No Way Out

of his notoriety. And yet in terms of professional ethics she was doing nothing wrong. It was these negative thoughts that went against the canons of her profession. People in her line of work were not supposed to get emotionally involved in their cases.

Fight like hell for your client no matter what you personally believe. But if they go down for the crime, you’ll know at least that they were given a fair trial and the system worked.

And what if, on the other hand, you manage to save them when they may in fact be guilty? How do you live with that?

She knew the answer. The system has its own kind of natural selection in the long run. A criminal who makes a lucky mistake may go one of two ways. They might learn from the experience of almost going down for the crime and be so frightened by the experience that they go straight. Or they might get cocky and think that they can carry on breaking the law with impunity. That might seem bad, but the more they break the law, the greater their chances of getting caught in the future.

That’s the way the system worked. It didn’t catch all the bad guys and it didn’t necessarily always spare the innocent. But in a rough and ready sort of way it balanced itself out and maintained some semblance of equilibrium..

And yet it made her feel uncomfortable. Even one injustice was one too many, especially when it was a crime like rape. But Andi knew that she couldn’t allow herself to get personally involved — neither with the client not the alleged victim. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. But not everyone can switch off their emotions like that.

The hardest thing was that she wasn’t sure if Claymore was guilty or not. He talked like an innocent man, even in the privacy of a conference with his own lawyers. And yet Bethel Newton insisted that he was guilty. The scientific evidence also suggested guilt, albeit inconclusively.

As she withdrew from these painful ruminations, she became aware of her new surroundings. Somehow she had arrived at the rape crisis center without noticing the journey. As she pulled up in the parking lot at the back of the building, she dreaded to think how she must have been driving on the way here.

She got out of the car and swept into the building, still rigid with the tension that she couldn’t shake off. An armed female guard recognized her through the video-intercom and pressed the button to open the first of the reinforced glass doors. Andi entered the “airlock” as she thought of it and the guard opened the inner doors to let her into the building. They exchanged a smile as Andi went up the stairs to the first floor.

A few steps at a languid pace took her to Gene’s office halfway down the wide corridor. But when she looked through the small porthole-type window in the door to see if Gene was alone, she got a surprise. For there was her lover engaged in earnest conversation with Bethel Newton.

Wednesday, 26 August 2009 — 21:30

Louis Manning was in a private room at the Alta Bates Medical Center, handcuffed to the bedrail, with a uniformed police officer sitting by the bed at all times. He had now been charged with the attempted rape of Martine Yin, but the arraignment had been postponed as he was in no position to be moved. His broken leg was still in traction. But at least it was a private room.

He smiled at the irony that he was getting better medical treatment as a criminal than he ever had as an ordinary citizen. However, he knew that his leg had healed enough to permit escape as soon as the opportunity arose. The trouble was that the opportunity had yet to arise. He felt confident that he could walk — or at least limp — but he certainly couldn’t run.

And the fact that he was handcuffed to the bed when not eating, meant that he could not run away when the officer left his bedside, as occasionally happened.

He had considered other options such as stabbing the officer in the eye with a syringe and then grabbing the keys for the handcuffs. There were sometimes syringes within reach, especially when they injected pain killers into the bag of his saline drip. But he dismissed the idea on two grounds. Firstly, the syringe was never inserted into the saline bag and then left unattended. When the saline bag was injected there was always a nurse or a doctor nearby. Secondly, even if there were no other persons nearby, sticking a syringe into the cop’s eye would cause the officer to scream with pain, thus attracting the attention of others, thereby making escape more difficult. He had to contend with the reality that he might not be able to walk but only hobble and for that reason he needed to escape quietly, without attracting the attention of anyone.

But he was working on another plan, and he was implementing one stage of it now as the nurse approached him with his night sedation. Because a hospital is a busy place, even at night, the patients were offered night sedation to help them sleep. The sedation came in the form of a tablet to be orally imbibed. But what Manning had been doing these past few days was not swallowing the tablet, but rather holding it under his tongue and swallowing the water that was offered with it.

It was a tricky operation, but he managed it with ease, once again. Under the tongue, swallow, hand back the plastic cup, wait twenty seconds or so while the nurse went away, reach for a tissue and spit it out into the tissue under the guise of coughing or sneezing. When the cop went to relieve himself, he would add the pill to the collection that he had accumulated, wrapped in a single tissue in the bedside cabinet. He was building up a nice little consolidated supply of sleeping pills and when he was ready, he would make his move.

Wednesday, 26 August 2009 — 21:35

Andi stood there for a few seconds, thoroughly confused.

Gene wasn’t supposed to have any contact with Bethel Newton. She was under a legal injunction.

What was Gene doing talking to Bethel now? And did this mean that she had been in contact with her the whole time leading up to the trial? How long had this been going on?

She needed to know. But would Gene tell her? If Gene was doing things behind her back would she open up now? Should she confront Gene and demand to know what was going on?

The trouble was that Bethel Newton was in there too. If she went in now and confronted her lover, then what sort of effect would it have on Bethel? It would be frightening… traumatic. And Bethel had been through enough trauma to last a lifetime.

What right do I have to add to her suffering by storming in there now to demand answers?

Her beef was with Gene.

And in any case, if she went in now and they had a scene, she had a duty as an officer of the court to notify the judge. That would lead to a mistrial and the whole process would start again, with Claymore still in custody. She had a duty to him too. He was in prison, in solitary confinement, living every day in fear that another inmate would kill him. If she caused a mistrial now, the next free slot for the trial might be months away. They couldn’t even argue that this would be a violation of his right to a speedy trial — because the defense would have caused it, or at least contributed to it. She couldn’t condemn Claymore to several more months in jail awaiting trial. She had to find a way to deal with this sensibly.

An idea struck her. It might still lead to a mistrial, but it was worth a shot.

She turned sharply and walked out.

Wednesday, 26 August 2009 — 21:40

“So it looks like both the Claymore and Manning tests are invalid,” said Sarah Jensen.

She had tried to call Detective Riley earlier in the day, after the courtroom debacle with Steven Johnson. But she was told that Bridget was in transit, and she couldn’t reach her on her cell phone. Bridget was now back at