"Matter of fact," Monk quietly remarked, "this room is where he fingered the brothers." His smile was almost imperceptible, a ghost of deeper reflections. "What exactly you want me to do?"
"To use all your street contacts—check out Eddie Fleet, a.k.a. Howard Flood. If you find something that troubles you, tell Larry Pell. Soon."
Wincing, Monk stretched his legs in front of him, reminding Terri of his chronically painful knee. "Have to tell Pell first," he responded. "It's his case now, not mine. But I'll try and see what I can do."
"Thanks, Charles," Terri said simply.
* * *
"Last time I ever see him," Rennell told Terri. "Tole me in the yard warden gonna lock us down now . . ."
He stopped, choking on his words. Tears ran down the broad planes of his face, so riven with grief that he did not seem to notice them. His next words came in a near-whisper. "Says not to leave my cell no more. Not till you get me out."
Miserable, Terri took his hand. Rennell's lips fluttered. "Says I can't go with him," he mumbled.
Terri's chest felt tight. "To heaven?"
Eyes shut, Rennell slowly shook his head. "The death chamber."
Helpless, Terri tried to answer as though this were a commonplace. "They don't let other inmates watch. It's the rules."
Rennell wiped his eyes with the back of his curled hand. "Grandma can't come either. Too sick, Payton says."
This was true. But only Terri knew that Payton had not given his permission for Eula Price to attend. He did not wish her to see him die, or bear witness to his shame.
Fumbling in the pocket of his denim shirt, Rennell withdrew a piece of paper, then carefully unfolded it on the table before her. "I drew this for him."
Heartsick, Terri stared at two stick figures, one larger and one smaller, drawn in orange Magic Marker. The larger figure seemed to be reaching down to catch the other's hand.
"It's beautiful."
"Want you to give it to him," Rennell said softly. "At the death chamber, so he'll have it."
She could not tell him that a pane of glass would separate Payton from those who came to watch him die. "I don't think I can be there, Rennell."
Rennell looked up at her, his eyes pleading. "He's my brother—always lookin' out for me. Don't want him to be alone."
The realization of what he was asking crept over her. Terri's mouth felt dry. "What does Payton say?"
"Up to you. Is it okay?"
The enormity of this request, Terri saw, was well beyond his ken. She had given Rennell comfort, and so could comfort Payton as well. The Teresa Paget of Rennell's imaginings slept soundly.
"It's okay," she assured him.
* * *
Christopher Paget gazed down at the drawing his wife had placed on his ink pad.
"Jesus," he murmured and slowly shook his head. "It captures this whole tragedy—far better than I can do in a hundred pages of legal argument. I'm just so sorry, sweetheart."
Terri mustered a wan smile. "I know you are. Save Rennell, I thought, and I could keep my innocence intact. But there's no innocence quite like his."
Chris glanced toward the marked-up pile of papers beside Rennell's drawing. "I'm a half hour from being finished. Then I'll run these to Sacramento, and ask the Governor's office for a reprieve. Bond notwithstanding, the State ought not execute Rennell's only witness before we can make our case."
"Do you think you've got a prayer?"
"An agnostic's prayer," Chris quietly allowed. "You're the Catholic, however lapsed. Maybe you can resurrect your rosary and pray that God will whisper in our Governor's ear. As opposed to his pollsters' here on earth."
Tiredly, Terri sat. "I don't want Payton to die, Chris. I'm not ready to watch that. Not when Rennell is with me night and day."
Chris's look of compassion carried a hint of his own solitude. "I know," he answered.
* * *
Terri went to her office and hit buttons on her cell phone until she found the number she had recorded for Eddie Fleet. She pressed one more button, then heard his telephone ringing.
"Go," Fleet answered tersely.
Terri hesitated. "This is Terri Paget. I've got a declaration to go over with you."
"That's sure nice, Terri Paget." His silken voice was suffused with anger. "Only problem is the A.G. called me first. Seems like you tryin' to trade me for Rennell."
