David Kessler - No Way Out

“I’m afraid we have no guest of that name at the hotel sir.”

“Oh sorry. I guess she must have checked out. Well thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome sir. Have a nice day.”

He broke the connection and crossed yet another hotel name off his list.

Elias Claymore was debating whether to call Alex again. He assumed that if Alex hadn’t called him then it meant he hadn’t been able to contact Andi. He had debated going to reception or the concierge and asking what room she was in. But they wouldn’t tell him — anymore than they would reveal which room he was in. The most they would do is let him call her on the courtesy phone.

Actually that was all he needed. He would call using a one digit prefix and the room number. But what was the point? If she was in her room, then Alex would have been able to reach her. The fact that he couldn’t meant that she wasn’t in her room and her cell phone was switched off.

There was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” he called out.

“Maintenance,” said a female voice.

This caught him by surprise. He associated maintenance with men. If it had been room service or the maid it would not have surprised him. But he hadn’t ordered room service and the main would normally come in the morning. He didn’t need anyone to turn down his bed.

He opened the door to find himself confronted by Gene. This in itself would not have been frightening. But she was holding a pistol in her hand and it was aimed at his chest.

As he backed into the room, she followed him, closing the door behind her.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said. “Justice has finally caught up with you.”

He looked at her, with pity rather than fear or anger.

“Justice… or revenge?”

“Do you think you even have the right to ask that question?”

“It seems like a long time to wait for revenge. You must have known who I was a long time ago. Why wait till now.”

“Until recently I was on the other side of the country.”

“That’s not the reason. Not if you were really determined.”

“Apart from that, I never had the opportunity.”

Claymore shook his head

“Not to do it the way you did with that Bethel Newton girl, maybe. But to do what you’re doing now… you could have done that any time. Why now?”

“You think I didn’t do it a hundred times in my mind?”

“But you didn’t have the courage.”

“I didn’t have the anger.”

“It took what happened in court today…”

He let it hang in the air.

“What happened to me in court today is nothing. It’s what happened to Bethel Newton in court today that rekindled the anger.

Claymore understood.

“She reminds you of another young girl… and there was only a limited amount you could do for her too.”

The implacable expression on Gene’s face didn’t change.

“You know, pain is a funny thing,” said Gene. “Wounds heal. But scars never do — and every now and again they start to itch.”

“And now your scars have started itching.”

Again it was a statement, not a question.

“Let’s talk about you Claymore. You say you’ve changed. That you could never hurt a woman like you did before. But do you know how much pain it caused Andi to defend you?”

“I know… but she didn’t say anything about-”

“I know she didn’t say anything,” Gene interrupted angrily. “That’s Andi! She keeps things bottled up. But that isn’t really the point. There’s a limit to the amount of suffering anyone should have to bear.”

“I tried to object to Andi taking second seat. But Alex insisted.”

“Yes, Alex is a bastard figuratively speaking. He’s a bit of rapist himself. At least he knows how to use coercion of one kind or another to force other people who conform to his will… what ?”

She was looking at him bewildered. His thoughts had found means of expression on his face.

“That’s what Andi said.”

You may have thwarted my plan, but there is a price to be paid for doing so. I am now going to kill Andi. Her blood is on your hands.

Lannosea.

She had finished keying in the text message to her cell phone and was now keying in the number to the intended recipient. That recipient was Alex Sedaka. But then she had second thoughts. Why Alex? Was it really Alex that she wanted to hurt?

Alex Sedaka was insignificant. He meant nothing to anyone. There was some one else who deserved to be hurt much more. And he had a weak spot: his conscience.

She had read somewhere that it was wrong to punish a person using their own conscience as the means of punishment, because conscience was a virtue. To punish a person through his own conscience was to punish him for his virtues and not for his vices.

And yet it made perfect sense. You punish a wrongdoer by attacking his weaknesses. If his weakness is his conscience, then so be it. If he has no conscience then maybe you have to use other means. But why use more force than necessary?

And if Claymore did have a conscience, then how did it make him a better person if he protected that conscience through denial. That conscience was only worth something to his victims if it was pricked by self-awareness. Absent that awareness, his conscience was a disembodied attachment — a conscience without a consciousness.

So she deleted Alex Sedaka’s cell phone number and replaced it with that of Elias Claymore.

But as she was about to press SEND, she hesitated again.

“Do you know how painful it is to bottle it all up inside like that?” asked Gene, still holding the gun close to her side, aimed squarely at Claymore’s torso. She had ordered him to sit down on the couch, from which it would have been hard for him to take any hostile action. That meant that he was facing the TV on the wall, with his side to her, forcing him to turn his head to give her his full attention.

“That’s what I don’t understand. Why didn’t the anger come out sooner ? Why only now?”

“I guess it’s because we have a duty to ourselves go on living. That’s how I got through the pregnancy.”

He was confused again.

“What pregnancy?”

“You don’t know do you?” She looked at him for a few seconds, alternately angry and then contemptuous at the blank look on his face. “When you raped me you got me pregnant.”

For a few seconds he was dumbstruck. But he had to know.

“And did you…”

“Have an abortion? I couldn’t”

“Why not? It was after Roe versus Wade.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“No one could have blamed you.”

“Not even born-again fundamentalists like you?”

“The Bible says ‘judge not that ye shall not be judged’.” he said, lowering his eyes in shame. “And I’d be the last person to sit in judgment… Why didn’t you? Couldn’t you afford the costs?”

“Oh I could afford it. There are always organizations ready to come forward and help in those circumstances. I could barely afford not to considering my lack of job skills at the time and the fact that I couldn’t provide for the baby. It’s just that I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Even though it was… mine?”

“You mean even though it was the fruit of an act of violation?”

“Yes,” he gulped, barely able to speak.

“But don’t you see that didn’t matter. Because it was mine too. And when I felt it inside me I didn’t think of you. I saw it as…” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t bring myself to kill it. It was life.. and if I was going to go on living, as I resolved to do, I guess I had to let the baby live too. I didn’t know how I’d feel when it was born, but I couldn’t destroy it when it was inside me. And when I held him my arms, he was so weak and vulnerable and I knew that I was there to protect him.”