In less than an hour their foreman, Henry Feldt, announced the verdict: death for both defendants.
* * *
The final decision was Rotelli's.
He could confirm the penalty of death or impose life without parole. In the courtroom, Mauriani watched as Rotelli, in his first capital murder trial as a judge, gravely began fulfilling a new role in a familiar play. Rotelli had become a judge by prosecuting high-profile murder cases; the question was whether he could enter a death sentence as readily as he once had sought it.
The courtroom was still: the Price brothers, James, the Sen family, and Eula Price were united in their sobriety by this final, fateful moment. With great deliberation, Rotelli began reciting the factors before him—the odious nature of the crime, the youth and innocence of the victim, the lack of remorse shown by the defendants, and their effort to cause the murder of the principal witness against them. Then he turned to the defendants. "The defense," Rotelli told them in somber tones, "has introduced no mitigating factors, and this Court is aware of none."
For an instant, the judge seemed to pause at the duty before him, then intoned for Payton Price—now as impassive as his brother—and then for Rennell the awesome words Mauriani had come to think of as, quite literally, a sentence of death.
"Rennell Price, it is the judgment of this Court, and it is hereby ordered, adjudged, and decreed, that you shall be put to death in accordance with California law within the walls of the State Prison at San Quentin.
"The defendant Rennell Price is therefore remanded to the custody of the Sheriff of San Francisco County to be delivered to the administrator of that prison, within ten days from this date, for execution of the sentence of death for the murder of Thuy Sen . . ."
To Mauriani's astonishment, Rennell Price stood. For the only time, his deep voice sounded in the courtroom. "I didn't do that little girl . . ."
* * *
Closing the transcript, Terri prepared to go home, try to get some sleep. There were fifty-four days until the date of execution.
PART TWO
THE INVESTIGATION
ONE
IT WAS THAT KIND OF SAN FRANCISCO MORNING WHEN DRIZZLE spattered through a mistlike fog which clung chill and close to the slick pavement. As Carlo drove, Terri sipped coffee from a porcelain mug, warming her cupped hands. The breath of the defroster cleared circles on the windshield of her cluttered Jeep.
Carlo turned down Pine Street toward Laurel Heights. "So tell me about Laura Finney," he said.
"Until a few weeks ago she was a senior counsel at Kenyon and Walker. She's the only lawyer who worked on Rennell's appeal from the start." Pausing, Terri sipped her coffee. "In theory, Kenyon and Walker's as different from Yancey James as you can get—six hundred lawyers from top-tier law schools, the elite of their profession, with resources to burn. More help than most would think Rennell deserved."
"You don't sound impressed."
"We'll see," Terri answered with a shrug. "What struck me about their filings was how neatly prepared they were. Perfect margins—not a typo I could find. The only thing missing was Rennell."
* * *
Laura Finney snatched at a stray hair which had eluded the rubber band pulling her brown curls back in a bun.
Dressed in blue jeans, she was slender and pale, her eyes unsmiling behind wire-rim glasses. In the living room of her one-story stucco bungalow a toddler girl watched Sesame Street while an infant boy writhed in a playpen, vainly attempting to master the art of flipping on his stomach. The circles beneath her eyes made Finney look so tired that Carlo could imagine her on the treadmill of new motherhood.
"The second baby got to be too much," she told them. "I took maternity leave one month before the Supreme Court turned down Rennell's habeas corpus petition. By then I was the senior lawyer on the case—the only one who had been there since Rennell's direct appeal got assigned to us, when I was just out of law school." Pausing, she added in a tone Carlo heard as bemusement. "That was fourteen years ago."
"Why so long?" he asked.
Finney shot a glance of wan amusement at Terri, sitting beside her stepson on the gray wool couch. "Bureaucracy," she told Carlo. "Inertia. Despite all the right-wing politicians bleating about tricky lawyers abusing the system to put years between our death row clients and the needle, thus extending the agony of people like Thuy Sen's parents.
