A corner of Fleet's mouth flickered upward. "They never asked. Guess they figured e-jac-u-lation don't require no college degree."
"No," Terri said agreeably. "All it takes is interest. Did Rennell have any?"
Fleet's eyes glinted. "Maybe in little girls. No way he could handle a woman. You know how it is. Women got more in the way of requirements, and need more in the way of managing."
Like a few blows to the face? Terri wanted to ask. Instead, she inquired mildly, "Do you really think Rennell was sexually interested in children?"
Fleet shrugged. "Liked this one, didn't he?"
"I don't know that. If you've got some reason to believe that it was Rennell who choked Thuy Sen, I'd like to hear it."
The look Fleet gave her was cooler. "When I saw her on the floor," he said coldly, "somebody's come was dribbling out the corner of her mouth. Didn't seem like the occasion to ask whose."
"Did you ever find out?"
Eyes distant, Fleet took another swallow of beer. "Let me paint you a picture, lady. When I come on the scene, that girl was already dead—nothin' I could do to save her. Payton was crashing hard, sweat pourin' off him like he was a sponge and somebody be squeezin' him. And you're expectin' me to be conductin' interviews?"
Terri took a sip of beer. "How did Rennell act?"
Fleet studied the table. "Like he'd gone to some other planet. Maybe had his brain taken over by aliens."
"And he was like that when he came to your door."
"Yeah." Fleet seemed to think, then swiftly added, "Maybe a little more jittery, like I told the cops."
Terri angled her head. "I guess Payton didn't rely on Rennell much, at least when it came to dealing crack."
Behind his newly impassive mask, Fleet seemed to watch her, wondering what lay behind this unexpected question. "Too stupid," he answered. "Boy get himself busted."
"So why didn't Payton come for you himself, instead of sending Rennell?"
"Payton was too screwed up, maybe. Or maybe he didn't trust Rennell with her alone."
"Are you saying Rennell liked dead children, Eddie?"
Fleet shrugged. "Maybe Payton was worried—leave Rennell alone, and he'd do somethin' stupid. Maybe tell Grandma, and then she'd call the cops."
Then why didn't he just call you? Terri thought. But Fleet was no fool, then or now—the image of Rennell arriving at his door made him sound more culpable, his brother's partner in a terrible crime. "Why'd you tell the cops?" she asked.
Fleet's eyes widened in satiric amazement. "What planet are you on? Cops are puttin' pressure on us all. Maybe Payton's not gonna crack, but guy like Monk could think rings around Rennell. If he confesses, I'm on my way to prison just for helpin' dump her body." His voice took an edge. "No time for sentiment. That's why I'm sittin' here, enjoyin' your so-ciety, and those boys about to die."
Terri appraised him. Fleet's story, while plausible enough, could be a fun-house mirror of the truth: if Payton had confessed, choosing to save Rennell, then it was Fleet who might wind up on death row. And so Fleet had chosen to frame the retarded brother, and dared Payton to choose between keeping silent and contradicting Fleet at the cost of his own life.
"So what did Monk offer you?" she asked.
"Just what I told their fool lawyer at the trial—consideration for cooperation, long as I told the truth. Nothin' more than that."
"Did you have anything against either Payton or Rennell?"
Eddie's smile was brief and chilly. "Not until they tried to get me capped."
"Think that was Rennell's idea?"
"Nothin' was ever Rennell's idea. Spent his whole damned life waitin' to have one. You can bet it was Payton that dreamed up my de-mise."
In that moment, Terri felt Rennell—and she—were caught in a continuing war between Payton and Fleet. But whether Fleet was trying to save himself or Payton was lying to exact revenge before dying, she didn't know. For now, desperate as she was, she could only try to exploit Fleet's animus toward Payton by inducing him to help Rennell at the margins.
"You knew them both," she said, "pretty much all your life. If you had to guess, which brother strangled Thuy Sen?"
Fleet seemed to ponder the question and, perhaps, the advantage of answering. Then a fresh thought appeared to hit him so hard that he flinched, his eyes narrowing in distrust. "What about this DNA stuff?" His tone, though soft, was wary. "Can't they test the come now, figure out whose it was?"
