At this moment, Bridget was sitting at her desk typing up a report on a domestic violence case for the DA’s office, when a female officer came over from the fax machine and dropped two sheets of paper on her desk. Bridget was a stickler for clarity as well as detail and so absorbed was she in getting the wording right that she let the fax lie there for three minutes while she played around with the phraseology of a single sentence.
Sarah Jensen, the Assistant District Attorney in charge of the Domestic Violence Division at the Ventura County DA’s office, was no less determined than Bridget to nail these “bastards” who beat their wives or girlfriends. But Sarah Jensen was a realist. She was also very ambitious. She knew that unsuccessful prosecutions damaged the reputation of the department, not to mention giving her a poor track record, personally.
She also knew that failures of prosecutions in such cases, gave right-wing politicians and news editors the chance to accuse the department of a feminist witch-hunt against men in the name of liberal political correctness.
So Bridget knew that she had to word the sentence carefully to give the impression that it was a winnable case. Whether it actually would be won was up to a lot of people: the prosecutor, the witnesses, the judge, even the jury. But Bridget was determined that the case should go to trial.
When she eventually looked at the fax, her eyes lit up. She scooped it up and rushed out of the room.
Friday, 12 June 2009 — 10:30
Elias Claymore’s Mediterranean-style villa stood in landscaped grounds on the sand of Montecito’s most prestigious beach and had breathtaking views of the ocean from nearly every room. Although the coveted syndication deal for his TV show had yet to materialize, he had done well out of his best-selling autobiography, his three follow-up books and the movie about his life.
To show for it, he had a huge living room with fireplace, bar and ocean view, a beachside kitchen, two beachside bedrooms each with a fireplace and a third at the back. Even the office had an ocean view. There was also a separate guest apartment, a large beachfront deck, a sunset view seaside spa, majestic trees and flowering gardens and 75 feet of private beach front.
Sitting on a lounging chair on the deck, looking out onto the ocean and thinking about his present surroundings, Elias Claymore realized that crime and repentance had served him well. It was a far cry from the ramshackle hut where he had been born and the rat-infested ‘hood where he had grown up. But how far had he really come?
“You can take the man out of the ghetto,” the racists had taunted. “But you can’t take the ghetto out of the man.” And much as it pained his troubled conscience, the racists were right on this one, albeit in the most literal sense. For a ghetto is actually a place of retreat where one is surrounded by ones own kind yet constantly under threat from those outside. And right now he felt besieged.
His mind drifted back to what his life had once been like. He used to think that the pain was all over. He had never forgotten what he had done. But after all these years he thought it would no longer come back to haunt him. Yet, the events of the past week had proved him wrong — and it was like a slow, drawn-out torture.
He tried to soften the pain by reminding himself what had driven him to do the things he had done and become the man he became. But those memories were even more painful. Like the time he was nine when two white policemen raped his mother before his eyes. He had tried to stop them, but one of them had grabbed him and twisted his arm behind his back, forcing him to watch while the other “pig” had pinned his mother to the ground, ripped her clothes and forced himself into her as she screamed and begged for mercy.
She had brought up Elias all alone, without the help of a man, for most of Elias’s childhood. She had always been a strong figure in his early years, dishing out the punishment but also protecting him from the bigger kids in the ‘hood. But she couldn’t protect herself from this. And Elias Claymore learned in those few minutes that the mother, who had been like a pillar of support for the entire world as he knew it, was powerless in the face of this invading force in their own home.
And through his childish eyes, little Elias knew why. She was a woman — and women were weaker than men. He couldn’t expect a woman to protect him. It was for men to be strong and to protect women… or violate them. That was how it was in other households. He had seen the local pimps slapping their girls around and he quickly learned that this was the natural order in the world. It was normal for men to dominate women.
But these men who had invaded his house and were now raping his mother were not their men. They were an alien presence. These were the “pigs” who beat up blacks just because they were black. These were the people who called him “nigger” and made him afraid whenever they walked by, knowing that he daren’t respond to their racist taunts. And now they were here in his home, doing… this thing… to his mother.
He couldn’t blame her for being weak. But it was her fault that they didn’t have a man to protect them. She had driven him away. That’s what one of his “brothers” had told him. She had called Elias’s father a “no-good, drunken deadbeat” and thrown him out of the house. But now he realized how much they needed a man in this household… and they didn’t have one because of her.
He realized in that moment that one day he would be a man. He would be big and strong and then there’d be hell to pay! Because then he’d be able to fight back… and he’d hit them where it hurt. He’d hit their weak ones — their women.
He remembered telling his mother this… and he remembered the hurt in her eyes…
When he came out of the daydream, he did not feel good; he was hurting. And not just on the inside. Even his body was aching from the painful memories.
He felt that something must have shaken him out of his daydream. But he couldn’t be sure what it was. Then it happened again and he realized: it was a loud, aggressive knocking on his door.
“Who is?” he called out nervously as he approached the door.
“This is the police! We have a warrant for your arrest.”
Friday, 12 June 2009 — 13:00
“This time we’ve got a witness,” said Lieutenant Kropf.
“Who?” asked Alex.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Alex had flown down to Los Angeles from San Francisco at barely a moment’s notice as soon as he heard of Claymore’s second arrest, having told his client not to say a word until he got there. He knew that the cops would try their usual tricks — telling the suspect that they were more likely to believe him if he spoke freely on the record, without getting all “lawyered up.” But Alex had been firm.
“Don’t fall for it,” he had warned. “The issue is not whether they believe you, but whether they’ve got a case. They’re capable of talking themselves into anything. You just stay cool and hang in till I get there. If they’ve got no case, they can’t act. If they think they’ve already got one then nothing you can say will make any difference.”
Claymore had told Alex that he had stayed silent — and by the way he said it, Alex believed him.
“What exactly did this witness see?”
Alex assumed that some one hadn’t just stood there watching a rape and doing nothing about it.
“He saw your client running away from the crime scene,” said Kropf, regretting it a moment later.
Alex picked up on it. So the witness was a man… or a boy. Alex wondered if it was a child. That might explain him watching and not taking action. But Kropf had already said that he had seen Claymore running away from the crime scene, not that the witness had seen the rape. That was a very different thing.