"Truth is, it's the process that's excruciating, and all we needed to invoke it was show up." Leaning forward in her chair toward Carlo, she began ticking off its stages on her fingers. "Let's review the stations of the cross. First three were the so-called direct appeal of Rennell's conviction to the California Supreme Court. The Court hears only about twenty or so direct appeals a year. And direct appeals include only issues which are presented by the record of the trial itself. That made our direct appeal pretty close to worthless when it came to whether 'Lawyer James' greased the wheels of death for his own client."
"Why? You can see that much from the trial transcript."
"All you can see," Finney rejoined, "is that James was a crummy lawyer with terrible judgment. The courtrooms of America are crawling with those. What you can't tell is whether he's what the Sixth Amendment right to counsel supposedly guarantees: a lawyer who investigates, with at least minimal competence, all the options for sparing his client death."
"Or," Terri interjected pointedly, "whether his lawyer had a coke habit?"
The inquiry, cutting off Finney's clipped, ironic narrative, induced a look of doubt and surprise. "Why do you think that?"
"Just surmise. You interview the grandmother?"
"I didn't." The hint of doubt in Finney's manner became defensiveness. "A junior associate did, I think. There was a lot to do, and so a lot of us worked this case."
Carlo could read in Terri's skepticism her imaginings of some rookie lawyer, too lightly supervised, interviewing an elderly woman from the Bayview across the gap of race and age and culture—though Carlo himself had adduced from Eula Price the telling detail of James's runny nose. But then his life until age seven had given him a preternatural sense of people, and what was left unsaid.
"Who was the partner in charge?" Terri asked.
"Which year?" Finney's tone retrieved its irony. "The direct appeal took seven years by itself, and the habeas corpus petition—the first time we could present facts outside the record—was decided seven years after that. About halfway through, the first partner, Frank Goldmark, died of a massive coronary at a 49ers game. The next one, Leslie Keller, left to become General Counsel of an Internet start-up in return for stock options which became worthless once the company crashed and burned. I guess you could say Rennell Price was a real killer."
Terri did not smile. "After Keller left," she asked, "who took over the case?"
Finney glanced at her daughter. In a corner of the living room, the child watched a purple puppet chirp at her from the television. Turning, Finney answered, "I did. After all those years, the case was too attenuated to explain to another partner, and would have required too much learning the law for him to get a grip on. After all," she added sardonically, "we were doing this for free."
This time Terri's expression was so polite that only Carlo might read it as a mask. "I guess that's why they call it pro bono," she answered, and the baby in the playpen began to whimper.
* * *
They waited in the living room while Finney took twenty minutes to breast-feed her son. "What's wrong?" Carlo asked.
Terri looked at him in surprise. Softly, she answered, "To me, it's classic—the intellectual severity, the unearned cynicism, the ability to see every irony but how badly they served Rennell. Sometimes I'm not sure what makes me crazier—smug big-firm lawyers, or privileged white women."
Carlo looked at the plastic kids' toys scattered across the carpet. "This is privilege?"
"To a mother." Terri's smile was sour. "She's home, isn't she? Rennell Price is about to die."
* * *<
br />
When Finney returned without the baby, she began speaking as if she'd never left. "The problem with the direct appeal was that the record was so clear.
"Mauriani played it straight. No racial bias in jury selection. No withholding of exculpatory evidence. If his witnesses gave answers which were objectionable and James failed to object, Mauriani would caution them and then rephrase the questions . . ."
"Why not?" Terri observed mildly. "When you're getting away with murder, why not wrap it with a bow?"
"The point is," Finney retorted, "that all the record left us was to argue that, on its face, James was so incompetent as to effectively deny Rennell Price his right to counsel. The Attorney General's Office argued that there might be strategic reasons for even his worst lapses. Though no one could guess what they were . . ."
"What did James tell you?" Carlo asked.
