No Way Out by David Kessler Read Free Book Online

more than a four minute interview.
    Not that Gene lacked the experience or training for the job. She had headed a Center in Brooklyn and had very impressive resumé.
    “Not only under-staffed, but also under-appreciated,” Gene echoed. “Everyone rails and rages against crime, but they’re more concerned with punishing the perpetrator than helping the victim recover from the trauma. Who needs to help the victim when you can get revenge. That’s the American way.”
    This was unfair, and they both knew it. They both understood the desire for revenge all too well. But it was strange how guns always counted for more than bandages on the human balance sheet.
    Now it was Andi who assumed a tone of sympathy.
    “You’ve got something on your mind haven’t you?”
    The voice was gentle. It was one of those spontaneous mid-conversation role reversals that characterized their relationship. Before, it had been Gene playing the firm but loving mother to Andi’s frustrated daughter. Now Andi was playing the sympathetic wife to Gene’s tormented husband.
    “I had a case this morning...”
    She trailed off, but Andi could read the rest of the sentence in the silence.
    “They threw you in at the deep end?” This was something that Andi had been hoping for in her own job. But it wasn’t to be. Instead it was Gene who had the dubious privilege.
    “Wha’d’you expect. Like I said, we’re understaffed.”
    Andi put a gentle hand on her lover’s bare arm and noticed a scratch there.
    “What’s bugging you? You’ve seen it all before. You know the score by now.”
    A pained expression flipped briefly across Gene’s face.
    “I’ve seen this before all right,” Gene muttered bitterly. “It’s the kind of case that sets off the talking heads on TV. Feminism versus race politics. A white girl raped by a black man.”
    Andi, who had been taking a sip of her orange juice, gulped and put the glass down.
    “The press’ll have a field day. It’ll probably turn into another ‘black rights versus women’s rights’ circus.”
    “And don’t I know it Andi! The defense will raise the specter of the Scottsboro Boys and the prosecution will use everything they can throw at the defendant from Mike Tyson to O J Simpson.”
    Andi nodded sympathetically.
    “The old political correctness conundrum.”
    “And caught in the middle of it is one frightened little girl, not yet out of her teens.”
    “You think you can handle it?”
    “Oh I can handle it all right. I’ve been there before, remember. The question is can the victim ?”
    “And can she?”
    Gene shook her head, sadly.
    “She doesn’t know what she’s letting herself in for.”
    “Have they got a suspect?”
    “Yes.”
    “Has she ID’d him?”
    “Yes. Only they released him pending DNA results.”
    Andi sat forward, part eager, part concerned. She had known Gene long enough to pick up the nuances in her words as well as her tone.
    “Well if she ID’d him then maybe she’s tougher than you think.”
    “She’s not tough. She’s just naïve. She doesn’t realize that she’s going to carry the can for two centuries of racial persecution.”

Saturday 6 June 2009 – 11:00
    Albert Carter was an old man. Not a wise old man, not a crusty old man, not even really a frail old man. Just an old man who had lived a full life and been around the block a few times. He wasn’t in the best of health, having done his share of smoking and drinking, before he gave it up when he noticed it slowing him down a bit. But he was a lonely old man, having lost his first wife to divorce and his second to the grim reaper.
    Oh yes, the Reaper.
    There were many weapons in the Reaper’s arsenal, and Albert Carter couldn’t even pronounce the name of the disease that had claimed Hildegard.
    His children were still around, but he had lost them to professional migration. He saw them at Christmas and on his birthday, but that was pretty much it. One lived in Utah and one in Boston. The