twenties and then changed her mind and said it was a man in his fifties. Did you have anything to do with this?”
“What do you mean?”
Gene was clearly nervous. She knew what was happening; they both did.
“Did you put her up to it?”
Justice Wagner stepped in.
“Miss Vance, you do not have to answer that question, as it may incriminate you on charges of contempt of court and obstructing justice.”
“But you
“Why would I do that?”
Her voice was trembling now. The roles had now reversed completely. She was the weak one and Andi had finally done the thing Gene always feared: seize control.
“Is it not a fact that twenty seven years ago, Elias Claymore raped you?”
The courtroom was filled by a huge collective gasp.
“Elias Claymore raped
“But before that, he raped three black women to ‘practice’ his technique — as he described it in his autobiography. And you were one of them, weren’t you Gene? You were the first. But unlike most of the other victims, you never reported it.”
Sitting between Andi and Alex, Claymore looked nervous — indeed terrified.
“He never paid the price for what he did.”
Several jurors leaned forward in their seats. Andi waited for a moment, unsure of how far to go. This was the woman she loved, and she was destroying her… in public.
“What gave you the idea of framing Elias Claymore, after all these years?”
Gene choked as she tried to speak, and tears began to roll down her face as she struggled to regain her composure.
“After Bethel looked at the mug shots in the first photo line-up… and didn’t see the man who raped her… she came back to the Rape Crisis Center to see me. She was crying. I knew what she felt like, because I’d been through it myself. I knew that feeling so well that I couldn’t bear to see it again… So I just rushed up to her and met her halfway across the room. I put a comforting arm around her… just like I did with another frightened little girl many years ago.”
Again she paused to damn up the flood of tears. Then she took a deep breath and continued.
“I offered her a set of darts to throw at our ‘poke his eyes out’ dart board. That’s a cork board with pictures of known rapists on it. The caption under the board says; ‘Rapist scum-bags of history.’ It’s basically just a therapeutic tool we use to help rape vict- rape survivors work off their pain.
“Bethel started working off her anger by throwing the darts at the board. When she’d thrown a set of three darts at the board, she went over to pull them out and start again. But when she got there and saw the pictures up close, she stopped. You see she thought she recognized a face on the board. It was a picture of a young man and she thought it was the man who raped her. She started talking to me excitedly telling me that it was the man.”
“But it wasn’t,” said Andi. It was a statement, not a question. She had more or less figured it out.
“No. It couldn’t have been the man who raped her because it was an old picture of Elias Claymore. I knew he was in his fifties now and she’d said the man was in his twenties. So I realized that the real rapist had to be another man who just happened to look like Claymore when he was younger. And I had to break this news to her after she was sure that she’d found the right man. I had to let her know — right after she got her hopes up and was sure that the rapist was about to be caught — that he wouldn’t be, because it was the wrong man. I had to look at the crestfallen look on her face when I told her that it was just a man who — when he was younger — looked a bit like the man who raped her. I had to watch her face contort in anguish and disintegrate into a torrent of tears when she took it all in. I had to see her beautiful young face ripped apart as she realized that the rapist wasn’t going to be caught and punished after all.
“And I remembered how Elias Claymore — the man who raped me — wasn’t punished for that crime either… because, unlike most of his other victims… I never had the courage to come forward in time.”
“And that’s when you got the plan? When you broke the news to Bethel that it couldn’t be the man whose picture she had seen on the dart board?”
“When I saw her reaction.”
“Okay, when you saw her reaction, you decided to get her to accuse Claymore.
“Yes. I saw the chance to make him pay for what he did to me.”
“You
“I didn’t manipulate her. I gave her the choice. I told her what happened to me and suggested the idea that she could help to punish the man who raped me and then later, if he was ever caught, some one else could help punish the man who raped her. But I didn’t force her. She
“For her? Or for you?”
“Do you really have the right to ask me that question? Do you know what it’s like to bottle up the pain all these years, knowing that the man who inflicted the pain hasn’t been properly punished? Do you know what it’s like to watch him transformed by a public relations machine from a villain into a national hero? Do you know what it’s like to-”
She broke down, unable to hold back the tears no longer.
Andi looked on helplessly, realizing that she had gone further than she intended. She looked sideways at Claymore and wondered if it had been worth it. Did he really deserve her help? Did Gene really deserve to be destroyed like this to get Claymore off the hook?
Claymore, for his part, was shrinking into his seat, as if trying to disappear from view, as if he at least had a sense of shame. But did that really matter? Surely it reaches a stage when it’s too late for regrets? When one cannot be forgiven no matter how much remorse one feels or shows?
But then again, Andi realized, perhaps that was true of her too.
The judge’s voice came out of nowhere to fill the silence with a gentleness that seemed appropriate for the situation.
“Does the defense have any more questions?”
“No Your Honor.”
“Ms Jensen?”
“No Your Honor.”
“Under normal circumstances I would order the witness taken into immediate custody. However in view of the circumstances, I think the DA might want to deal leniently with her. Is that the case?”
“Yes Your Honor,” said Sarah Jensen, rising slowly from her seat.
“In that case the witness is excused.”
Gene was led shakily from the witness stand by a bailiff, sobbing wildly as she walked away. As her cries faded into the distance, Sarah Jensen requested a side bar.
“Approach the bench,” said the judge said.
They approached the bench for a side-bar, Sarah, Nick, Andi and Alex. Sarah Jensen spoke.
“Your Honor, I’d rather not put the Newton girl back on the stand. If it was hard for that last witness, then we can all imagine what it would be like for her.”
Ellen Wagner nodded.
“If you meet with Ms Newton in private,” said the judge, “would that be sufficient to give you what you need for a motion to dismiss?”
“There is still one outstanding question, Your Honor,” Sarah Jensen replied, “The DNA. I know that there’s only a one in five hundred possibility of a random match, but there are some issues we’d like clarified.”
“Your Honor,” said Andi, “I think I may be of some assistance here. As you know, yesterday I was arrested by the FBI on Federal charges of illegally accessing a government computer — specifically the server for the local DNA database of the Ventura Sheriff’s Department crime lab.
