïve. She doesn’t realize that she’s going to carry the can for two centuries of racial persecution.”

  Saturday 6 June 2009 – 11:00

  Albert Carter was an old man. Not a wise old man, not a crusty old man, not even really a frail old man. Just an old man who had lived a full life and been around the block a few times. He wasn’t in the best of health, having done his share of smoking and drinking, before he gave it up when he noticed it slowing him down a bit. But he was a lonely old man, having lost his first wife to divorce and his second to the grim reaper.

  Oh yes, the Reaper.

  There were many weapons in the Reaper’s arsenal, and Albert Carter couldn’t even pronounce the name of the disease that had claimed Hildegard.

  His children were still around, but he had lost them to professional migration. He saw them at Christmas and on his birthday, but that was pretty much it. One lived in Utah and one in Boston. The one in Utah was a store manager and the one in Boston some kind of academic. He understood the work of the former more than the latter, but both had families and neither came out west very often.

  So he spent his days, watching TV, reading the newspaper and – with diminishing frequency – bowling with his old friends. It was a dull, repetitive chapter towards the latter part of his book of life, but he had his basic needs and he didn’t want more. All he yearned for was a bit less arthritic pain. Oh yes, and he wished that the cops would do more to round up those gang-bangers who were turning the neighborhood into such an unpleasant place – he knew who they were… in a generic sort of way.

  It was while he was watching the TV that he saw a report about the Bethel Newton rape case. They were saying how a famous local talk show host had been arrested and then released. They didn’t have any footage from the police station, but they showed a still photograph of the girl and stock footage from the man’s talk show. Apparently he’d been arrested after shooting the latest show, yet to be broadcast.

  And that was when Carter got the feeling.

  He didn’t remember the details too clearly – the whole thing had happened just too fast. But there was one thing that he remembered.

  For a moment he hesitated, realizing that criminals could sometimes be vengeful towards people who “snitched.” But then he remembered his own, all-too-frequent words about the cowards who don’t speak out when criminals destroy their communities. He didn’t want to be like one of those people whom he routinely criticized. He knew now that it was his civic duty to speak out and he didn’t want to be like all the shirkers.

  So he dragged his weary bones out of the comfort of his tattered, dust-ridden armchair and trudged over to the phone.

  Friday 12 June – 9:40

  Detective Bridget Riley was a victim chaperone, but not a counselor. Her duties involved being the principal point of contact between the investigating officers and the rape victim. The detectives investigating the case put most of their questions through Bridget. When they had to put questions directly or when others had to have contact with the victim, such as during the medical examination, the victim chaperone had to be there.

  She had a sporty, athletic look about her, not the soft look of a movie queen, but the tough look of kick-boxer. Male colleagues found her attractive and her face, highlighted against a raven-haired background, was potential photographic model material. But what was a blessing in the world of Show Biz, could be something of a curse in the locker-room culture of the police.

  Because of her looks, Bridget had been the target of sexual harassment by her colleagues. And like the proverbial “Boy named Sue” it had made her tough. She could take the complements with a smile and a shrug and when they became vulgar she hit back with a glib rejoinder like “in your dreams buster.”

  When one of the rookies was bold enough to try and pin her against a locker, showing off in front of three of his friends, she deterred him from further action with a well-placed fist to the groin. He had been anticipating the knee and had been poised to block it with his leg, but the fist took him by surprise. Then she added insult to injury by asking him if he wanted her to kiss it better. The rookies never bothered her again; nor had anyone else in the department during the four years since.

  At this moment, Bridget was sitting at her desk typing up a report on a domestic violence case for the DA’s office, when a female officer came over from the fax machine and dropped two sheets of paper on her desk. Bridget was a stickler for clarity as well as detail and so absorbed was she in getting the wording right that she let the fax lie there for three minutes while she played around with the phraseology of a single sentence.

  Sarah Jensen, the Assistant District Attorney in charge of the Domestic Violence Division at the Ventura County DA’s office, was no less determined than Bridget to nail these “bastards” who beat their wives or girlfriends. But Sarah Jensen was a realist. She was also very ambitious. She knew that unsuccessful prosecutions damaged the reputation of the department, not to mention giving her a poor track record, personally.