"Nothing," Finney responded in an arid tone. "He was in the middle of disbarment proceedings, so his lawyer advised him not to meet with us." She glanced at Terri. "All he told me on the phone was that Rennell's case was so hopeless that nothing he did, or didn't do, would have made any difference. Lest that sound too self-serving, the California Supreme Court read the record, and agreed." Pausing, she smiled thinly. "For that meager result, we bought Rennell Price seven more years on death row. Clever lawyering, don't you think?"
* * *
Turning from the screen, the little girl pronounced herself hungry. A look of martyred patience crossed Finney's face, and she invited Terri and Carlo to the kitchen while she made a peanut butter sandwich and cut it into bite-size squares. Placing this offering before her daughter, she said with a faint smile, "Here you are, sweetie. Quicker than you can say 'paternity leave.' "
The little girl looked up at her, uncomprehending, then slipped the first brown and white square into her mouth. "Not that I blame my husband," Finney remarked. "Our firm's got upward of three hundred male lawyers, and not one has taken the six-month leave we offer. Its mere existence is enough to make them paragons of feminism."
The bitterness beneath this observation made Carlo imagine a disenchanted and, perhaps, no longer quite attentive lawyer left by attrition to deal with a hopeless client.
"At least that's something," Terri answered. "My first husband was just a deadbeat." But, of course, Ricardo Arias had been so much more than that.
* * *
As they went back to the living room, Terri turned to Carlo. "Once Rennell lost his direct appeal," she explained, "the next step was habeas corpus. Basically, you claim that a prisoner is being imprisoned in violation of his constitutional rights, and then try to get him out by proving it.
"In Rennell's case, that enabled Kenyon and Walker to file a separate petition, also before the California Supreme Court, presenting evidence outside the record—maybe of innocence, or factors which might cut against a death sentence. As well as why James might have failed to uncover evidence of either." Of Finney, she inquired, "Who looked into Rennell's school or medical records?"
Finney settled back in her chair. "That part got assigned to another associate, I can't remember who. What comes to me is a lot of truancy, and a couple of accidents—things like falls and broken bones."
Terri studied her. "Kid stuff?" she asked softly.
"I guess so, yeah."
Carlo glanced at Terri. "What about Rennell's IQ?" he asked.
"I remember he was no genius," Finney said reluctantly. "But if you're talking about retardation, that became more critical after I left the firm. By the time the Atkins case came down, it was too late for us to use it—our habeas corpus petition had already been shot down by the State Supreme Court, the Federal District Court, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supremes had declined to review. So raising retardation falls to you."
No problem, Carlo thought. We've got seven weeks. It struck him that Terri's face was never more arresting than when her green-flecked brown eyes betrayed the swiftness of her thoughts. "Did you try to interview Rennell's teachers?" she asked.
"I think so. But I don't recall anything coming of it."
"What about the family?"
"Not much there. Mom killed Dad, Grandmother's literally sick and tired, and his brother, Payton, hasn't opened his mouth for a decade and a half. All we got from any of them was the grandma saying that the Rennell who came to live with her was a sweet and gentle boy. I guess that's what she had to cling to."
Terri's features suddenly lacked all expression—a sign, Carlo guessed, of how hard she was working to conceal her impatience with Laura Finney. "What about the mother?" she asked.
"We tried," Finney answered. "But the woman's crazy. Talking to her was like listening to some street person jabber to herself."
"No doubt," Terri responded. "But tell me about it, anyway."
* * *
What Laura Finney remembered was eyes like burn holes.
She sat with Athalie Price in a mental institution so grim that it could have been nothing else. The woman's processed hair was hacked off, her face gaunt, her body as stringy as beef jerky. But it was the eyes—to Finney, they spat madness.
"Fool," Athalie Price muttered with contempt. "And he thought that boy was stupid 'cause I was. That made him the stupidest of us all."
When Laura asked if she meant Rennell's father, Athalie leaned back, head against the wall, and started laughing to herself, a hiss of rage escaping from her lips. She refused to speak another word.
* * *
"All I came away with," Finney said now, "is this wasn't the Cleaver family. That much I already knew."
"What about Thuy Sen's family?" Terri asked. "Ever talk to them?"
