David Kessler - No Way Out
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- Название:No Way Out
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She had planned to go back to college. But the idea no longer held its appeal. She couldn’t face people after the rape — the second rape. She couldn’t face men. She had gone out on a few dates since the rape, but they always made her feel cheap and dirty. Not that they were aggressive. Most of them went out of their way to be respectful, almost to the point of timidity. But the kid gloves treatment reminded her that she was damaged goods. It was as if they were saying to her that they didn’t want to touch her. Or if a few of them became bold enough to touch her, she flinched away from them.
And this rape had in some way affected her more than the first.
The first was date rape. It had hurt her deeply at the time. But somewhere along the line, she had seen it coming. Orlando had been building up to it the whole evening. Although she didn’t want to have sex with him, she had been mentally prepared for the rape as she saw Orlando’s frustration steadily degenerate into anger and then violence when he didn’t get his way, like a frustrated child throwing a tantrum. And because he was such a big child and she was alone with him, it was obvious long before it happened that she wouldn’t be able to hold him off.
Also, she knew that Luke Orlando had suffered for it too in some ways. He had lost friends as a result of it: his friends knew full well that he had raped her — just as they knew he had raped the other girl who came forward at the time, but whose case was never heard.
But this time it was different. When she got into the Mercedes with that smooth-talking man, she hadn’t expected it all. She had heard all the racist generalizations, but it was precisely for that reason that she was determined not to be intimidated by them.
The last time she was raped, some of the men she knew had even offered to “beat up that bastard”. But that did nothing to ease her pain. They were seeing it in terms of revenge. But they were missing the point. What she wanted was not revenge but empowerment . Perhaps, in a way, that was really what men wanted too. Perhaps revenge made men feel empowered.
But in any case, the feelings of empowerment eluded her. When she had testified in court, she didn’t feel empowered, in spite of all the pep talks they had given her at the rape crisis enter. The opening bars of “For what it’s worth” rang out from her cell phone.
It startled her out of her thoughts and jarred her into awareness of her surroundings. More to the point, it brought her down to earth and made her realize that in the real world she was just a weak little girl. She looked at the display and it showed a number, but not one that she recognized. She wondered who was calling. She didn’t like answering the phone when was alone. Since the rape she had been afraid of strangers. Even strangers at the other end of the phone frightened her.
And so now, listening to the phone ring, the apprehension grew inside her as she wondered who it was. Her hand tried to find the phone, fumbling its way around the low table. But fear held it back. Eventually, her curiosity overcame her fear. She picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” she said abruptly, putting on a Mexican accent that she could hide behind, in case it was some one she wanted to avoid, by pretending to be some one else.
“Is that Bethel?”
It was a woman’s voice… a familiar voice… but it sounded distorted.
“Who is this?”
“Who wants to know?” would have sounded corny.
“You don’t know me. My name is… you can call me ‘Lannosea’.”
“What do you want?” Hearing such a strange name made Bethel nervous. Anyone using a name like that had to be a weirdo. And the she didn’t need a weirdo in her personal space on top of all her other problems. But the fact that it was a woman was reassuring.
“I want you to know that Claymore isn’t going to get away with it… and neither is Alex Sedaka.”
“What… what do you want?”
“I want you to know that there’s some one out there fighting for justice… fighting to give you justice.”
“You said… Alex Sedaka.”
“He raped you too, figuratively speaking.”
A streak of terror went through Bethel like a lightening bolt. This woman was reading her mind. She was telling her the thoughts that had been going through her head only a few minutes ago.
“What are you going to do?”
“I intend to make sure that all those who have harmed you are punished. I intend to give you the justice that the system has denied you.”
Bethel was apprehensive, but no longer fearful. This woman was not her enemy. But she knew that she had to be careful what she said. It was one thing to wish for revenge, it was another to be associated with it. And yet the voice gave her a note of hope. This woman was in some way her kindred spirit — a woman who could read her thoughts, feel her pain, almost with the same heart beating inside both of them… whoever this woman was.
“Thank you,” said Bethel quietly. “Thank you,” she said again her eyes squinting against the tears that were now flowing freely.
“Be strong,” said the woman’s voice at the other end of the line, gentle yet hard. “Be strong and courageous. Justice will soon be with you.”
Saturday, 22 August 2009 — 10:20
“OK, let’s hear it,” said Alex.
They had set up the three-way video conference, with Alex sitting at his desktop computer in his home office on the main level of the house, while Andi was sitting with her laptop at the desk in her hotel room. Alex and Andi had passively logged on to the Oovoo program and David Sedaka had then invited each of them to join. All they had to do was click “Accept” and the three way conference was up and running.
“It works like this. First of all, the original jury selection program was written in such a way that it didn’t have to use it’s own database. It logs on to the databases for voting and driver’s registration in the relevant district of the State and take the names of all prospective jurors in that district from both databases. That way it’s assured of the most up-to-date voter and driver records.”
“OK,” said Alex, nodding.
“The next thing it’s supposed to do is screen out any duplicates — that is any names that appear on both the voting register and the driver’s license records. There are usually quite a lot. So far so good?”
“I’m still with you.”
“All right, the next stage is to screen out persons known to be ineligible . That means people in prison, people with felony convictions or recent misdemeanors, etc. All clear?”
“Absolutely.”
David was being brisk about it, Alex gave him credit for that. He was also being careful not to go too fast, summarizing each stage quickly and then stopping to make sure that Alex had understood.
“Okay finally when all that’s done, the algorithm picks the jurors using a randomization procedure that I told you about before to get the initial random number.”
“OK, I understand all that,” said Alex impatiently. “But how has it been tampered with?”
“Well remember I said that first it draws up the list of potential panelists living within the relevant district. Then it cuts out the duplicates from the list before going on to make the actual final selection.”
“Yes?” said Alex hesitantly.
“Well I don’t know if this is the result of tampering or just bad programming, but what actually happens in the program is that it doesn’t cut out the duplicate names from the overall list before it draws up the panel. Instead it draws up the panel first and only then cuts out the duplicates from the actual list of panelists if there are any .”
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