Conviction
Page 2
This settled the matter, as Terri had known it would. After another glance at his father, Carlo nodded.
"So," she continued, "we have to look at the facts as if no one ever has before. Review the police reports, the physical evidence, the witness statements, the trial transcript. Track down the key witnesses—could they have been mistaken, we'll want to know, or have had a motive to lie? Both happen more often than you'd think."
"What about the cops?"
"If they're willing. Same with the prosecutor and Rennell's trial lawyer—we'll want to know why they made the choices they did. That will be far more touchy for defense counsel."
Carlo raised his eyebrows in inquiry. "Because we'll second-guess him?"
"More than that," Chris told him. "We have to prove that Rennell Price's trial lawyer was so incompetent that his client was denied the effective assistance of counsel granted by the Sixth Amendment. It won't be easy, given that some courts have ruled that even sleeping through your client's trial is not enough to qualify. Damned few lawyers will admit they were worse than that."
"If we can prove Rennell Price is innocent, why should it matter?"
Terri suppressed a rueful smile: framed against the panoply of sailboats, his crew-neck burgundy sweater carelessly draped over his shoulders, Carlo still seemed innocent himself. But so had she been.
"Later on," she promised, "I'll induct you into the wonderland of death penalty jurisprudence. For now, take my word that the State of California can claim that even compelling new proof of this guy's innocence doesn't bar his execution—at least, taken alone. If the trial was fair, then they'll say his execution is constitutional. Even if the verdict may well have been wrong."
"How can innocence not matter?"
"Because that's the law—you'll find out soon enough. Rennell Price was convicted of an awful crime, and fifteen years later, he's still alive. He's become an overdue debt to the victim's parents, and the State of California is determined to collect on their behalf."
Saying this reminded Terri of how solitary Rennell was—and of why she must distance herself, as much as possible, from the fact that the victim had suffered a death which caused Terri to cringe with guilt at what her own daughter still was forced to live with.
"So we'd better hope he is retarded," Chris remarked to Carlo. "That's the good news, if there is any. While you were holed up cramming for the bar exam, the Supreme Court decided in Atkins v. Virginia that we no longer execute the mentally retarded. The trick, if Terri's right, is proving that she's right with respect to Rennell Price. Otherwise," Chris added sardonically, "or so the argument goes, we'll be flooded with claims of retardation filed by crafty middle-aged inmates who suddenly can't tie their own shoes.
"That means we need to show who Rennell was at age eighteen, and how he got that way—his parents, relatives, brother, friends, home, neighborhood, educational and medical histories, mental profile. Everything that ever happened to him, an entire social history in fifty-nine days."
The task was so daunting that Carlo, feigning a careless shrug, simply inquired, "So where do we start?"
Restless, Terri stood. "By going to the office," she told him with faux good cheer. "Right now. We'll start by reading reams of paper, then tracking down the cops."
Now Carlo looked genuinely startled. "What if I have a date?"
Chris laughed aloud. "Ask her to come to your place late," he suggested helpfully, "and hope that she'll stay over." Abruptly, his eyes grew serious and, in his wife's appraisal, a little sad. "Until you save Rennell Price, or the State of California kills him, life as you know it is over. After that, it will merely never be the same. I know that from living with Terri."
THREE
"KIDS," CHARLES MONK SAID SOFTLY. "TO ME, THEY WERE ALWAYS the worst. Never quite got used to it."
Fifty-seven days to go. Perhaps that was why, Terri thought, Monk's words had a valedictory tone; perhaps it was just the reflective melancholy of a veteran homicide inspector who, freshly retired, had the freedom of acknowledging emotions which for too long had been a luxury. Then she wondered if the melancholy was her own, more about the daughter she knew than the children Charles Monk had seen.
They sat at a sidewalk café in North Beach, the early morning pedestrians—tourists and schoolkids and office workers headed for the Financial District—passing by their table. The morning was bright but a little chill; Monk stiffened, a wince briefly disturbing the granite angles of his seamed brown face, and then stretched one leg in front of him. "Knee," he told her with resignation. "Vietnam."
