A spark of resentment flashed in Tasha's eyes. "I don't see that. Whatever Payton did to that girl wasn't 'part of my life.' It was part of his, fifteen years ago, when he left me with no one. After that, I made my own life."
Terri stared at her. Softly, she said, "Your husband doesn't know anything, does he. Nothing about Payton, or perjury, or the death of a nine-year-old girl. Nothing but that you worked your way out of the Bayview, and now you're a wife and mother."
Tasha met Terri's eyes. But silence was her only answer.
"You do know something," Terri went on. "I don't know what it is. But you started sparring when I asked you about Fleet."
Tasha placed a finger to her lips, appraising Terri with a mute hostility. Her body seemed to perch on the edge of her chair—as though, Terri suddenly suspected, she were about to leave.
"Don't," Terri said. "Don't do this."
Tasha stared at her. "You come here," she said at last, "and you've got no idea. All you care about is what you want . . ."
Once more, Terri thought of Elena. "I'm Rennell's lawyer," she answered. "He's all I get to care about."
"Really. Have you got a family?"
"Yes."
"Then how would you feel if I barged into your life, asking you to spell out in some court paper stuff you don't want anyone to know?"
Mute, Terri considered her response. "Resentful. Angry. Scared. Maybe ashamed. There are things in my life I don't want anyone to know, things I feel guilty about. But my husband does know." Terri paused. "I guess, in the end, what I did would depend on how I wanted to feel about myself. And whether I thought I could bury shame through silence when someone else's life is at risk."
For the first time, Tasha looked down, eyes focused on the table.
"Eddie Fleet," Terri repeated.
For a long time, Tasha was silent. Finally, she said, "I don't know that whatever I've got to say makes any difference."
"But you're not sure it doesn't."
Tasha touched her lips again, and sorrow seeped into her gaze. "Promise me—unless it really matters, I don't want you to use this. And if you do, I want time to tell my husband." Her voice was raw with feeling. "I saw my name in the papers once, for lying. I don't want my family reading about this."
Though the words held little meaning, Terri said, "I promise."
* * *
A few nights after the brothers were arrested, Eddie Fleet knocked on Tasha Bramwell's door.
She had always despised him—there was something twisted about him, something treacherous she could not quite identify, though the insinuating way he looked at her was bad enough. Since Payton's arrest, she had barely slept, and Eddie's gold-toothed smile made her skin crawl.
"What you want?"
His smile broadened. "A little conversation, sweet thing."
"Save it for the police," she snapped. "I know you lied to them about Payton. Now I may never see him outside of jail, or a coffin."
Eddie shrugged. "What's a man supposed to do, po-lice on your ass day and night. Didn't tell no lies about Payton, either. You just got to face the facts, sweet thing."
Tasha quivered with disbelief and anger. "Go away."
Eddie's grin broadened, as if he were struck by a new idea. "Maybe I could do that. Just go away. Without me, the police won't have no case, and your man be back in your arms. Not to mention other places."
Tasha hoped she did not understand him. "Then go," she said. "No one stopping you."
He leaned in the doorway. "There's the one person stoppin' me," he said softly. "Till she sends me on my way."
Tasha's grip tightened on the door. "Consider yourself sent."
Eddie gripped her wrist. "Not quite yet."
"Stop, or I'll tell Payton."
"What's he gonna do," Eddie said coolly. "He's in jail, and there be only two people hold the key. Me, and you."
Tasha writhed in pain. "Let me go."
Eddie loosened his grasp but did not release her. "You got a choice, Tasha. Do what I want, and you'll get your boyfriend back. No one ever know but us."
Tasha could not speak. The intimacy in the way he spoke her name sickened her. "Don't need to say a thing," Eddie continued quietly. "All you need to do is let me in, and listen."
When Tasha did not answer, he pushed her inside, closing the door behind them.
"You want him back," he said. "I can see it. So I'm gonna spell out just what you need to do to make that happen."
He told her.
Undressing, Tasha willed her soul outside her body.
Eddie unzipped his pants. "On your knees," he said. "Do me like I know you did for him."
* * *
As Terri listened, sickened, Tasha bowed her head. "Eddie lied to me," she said. "I never could tell Payton. All I could do was lie when Payton asked me to. 'Cause I loved him."
To Terri, her voice was that of the younger Tasha, bereft and without defenses. Filled with her own fear and anger directed at Eddie Fleet, Terri struggled to discern the meaning of what she had just learned.
"Oral sex," Terri said at last. "That's all he wanted."
Tasha nodded.
As with Thuy Sen, Terri thought, and Lacy Sims. But though she could not yet parse the uses of Tasha's story, she felt the undercurrent of her own misgivings.
"I'm sorry," Terri told her.
Tasha shook her head. "You haven't heard it all. There's only one thing I know for sure—Eddie Fleet's as evil as any man I ever met."
* * *
The night after Payton and Rennell were sentenced to death, Eddie returned to her apartment.
This time she peered through the peephole and saw him. Tears of grief and rage ran down her face.
"I know you're here," he said through the door, voice deep but soft with laughter. "Figure you be needin' a man now, and wantin' what I have to give you."
