Free Retribution by Jilliane Hoffman

straight out the convention center doors. At 8:26 A.M. she took a Yellow cab home and never went back.
    Detective Harrison didn’t call anymore, so Chloe instead now called her every day to check the status of the case. The answer was always the same, though.
    ‘Be assured, we are actively pursuing the investigation, Chloe. We hope to have a subject in custody soon. We appreciate your continued cooperation.’
    She swore the detective read the daily response off a cue card titled ‘Law Enforcement Responses to Pacify Annoying Victims of Unsolved Cases’. As days became weeks, Chloe knew that her case was moving its way on a steady course into the cold-case files. Without an ID and no fingerprints or other physical evidence, her case would most likely never be solved short of a confession and a lot of luck. Still, she called Detective Harrison every day, if just to haunt her and let her know that she was not going away anytime soon.
    After the bar exam fiasco, her relationship with Michael had all but disintegrated. She knew that he was angry with her for just walking out on the test, for noteven trying. There had been no sex since the incident, as he still preferred to call it, but now even when they held hands, it felt strained and uncomfortable. Instead of coming by every night, he now came by only on the weekends. And he was getting more and more frustrated that she no longer wanted to leave her apartment, even if it was only to go out to dinner. There was an unspoken cold distance between them that grew every day, but neither knew how to take back the lost ground. Chloe didn’t know if she even wanted to go back to the way things were. She knew that Michael, in some way, secretly blamed her for what had happened. She saw it in his eyes when he looked at her and then when he couldn’t look at her. And for that she could just not forgive him.
    I just wish you had let me stay with you last night.
    Chloe supposed that they both knew it was over, yet neither of them wanted to be the one to administer last rites. She suspected that Michael was too afraid of the avalanche of guilt that was sure to fall on his head if he ever conjured up the nerve to break it off. Then she wondered what emotion she would feel herself when and if he finally told her that, although he would always love her, he didn’t want her as his wife and could they please just be friends? Would it be relief, guilt, anger, sadness? So as their relationship drifted through the rest of summer and blurred into fall, the two of them saw less and less of each other and neither complained.
    Fitz & Martinelli urged her to retake the bar in February and offered her a position as a law clerk in the interim. She declined. It would be just another place where she would be known around the watercooler as‘the rape victim’. Only now it would be worse because she had also earned herself the dubious distinction of being ‘the rape victim who walked out on the bar exam’.
    At her three-month postop checkup, her gynecologist suggested counseling. ‘Rape victims have scars the rest of us can’t see,’ he had said. ‘Psychological counseling is recommended to help you cope with things.’
    I’m fine. Everything is healing, I just didn’t take the bar as scheduled. Thank you for your concern. Then she left his office and vowed not to return.
    In October she applied for a position as a nighttime reservationist with the Marriott Hotel at La Guardia Airport – a large, constantly busy hotel with hundreds of workers, none of whom even knew her name. She worked in a back room with a headset, away from the public and its probing eyes. It didn’t put her on the partner track, and it would not make her parents proud if they knew. Michael was disgusted by what he called her ‘lack of ambition’. But it was a place that allowed her the safety of numbers during the terrifying nighttime hours, and still afforded her the anonymity she needed to avoid intrusive