It was you, Terri thought. For an instant, all the time she had, Terri weighed the merits of keeping him in doubt. But the advantage would be temporary, the risk too great—inducing silence, or even flight. "No DNA available," she answered. "Thuy Sen was in the bay too long."
Light crept back into Fleet's eyes. "Then I'd guess Payton," he answered flatly. "Don't think Rennell's brain could send signals all the way to his thing. Or figure out a nine-year-old's mouth might work better than her pussy."
But you could, Terri thought. "Think so?"
"Yeah." Fleet smiled slightly. "Rennell's way too stupid to teach a child no tricks. Even ones that want to learn."
Terri felt the pinpricks on her skin. Fleet had let his mask slip, exposing the narcissism and perversion beneath the veneer of a survivor. Some men, Terri knew too well, could want both a woman and her child.
Softly, she said, "I think you can help me, Eddie."
Fleet had begun studying her mouth. "How might that be?"
"I'd like you to execute a declaration—saying that Rennell was slow, and that he depended on Payton for everything. Maybe that you never knew Rennell to be sexually involved with women of any age."
Once more, Fleet seemed to weigh his choices. "Maybe," he allowed. "Them executin' that fool won't do nothin' much for me. Let Payton pay the piper."
Of course, Terri thought. Payton's the brother who knows what happened, the one that you need dead. "Can I draft a declaration and bring it to you?"
"Why don't you bring it to my place?" Smiling, Fleet gently placed his fingers on her wrist. "You can read it aloud, just you and me. Sort of an oral pre-sentation."
TWENTY-TWO
THE NEXT MORNING, WITH FOUR DAYS REMAINING BEFORE PAYTON Price was scheduled to die by lethal injection, Terri applied with Payton's lawyer, Paul Rubin, for a stay of execution from the same federal district judge who had denied Rennell's prior habeas petition.
She, Carlo, and Chris had worked until three o'clock that morning, assembling the legal papers which outlined Payton's confession and her meeting with Eddie Fleet. The risk of filing was clear: that exposing Payton's accusation of Fleet would, if Fleet learned of it, end any chance of entrapping him. But there was no more time. So at 10:00 A.M., her nerves jangled with coffee, Terri found herself in the chambers of Judge Gardner W. Bond, as crisp and imperious as the pin-striped suit and starched white shirt which were his uniform, his peremptory gaze trained on those who gathered around his conference table—Bond's supplicants, Terri, Rubin, and the Assistant California Attorney General Laurence D. Pell—as well as the impassive female court reporter he had summoned to record his rulings.
With his gold wire-rim glasses, neatly clipped, graying brown mustache, and an erect posture which made him seem to tower while sitting, Gardner Bond often seemed to Terri less a person than a series of poses intended to convey his pride of place, the conviction that a well-ordered world was best run by men whose stringent sense of law was unleavened by sentiment and sloppiness of thought. But Judge Bond's sense of law—just as subjective as Terri knew her own to be—had been tempered on the forge of the Federalist Society, whose conservative philosophy held the death penalty to be redemptive of good moral order. At least the knowledge that Payton Price would die—perhaps quite soon—made Bond's behavior less peremptory than was his norm. Of course, Terri thought unkindly, the judge knew himself to be in good hands: those of death's bureaucrat, Larry Pell.
Pell was African American, a former college quarterback with keen eyes, a pleasant but
somewhat guarded expression, and a gift for swaddling executions in what Terri considered sanitizing legalisms, making lethal injection sound like the resolution of a boundary dispute. Aside from a healthy professional respect for his skill in preserving executions, what Terri felt for Larry Pell was less dislike than bemusement: she could not understand how a black man could devote his professional life to making cosseted white males like Gardner Bond even more comfortable in their assumptions. But then life was full of such quandaries, not the least of which, in Terri's mind, was the pervasive and quite persuasive rumor that Gardner Bond, steward of the right-wing moral order, was a closeted homosexual.
"Your Honor," Pell told him calmly, "Payton Price can't get a stay of execution on his own merits. So he's piggybacked on his brother, Rennell, to save himself by claiming, incredibly, that he's been keeping Rennell on death row all these years in order to save himself. The sole consistent theme is 'whatever it takes to cheat death.' "
Gardner Bond turned to Terri, fingers steepled in front of him. "What's so compelling now, Ms. Paget, that the Court should be constrained to keep Payton Price alive?"
