David Kessler - No Way Out

“Maybe that’s because the outcome of the case isn’t in your hands.”

Andi turned her head slightly.

“How do you mean?”

Gene’s voice became surprisingly gentle.

“Has it occurred to you he might be guilty?”

“It occurred to me. But I think — I know as a lawyer I should be thinking with my head, no my heart — but I think that he’s innocent.”

“Are you sure that isn’t just what you want to think? The evil man redeemed by repentance? Good ol’ Christian forgiveness and the fairy story ends with ‘they all lived happily ever after.’?”

Gene was about to start massaging again. But Andi swung round into a sitting position, her feet touching the carpet. She looked lost in thought.

“Are you coming to bed now?” asked Gene.

“Not yet. I forgot to check my E-mail today.”

And with this, Andi stood up and went over to the desk. She switched on her laptop and logged on to the office network at Levine and Webster to download her E-mail. There was only one message, but when she saw it, she felt that claw of fear and anger ripping at her insides. The screen contained the following message.

You are still helping that slimy nigger rapist. By helping him you are stabbing your sisters in the back and your blood will be upon your own hands!

Lannosea

The first thing Andi felt was a jolt of anger. But as she thought about the message, she remembered that she had never really made any effort to find out who this Lannosea was. Whatever the cause of the anger of this “Lannosea”, it must have a background. She knew that Lannosea was the name of one of the daughters of the ancient English queen Boudicca. But why would anyone choose such a name?

Determined to find out more. she typed in Boudicca and looked up the wikipedia entry. It didn’t give the names of Boudicca’s daughters but it stated that when their father Prasutagus — a vassal of Rome — died, the roman’s seized his kingdom, flogged Boudicca and raped her daughters.

Raped her daughters?

So that was it!. “Lannosea” was a rape victim. — maybe even one of Claymore’s former victims!

All of a sudden things were different. Andi realized that she was not being taunted by some evil creature motivated by hatred, but rather by a victim who was motivated by anger.

And she couldn’t hate a victim.

She tried to tell herself that she was only doing her duty. Once she took on the case, she had to give it all her professional skill. But that sounded like the pathetic excuse of every other pragmatist who ever sold his conscience down the river for a quick buck or an easy life. She knew now that she had been rationalizing when she justified taking the case. She had become like one of those people whom she despised — a mercenary, devoid of conscience.

As this ugly realization swept over her, she broke down in tears, her face resting her on her arms and her arms on the desk, her whole body shaking from the violent sobbing.

It was Saturday morning, and David Sedaka was in his apartment in Berkeley, studying the decompiled jury selection program. He didn’t yet have the source code — LegalSoft had at least until Tuesday to produce it and even then would probably appeal. So all he had to work with in the meantime, was the decompiled source code, without any programmer comments and with hopelessly counter-intuitive names for the variables and arrays.

Still, now that his working week was over, and he was relaxed and in his own home, he was able to give it his undivided attention The trouble with most modern “Object oriented” computer programming is that it doesn’t really have a beginning, a middle and an end. It jumps around and branches off in all directions. But it does have a so-called “main object” which is the control center of all this branching. So if he wanted to debug the program it made sense to start off by looking at its “Main” object and see where these branches led.

It was at the Main object that David was staring now, as he tried to figure out how it held the other parts together. To make it clearer he started drawing a flow chart, showing how the parts connected and branched. In effect he was reverse-engineering the way in which the program was created in the first place.

It was then he noticed a small discrepancy. He chased it up by looking at how the program handled duplicates — that is names that were in both the voting register list and the Department of Motor Vehicles list.

And that was when he realized!

“Just ignore it,” said Martine.

Alex had been about to reach for the phone when Martine spoke.

He had invited her for Friday evening dinner and she had stayed the night, entranced by his home-made, gefilte fish, chicken soup with kneidelech and chicken schnitzel with potato kugel. His mother had taught him to cook, but it was from Melody that he had learned that sometimes the way to a woman’s heart was through her stomach. He hoped that the ghost of Melody had been smiling down on him last night, as he availed himself of this knowledge to take the first delicate steps towards moving on from the pain of the past.

“It could be important.”

“Isn’t it supposed to be the Sabbath?” she asked with a girlish grin, as he reached for the phone

“Don’t be cheeky,” he said, picking up the phone with one hand and smacking her bottom playfully but firmly with the other.

“Hallo,” said Alex, his greeting almost masked by Martine’s squeal of pain, or delight.

“What was that?” asked David.

“Oh, er hi David. Nothing. I was watching the TV.

“That’s not like you. You’re usually all work and no play.”

“I guess the case is taking it’s toll. Anyway it’s not like you to phone this early on a Saturday.”

“I know, it’s just that I’ve had some results looking at the jury selection program.”

Alex sat bolt upright and signaled Martine to be quiet. David’s tone had been ever so calm and measured that anyone else hearing it would not have known how tinged with excitement is was. But Alex Sedaka had known his son for 26 years and he could tell when he was gripped by excitement.

“What did you find?”

“The solution! To the jury selection software problem! I’ve found out how the software was rigged! I mean I’ve discovered what the tampering actually does .”

“So tell me!”

David’s tone took on the aura of embarrassment.

“I’m not sure if I can explain it to you.”

Alex wasn’t in the least bit offended. He was, at worst, mildly irritated.

“Oh don’t do the old ‘ignorant father’ routine. I need to know.”

“Okay, but look, it’s hard to explain it in words alone. I may need to show you some things. I can drive round there.”

Alex didn’t want David coming round there now. Obviously he would have to tell him at some point about how the relationship with Martine had progressed. But now was not the time.

“Can’t you eMail them over? Besides, Andi needs to hear it too.”

“Maybe you can get her to come round as well. That way I can show you the print outs and diagrams and everything.”

Alex had to think quickly.

“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s do one of those three-way video conferences that you’re always on about.”

“Okay. We can use Oovoo. Phone Andi and tell her to log in, then you log and I’ll log in and I’ll invite both of you. You just have to accept the conference and we’re up and running.”

It was Saturday morning and Bethel was miserable. Last night she would normally have been out on the town with her friends. As a double rape survivor she kept trying to tell herself that she had almost recovered. Almost, but not quite. The experience of testifying at the trial and listening to the other witnesses, brought it all flooding back. And now when she should have been out having a good time, she was sitting at her friend’s home feeling miserable and depressed. She was staying with her friend Linda for the duration of the trial. At the end of the trial she would go back to her parents and try and get on with her life. Not that she was sure what “getting on with her life” meant any more.