David Kessler - No Way Out

“You don’t get it do you? What Claymore did was part of his nature. It’s in a man’s genes. It’s part of their nature. Men try to reproduce their genes. And the stronger men succeed.”

“But not by rape.”

“They don’t need to. In the animal kingdom the concept of rape is meaningless. The males fight amongst each other to establish superiority and then the females go naturally and willingly with the strongest males. The weaker males get the leftovers. Its only in the human species that women look for other things like sympathy and kindness and wealth . A female animal doesn’t want a good provider, she gathers or hunts for the food herself. She just wants strong genes to bind with hers to make sure that her own genes survive in her offspring. Even in the human species, most women know that the best provider isn’t necessarily the best biological father for their children. That’s why they marry rich men and then cheat on them with hunks from the street. Adultery’s as natural for a woman as it is for a man.”

“You’ve been reading the wrong books.”

“Books are one of the few things they give you behind bars. Some cons toke. Some work out. I read books.”

Claymore was sprinting along the pedestrian walkway as fast as he could, trying his best to keep Andi in his line of sight. But his heart sank when she arrived at the southern suspension tower. For at that point, he saw her moving off the walkway and round the tower, onto the observation platform behind it. That — and a similar platform at the northern suspension tower — were the points where suicides jumped off.

He arrived at the suspension column in time to see Andi clambering over, apparently with a bottle of gin or vodka in her hand. He felt a knot in his stomach as terror swept over him. If he shouted out to her, he would frighten her. If her decision was final, it would make her jump. If she was still undecided, it would take her by surprise and might very well startle her and cause her to lose her grip. If he rushed her, it would also frighten her.

He stood there frozen with indecision, his feet stuck to the ground beneath him. As she completed her climb to the other side, she held on with one hand as she took a swig from the bottle.

And then she saw him.

For a second his heart went into his mouth as he thought this was the end for her. But instead, she simply smiled.

“Oh hi Elias?” she said, in what sounded a bit like a little girl voice.

He looked at her still feeling helpless, and yet in some way liberated from fear by precisely that sense of desperation. Behind him the sun was setting making her squint, so he couldn’t tell if she had been crying. Was she sad? Lost? Already too far gone?

He looked around. There were plenty of cars on the bridge. But here, behind the suspension column, they were virtually concealed from public view. And at this time, on a baseball day, there weren’t many pedestrians about. They were, effectively, alone.

He had to reach out to her in the only way he could. But now the “only way he could” meant not with his body, but with his mind… with his words.

“Andi don’t do it!”

She was smiling. But he couldn’t tell if it was from her mood or the setting sun in her eyes.

“What do you want?” she asked hesitantly, putting the bottle down on the ledge and holding on with both hands now.

“Don’t do it… don’t jump.”

She half turned her head and looked round at the water 220 feet below.

“Why not?”

He tried to take a step forward, but she released the grip of one of her hands, as if warning him of how easy it would be to jump.

“No! Wait!” he pleaded, stopping in his tracks and holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Andi listen to me. You’ve blotted it out of your mind. The rape. The pain. It was me . I was the man who raped you all those years ago. You’ve closed off the past and shut it out of your mind. But it’s been there all the time… in the background.”

“I don’t understand,” she said weakly, her voice now distinctly like a little girl’s as some distant memory pierced her consciousness.

“You’ve been doing these things to yourself,” he said, the desperation, “…the messages… the threats… switching the DNA files and then leaving a trail for them to get back to you, like you were framing yourself… it was you all along Andi. You were doing it to yourself !”

“Why would I want to do those things to myself?” she asked. He didn’t know about the pills or how mush she had drunk. But she was clearly out of it.

“It was your way of handling the pressure… the painful memories. You couldn’t take it, so you blotted it out. And then you must have created another person to carry the anger for you, so that you could get on with your life.”

“What do you mean ‘created another person’?” she asked, crying with the pain of recollection as she memories of the rape came fleeting in and out of her mind.

“I don’t know all the reasons. I only know that it’s because of what I did. You wanted revenge. You wanted me to be punished — as I deserved to be. But you also wanted to forget your pain. And I guess you couldn’t handle both. The one wasn’t compatible with the other. So the part of you that wanted to forget, blotted it out. And then the other part of you set about getting revenge. But then, just now at the trial, because you were helping me, the other part of you didn’t just want revenge on me . It sought revenge on you too .”

“Revenge?” she echoed confused, as her mind drifted into some far off world.

“Yes. You were the one who modified the jury selection software.”

“No!” Andi whined, wiping back the tears with the backs of her free hand. “It was Lannosea!”

“Don’t you see Andi? You are Lannosea. She’s part of you — the strong part. She’s the part that wants revenge, the part that wants to punish the other part for helping me. Lannosea is just the angry side of you . She carries the anger, but you still carry the pain . That’s why she hounded you with those E-mail messages and threats. That’s why she broke into the DNA database and framed you. It was you doing to yourself to punish yourself.”

“No you’re wrong! It can’t be that! I wouldn’t betray some one who trusted me.”

“Andi I’m not blaming you. God knows, I’ve got no right to blame anyone ! But you need help.”

“I don’t need any help from you !”

It looked like she was about to jump. He had to stop her.

“Lannosea!” he shouted desperately. “If you let her jump, you’ll die too!”

Alex, meanwhile, was going nowhere. He was snarled up in traffic on the Bay Bridge. In the other direction, much of the traffic was headed towards the baseball game. But on days like this, the whole road network gets clogged up as people try to find alternative routes to beat the bottlenecks. The trouble is that everyone has the same idea and that just creates more bottlenecks.

He had tried calling Martine’s hotel room several more times, but got no answer. He had considered asking the hotel to send a member of staff to check. But they would probably think he was crazy and even if they didn’t they were unlikely to treat it as a matter of any particular urgency.

But Gene must be there by now.

It was strange the way she was suddenly helping him after what he had effectively put her through in court. And yet in a way it made perfect sense. She probably felt guilty about what she had done herself. And this was her way of trying to redeem herself.