"Want to go inside?"
Monk slowly shook his head. "Not if I can help it. Just make me feel like an invalid. Worse than that—retired."
Terri smiled. They had been adversaries, sometimes bitterly so, but never enemies. Monk was smart and honest, a legend on the street; he seemed willing enough to talk with her, maybe because he was bored, more likely because he was satisfied with the integrity of his work. For Monk, the execution of Rennell Price was a given—the recompense, too long delayed, for what he had seen fifteen years before.
"Let's start from the beginning," Terri requested.
* * *
It had been late September, the waning of the baseball season, and the Giants were playing a Thursday night game at Candlestick. Through Monk's windshield, the circular glow of klieg lights rose from the bowl of the stadium.
It sat on a promontory jutting eastward into the San Francisco Bay, the ill-advised project of a mayor who seemed never to have visited at night, when the stiff winds buffeted your face and chill fog seeped into your bones. A cop waved Monk past the barrier erected to divert the flow of traffic, and Monk's headlights found the parking lot closest to the bay.
He parked beside the water. Stepping out, conscious of the shadow of the stadium a quarter mile behind him, the thin cries of deluded fans carrying in the cold, damp air which made this such a miserable place to play—or watch—a ball game. Or for Monk to be now.
Pulling up the collar of his windbreaker, he crossed a strip of sand and underbrush to the low wall of rocks which edged the bay. Far across the water were the glistening lights of the Oakland hills; a few feet from him, in the black shallows of the water, the new medical examiner, Liz Shelton, dressed in a down jacket and hip boots and clutching a flashlight, braced herself against the current as she scrutinized a dark form which had washed up against the base of the rocks. A lab technician knelt beside it.
"Didn't know you fished," Monk said.
Liz glanced up at him. Her dirty-blond hair was tied back off her neck, and her level gaze was somber in the moonlight. "Fly-fishing," she answered and moved her flashlight toward the shadowy form.
Captured in its yellow glow was the bloated face of a child who appeared to be Asian. Long black hair, swirling in the water, marked her as a girl.
Monk peered down at her. He could not see her legs; though soaked with water, her wool sweater appeared dark green. As her hair swirled again, Monk caught the glint of what might have been a silver barrette.
"Who found her?" he asked Shelton.
"Samoans. A bunch of them were sitting on the rocks, drinking beer."
Which figured; in Monk's reckoning, they were about the only folks scary enough, or maybe just dense enough, to hang out here in the dark and cold. Monk's knee had begun to throb.
"How long she been in the bay, you think?"
Shelton peered at the body with narrowing eyes, as if trying to see the child beneath the bloated mask. "Two days, maybe."
Beside the victim, the criminologist studied her for signs of trauma. In terms of external evidence, it was all he could accomplish now, and perhaps ever: a floater in the bay would have all sorts of stuff on it, from seaweed to the residue of toilets, and there would be little way of telling where any of it came from. Far better if she'd been wrapped up in a blanket and dumped in Golden Gate Park.
Monk looked up again. "How long dead?" he asked Shelton.
"Any guess on cause?"
"Not yet."
Monk stared down at the victim. More quietly, he asked, "Think it's her?"
Shelton considered this. Monk did not need to explain: two afternoons ago, in a crack-infested section of the Bayview District, the nine-year-old daughter of Cambodian immigrants had vanished after school. She had stayed late for extra help with English; she had left alone; and as of now, her teacher was the last person who claimed to have seen her. In the photographs shown on television, the girl, named Thuy Sen, appeared grave and delicate.
"I'd say I hope not," Shelton answered, "but then she'd just be someone else's daughter."
Turning from the body, Monk gazed out at the sloping hills of the Bayview District, their light and shadow some distance beyond the stadium. "Why," he wondered aloud, "would Cambodians decide to settle in Bayview?"
"It's like Bogart said in Casablanca," Liz responded wearily. "They must have been misinformed."