  She also knew that failures of prosecutions in such cases, gave right-wing politicians and news editors the chance to accuse the department of a feminist witch-hunt against men in the name of liberal political correct
ness.

  So Bridget knew that she had to word the sentence carefully to give the impression that it was a winnable case. Whether it actually would be won was up to a lot of people: the prosecutor, the witnesses, the judge, even the jury. But Bridget was determined that the case should go to trial.

  When she eventually looked at the fax, her eyes lit up. She scooped it up and rushed out of the room.

  Friday, 12 June 2009 – 10:30

  Elias Claymore’s Mediterranean-style villa stood in landscaped grounds on the sand of Montecito’s most prestigious beach and had breathtaking views of the ocean from nearly every room. Although the coveted syndication deal for his TV show had yet to materialize, he had done well out of his best-selling autobiography, his three follow-up books and the movie about his life.

  To show for it, he had a huge living room with fireplace, bar and ocean view, a beachside kitchen, two beachside bedrooms each with a fireplace and a third at the back. Even the office had an ocean view. There was also a separate guest apartment, a large beachfront deck, a sunset view seaside spa, majestic trees and flowering gardens and 75 feet of private beach front.

  Sitting on a lounging chair on the deck, looking out onto the ocean and thinking about his present surroundings, Elias Claymore realized that crime and repentance had served him well. It was a far cry from the ramshackle hut where he had been born and the rat-infested ‘hood where he had grown up. But how far had he really come?

  “You can take the man out of the ghetto,” the racists had taunted. “But you can’t take the ghetto out of the man.” And much as it pained his troubled conscience, the racists were right on this one, albeit in the most literal sense. For a ghetto is actually a place of retreat where one is surrounded by ones own kind yet constantly under threat from those outside. And right now he felt besieged.

  His mind drifted back to what his life had once been like. He used to think that the pain was all over. He had never forgotten what he had done. But after all these years he thought it would no longer come back to haunt him. Yet, the events of the past week had proved him wrong – and it was like a slow, drawn-out torture.

  He tried to soften the pain by reminding himself what had driven him to do the things he had done and become the man he became. But those memories were even more painful. Like the time he was nine when two white policemen raped his mother before his eyes. He had tried to stop them, but one of them had grabbed him and twisted his arm behind his back, forcing him to watch while the other “pig” had pinned his mother to the ground, ripped her clothes and forced himself into her as she screamed and begged for mercy.

  She had brought up Elias all alone, without the help of a man, for most of Elias’s childhood. She had always been a strong figure in his early years, dishing out the punishment but also protecting him from the bigger kids in the ‘hood. But she couldn’t protect herself from this. And Elias Claymore learned in those few minutes that the mother, who had been like a pillar of support for the entire world as he knew it, was powerless in the face of this invading force in their own home.

  And through his childish eyes, little Elias knew why. She was a woman – and women were weaker than men. He couldn’t expect a woman to protect him. It was for men to be strong and to protect women… or violate them. That was how it was in other households. He had seen the local pimps slapping their girls around and he quickly learned that this was the natural order in the world. It was normal for men to dominate women.

  But these men who had invaded his house and were now raping his mother were not their men. They were an alien presence. These were the “pigs” who beat up blacks just because they were black. These were the people who called him “nigger” and made him afraid whenever they walked by, knowing that he daren’t respond to their racist taunts. And now they were here in his home, doing... this thing... to his mother.

  He couldn’t blame her for being weak. But it was her fault that they didn’t have a man to protect them. She had driven him away. That’s what one of his “brothers” had told him. She had called Elias’s father a “no-good, drunken deadbeat” and thrown him out of the house. But now he realized how much they needed a man in this household… and they didn’t have one because of her.

  He realized in that moment that one day he would be a man. He would be big and strong and then there’d be hell to pay! Because then he’d be able to fight back... and he’d hit them where it hurt. He’d hit their weak ones – their women.

  He remembered telling his mother this… and he remembered the hurt in her eyes…

  When he came out of the daydream, he did not feel good; he was hurting. And not just on the inside. Even his body was aching from the painful memories.

  He felt that something must have shaken him out of his daydream. But he couldn’t be sure what it was. Then it happened again and he realized: it was a loud, aggressive knocking on his door.

  “Who is?” he called out nervously as he approached the door.

  “This is the police! We have a warrant for your arrest.”