"The fact that he will die," Terri said flatly. "Either in four days or whenever his brother's second habeas corpus petition is resolved." Swiftly, she glanced at Rubin. "As Mr. Rubin can tell you, Payton Price has directed him not to pursue any further avenues to avoid execution—"
"As if his confession hadn't foreclosed them," Bond interjected.
"Then it's hardly a 'convenience,' is it?" Terri angled her head toward Pell. "Even from the State's point of view, what interest is greater—executing Payton Price as swiftly as possible, or ensuring that it doesn't execute an innocent man? Mr. Pell's argument comes perilously close to asking this Court to bury Payton Price so that the State of California can bury its mistake."
" 'As swiftly as possible'?" Pell echoed in an incredulous tone. "Fifteen years—during which Payton Price could have spoken out any time he wished? What of the State of California's interest in justice? What of Thuy Sen's family—awaiting justice? We'll be happy to let Ms. Paget depose Payton Price before he dies. It should be enough for her purposes to let his words live after him."
Pell's argument, Terri thought, was more raw than normal. "Words aren't enough," she answered. "It's important for a court to judge Payton's demeanor—the conviction of his testimony, the persuasiveness with which he answers the State's questions. That can only be captured by seeing and hearing a living witness."
Bond pressed his steepled fingers to his lips, a gesture of contemplation which Terri thought both stagy and overfastidious. "Would you consider a videotaped deposition, Mr. Pell?"
"We're opposed to that," Pell answered crisply. "A transcript will preserve what is said. A videotape serves only the kind of media public relations campaign which all too often pervades these cases—the desperate attempt to influence the legal process by extralegal means."
Fatigue frayed Terri's temper. "I want a living witness for this Court, not for the media. What's desperate is for the State to execute both Payton and Rennell Price in a way that keeps us from ever knowing that they'd executed an innocent man. After all, we wouldn't want the citizens of California to lose faith in our system of justice—"
"That's uncalled for," Pell said swiftly.
"Then so is your indecent haste to execute the only witness to my client's innocence." As Bond held up a hand in warning, Terri paused, her next words clear and calm. "My point, Your Honor, is that Payton confessed six days ago. Our inquiry is just beginning—including into Eddie Fleet, the potential second murderer, upon whose very dubious testimony the State's case depends. This Court should see Payton, Fleet, and any other witness for itself before determining Rennell's guilt or innocence."
"This is not a trial," Pell rejoined. "Five courts have, effectively, found Rennell Price guilty: the trial court, the California Supreme Court, this Court, the Federal Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He had his trial fifteen years ago."
The reporter's fingers tapped swiftly now.
"He should have another," Terri shot back, "if new evidence suggests that verdict was wrong. In the meanwhile, this Court can allow Payton Price to take a polygraph—"
"They're not admissible as evidence," the judge remonstrated. "You're well aware of that."
The opacity of Bond's expression made Terri more anxious yet. "True, Your Honor. But it may be indicative of Payton's veracity and, therefore, whether his life should be preserved until his brother's petition is resolved."
Bond raised a dubious eyebrow in Pell's direction, inviting a response. With the serenity of a man who sensed himself winning, Pell replied, "Any sociopath can pass a polygraph. That's why they're not admissible in court. Payton Price should not be permitted to use this discredited tool as a 'life preserver'—"
"He's going to die," Paul Rubin burst out in anger. "Do you understand that, Larry? Do you really think they'll abolish the death penalty before you can kill him off?"
"That's enough," Bond snapped. "Next time you would care to be heard, Mr. Rubin, ask first. You might also stop to consider what you wish to say, and to whom you wish to say it. This is a court of law, not a school yard."
Of course, Terri thought to herself. At whatever cost, the decorum of death must be preserved. But Rubin's outburst had not helped her position. "Your Honor," she tried again, "the State of California wishes to execute Rennell Price. His guilt or innocence is what's important here—not 'sanitizing' the process by eliminating such unseemly spectacles as polygraphs and videotapes. Let alone, Lord help us, a living witness to his innocence. The State's priorities are skewed."
