No Way Out

that she was being followed by a young man — a young man whose excitement was growing at the prospect of what he was planning to do.

Wednesday, 19 August 2009 — 13:30

“So let me get this straight,” said Juanita. “You’re saying that you think it’s not a glitch but deliberate tampering?”

“That’s right. And it goes back for the last five years.”

They were crossing the Bay Bridge into Oakland, on their way to the Court Administration Building in Oakland. Juanita was at the wheel.

“But what does that mean? That it’s an inside job? Some one in the software company?”

Andi threw her head back, considering this.

“Possibly.”

“Well I mean, like, what else could it be?”

“Maybe some one created a different version and switched it for the original.”

“What like some one who worked at the Court?”

“At this stage we need to keep our minds open.”

“Yes, but… hold on a minute Andi. Anyone working in the court would only be working in one county. They’d have an opportunity to install it in one county but not a third of the counties in the state.”

“No, that’s why is aid we should keep an open mind. But you’re right that’s not a likely explanation. But maybe somebody hacked in to the computers at the courts?”

Juanita seemed to ponder this in the dim light of the lower section of the bridge as heavy traffic thundered overhead.

“Wouldn’t that be kind of hard? I mean don’t they have… what are they called… Firewalls?”

“Of course. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. But some people have that kind of skill. But they wouldn’t just have to modify the software. They’d also have to find some way to slip it past the firewalls — and that’s probably a lot harder. Firewalls these days are quite sophisticated. A good server would only allow local superuser privileges.”

“So a remote installation would be blocked automatically.”

“Exactly. Anyway, the first thing we need to get the software and see if it has been tampered with — or indeed if it’s merely defective. The problem is that even getting the software might not help us. It could be one of the configuration parameters.”

“You mean like the set up,” Juanita asked.

“That’s right. In fact, that’s what happened in Kent County, Michigan. A configuration error told the database that there was a smaller total pool of prospective jurors and it just cut out the zip codes above a certain number.”

“But then you’d expect it to be just one county; not several, like in this case.”

Andi paused for thought again and then her tone changed as she looked to her left.

“You know something, Juanita. For a legal secretary you’re pretty smart about computers.”

For a minute there was silence and then they both broke into girlish giggles.

“There’s something else I don’t get,” said Juanita. “If some one had tampered with it — or even if it was just plain defective — how come no one discovered it until now?”

They were coming off the bridge now.

“Don’t forget, the only reason I discovered it now was because I noticed that there weren’t enough blacks on what was quite a large panel. Usually the venire panel is smaller to begin with, so this sort of imbalance wouldn’t stand out so visibly.”

“A smart lawyer like Alex would notice it, Andi.”

“From case to case yes. But he’d probably just think of it as bad luck or look for other more mundane explanations. I mean that’s exactly what he did.”

“But you didn’t agree.”

“No and I’ll tell you why not. You see we went to a lot of trouble to get a change of venue and I did a lot of prior research about the demography of the various counties. That meant that I approached the trial with some very specific expectations about the venire. When those expectations weren’t met it stuck out like a sore thumb. And it was particularly surprising because it was such a big venire pool. That meant we couldn’t explain it away as a random deviation.”

“But you haven’t told Alex your theory that the software’s been deliberately tampered with?”

“It’s not a theory. Just a hypothesis.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Not really.”

“Still… I think you should tell him.”

“I’d rather not.”

“You mean you’re afraid he’ll laugh at you.”

Andi didn’t reply. It occurred to her that Alex would confide in Juanita. And Alex was one of the few people who knew that they had put pressure on her to take second seat in the Claymore defense.

Wednesday, 19 August 2009 — 13:35

Alex had been surprised to get back to the office from a deli downstairs to find it empty and a note on his desk saying: “taken a long lunch break to have a chat with Andi.” But he knew better than to make a big deal of it. Juanita was too useful an asset to reprimand. And if she thought it was more important to have a heart-to-heart with Andi than to answer the switchboard then he wasn’t one to argue.

He realized that Juanita was better attuned to women’s issues than he, and he assumed it was something important. He was well aware that Andi still felt uncomfortable about working for the defense in this case. She was in a relationship with a rape counselor and she herself practiced law in the area of victim compensation. She had done defense work in the past, but it obviously wasn’t something that gave her any sense of satisfaction or fulfillment.

And today’s events had been particularly traumatic. It was obvious why Andi might have felt the need to take her to lunch and encourage her to get it off her chest. The important thing was that the case was going surprisingly well, and that was due — in no small measure — to Andi. She had seriously undermined Bethel Newton’s testimony without seeming like a bully. Yes, she had reduced the girl to tears. But the tears came only when it was revealed that Bethel had made a rape accusation in the past and then withdrawn it. That was not something that would sit well with the jury. And they would have serious doubts about Bethel’s claims now.

The office seemed strangely quiet with Juanita not around. The business was in fact growing and he knew that unless Juanita finished her degree pretty soon he’d have to take on an intern, like he had two years ago, or even an associate or partner.

He realized that Juanita would have set the switchboard to record incoming messages. Now that he was back, he ought to set it back to receive calls. But before that, he noticed that the message light was flashing and it said on the LCD display that there was one message waiting. He pressed the button to retrieve it.

“Hallo this is a message for Alex Sedaka. My name is Jerry Cole. I’m calling from Ventura County. I worked in the lab where the samples from the Claymore case were processed. I have some very interesting information about the lab and how those guys operate. Please call me at…”

Alex scrambled to grab a pen and write down the number.