"That's not right—"
"You take me for a fool?" His tone became quiet, poisonous. "You can still come on over. But now you got to get down on your knees and suck my dick till I'm done. See if you're woman enough to live through what I got stored up just for you." Fleet emitted a harsh laugh. "That's what this case is all about, right? 'Cept your mouth is bigger."
For a terrible instant—born, Terri understood at once, of a mother's primal instinct to protect—she feared this man not for herself but for Elena. Then the line went dead.
TWENTY-FOUR
FOR TERRI, THE NEXT TWO DAYS WERE A BLUR OF ACTION THROUGH which she tried to save her client by preserving the life of his brother.
Rennell and Payton were in lockdown with the entire population of death row—no visitors, no exercise, no doctor visits save for medical emergencies. East Block would be particularly quiet, its pall deepened by the knowledge that one among them would soon die, to be followed, quite likely, by another lockdown and another execution. Even the crazies were muted.
The only break in this routine was Payton's deposition. Shackled, he sat at a wooden table in the psychiatric conference room, responding first to Terri's questions, then to Larry Pell's, with a precision and composure which astonished her. It was as though he wished to perform the last meaningful act of his life, the only one in which he retained volition, by employing all the resources he had acquired since receiving his sentence of death. With conviction and persuasiveness, he spelled out for the lawyers and a court reporter that Eddie Fleet was the murderer of Thuy Sen. For Terri, his story, terrible in itself, was made more tragic by the fact that—unless the Governor granted a reprieve—no one else would ever see or hear Payton tell it.
This sense was only deepened by the fierce dignity of Payton's response to Pell's cross-examination. "No," he answered, biting off each word. "I didn't lie. Don't want to die with a lie on my lips. Don't want Rennell to die for me." He paused, face twisted with emotion, and then he spoke more softly, looking directly at Larry Pell as if daring him to hear. "You about to kill my brother, who done nothin' to that girl. All that poor sucker ever did was love me, and what he got for it is this. Only thing I can give him now is truth."
Tears welled in his eyes. But he would not look away from Pell until, at last, Pell decided he had no more questions.
After this, Payton's only words were for Terri. With a weary smile, he murmured, "Guess I'll be seeing you." Then the guards took him away.
* * *
The press conference which followed preceded Terri's call to Thuy Sen's family.
In a hotel meeting room crowded with reporters, she distributed Payton's deposition, transcribed overnight by a team of stenographers. Then she spoke to the cameras. Though she would always find this surreal, Terri had learned to imagine her audience behind the blank lens of a mini-camera.
"Payton Price's confession," she told them, "exonerates Rennell Price for the murder of Thuy Sen. And it places responsibility for this horrible act squarely where it belongs—on Eddie Fleet, whose perjured testimony has brought Rennell within eleven days of execution.
"Therefore, we have asked Governor Darrow to delay Payton's execution until—if we're granted the hearing Rennell deserves—Payton can be heard in open court . . ."
This would yield headlines, Terri knew, be the lead story on newscasts across California and, therefore, put pressure on the Governor and, once she filed Rennell's second habeas petition, on Gardner Bond. The price could be Bond's enmity.
As to Thuy Sen's family, she was uncertain of their reaction until, for the first time, sh
e found herself speaking to her father. "Rennell's innocent," she said simply. "He shouldn't die for what Eddie Fleet did to your daughter. All we're asking is that you support our petition to the Governor, so that the right man can be punished."
"Payton Price die," Meng Sen interjected coldly. "Attorney General say you already got his testimony."
"He will die . . ."
"Tomorrow." The spat-out word was followed by a pause. "Tomorrow," the man repeated quietly. "I watch him."
The phone clicked off.
* * *
On the morning of Payton's scheduled execution, Terri began drafting Rennell's habeas corpus petition while Chris, a prisoner in his office, awaited a telephone call from Governor Craig Darrow.
Shortly before 11:00 A.M., Carlo cracked open Terri's door. "Darrow's on the line," he said urgently. "Dad's talking to him now."