"No." Finney's face registered palpable surprise. "What could they tell me that wouldn't add to their misery? Even before having my own daughter, I wouldn't have wanted to remind them all over again of how theirs died. Not unless it did some good."
Carlo glanced at Terri and saw nothing in her eyes about Elena. But, uncharacteristically, she seemed to have no follow-up question. "What about DNA?" he asked Finney.
"We tried every test there was. But Thuy Sen had been floating for two days before they found her. The semen samples from her mouth and throat were too degraded to show whose sperm it was." Pausing, Finney drew a breath. "To tell the truth, part of me was relieved. I was too afraid of knowing."
Terri stared at her. "Knowing what?" she quietly asked. "That Rennell was guilty, or that he might not be? Only the latter scares me."
Still watching Terri, Carlo wondered if this were true.
TWO
SILENT, FINNEY CONSIDERED TERRI. "TO BE HONEST," SHE SAID sharply, "I never felt at risk of finding out Rennell was innocent. God knows I tried."
Terri was unsurprised, except by Finney's candor. "What did Rennell say happened?" she asked.
" 'I didn't do that little girl.' Over and over, for fifteen years. But he didn't give us any reason to believe that."
"Didn't?" Terri countered in even tones. "Or couldn't? Suppose he is retarded—that wouldn't make him gifted at constructing an alternative. Or suppose he wasn't there at all. He wouldn't know what happened."
"True," Finney answered. "But Thuy Sen was inside their living room. We know that from the forensics, from Flora Lewis, and from Fleet."
"Then let's start with Lewis. Did you talk to her yourself?"
Finney nodded. "Shortly before she died in her parents' home—as she made clear to us she'd always planned on, no matter what had happened to the neighborhood. She was as certain with us of what she'd seen that day as she was with Charles Monk."
"Maybe so," Terri responded. "But as Monk well knows, a white woman like Lewis—elderly, isolated, and frightened—might not distinguish one black man from another. She might even have wanted one of the men she saw, or said she saw, to be Rennell."
"Who else would Flora Lewis have seen?"
"A black man," Terri answered dryly. "That much we can count on. Did you consult any
experts on the reliability of cross-racial IDs?"
"No." Finney's voice rose. "You do understand that, when we started, the State of California allowed only twelve thousand dollars in investigative fees, and that the federal court's allowance for expenses on habeas corpus was largely left to the discretion of the judge. It's not just that Kenyon and Walker didn't bill for our time for fourteen years—we pretty much carried the cost of Rennell Price's petition, however slim the prospect of success."
From Finney's perspective, Terri acknowledged, that was fair—the fees allowed the Pagets were well below their normal rates. "I appreciate the problem," she offered in a mollifying tone. "But we've only got forty-nine days and a very hard road. I need to know how many avenues are left to keep the state from killing Rennell Price. Did you talk to Eddie Fleet?"
"I tried, the last time maybe seven years ago." Something, perhaps a memory, seemed to make Finney glance briefly at her daughter. "The nearest I got to him was Betty Sims's front door."
* * *
The Bayview, Finney acknowledged to herself, made her apprehensive—there was a sense of danger, as frightening for its randomness as for its malignity. Laura Finney suffered from the lawyer's belief in cause and effect; the idea of dying for no reason—except perhaps that she was white, or a woman, or in the wrong place when some drug dealer fired a gun—made her feel powerless and afraid, as vulnerable as if she were standing naked on a street corner. Knocking on a stranger's door in the featureless squalor of the Double Rock project, she felt pinpricks on the back of her neck.
After the second knock, a woman in a bathrobe slowly opened the door. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, but her eyes, wide and wary, seemed older, as if no surprise in her life had ever been a good one. A girl of seven or eight leaned against her, gripping the belt of her robe as though it were a lifeline.
"I'm looking for Betty Sims," Finney told her. "Can you help me?"
The woman paused before curtly answering. "I'm Betty."As she did, Finney saw that her lower lip was swollen, marred by the remnants of a scab which suggested that the lip had been cut by her own tooth.
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