  Friday, 12 June 2009 – 13:00

  “This time we’ve got a witness,” said Lieutenant Kropf.

  “Who?” asked Alex.

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  Alex had flown down to Los Angeles from San Francisco at barely a moment’s notice as soon as he heard of Claymore’s second arrest, having told his client not to say a word until he got there. He knew that the cops would try their usual tricks – telling the suspect that they were more likely to believe him if he spoke freely on the record, without getting all “lawyered up.” But Alex had been firm.

  “Don’t fall for it,” he had warned. “The issue is not whether they believe you, but whether they’ve got a case. They’re capable of talking themselves into anything. You just stay cool and hang in till I get there. If they’ve got no case, they can’t act. If they think they’ve already got one then nothing you can say will make any difference.”

  Claymore had told Alex that he had stayed silent – and by the way he said it, Alex believed him.

  “What exactly did this witness see?”

  Alex assumed that some one hadn’t just stood there watching a rape and doing nothing about it.

  “He saw your client running away from the crime scene,” said Kropf, regretting it a moment later.

  Alex picked up on it. So the witness was a man… or a boy. Alex wondered if it was a child. That might explain him watching and not taking action. But Kropf had already said that he had seen Claymore running away from the crime scene, not that the witness had seen the rape. That was a very different thing.

  Because Kropf had specifically said “saw your client” – not “saw some one.” That meant that an ID had already been made.

  “Wait a minute, you put my client in a line-up when I wasn’t there?”

  Alex knew perfectly well that they could do a photo line-up without the accused or his lawyer being present. But this was unusual when the suspect was already in custody. Then again, maybe the arrest took place after the line-up.

  “We didn’t need to,” said the lieutenant, squelching Alex’s speculations. “He recognized him from the news reports.”

  They hadn’t said anything about a witness at the time of Claymore’s first arrest. And even if he was right about the identity of the man running away, how did he know that it was from the scene of a rape? If he had known at the time, would he not have stayed to help the victim? Or given his name to the police? And would they not have said something about a witness at the time of the first arrest? And put Claymore in a line-up? But now they were saying that this man had recognized Claymore from the news reports. That meant that he didn’t stick around at the time.

  Why not? Had he been afraid? Why would he be afraid if the rapist had run away? Was he afraid to get involved? Was he afraid of the police? Was he a criminal himself? Had he really seen something? Had he even been there? Or was he one of the legion of freeloaders who come out of the woodwork in hi
gh profile cases, looking to make a quick buck?

  “Can I see his statement?” asked Alex.

  “We haven’t charged him yet.”

  This was true. If they did charge him, Alex would ask the DA. It would then become what was known as an “informal request” under Section 1054.5 of the Penal Code. That would give the DA fifteen days in which to give the defense a copy of the statement. And if he still hadn’t complied after that, Alex could take it to a judge and seek immediate disclosure or a delay proceedings until the disclosure requirement was met. The judge could also tell the jury about the DA’s failure and allow them to draw the own conclusions or even bar the witness from testifying. In extreme cases, the DA could even institute contempt proceedings against the DA or could. However, all of that was academic at this stage, because, as Lieutenant Kropf had said, they hadn’t yet charged Claymore – and it was possible that they never would.

  Still, Alex had to protect his client from something called “impeachment by silence.” He could do this, by getting his client to invoke his right to remain silent. Even though he had made a previous statement, he could re-invoke the right now and be protected under the Caruto ruling. But he had another tactic to spring on them.

  “If you show us the statement now, my client might be able to offer you some explanation. But if you don’t show it, we don’t actually know what we’re supposed to be answering, beyond your vague description.”

  Kropf looked unimpressed at this feeble attempt to turn the tables.

  “Explain what? Why your client was at a crime scene at the time of the crime? Or why he told us at the time of his first arrest that he was at home?”

  Alex decided not to push it.

  “The ball’s in your court Lieutenant.”

  The door opened abruptly and Bridget entered. She signaled the lieutenant over and had a whispered word in his ear while the other detective kept an eye on Claymore. Alex noticed that she was showing her superior a piece of paper. The lieutenant was nodding seriously and the expression on his face looked grave. Alex suspected that this scene was being staged. He had seen this sort of thing dozens of times before, if not hundreds.