Swiftly, Terri followed Carlo to Chris's office. Through the squawk box, the Governor was speaking in the careful tones of a diplomat. "I understand your concern, Chris. But my job is to see that our laws are carried out, including those with respect to capital punishment—"
"We're not asking for a commutation, Craig. Just a delay."
Terri and Carlo stood by Chris's chair. "Fifteen years," the Governor said in mild reproof, "seems like delay enough. The Attorney General advises me that her family wishes this execution to go forward. Where the man's admitted his guilt of a terrible crime, and you've preserved his eleventh-hour testimony, I'm inclined to agree."
Anxious, Terri turned from the squawk box to her husband, willing him to give the answer she would give. "You were a trial lawyer," Chris told Darrow. "You know the difference between a typed page and the words of a living witness."
"I do," Darrow replied with measured sympathy. "But, in itself, it's not enough for me to act. There are other interests at stake . . ."
"Can we talk about this?" Terri whispered sharply.
Chris glanced up at her. "Could you hold, Craig?" he asked. "Just for a moment. I need a word with cocounsel."
Quickly, he stabbed the mute button. "What is it?"
"Dammit," Terri burst out. "He's not just the only real witness, he's the only living witness. Flora Lewis wasn't even there, and now she's dead."
"So's Payton," Chris said evenly. "Darrow's not changing his mind on this."
Carlo looked from his father to his stepmother.
"You raised money for this creep," she shot back. "You at least can push him some."
Anger glinted in Chris's clear blue eyes. "Back off, Terri. The day I push him it'll be for Rennell. If your habeas petition fails, Darrow's all we've got. I'm not using up my chits for Payton Price."
Terri stared at him. "The Governor's waiting," Chris said with perilous calm. "What do you want me to tell him?"
Silent, Terri turned away.
She heard Chris switch the speaker back on. "We understand," he told the Governor. "Thanks so much for your time. We hope you'll keep all this in mind—particularly about Eddie Fleet—should we bring you a clemency petition on behalf of Rennell Price . . ."
Terri glanced at her watch. In thirteen hours, Payton Price would die by lethal injection.
TWENTY-FIVE
THAT EVENING, THE PAGET FAMILY ATE LATER THAN USUAL, ABOUT seven-thirty, and the conversation was quieter, although Carlo, their frequent guest, tried to focus on Elena and Kit. But Carlo, too, was somber. Only Kit seemed unaffected; Elena, knowing her mother's plans for that evening, had lapsed into a silence Terri found ambiguous. Terri ate little, declining Chris's offer to open a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, a favorite from their Italian honeymoon. In the midst of their dinner, softly lit by candles whose flicker refracted on the crystal facets of their chandelier, it struck Terri that by the unvarying protocol of San Quentin, Payton Price was being offered his last meal. She put down her fork.
"I'll read to Kit tonight," she told her husband. "I haven't in a while."
In the event, this ritual of parenthood, usually Chris's domain, soothed her for a time. The current book was from the Lemony Snicket series, and Terri's rendering of its skewed humor was satisfactory enough that she was intermittently rewarded with the laughter in Kit's dark eyes, the play of humor around his mouth, which reminded her of Chris and yet was wonderfully Kit's own. Finishing, she kissed his forehead and repeated a prayer with him, as her own mother had with her, then went down the hall to Elena's room.
Terri's knock on her door was tentative, a mother's request for admission into the moody realm of a thirteen-year-old girl. But Elena's expression was opaque. "Are you really going out there?" she inquired.
Nodding, Terri sat on the edge of her bed. "No choice. Rennell asked me to."
"Too bad," Elena answered. "But I guess you'd do anything for Rennell, wouldn't you. No matter what it does to us."
Terri composed herself. "I know you hate my work. But no one matters as much as you."
The child-woman in the Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt gave an indifferent shrug. "I don't understand your work," she said in an accusatory voice. "And no one matters as much as it does. Rennell Price deserves to die, and it will just kill you when he does."
Though this cutting remark was, at bottom, about something more, Terri had little will to surface that tonight. "It will," she answered finally. "But not nearly as much as what happened to you."
