No Way Out by David Kessler

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.
    Because Kropf had specifically said “saw your client” – not “saw some one.” That meant that an ID had already been made.
    “Wait a minute, you put my client in a line-up when I wasn’t there?”
    Alex knew perfectly well that they could do a photo line-up without the accused or his lawyer being present. But this was unusual when the suspect was already in custody. Then again, maybe the arrest took place after the line-up.
    “We didn’t need to,” said the lieutenant,