No Way Out

‘But first you’ve got to catch him,’ said Beth tentatively.

‘We’ll check his DNA against the National DNA Index System as well as the California DNA Index which may have some more detail.’

Bethel smiled nervously. But then she said something that struck Bridget as rather strange. ‘What if his lawyers dig up stuff that they can throw at me?’

Friday, 5 June 2009 – 11.05 (#ulink_485850b1-61ba-59d2-b51d-02e363f69e11)

‘So how big is this department, then?’ Andi asked the lean, bespectacled man in a light gray suit as they walked past the desks in the open-plan office.

A mix-up about her starting date had meant that she had spent half the morning sitting in a room reading brochures and web-based material about Levine and Webster instead of beginning her induction and being introduced to the staff. The human resources manager wouldn’t be back till Monday, so it was left to Paul Sherman, one of the partners in the firm, to lead Andi along through the maze of desks, as some of the younger (male) members of the staff leaned out from their shoulder height partitions to get a glimpse of the new girl. The women, for the most part, kept their attention to their photocopying or papers on their desks, only glancing round briefly to size up the competition.

‘It’s not really a department,’ Sherman replied nervously. ‘It’s more of a section in my department.’

Andi experienced a hint of unease as these words wafted over her. ‘I don’t understand. I thought I was going to head up a department over here.’

Sherman squirmed with embarrassment. He was only slightly shorter than Andi yet she seemed to tower over him. ‘Well, my department covers all forms of negligence and, for our purposes, tortious liability of criminals is a sub-section of that.’

‘I’d’ve thought there’s a difference between malicious acts and negligent ones.’

‘It’s all part of torts.’

‘Well so is trespass,’ she replied, as if addressing a child. ‘So is nuisance, so is defamation.’

‘Yes, but slander and libel are intentional.’

‘Just like crime.’

Sherman seemed embarrassed, as if perturbed by Andi’s confrontational approach, but reluctant to follow suit. ‘Well, anyway, I won’t try to second guess you. When we’ve got a victim case to litigate, you’ll be the one whose desk it lands on. You’re the expert in that field. I’m just a humble negligence lawyer.’

The uneasy feeling was growing in Andi. This wasn’t what they’d promised her when they offered her the job. They had given her the job without an interview, based on nothing more than her résumé and the recommendation of her head of department back in New York. But what Sherman was describing now wasn’t anything like what they had described when they made the job offer. If anything it was a step backwards.

She had made this move because it had become clear to her that in New York she could only move sideways. But now it looked like she had been suckered into this and was going nowhere just as fast. She felt betrayed. No, she told herself. Don’t prejudge. Maybe it’s not what it seems. Maybe they just have a less formal structure in this firm.

‘So let me get this straight, Mr Sherman. Any crime victim wanting to sue the perp is mine?’

She was watching his face carefully now.

‘As long as it falls exclusively within your remit. There might be some areas of overlap, in which case we’ll have to discuss it. But nobody’s going to go behind your back, let alone over your head. Everything’ll be done on a consensus basis.’

It was obvious that he was trying to sound encouraging, to make her feel at home. It was clear that they respected her or they wouldn’t have hired someone from the other side of the country and made such a generous pay offer, not to mention paying her relocation costs.

‘I guess it makes sense. It’s just not what I had in mind.’

‘Well, let’s see how it goes,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You’ll have a lot of autonomy. And in most cases no one will try to second guess you. The other partners will probably defer to your judgment too. You’re the specialist after all.’

‘Okay,’ said Andi brightening up. ‘Let’s get to work.’

‘That’s the spirit.’

‘So, where’s my office?’

Sherman looked embarrassed. ‘Well, it’s not really an office,’ he said nervously. ‘As you can see we’re open plan here.’

‘You mean only the partners have private offices?’

‘Well, no, some of the others do too. But we didn’t have a spare room, apart from the conference rooms. You’ll get one when we’ve got things sorted out. It’s just a matter of rearranging things. In the meantime, you’ll have a booth in the corner – away from most of the noise.’

