No Way Out

Manning.”

“Have you traced him?”

“No need. That was the name of the perp. We checked his driver’s license and it’s him all right.”

“Okay, so he also owns an aquamarine Merc and he tried to rape a reporter who’s covering the Claymore trial.”

Bridget was no longer as excited as she had been a few seconds ago.

“Now hold on a minute. I said the plates belonged to the perp. But they didn’t belong to the car. They were New Mexico plates and they belonged to his old car — a Pontiac Firebird.”

“You should’ve checked the VIN.”

“What kind of a jerk do you take me for? Of course we checked the VIN.”

“And?” prompted Bridget, not daring to get her hopes up.

`“It’s registered to Elias Claymore.”

“Holy shit!”

Several other people in the open plan office turned to look in the direction of Bridget’s booth when she uttered this exclamation. Profanity wasn’t exactly taboo in a police station, even for women, but it was rare for Bridget.

“Wait, it gets better! You see, I thought it was kind of a big coincidence, this guy having possession of Claymore’s car and trying to rape a woman who just happens to be covering the Claymore trial. So I pulled the records on the Newton rape and guess what?”

“I already told you, I’m not into guessing. Just tell me what you got.”

“This perp, Louis Manning… he’s the spittin’ eye of the artists impression of the man the Newton girl described.”

Bridget practically choked on her sandwich.

“But we’ve already got the man who raped Bethel Newton.”

“You mean you think you’ve got the man.”

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“All I know is we’re holding a man on an attempted rape charge who was driving Claymore’s stolen car and who looks just like the original description of the rapist.”

“So did Claymore when he was younger,” said Bridget, realizing that she was rationalizing.

“So what should we do?” asked the rookie.

“About what?”

“Louis Manning. I mean we can’t just ignore what we’ve got. We have to check it out.”

“Have you taken a DNA sample from him?”

“Not yet. We’re waiting for a warrant.”

“Why?”

“We weren’t sure if we had probable cause.”

“Are you kidding? On a 261?”

“261-A — it was only attempted rape.”

“That should still be enough to pass a Hayes test.”

“My captain didn’t want to take any chances.

“I just thought of something. What if they ask why we need a DNA sample when he never got past second base.”

“Don’t worry. What we said is that it’s to compare with skin and clothing contact samples. But in the meantime I just thought you should know.”

“Okay, well as soon as you get the warrent, take the sample and run it. Have the lab upload it to the California SDIS. Tell them to do a Y-STR comparison with the Bethel Newton rape evidence sample. In the meantime, I’ll tell Sarah Jensen what you’ve told me.”

“Sarah Jensen?”

“The ADA. She’s one of ours. She’s first seat and I think you’ve got a local guy — Nick Sinclair — in second.”

Bridget remembered that some cops resent out of zone intrusion. Still, he’d taken the trouble to contact her so he obviously wanted to help.

“Okay,” said the patrolman. “Just one thing?”

“Shoot.”

“What if you find something you don’t like?”

The patrolman sounded genuinely concerned.

“I don’t think we will. But we’ve got to cover all the bases — ‘cause if we don’t, the defense certainly will.”

Thursday, 20 August 2009 — 13:30

Alex had lunch with Martine at the Slanted Door, the classy Vietnamese restaurant in the Ferry Building overlooking the Bay: a generous plate of Niman Ranch shaking beef with broken jasmine rice for him and grilled five-spice chicken with Massa Organics brown rice for her. He was trying to reassure her after what he thought to be the traumatic experience of the attempted rape. If he had been eating alone it would have been a “Miss Kentucky” chicken burger at Taylor’s, in the Embarcadero Center where he worked. But he always went up-market when he was with a lady, even if it was strictly platonic. In this case it was a mixture of the romantic with the paternalistic: the eager lover and the protective older man.

But she had made it clear that she wasn’t the delicate little flower that he seemed to think she was. She reminded him a couple of times during the conversation that she had fought off the attacker with pepper spray and it was Louis Manning who had fled in agony and was now in a hospital bed with a broken leg and collar bone.

But she had agreed to tell the network to take her off the Claymore case because of a conflict of interest. That meant that she and Alex were now free to start dating again. Alex even hinted that he wanted her to move in with him, but Martine made it clear that she valued her freedom too much for that. Alex well understood. He also remembered her reaction the first time she visited the house in Elizabeth Street, when she saw Melody’s strategically placed picture in several places. They had never discussed it, but he had made it clear that his late wife was still too important in his memory to remove the pictures and she had made it equally clear that she wasn’t sure if she could compete with a ghost.

So they had let it stand at the status quo, dating but not living together, taking it one day at a time, faithful but not committed to each other. And now they were poised to resume where they had left off.

It was mid-afternoon when Alex returned to the office. Juanita was at her desk, reading a law book as part of her night school course. She reacted, almost imperceptibly, to his entry, but didn’t greet him. Alex sensed that something was up — almost as if she was deliberately ignoring him.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Andi has some one in there. Jerry Cole. You remember, you invited him over?”

“Jerry Cole? Oh yes. From the forensic lab in Ventura. I thought he was coming this evening.”

“His flight arrived at two thirty and he didn’t have anything else to do. So he phoned in and I put him through to Andi. She got him to come by taxi and she’s been talking to him for the last twenty minutes.”

They heard a door opening. It was the office that had been assigned to Andi — the one that Nat Anderson had once used.

“Alex, is that you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got Mr. Cole with me.”

He noted the use of the respectful title and surname and sensed that their guest had a fragile ego.