David Kessler - No Way Out

So all Alex could do was make his own way to Martine’s room and hope that he had the wherewithal to deal with the situation.

When he arrived at the parking lot of the Waterfront hotel, he leapt out of his car without even making sure to park it properly. He just tossed the keys to the valet and ran inside. He knew which room she was in, so it was just a case of racing up the stairs and getting there. He thought about the possibility of calling 911 again, so that they would hear what was going on when he got there. He knew that there was no way that he could take on Manning — especially as he almost certainly had the cop’s gun.

But Martine was in danger and he had to save her. He hadn’t been there for Melody when she was in danger. But he was here for Martine now. He had to justify his existence, even if it meant putting it on the line.

When he got to the door, his courage almost deserted him, but in his mind, the faces of Martine and Melody merged into one and he knew that he had to do.

He banged on the door even more aggressively than Gene had done fifty minutes earlier.

“Martine! Martine!”

There was movement inside, followed by the sound of the door handle. Slowly the door opened a crack… then a little more. Finally it opened enough for Martine’s frightened, huddled figure to become visible. But what surprised Alex was what happened next.

The door was flung open and Martine staggered out in her bathrobe. She collapsed into his arms.

Slowly, Claymore’s hands reached down and took their place over her heart — the same hands that had once fondled her breasts while she lay there on the grass, sobbing profusely and begging for him not to hurt her, in that secluded area of woodland where he had raped her. As the woman on the phone had instructed, he began the manual compressions, pumping her heart with a double-handed action, counting as he did do.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen fourteen, fifteen.”

He leaned over and opened his mouth. For a moment he hesitated, remembering how he had pinioned her to the ground, holding her thin, frail wrists together with one of his giant hands while he leaned over her and thrust his mouth onto hers, kissing her in a way that was so possessive that it made him feel as if he owned her for life, regardless of her wishes.

I have to do it , he told himself.

He placed his mouth gingerly over hers and did the first ventilation, breathing into her and silently praying that it would be the breath of life. He paused and did it a second time. Then he straightened up into a kneeling position and did the next fifteen compressions.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen fourteen, fifteen.”

He did two ventilations and then went back to the compressions again, repeating the entire process three more times. He felt exhausted, and defeated. There was still no sign of life. He straightened up, remembering how he had grabbed the throat of fourteen year old Andi when she tried to scream. But this time, when he reached for her throat it was to check if there was a pulse. As he touched her, he saw a slight movement of Andi’s chest and felt the pulse that he had been praying for. The heart was beating and she had resumed breathing. Through his tears, Claymore smiled a bitter smile and sighed heavily with relief.

Then he staggered to his feet, turned away and wept into his open hands.

Martine stood there clinging onto Alex as he encircled her waist with his arms. But there were no tears in her eyes, just a kind of heavy gasping as if she were trying to recover her strength.

“Where’s Manning?” he asked, urgently. “And Gene.”

“Inside,” said Martine, her voice rasping from shortage of breath.

He looked over at the door nervously and tried to edge Martine away from it, to get her out of harms way. But she resisted his efforts.

“We have to help her,” she said, releasing her grip on Alex and half turning towards the door.

He nodded, unsure of what he meant, or what danger lay behind that door. She turned her back on him, opened the door and walked into the room. He followed and saw Gene in a kneeling position, cradling Louis Manning’s bleeding head in her arms, rocking backward and forward gently as if holding a baby and trying to soothe it gently to sleep.

There was no movement from Manning. His eyes were open but unblinking. And the only sound in the room was a feint murmur from Gene’s throat as she sang the lullaby from Robert Munch’s Love You Forever .

Martine turned to Alex, and this time a couple of tears were forming in her eyes.

“He was the salmon,” she said softly.

“The salmon.”

“Swimming up stream, to the waters where he was born. Only he never made it.”

For some reason, that he couldn’t fathom himself, Alex took out his wallet and looked at a picture of a young man. He had found the picture in the glove compartment of the car belonging to his former legal intern, Nat Anderson, after Nat had been killed in that fatal crash. He felt overwhelmed by the emotions it brought on — the same emotions he had felt when he first saw the picture and recognized the face.

It was later that night when Claymore stood dry-eyed on the Golden Gate Bridge looking out at the waters below. He had gone with Andi in the ambulance and was still with her at the hospital when Gene had arrived with Alex and Martine. Andi had been slipping in and out of consciousness, but she seemed to respond to Gene, at one point even squeezing her hand. Alex and Martine had left shortly after that, and Claymore realized that he too was in danger of outstaying his welcome.

So now, with no one else about, he stood here looking east towards the city where he had been judged not guilty by the system. But it was not so easy to escape the judgment of his own conscience.

It would be so much simpler to end it here. He had given Andi back her life, but he could not restore her youth joy of living that he had robbed her of forever. Neither could he banish her pain. Like all human beings he could do limited good but unlimited evil.

His moral account was overdrawn.

And yet… that didn’t make him morally bankrupt. The words “temporarily insolvent” came into his head, bringing a wry smile top his lips. He still had a few good years left, and if he chose to use them wisely he could repay at least part of his debt. But he could never give back to Andi what he had taken away from her.

To do away with himself now — as a means of paying for his sins — was as tempting as any temptation life had thrown at him. But it was tempting for all the wrong reasons. It would be like the trick that those smarmy, crooked business corporations sometimes play: filing for Chapter 11 to duck their obligations towards workers, creditors and shareholders.

He knew that he had a duty to pay back what he had taken away from his victims. If he couldn’t pay it back to Andi, he could pay it back to others — helping some future potential victim before it was too late. He had thought, for many years, that he had repaid the debt already by standing up for “American values.” But paying tribute to American values — whatever that meant — didn’t expiate his sins or purge him of the guilt that he still carried. Whatever those ill-defined values were, they weren’t a model of perfection any more than those other political and religious systems that he had experimented with and that had left him so thoroughly disillusioned.