No Way Out (12 page)

“I mean saw
you
. Not in the flesh, but on the TV. She said she was passing an electronics store and she saw you on a TV screen in the display window. It was your show. And that was when she realized – so she said – that it was you.”

“But I mean didn’t they notice the age difference. I mean you said that she said. But didn’t they ask her about it. Didn’t they ask her to explain the discrepancy?”

“They did, but she just said she was mistaken. She claimed that she was under stress. Which is reasonable.”

“But how can stress make her mistake fifties for twenties?”

“That’s the question they don’t seem to have asked. Or if they did, they didn’t receive any answer, as far as I can determine. And that’s the question that we’re going to ask if this case gets to trial.”

“But how come you didn’t notice this before? I thought you were on the ball man.”

“I know, I’m sorry. It looks like I took my eye off the ball. But you have to understand Elias, I was so pre-occupied by the DNA, I only speed-read her statements. Once I went back over them, it practically jumped out at me. But now that I’m onto it, we have an Achilles heel to attack. But they’re still going to keep hammering home the argument about the DNA.”

“The defendant, Elias Claymore is charged with Rape Under section 261 Part a, paragraph 2 of the California Penal Code. How do you Plead Elias Claymore, Guilty or Not Guilty?”

“Not Guilty”

Claymore sat down, looking around the courtroom nervously. He had been brought here for the arraignment on the Information – the document filed by the prosecution within 15 days of the preliminary hearing, setting out the details and particulars of the charges. They were in Court 11 of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse on Fallon Street in Oakland, before Justice Roberts the judge who dealt with the Master Criminal Calendar.

Alex remained standing.

“Your Honor at this stage I would like to renew my request for bail in accordance with my written submissions.”

Sarah Jensen – who had hung on to the case for the time being – rose to reply. But the judge stayed her with a raised hand.

“I’ve considered your submissions carefully Mr. Sedaka, but I see no reason to re-open the original decision to deny bail. This is truly an exceptional case in every sense of the word, but I am bound to consider the defendant’s past as an escapee and for this reason I cannot grant bail.”

Alex gritted his teeth. It was particularly hard on Claymore, because he was still being held at the Pre-Trial Detention Facility in Ventura to the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County. To get to this hearing, he had been driven for six hours – across 375 miles from Ventura – to get here for this ten minute hearing.”

“In that case, Your Honor, I move that the defendant be transferred to the Santa Ritter jail.

The Santa Ritter Jail, in Alameda County had been modernized in 1989 and was now classified as a modern “mega-jail” complete with solar panels for power and a system of robotic carts to move food, laundry and garbage. However, despite this, it was heavily over-crowded and quite a violent place. There had been a number of “shank” stabbings there – several of them fatal. But Claymore was equally vulnerable in Ventura and at least in Santa Ritter he would be close to the trial venue… and close to Alex’s office.

“So ordered. Now, regarding the trial date. Does your client waive the right to a speedy trial?”

“No Your Honor.”

The judge peered down at the papers in front of him. If he had granted bail, Claymore would probably have been more amenable to waive his Sixth Amendment rights. But it was understandable, given that Claymore was to be held in custody, that his lawyer wanted the trial to take place as quickly as possible.

“I see that the Information was filed in Ventura County on the 26
^th
of June. That means the trial must commence by the 25
^th
of August. I also see that there’s a vacant slot on Justice Ellen Wagner’s docket in Court 7 between the August 17
^th
and September 4
^th
. Does that allow enough time for the trial?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” said Alex, nodding.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Sarah Jensen confirmed.

“So I’ll assign the case to that slot. Voir dire to commence on the 17
^th
of August.”

Later that day, Elias Claymore was looking around uneasily as he was escorted out of the central block where he had been processed to his assigned block. He had survived at the Ventura pre-trial facility, but this was a new and unfamiliar environment and he would have to go through the process of adapting and acclimatizing all over again.

As he shuffled along, he was torn between whether to keep his head low and avoid antagonizing anyone, or to hold his head up to show that he wasn’t a natural victim.

He opted for the latter and was surprised to hear some of his fellow inmates actually cheering him. That was an encouraging sign. But it didn’t alter the fact that prison was prison. He was familiar with it, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. He had never allowed himself to become institutionalized either before his escape or when he came back to serve out his sentence afterwards.

Since then, his financial success had accustomed in the lap of luxury. But the last month had re-acquainted him with prison and all its horrors. And in many ways this time it was worse. Last time around he had been a hero – at least in the eyes of his brothers. He was the freedom fighter who had stood up to the enemy. But this time he could feel the hostility all around him, and he could count on no one.

So when he walked now, it was with a sense of alertness and caution.

He was not looking forward to the trial. Alex was a good lawyer, but the evidence was stacked up against him. Worse still he feared that Alex didn’t believe him. And it was hard to take his mind off the case. If he didn’t think about the future, then all he had left to dwell on was the past. And that was even more painful. For it was not just his childhood that he had to contend with, but also his young adulthood – when he had turned from victim into victimizer.

He remembered the time he had followed a white woman home at the start of his campaign of vengeance and then forced his way into her house, smashing open the French windows from the garden to get at her. She had screamed as he approached her but he clamped his hand over her mouth to silence her. He then threw her onto the sofa and ripped her clothes off her. And as she begged and pleaded, he raped her.

