No Way Out

bring a new trial with a fresh jury.

Ellen Wagner thought about it for a moment.

“I will take this matter under advisement. There’s no point jumping the gun until we know whether or not this was deliberate tampering.”

The judge was about to adjourn the hearing, when Alex remembered something.

“There was one other small matter, Your Honor.”

“”Yes, Mr. Sedaka,” said the judge, sighing irritably.

“The defense would like to call Steven Johnson, the lab technician who processed the scene sample from the nail clippings.”

Sarah Jensen became highly animated at this.

“Your Honor we have had no notice of this — and Mr. Johnson is not on the defense witness list. If the defense wanted to call him, they had ample time to notify us.”

“Your Honor, something has come up that makes it vital to the defense case that we call this witness — if the trial goes ahead. In any case, the prosecution has forty eight hours before the trial continues to look into this witness. Furthermore it’s not as if this witness is unknown to the prosecution. He works at the very lab that they have relied upon in this case. And he was the lab technician who processed the evidence sample upon which the prosecution has placed such heavy reliance.”

“Yes, I can’t see any valid reason to deny this request, Miss Jensen. You may call Steven Johnson Mr. Sedaka. Will that require an adjournment for the five day notice period Ms Jensen?

“Mr. Johnson is an employee of the state and I’m sure the Ventura lab would be ready to release him at short notice.”

“In that case this Court is adjourned until ten O’clock Wednesday morning.”

Monday, 24 August 2009 — 11:50

The forensic laboratory in Ventura was as busy as it had been the day they had processed the nail clipping sample from the Bethel Newton rape case. The initial evidence samples from the vaginal swabs had already been processed with the intention of uploading the profile into the National DNA Information System database and cross-checking against other crimes. But after the failure to find any sperm DNA had thwarted that. They would have pressed ahead if they had felt confident of finding any autosomal DNA from the perpetrator in the crime-scene sample. But they realized that the nail clippings were probably only good for Y-STR DNA, and this could not be uploaded to the NDIS.

So it was only when they had a suspect and after they had processed the reverence samples that they got round to the amplification, separation and detection of the nail-clipping evidence sample.

Now, today, it was like any other day at the lab. Evidence was checked in, registered, filed, in some cases processed and reports written up. It was like a factory. The staff had no emotional attachment to any of the cases, whether it was about blood alcohol, illegal substances or DNA. They simply did their bit, according to the work rota assigned to them.

Consequently, Steven Johnson was thoroughly engrossed in his work, when the process server appeared. Ordinarily such unauthorized personnel would not have been allowed into the lab. The server was a bailiff attached to the court and as such was able to flash her credentials at security and get waved through without even putting in a call to the DNA section where Steven Johnson worked.

“Steven Johnson,” said the bailiff, fulfilling the technical requirement that she identify the subject by name, even if he had already been pointed out to her.

“Yes?”

She noticed that he was smiling. Young men often smiled when they saw her. She took advantage of his disarmed state to hand him the envelope, that he took without question but with a look of curiosity in his eyes.

“You’ve been served.”

The bailiff was such a battle-hardy and seasoned veteran of this kind of mundane leg-work that she didn’t usually pay attention to the recipient’s reaction to being served with a subpoena or court order. The only thing she was on guard against was the possibility of the recipient becoming violent. In this case, Johnson’s slight frame and meek manner precluded that danger. But still, she noticed that even before Johnson opened the envelope, he already looked afraid.

Monday, 24 August 2009 — 21:30

The hotel room was in semi-darkness, the light coming from a floor lamp. Andi was sitting on the couch working at on her laptop computer. It had been a frustrating day, culminating in the judge postponing her decision on the dismissal motion. Now they had to wait till tomorrow to get the source code.

And there was no guarantee that they would get it. LegalSoft would almost certainly file an appeal. Whether the appeal court would agree to here it was another matter. But if they did then they would grant a stay and set a date for a hearing with all parties present. That could drag the matter out for another week. The best thing they could hope for was that the appeal court would refuse to hear the appeal or grant a stay and the company would have to hand it over by tomorrow morning at ten. The trouble was that hope was all they could do. They certainly couldn’t count on it.

Of course the defense could also go on the offense and file an interim appeal against the court’s refusal to grant their dismissal motion based on what they had already found out. But there was no guarantee that such an appeal would be granted — the judge’s reasoning regarding the intent-based test was legally sound. Besides, it was premature. It was just that even waiting till ten O’clock tomorrow was maddeningly frustrating for Andi.

In the meantime, tonight, she just wanted to unwind and forget about it. So she logged on to her Internet account and downloaded her E-mail. There were several messages from her Internet friends from Europe and the Far East. But there was also one that struck fear into her heart yet again when she saw the name: Lannosea:

So your dirty little plan to get that rapist shit-bag off on a technicality didn’t work? And that leaves you back at square one, you cheap little cunt. That’s what your sisters think of you, you know. That’s really all you are! You didn’t really think you’d away with it did you? By the way, I was the one who changed the software to keep the niggers off juries. And if you try and fuck with me bitch, you’ll be fucking with the wrong woman. You understand?

Lannosea

The language was getting more vitriolic. This person was angry. But who was it? The name Lannosea — and her reasoning about it being another of Claymore’s victims — suggested that it was a woman. But the language was what one would expect of an ultra-misogynistic man.

And how did Lannosea knew about her attempt to get Claymore off “on a technicality?” How many people knew about that? And which of them could be doing this? Which of them might say something indiscrete to let other people know?

She couldn’t think. Her head just wasn’t clear enough. She needed help; she knew that now. She reached for the phone and called David Sedaka. He knew about computers and the internet. He could help her. And she could trust him, she knew that.

“Hi listen David, it’s Andi here… Andi Phoenix… fine, how are you… good… listen I need your help, that is, I’d like your help… if you think it’s something you can do. But you must keep this completely secret from everyone, at least for the time being.”

Over the next few minutes, they set up a plan to try and trace the person sending the messages. It started with her copying the messages she had already received to him, including the full internet header. This showed the path that the messages had taken over the internet. It couldn’t trace the message all the way to its source. But it might just lead them back to the service provider for the place where the messages were sent from. This would