Authors: David Kessler
“What was that name again sir?”
“Yin, Martine Yin.”
“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… butshe 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.”
“Where is he now?”
“I got rid of him.”
“But you said...”
“I said I couldn’t bring myself to have an abortion. And I tried to bring him up on my own. But it was hard. Everyone told me I should try and find a man. They said forget the looks. Just find yourself an ugly, lonely guy with a full wallet and a lonely heart. ‘At least he’ll provide for you both and he won’t leave you.’ That’s what my friends said. Maybe they were right. But I wasn’t ready to deliver myself into the hands of another man. I was looking for some one gentle to share my life with, even before that.”
“You mean because of your sexual preference.”
“If that’s what you care to call it.”
“But what about… getting rid of him?”
“I gave him up for adoption.”
“But you said you wanted to keep him.”
“
Of course I wanted to keep him.
I wanted to love him. He was my child. And when he was a baby, weak and helpless, I could do that. I didn’t think of him as part of you, I thought of him as part of
me
. But when he got towards two, things started to change. His facial features started to develop and he began reminding me of you. Also he was stubborn. He was developing a mind of his own. Instead of being the baby who responded with a smile when I scooped him up in my arms, he became this strong-willed brat who wanted his own way every time. And then it all started coming back: all the memories of another overgrown little boy who wanted things all his own way and didn’t care who he hurt to get it!”
There were tears in the eyes of both of them. If Claymore’s pain failed to equal that of Gene, it was offset by the knife of
guilt
that twisted in his gut.
“So you gave him up after you’d already bonded with him?” asked Claymore tensely.
“
Yes!
” said Andi, choked up with tears.
“But you still loved him?”
“Of course I still loved him!” By now she was crying more hysterically than she had been in court. But she still held on to the gun aimed squarely at Claymore.
“And that’s what you’ve had to live with all these years?”
“Yes!”
He leaned forward.
“I can help you... if you’ll let me.”
He started to get up, but stopped in his tracks when she raised the gun and aimed it at his face.
“I don’t need your help! I can handle my own pain.”
“Look... I know it’s an impertinence for me to offer
my
help. But like you said you’ve been bottling it up all these years. You’re entitled to some relief... some rest.. some inner peace.”
“I wasn’t talking about
me
!” she screamed. “When I said how hard it was to keep it all bottled up, I didn’t mean
me
!”
“Then who?” he stuttered, helplessly
“I was talking about your other victim – the fourteen-year-old girl who didn’t come forward at the time you raped her!”
Claymore could barely find the breath to speak. But he forced himself to say the name: “Andi.”
Bethel Newton was going home.
She had boarded the flight at noon and touched down at Miami International Airport five hours and twenty five minutes later. She had taken only hand luggage – having ditched practically everything that reminded her of her all too brief stay in California.
Her folks were expecting her. But she remained uncertain of what to expect. She had told them of her plans by text message while the taxi snaked its way to the airport in Los Angeles, where she had stayed when Gene went up to Oakland to answer the subpoena. She had used up practically the last of her precious cash to make the journey. But she didn’t have the courage to speak to them by voice and they hadn’t replied to her message.
She wondered how they would take it. She had rejected their overtures of support during her ordeal in California. Would they want to have anything to do with her now?
These thoughts were playing on her mind as she raced from the arrivals lounge past baggage collection and into the arrivals hall.
“
Bethel
Honey?
” a woman’s voice shouted. “Over here!”
She looked round to see a somewhat plump thirty-nine year old woman waving to her. It was her mother. And she wasn’t alone. Her step-father Jack, twelve-year-old sister Judy and two-year-old half-brother Benny were also there.
Bethel Newton’s eyes flooded with tears as she raced towards her waiting family.
Claymore had been silenced by Gene’s words and was still struggling to take it all in. He had long suspected it
–
since the day he had first walked into the meeting room with her and Alex. But he hadn’t been sure. And she had
said
nothing.
After a long silence, Claymore finally spoke.
“I
thought
it was her.”
“What do you mean, you
thought
?”
“It was so long ago. She was… I don’t know how old.”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen,” he repeated quietly, as if the magnitude of his crime from twenty five years ago were only now sinking in. “I still remember her face. It’s haunted me ever since. That was why I stopped you know. It wasn’t getting caught. It was her eyes… those wounded eyes.”
“
Shut up!
” Gene yelled.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to torment you. And I wasn’t making a play for sympathy. I just want you to know the truth. When she first came into that room and Alex introduced her… The face had changed of course. But I still remembered. When he said the name, it didn’t confirm it because I never knew the names.”
“Of course you didn’t! What did the names matter? We weren’t people to you.”
“That’s what I was like
then
! It’s not the man I am
now
! The men you should really hate are the men who are
still like that
–
like that scum-bag Louis Manning.”
“Who?” She seemed stunned by this.
“Louis Manning. He’s the guy who really raped Bethel Newton.”