He had noticed the expression on her face. ‘What?’

‘Look, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I’ll spell it out to you. This isn’t what I signed on for. I signed on to have an office, even head a department. Not to be an orphan or a stepchild.’

Friday, 5 June 2009 – 14.40 (#ulink_f1ab291c-2089-5523-a1a9-4769bcc8b15b)

‘Well, check out the ass on that!’

Alex shot an angry look at the leering redneck in torn jeans who was nursing a near-empty can of Bud. The man looked back as if to say, ‘Wanna make an issue of it, buddy?’

The truth of the matter was that Alex didn’t want to. But he was ready to. He was more afraid of the legal and professional consequences to himself as a lawyer than the possibility of getting beaten up. The guy was bigger than Alex. But Alex had trained in Krav Maga – an Israeli martial art – and reckoned the odds at about 50-50.

Not wanting to feed the redneck’s desire for attention, Alex returned his attention to the snooker table that the lithe, thirty-four-year-old, dark-haired, Chinese-American woman was bending over.

They were in the Embassy billiards club in San Gabriel. The place had been packed for the men’s event – the fourth in the six-venue US tour. But the hall seemed half empty as the woman in black pants and matching vest lined up her most crucial shot of the frame – if not the entire semi-final match.

After a few seconds, the chattering settled down to a respectful silence as the crowd held its breath with eager anticipation, wondering if Martine Yin could pull it off.

She took the shot with cool ease, not tentatively but with the firm confidence of someone who knew that there were no prizes for second best. And when the red ball dropped into the right corner pocket and the cue ball rolled slowly to a halt a foot away from the left cushion, the small crowd of appreciative aficionados who were there to watch the game and Martine, let out a whooping cheer. And Alex was amongst those applauding wildly – although he had to admit that he was one of those who was there to see Martine more than the game.

They had been going out together, on and off, for over a year now – if you could call it going out together. It had started after the Clayton Burrow case, when Martine had spent several months pursuing Alex for an interview. She was a TV reporter and she had covered what had become Alex’s most famous case. She had been one of the reporters in the observation room adjacent to the death chamber when they got the fateful call to abort the execution.

And she had witnessed, albeit from a distance, Alex’s intense conversation with his legal intern followed by the intern’s arrest. This whole surreal episode had culminated in a high-speed car chase in the dead of night, ending in a fatal crash that unfortunately evaded the cameras of the news helicopters.

After the case, Alex had offered some considerable resistance to Martine’s interview request, and when they did finally talk about it, she got the impression that he was holding something back. At first, she had been determined to break his resolve and get in under his guard. But somewhere along the line, she sensed that what Alex was holding back had more to do with his personal feelings than any hard facts about the case itself. She realized that Alex was all too human – nothwithstanding the predatory reputation of his profession – and thus realized also that there were limits to how predatory she could be in her own chosen vocation.

It was only after that, and because of this softening in Martine’s character, that the relationship between them really started to develop. And even then it was a relationship at a distance, which tended to stunt its growth. She was based in Los Angeles; he in San Francisco.

‘I’d like to put one in your pot, babe,’ the redneck called out, as he swaggered to the bar for a refill.

‘Why don’t you can it?’ said Alex turning round again.

‘Wanna step outside and settle it like a man?’ the redneck challenged.

‘Why don’t you both can it!’ Martine snapped. ‘I’m trying to concentrate.’

By this stage, the referee could no longer hope that the situation would play itself out without his intervention. He called a couple of bouncers to escort the redneck off the premises.

Martine turned back to the table and, taking a deep breath to regain her composure, potted the black and then another red. She had come to the table with four points and eight frames on the board against her opponent’s sixty-one points and eight frames, after a nail-biting battle of safety shots. Her opponent, a petite blonde, had missed a two-cushion escape from a tricky snooker and this gave Martine a final chance to save the match on this final frame.

But only if she made every shot.