The look on her own face must be miserable, Terri realized; as Elena studied her mother, her expression changed. "Then why," she asked, "do you spend more time on him than me?"
The accusation pierced Terri's heart. As with Kit, Terri kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry about tonight," she tried. "I'm sorry about everything."
Elena gazed at her, tears welling, and then she turned away.
Chris was in the kitchen, listening to Carlo describe his new girlfriend. Of Terri, Chris inquired, "Did Kit induce you to read the entire series?"
"I was counting Elena's moods."
Chris gave her the long, somewhat veiled look he reserved for efforts to gauge her own moods. "Let me drive you, Terri. Carlo's volunteered to watch the kids."
"No," she said sharply, then saw the brief flicker of worry on Carlo's face, the residue of the child who feared conflict. In a more temperate tone, she added, "Really, this is mine to do. I honestly don't want either of you holding my hand."
She went to their bedroom to change. Reflecting on which of her suits was most suitable for an execution, she chose gray over black.
When she returned, Carlo was gone and Chris was sipping brandy. He looked up at her, openly concerned.
"I'm really not punishing you for the Governor," she said.
"I didn't think you were."
She walked over to him, resting a hand on his chair. "I don't know how this is going to be for me. It just feels like I'll do better alone."
Standing, Chris gave her a tentative hug. Then she went to the garage and backed her car out into what, even without the chill and drizzle, would have seemed a miserable night. Even the vigil outside the gates of San Quentin, deprived of candlelight, seemed dispirited and ill-attended. For a brief moment, in the cool breath of night, Terri felt the presence of Eddie Fleet.
* * *
At eleven-thirty, thirty-one minutes before Payton Price was to die, Terri was admitted to the viewing room.
The guard directed her to the far side of the chamber, reserved for the friends or family of the prisoner about to be executed. No one else stood with her. Several reporters and the warden separated her from Thuy Sen's family, huddled close together on the other side. Silent, they stared through the windows of the execution chamber.
The chamber itself was much as Terri had envisioned—an octagon roughly eight feet in diameter, with a padded table beside a cardiac monitor and a machine for intravenous injection. But for the straps, Terri thought, the table was eerily like the hospital bed in an intensive care unit, a site dedicated to preserving life. The large oval door at the rear of the chamber, through which Payto
n Price would enter, seemed to hypnotize those awaiting him.
With that thought, the strangeness of this setting hit Terri hard—the raised platform for the witnesses, the five windows of the chamber, their blinds raised to permit those assembled to view the state-sanctioned death of another human. "He'll probably be pretty subdued," an older lawyer had predicted to her. "The 'People's' victims don't tend to be kickers or screamers, or even very defiant. A decade or two on death row breeds a certain level of acceptance."
Terri drew a breath.
Desperate for distraction, she began a surreptitious study of Thuy Sen's family. Only Chou Sen was familiar. Her husband, Meng, was a small, well-knit man with jet-black hair and a seamed face which betrayed his age and, perhaps, years of grief. Stoic, his wife stood between him and the young woman whom Terri thought of as the second victim, Kim Sen.
She was slight, with straight black hair cut shoulder length and a look of keen intelligence accented by gold wire-rim glasses, suggesting the graduate student that she was. Though they stood close to each other, the Sens neither spoke nor touched. To Terri, they seemed bereft, a family smaller than it should have been. Only when Kim Sen flinched did Terri's gaze return to the execution chamber.
Its door had opened. Through it shuffled Payton Price, shackled, dressed in the stiff new denim work shirt and trousers issued for the occasion.
He stood straighter, mustering what dignity he could, and then paused to register each face on the other side of the glass, lingering on the three Asians whose suffering he had caused, as if to assess the changes fifteen years had wrought. Only when his gaze met Terri's did he nod, a brief acknowledgment that she, the surrogate for friends or family, had kept her word to Rennell. Forcing herself to smile, she took out Rennell's drawing from the pocket of her suit, holding it up for him to see.
Payton stared at it, then slowly shook his head. The faintest of smiles did not conceal the sorrow in his glistening eyes.
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