No Way Out

“That could mean anything.”

But he was rationalizing now.

“No think about it a minute. Who else would he go after? He could hardly go after the cops who busted him: he wouldn’t dare. He has no reason to go after Bethel Newton, ‘cause she never accused him. It was others who ID’d him. He wouldn’t go after Detective Reilly or Sarah Jensen ‘cause they’re probably too well protected. So who else does that leave?”

Alex could think of several answers. There was Andi, who had discovered the tampering at the DNA lab that had got the police and DA to look again at the DNA evidence. And of course Alex was going out with Martine, so getting at Alex would be a way of getting at Martine… and vice versa.

No, he told himself. That doesn’t make sense! He doesn’t know anything about me and Martine!

But then another thought occurred to Alex: what if he was wrong? After all, that — as much as her coverage of the Bethel Newton rape case — might explain why he had tried to rape Martine in the first place!

No! That’s impossible! How could he know?

But then again, even if he didn’t know — even if he had picked Martine as his victim purely because of her coverage of the Claymore trial — everything that Gene had said made sense. If he was stupid enough to stick around in an attempt to exact revenge, then Martine was the logical target. Who successfully fought him off when he tried to rape her? Who maced him in the face and left him defeated and humiliated? Who sounded the alarm that got the cops racing to the scene, so that when he tried to hotfoot it out of there he got side-swiped by a squad car and ended up with a broken leg?

“Look I’m supposed to be meeting her tonight. I know where she’s staying so I’ll call her right away and warn her to be careful.”

“Okay, but keep me posted. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of…”

He understood why she had trailed off. She felt guilty, as if she had caused all this — which in a way she had.

“Okay I’ll call you right back as soon as I’ve spoken to her. Are you on this number?”

“Yes. I’ll be waiting.”

Wednesday, 2 September 2009 — 18:40

Andi was driving north along Drumm Street in the direction of Sacramento Street. On the dashboard in front of her was a note in an unfamiliar handwriting that said: “Golden Gate Bridge, sunset. The truth shall set you free.”

At Washington Street she turned right, glancing at the green wall of the outdoor tennis courts to her left. The street was divided by a stretch of grass with three or four trees. The sun was setting, but she still had about an hour before it dropped below the horizon and maybe an hour of twilight after that.

There was no particular urgency to the way she was driving, but a barrage of thoughts was racing through her mind. Anger, guilt, vengeance. On the from passenger seat was the vodka bottle. But she wasn’t driving erratically. Still… maybe she’d get pulled over by the cops. Maybe she wouldn’t. To tell the truth she didn’t care.

She was headed east on Washington towards the Embarcadero intersection. There seemed like a mass of traffic headed south. She remembered that today was a baseball day. The Giants were at home today playing the Dodgers.

Old rivalries. They could bring out people’s anger more than politics… more than religion.

Who was it who said: “Baseball isn’t a matter of life and death: it’s much more important than that.” She vaguely remembered that it was originally said of soccer by some British team manager.

Funny… people’s values. When they couldn’t find something to fight over, they invented something. As if there wasn’t enough pain and suffering in the world. Maybe that was precisely because most people had it too easy. They could afford to fight over the most trivial things in life. Only sexual envy could bring out greater aggression in people. But that was rare and only affected some of the people some of the time.

The one thing that ought to bring people out onto the streets and get them to storm the barricades was injustice. But that rarely happened these days. America’s anger with itself had burnt itself out in Andi’s infancy. It wasn’t that America was now at peace with itself. It had merely succumbed to complacency.

And there was no room in all this for some one who had a passion for justice.

She had reached the intersection just as the light turned from green to yellow. As she pulled out on the yellow, the light turned to red. But a grey pickup truck behind her tried to beat the lights and shot out into the intersection close on her tail. Maybe if Andi had been quicker across the intersection, things would have been different. But the alcohol and pills had clouded her judgment and she expressed this, not in driving with speed and aggression, but slowly and passively — oblivious to the danger.

Meanwhile the traffic headed south on Embarcadero towards the ball park was taking no prisoners. And when their light turned green, they went for it. So it was no surprise that a bus, headed straight across the intersection, slammed into the pickup truck. Meanwhile another car on Washington took it into his head to do a risky right turn on red. But when the bus ploughed into the pickup truck, the pickup truck was sent careening sideways till it skidded to a halt, thus making it too a perfect target for the stream of southbound traffic on Embarcadero.

For a second the air hung still. Then Andi — who had caught only some of this with a quick side-glance — heard an almighty crash. As she completed her left turn into Embarcadero, she heard the sound of other cars crashing into the ones that blocked the intersection and turned again to see an almighty multiple pile-up across the entire intersection.

Wednesday, 2 September 2009 — 18:45

Martine was sitting on the bed in her bathrobe, drying her hair, and she barely heard the knock on the door.

“Who is it?” she shouted, moving the dryer away from her hair but not switching it off.

A muffled voice came at her and all she heard was “iss”. She switched off the hair dryer.

“Pardon?”

“Room Service!”

“I didn’t order anything!”

“I’ll leave the tray out here!”

She heard the feint sound of receding footsteps.

“No, you didn’t hear me! I said I didn’t order anything!”

She waited for a response. But heard nothing.

What kind of a moron was that?

She walked over to the door and peered out through the spy hole. There was no one there. But to the side of the door, she could clearly see a tray on the floor with some sort of a covered plate together with a coffee pot and a cup. Angrily, she opened the door to take a proper look. Realizing that the food tray was probably intended for some one else, she turned her head left and right, but saw no sign of the waiter. There was another corridor, branching off, and for a split-second, she thought she sensed a human presence there, movement of a shadow or maybe the sound of breathing.

But before she had time to think about it, her phone rang — not the phone in the room, but her cell phone on