But he didn’t hear her cries. He heard only those of his mother – those of his memory. But even those cries were drowned out by something else. In his mind he heard the smug voices of the callers to the talk radio station, who phoned in when they were discussing the rape of his mother. They came on the air one after another to say that the “black woman” was “lying” and that she was “probably just a hooker who didn’t get paid.” He was seeing the skeptical looks on the faces of the people on the TV show as some long-winded liberal lawyer tried to defend his mother’s reputation – not attacking the white “pigs” who raped her, just defending her reputation, but failing. And he remembered that the slanderous comments about his mother came from white
women
as well as men, speaking in their smug, sanctimonious middle glass accents about they “felt sorry” for this woman, but she “only had herself to blame.”

It had been incomprehensible to him. His mother had been raped before his very eyes, but whenever people discussed the case, those who claimed to speak for his mother were on the defensive, while the viciousness of the fascist pigs was never even talked about. His mother had complained to the police. But after his uncle had been beaten up and arrested on trumped-up drugs charges, she withdrew the complaint. It never even got to court.

That was white man’s justice – and white woman’s.

So when he raped white women as a “revolutionary act,” the pangs of guilt were numbed by the pain of anger.

His thoughts were truncated by large shadow in front of him and a sharp pain in his abdomen. He looked up to see a man in front of him. But in seconds the man was gone. Then he felt something wet against his flesh and he looked down to see blood accumulating on his torso.

While Andi sat in lounge at San Francisco International Airport waiting for her flight, she decided to check her eMail on her BlackBerry. Most of the messages were routine and work-related, but one of them gave her pause even before she read it. The reason it leapt out at her was because of the sender’s name:
Lannosea
.

What was it this time?

Andi moved the pointer to the message and then clicked. The message read:

You are playing with fire by helping that rapist nigger and that blackmailing sleaze-ball lawyer of his. If you had any guts – which you obviously don’t - you’d have told that slimy Sherman and that hypocrite Sedaka to fuck off when they badgered you into helping him. Instead you just lay down and spread you legs – figuratively speaking. I guess that makes you a rape victim too – or maybe just a whore!

Lannosea

A mixture of fear and revulsion broke out inside Andi as she starred at the message. Who
was
sending these messages?

She logged onto the Internet and quickly looked up Lannosea on Wikipedia.

Nothing.

She did a general search for the name but only found three listings. Two were flagged by warnings that they were dangerous websites that might contain spyware. The third was one of those question-and-answer websites and all it said was that Lannosea was one of the daughters of the ancient English queen Boudicca or Bodecea.

What on earth did it mean?

But there was another question nagging away at Andi. How did this “Lannosea” know that Sherman and Alex had badgered her into working on the Claymore case? She hadn’t told anyone.

Alex was reading through the report about the case, trying to find other weaknesses. So far, Bethel’s change of mind was the only one. But it looked like the most promising. The only thing that Alex was worried about was that it seemed like such an unlikely change of mind that he was wondering if the DA’s office had a trick up their sleeve.

Aside from that, he also had the problem that this was not a case that depended on the testimony of the victim. They also had DNA evidence. If Claymore had said that he had consensual sex with Bethel then it would have been a whole different ball game. They could have argued consent. Although the medical evidence and pictures made that difficult, the defense at least had breathing room.

But Claymore had closed the door on that by claiming that there had been no sexual contact between himself and Bethel Newton – and even that he had never met her.

That left Alex and Andi with the problem of explaining why she had accused him. Of course the obvious answer was that she had been attacked by some one who looked like him. Alex had even played a long shot by asking Claymore if he had an identical twin. But Claymore responded with such a withering look that he didn’t have to open his mouth for Alex to know perfectly well what the answer was.

The phone rang. Alex picked it up. Juanita told him that it was a call from the Santa Ritter jail. Alex said he’d take it.

“Hallo Elias.”

“Pardon?” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Oh I’m sorry,” said Alex, I thought you were some one else.”

“This is the deputy governor of the Santa Ritter jail. I’m afraid I have to tell you that your client, Elias Claymore, has been stabbed.”

“Stabbed?”

“Yes sir, but not fatally. He’s in the jail hospital. We have a fully equipped hospital here.”

“But how did it happen?”

“Usual story… a fellow inmate with a shank.”

Alex was surprised to hear this described as “usual.”

“How serious is it?”

“It was pretty serious. He was stabbed in the stomach. They’re still operating, but the anesthesiologist came out a couple of times and said it looks like he’s gonna make it.”

Alex breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did you catch whoever did it?”

“Not yet, but we’ve got CCTV so we’ll look at the tapes.”

“Okay what about security for my client?”

“We’ve got guards posted outside the operating theatre and we’ll keep him in protective solitary until the trial.”

Until the trial?

Alex sensed the full import of these words. If Claymore was found guilty and imprisoned, he wouldn’t be kept in solitary any longer. He might be transferred to an open prison, but he’d have to join the general population. Alex realized in that moment that this wasn’t just about his client’s freedom. If he didn’t secure an acquittal, Elias Claymore’s life wouldn’t be worth two bits.

When he opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was. All he could see was that the walls were white. He tried to gather his wits. The last thing he remembered, he had been thinking about his early life and the crimes he had committed. Was that where he was now? In prison? Had it all been a dream? Had he never really been released? Or escaped?

He struggled to remember.

He had joined several black power groups as they struggled to liberate themselves – and some of them had used rather clever tactics. For example, they availed themselves of the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.” But when the White Establishment decided that the second amendment wasn’t quite so sacred – now that the Brothers were asserting their rights under it – the movement split. Most of them didn’t want to risk their newfound support among the white liberals by falling afoul of the new gun laws. But Elias Claymore held out for continued bearing of arms, arguing that self-defense still required possession of guns and that in any case the White Establishment had no right to change the rules in the middle of the game.

After serving a one-year stint in prison for firearms offences, he came out angrier than ever and over the next two and a half years he raped five white women, after “practicing” his technique first on three black ones.