* * *
After Liz took charge of the body, transporting it to the Hall of Justice, Monk had gone to his office and begun calling the plainclothes cops who were searching for Thuy Sen.
The lead cop was in a sports bar in the Marina District. Above the din of voices and the Giants game, he told Monk where things stood.
They had done it by the numbers—cruised the neighborhood, searched her house, broadcast her description to operations, called hospitals, interviewed her teacher and, of course, her father, mother, and sister. "You know how it is in the Bayview," the cop told Monk. "Ninety-nine percent of the kids just decide not to show, or Mama lets 'em run around loose. Maybe nine or ten o'clock she'll get curious about where the kid might be. But Cambodians are different."
From blacks, you mean, Monk thought but did not say. "The parents have any ideas?" he asked.
"Nope. Last time they saw her she was heading off to school with her twelve-year-old sister. Sis's job was to walk her to school every morning, and home every afternoon. This time she didn't—she seems pretty much of a mess. You can see the parents staring at her—they don't need to say a word."
Monk found himself studying the picture on his desk, his wife and their two daughters. "How are they?" he inquired. "The parents."
"Mom's jittery and anxious, can't sit still. Dad's, as they say, inscrutable. But they say they had no problems with Thuy Sen—no acting up, no conflicts, no hanging around with drug dealers or bad kids on the street. Her teacher agrees; as far as she knows, the girls keep pretty much to themselves."
"What does Sister say?"
"Not much," he answered, "except that they took the same route every day from home to school. We've been knocking on doors to ask if anyone saw her. Nothing yet."
In the bar, Monk heard a ragged chorus of cheers—the Giants, he guessed, had just done something good. "When she left for school," he asked, "did they say what she was wearing?"
"Yeah—a plaid skirt, Mom says. And her favorite green wool sweater."
* * *
By the time Monk caught up with Liz Shelton, the victim was on the autopsy table, her eyes shut, her naked limbs rigid and pitifully thin under the harsh light of an overhead lamp.
Monk gazed at her. "So?" he asked Shelton.
"No evidence of a beating, no obvious indications of brain damage. The only bruises seem to be postmortem."
"What about penetration?"
"No sign of it, vaginal or anal. We'll take swabs, of course. But I doubt we'll find anything."
"Any guesses?"
Touching one side of the girl's face, Shelton extended her forefinger and gently opened an eyelid. At the edge of the sightless brown eye were starbursts of red.
"Like she was strangled," Monk observed.
Gently, Shelton removed her hand from the child's face, closing her eyelid again. "Except that there's no external evidence of that. It's like she maybe choked on a sandwich. That's why we perform autopsies."
Monk nodded. "I'll call the parents," he said. "See if they can ID her."
Shelton emitted a sigh. She was new on the job, Monk thought.
* * *
Monk and his partner, Rollie Ainsworth, sat in Shelton's office with Thuy Sen's father, mother, and the police translator, a petite young woman who had fled the Cambodian killing fields.
As had the Sen family, Monk learned in the ghastly form of small talk which occupied their anxious waiting. The mother, Chou, had lost her parents to the murderers of the Khmer Rouge; the brother and two sisters of Meng, the father, had been taken by the government and never seen again. Both seemed traumatized anew—the woman trembled, and the father, sitting stiffly in a chair, stared at the wall with foreboding.
"How did they get to the Bayview?" Monk asked the translator.
The young woman, reluctant, turned to the father and uttered words which sounded to Monk like a question. After a moment, Meng Sen answered in a monotone.
"His great-aunt was already there," the translator told him. "She wanted family around her."
* * *
When Liz Shelton was ready, Monk led the Sens to the glass window. The translator lingered behind.
The window was covered with curtains. Though it was intended to minimize shock and cut off the odor of death, neither, in Monk's experience, was much help at moments like this.
From inside, Shelton slowly drew back the curtains. The child lay on a gurney, draped in a white sheet.
