No Way Out

Friday, 21 August 2009 — 22:15

“Mm, that feels good,” said Andi as Gene’s hands moved up and down, her thumbs squeezing Andi’s shoulders and upper back.

The room was dimly lit. Andi was lying on the bed in her underwear, while Gene gave her an intense yet soothing and relaxing massage. When Gene had turned up unannounced at Andi’s hotel room, a beaming smile had lit up Andi’s face. But now as she recalled the week’s events, the stress and strain of the trial began to take its toll.

“And the judge isn’t going to do anything about it unless we can prove that there was deliberate tampering,” Andi continued. “But the thing I’m worried about is that we just find some accidental glitch in the software that’s reducing the number of African-Americans on jury panels.”

By tacit agreement, Andi and Gene had suspended their rule against talking about the case together, although Gene was still prevented by an injunction from any contact with Bethel.

“But at least that’ll help in the future,” Gene comforted.

“Yes but it won’t help in this case.”

“You shouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Claymore isn’t exactly the most deserving client.”

“But he is the client and I’ve got a duty to do my best for him.”

“Then do your best. But don’t beat yourself up over it if the judge doesn’t accept your arguments. You’ve done your best by presenting the arguments. The rest is out of your hands.”

“It’s just that I can’t help feeling that this is some sort of a test of my integrity.”

Gene’s hands stopped working Andi’s shoulder muscles.

“You’re not on trial Andi. Elias Claymore is. The only duty that you and Alex Sedaka have to Claymore is to give him the best of professional services.”

“But how can I be sure that I am giving my best?”

“Judging the by the TV coverage of the trial, I’d say you’re going above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Then how come I feel this case slipping away from us?”

“Maybe that’s because the outcome of the case isn’t in your hands.”

Andi turned her head slightly.

“How do you mean?”

Gene’s voice became surprisingly gentle.

“Has it occurred to you he might be guilty?”

“It occurred to me. But I think — I know as a lawyer I should be thinking with my head, no my heart — but I think that he’s innocent.”

“Are you sure that isn’t just what you want to think? The evil man redeemed by repentance? Good ol’ Christian forgiveness and the fairy story ends with ‘they all lived happily ever after.’?”

Gene was about to start massaging again. But Andi swung round into a sitting position, her feet touching the carpet. She looked lost in thought.

“Are you coming to bed now?” asked Gene.

“Not yet. I forgot to check my E-mail today.”

And with this, Andi stood up and went over to the desk. She switched on her laptop and logged on to the office network at Levine and Webster to download her E-mail. There was only one message, but when she saw it, she felt that claw of fear and anger ripping at her insides. The screen contained the following message.

You are still helping that slimy nigger rapist. By helping him you are stabbing your sisters in the back and your blood will be upon your own hands!

Lannosea

The first thing Andi felt was a jolt of anger. But as she thought about the message, she remembered that she had never really made any effort to find out who this Lannosea was. Whatever the cause of the anger of this “Lannosea”, it must have a background. She knew that Lannosea was the name of one of the daughters of the ancient English queen Boudicca. But why would anyone choose such a name?

Determined to find out more. she typed in Boudicca and looked up the wikipedia entry. It didn’t give the names of Boudicca’s daughters but it stated that when their father Prasutagus — a vassal of Rome — died, the roman’s seized his kingdom, flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters.

Raped her daughters?

So that was it!. “Lannosea” was a rape victim. — maybe even one of Claymore’s former victims!

All of a sudden things were different. Andi realized that she was not being taunted by some evil creature motivated by hatred, but rather by a victim who was motivated by anger.

And she couldn’t hate a victim.

She tried to tell herself that she was only doing her duty. Once she took on the case, she had to give it all her professional skill. But that sounded like the pathetic excuse of every other pragmatist who ever sold his conscience down the river for a quick buck or an easy life. She knew now that she had been rationalizing when she justified taking the case. She had become like one of those people whom she despised — a mercenary, devoid of conscience.

As this ugly realization swept over her, she broke down in tears, her face resting her on her arms and her arms on the desk, her whole body shaking from the violent sobbing.

Saturday, 22 August 2009 — 09:00

It was Saturday morning, and David Sedaka was in his apartment in Berkeley, studying the decompiled jury selection program. He didn’t yet have the source code — LegalSoft had at least until Tuesday to produce it and even then would probably appeal. So all he had to work with in the meantime, was the decompiled source code, without any programmer comments and with hopelessly counter-intuitive names for the variables and arrays.

Still, now that his working week was over, and he was relaxed and in his own home, he was able to give it his undivided attention The trouble with most modern “Object oriented” computer programming is that it doesn’t really have a beginning, a middle and an end. It jumps around and branches off in all directions. But it does have a so-called “main object” which is the control center of all this branching. So if he wanted to debug the program it made sense to start off by looking at its “Main” object and see where these branches led.

It was at the Main object that David was staring now, as he tried to figure out how it held the other parts together. To make it clearer he started drawing a flow chart, showing how the parts connected and branched. In effect he was reverse-engineering the way in which the program was created in the first place.

It was then he noticed a small discrepancy. He chased it up by looking at how the program handled duplicates — that is names that were in both the voting register list and the Department of Motor Vehicles list.

And that was when he realized!

Saturday, 22 August 2009 — 09:20

“Just ignore it,” said Martine.

Alex had been about to reach for the phone when Martine spoke.

He had invited her for Friday evening dinner and she had stayed the night, entranced by his home-made, gefilte fish, chicken soup with kneidelech and chicken schnitzel with potato kugel. His mother had taught him to cook, but it was from Melody that he had learned that sometimes the way to a woman’s heart was through her stomach. He hoped that the ghost of Melody had been smiling down on him last night, as he