Bond sat back, surveying the lawyers, his expression closed to further argument. "The interests of the parties," he admonished Terri, "are for this Court to balance. Including those of the victim's parents, who have no voice but Mr. Pell, and who would only suffer more from needless publicity and unwarranted delay. And your argument, Ms. Paget, prematurely assumes that your client's next petition will, under the AEDPA statute, prove meritorious enough to be heard at all. Let alone granted.
"Mr. Pell is not attempting to suppress Payton Price's testimony. By order of this Court, you'll have his deposition—two days from now." He turned to Pell. "And four days from now, by order of its Supreme Court, the State of California may carry out his sentence."
"Thank you, Your Honor," Pell said swiftly, the rote obeisance of an advocate. Terri could not bring herself to emulate the courtesy.
* * *
Afterward, Terri, Rubin, and Pell left Bond's chambers together, silent until they reached the long tiled corridor outside his courtroom. For a moment the only sounds were the click of Terri's heels and the deeper echoes of the two men's hard-soled shoes. "Tell me," she asked Pell, "have you ever witnessed an execution?"
He looked at her sideways, curious. "Why should it matter?"
"It just seems funny to me," Terri said. "Like a football coach skipping the postgame celebration."
Pell's slight smile was defensive. "I don't have to see it to believe in it. Have you ever watched a client die?"
"No."
"Then isn't that like a doctor abandoning her patient because the operation failed?"
"No," Terri answered. "It's like a lawyer who's still trying to stop the process you've chosen not to see. I guess it helps your side 'believe' if death remains invisible. So why not put yourself to the test?"
TWENTY-THREE
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, TERRI AND CHARLES MONK SAT IN a windowless interrogation room at the Robbery and Homicide Division. "I flunked retirement," he told her matter-of-factly. "Back here part-time, doing special investigations. Chumps who gave me the golf clubs at my farewell party are wanting a refund."
Terri gave him a perfunctory smile. "Got time to excavate the past?"
"Whose past?"
"Eddie Fleet. The guy who asphyxiated Thuy Sen while Rennell Price was fast asleep."
Monk dealt with surprise
, Terri realized, by summoning a total absence of expression. But his eyes betrayed his swiftness of thought. "If Rennell was sleeping, and Fleet still says he wasn't there, that makes Payton your witness."
"Think about it," Terri urged. "You had no witnesses to the murder. So Flora Lewis could mistake Fleet for Rennell, and Fleet could lie to you about him."
"That'd be a pretty nasty coincidence, counselor. I never told Fleet about Lewis. Their stories jibed without any help from me."
Terri felt a surge of desperation. "I have a witness," she retorted. "One of the men who killed her. You can't ignore what Payton says."
Monk appraised her, his expression softening a bit. "But the A.G.'s Office can," he said. "Death row confessions are nothing new to them. You'd better tell me exactly where things stand."
Eyes still fixed on his, Terri summarized her theory as succinctly as she could. "Rennell never knew what happened," she concluded. "He still doesn't. I'm sure Fleet does. I'm almost as sure that if you kick over enough rocks, you'll find a pedophile who likes forcing children into oral sex, and is going to keep on doing it until somebody stops him. And maybe, if we're lucky, he told somebody sometime how clever he was to frame Rennell."
"You've got investigators. Why me?"
Terri paused, then chose total candor. "Because we're striking out. Because there's ten days left for me to save Rennell. And because you've got as big a stake in that as I do." She softened her voice. "Maybe bigger. Whatever happens, I'll have done my best to save an innocent man. But if I'm right, his death—and the next child Fleet forces into sex—will be the dark side of your storied career."
Monk shook his head in demurral. "I went where the evidence took me. I'm not the prosecutor, or the judge, or his lawyer, or the jury that convicted him."
"They were all standing on your work," Terri replied. "Fleet's story saved his ass; Payton's story seals his execution. Why are you so sure that Fleet didn't play you?"
For the first time Monk looked away from her, eyes narrow in thought. "Rennell's retarded," she continued. "He was too impaired to have a story, and Fleet knew it. That put him one jump ahead of you."
Conviction Page 23