The parents gazed at her. It was the mother who broke first, emitting a muted shriek, hands covering her face. For what seemed a long time, the father did not react. Then he closed his eyes, still silent, and nodded.
* * *
Thuy Sen did not play near the shore, Monk learned through the translator. She did not swim, and did not like the bay. The water was too cold.
After a few minutes, Monk told the woman to take them home.
* * *
It was midmorning before Shelton finished the autopsy, and Monk had barely slept before returning to her office.
"She choked to death," the medical examiner said baldly. "But not on a sandwich. On semen."
Monk said nothing. Briefly, it struck him that Thuy Sen's older sister was in for a lifetime of guilt and anguish.
"We found semen in her mouth and throat and airways," Shelton continued. "One male can ejaculate three to five milligrams. More than enough to choke a nine-year-old girl."
Monk considered this. "Anything to show she didn't volunteer?"
"No. But judging from what you know, how likely does that seem? Even over there."
Monk answered with a shrug. "What else?" he inquired.
With a tentative air, Shelton steepled her fingers, resting them against her chin. "There was a hair snagged in her barrette. For all we know, it came from the bay, and hair identification by ethnicity is hardly an exact science. But more likely than not it's Negroid."
Again Monk said nothing. Neither needed to comment on the inflammatory images this might summon, even in San Francisco—a nine-year-old girl choking to death during forcible oral copulation with a black man. Whoever the sperm donor turned out to be, Monk's job was to find him.
* * *
For some moments, Terri had not touched her coffee.
" 'Him' turned out to be 'them,' " Monk said with quiet emphasis. "We found them both."
FOUR
MONK STUDIED THE LEMON RIND FLOATING IN THE TINY CUP OF espresso, incongruous in his paw of a hand. "Should have ordered a double," he observed. "Less rind, more caffeine."
Terri emptied her own cup, cold now, its contents bitter on her tongue. "Tell me about Flora Lewis."
* * *
They didn't find a witness for two fruitless days, spent going door-to-door in the crack-ridden streets of Bayview, hilly and sunny and stark, where black kids loitered on the pavement from childhood until, in their twenties, half the boys were dead or in jail. To outsiders, it was a foreign country—taxi drivers would
n't go there, cops blew off domestic violence calls rather than stick their necks out, and the whole mess was sitting on a Superfund site, with exposure to buried poisons as toxic as the lives of many who were born there.
Once it had been a place of hope, its white, blue-collar residents joined during World War II by African American shipyard workers who remained there, thinking the jobs and sunny weather—best among the city's microclimates—might presage a better life than whatever they'd left behind. The jobs vanished; many blacks remained, predominant now, mingled with pockets of Tongans and Samoans, a few Asians, and remnants of the white home-owning classes—stranded in the houses they still owned, Monk knew, by an economy which otherwise had passed them by. Some, like Flora Lewis, saw Bayview as a prison.
She lived two blocks south of Thuy Sen's accustomed route to school. Cracking open the door of her tiny Edwardian home, she peered above a door chain at the two black men—Monk and Rollie Ainsworth—who had come there unannounced. Only when Monk thrust out identification and stated their purpose did Lewis let them in.
The next thing she did seemed odd. Going to the window, she craned her neck to peer out, one palsied hand drawing open lace curtains, her frail body still bent away from the window to conceal herself from view. When she spoke she did not turn.
"I'd have moved," she said, "but all I've got is my social security and my parents' house."
Glancing at Ainsworth, Monk saw his partner's shrewd, round face appraising her and concluding, as Monk had, that silence was best. "They live across the street," she told them.
Uttering this non sequitur, her voice was parched. Her eyes maintained their vigil. "Who?" Monk asked.
"The Price brothers, two boys, if you could call them that. Cars squealing up at night, men and trampy-looking girls streaming in and out, music getting louder all the time and more obscene." Her tone became quieter, to Monk, etched with bitterness. "It always felt to me like anything could happen—their grandmother locked up like a prisoner, the boys with no one to control whatever impulses they had."