Tasha leaned against the door, teeth gritted. "You lied to me."
She heard Eddie laugh aloud. "You knew I was. And I know you miss it from me, baby. You be comin' round."
A week later, Tasha Bramwell left the Bayview, never to return.
* * *
"I didn't want to go back there," Tasha said. "I still don't." She paused, voice quieter. "I hate the person I was. But I outran the evil of that place, the evil of that man. I don't want to go back there, dragging my family with me."
Terri placed her hand on Tasha's wrist. "If you do," she promised, "it will be to save a life."
* * *
It was two in the morning before she sat with Chris, the signed declaration from Betty and Lacy Sims spread across their breakfast table, and told him what she had learned from Tasha Harding.
"Forced oral copulation," Chris said. "Jealousy toward Payton of Iago-like proportions. There's a pattern. But you know what the problems are."
"Yes. Tasha's already committed perjury. She knows nothing about Fleet being a pedophile, or anything that bears directly on Thuy Sen's death. In fact, Fleet told her—truthfully—that Payton was involved."
Chris nodded. "And said nothing about his own role, or Rennell's. I can hear Pell now: assuming that Tasha's to be believed at all, what Fleet told her confirmed his story. He'll say the whole thing's just sexual one-upmanship between a couple of crack dealers, evidence of nothing but our own desperation."
Drained, Terri finished her coffee. "I feel sorry for her. But our only obligation is to Rennell. Should we use this?"
"Not yet. Let's hope we find something else."
The next morning, based on the declarations from Lacy and Betty Sims, the Pagets began preparing a third habeas petition for the California Supreme Court.
EIGHTEEN
TEN DAYS BEFORE RENNELL'S SCHEDULED EXECUTION, IN A TWOLINE opinion which again explained nothing, the California Supreme Court denied his third habeas corpus petition, and the Pagets asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for permission to file the petition before Judge Gardner Bond.
The Attorney General res
ponded swiftly: the declarations of Betty and Lacy Sims concerning Eddie Fleet were irrelevant to the murder of Thuy Sen and, therefore, inadmissible at trial. Anxious, the Pagets awaited the decision of Judges Sanders, Montgomery, and Nhu, and with considerably less hope, Governor Darrow's disposition of Rennell's clemency petition.
"We've got two arguments," Terri had explained to Carlo. "First, that AEDPA leaves Rennell no suitable avenue for bringing his freestanding claim of innocence. Second—and this is critical—that we should have the same right to testimony from Fleet which the State had at the original trial. That would require California to grant Fleet use immunity so that he can't invoke the Fifth Amendment."
"First, we have to find him," Carlo pointed out.
"Sure. But we've got a pretty compelling argument, I think—the State can't convict Rennell on this pervert's trial testimony and then help Fleet avoid questioning after Payton swore that Fleet was the second murderer, and that he perjured himself at trial."
Out of public view, Johnny Moore and Tammy Mattox also worked to save Rennell. Feverishly, Tammy knocked on doors in the Bayview, seeking out anyone who might have known Eddie Fleet; Moore flew to Los Angeles, where Fleet had lived for a time after Thuy Sen's death, and began working from a motel in the South Central section of the city. The Pagets set up a phone bank in the office, manned by the other investigators, soliciting tips through the media and over the Internet. And despite all this activity, every day without fail, Terri spent an hour with the frightened and confused man who, despite her reports of all the Pagets were doing, felt his life slipping away, day by day, and hour by hour.
"Next Tuesday, right after midnight," Rennell told her in a hollow voice. "That's when the warden say it gonna happen."
At ten o'clock that evening, as Terri tried to sleep, Chris found a short opinion in the tray of their fax machine. In disbelief, he read the document's conclusions: by a vote of two to one, Judge Blair Montgomery dissenting, the panel denied Rennell Price permission to file a third habeas corpus petition before Judge Bond. The reasoning of Judge Nhu and Judge Sanders, the defector, was tersely stated: as directed by the recent opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Godward v. Price, the panel would defer to the Supreme Court of California and, in light of that, could not say that the new affidavits regarding Fleet were "clear and convincing evidence" of Rennell's innocence. And even were the new evidence sufficient, it did not reflect any constitutional defect in the trial itself, and thus could not be heard.
With a leaden spirit, Chris went to the bedroom and found that Terri, aided by sleeping pills, had at last fallen asleep. Her face, for once, was so untroubled that Chris hated to awaken her. But he knew he must—both for Rennell's sake and for hers.
Gently, he touched the bare skin of her shoulder.
She started, and then her eyes flew open. "What is it?"
"The Ninth Circuit. I'm sorry, sweetheart, but Sanders flipped. They've turned us down."
In the dimly lit bedroom, Chris watched his wife struggle to comprehend what, fully awake, she knew by heart—that AEDPA barred Rennell from seeking review by the full Ninth Circuit, or by the United States Supreme Court.
"Oh, God," she said softly. "Oh, God."
* * *
Shortly after 1:00 A.M. in Washington, a call awakened Caroline Masters.
"I'm sorry be calling at this hour," Blair Montgomery told her, "but I've got some news. Our panel just denied Rennell Price's request to file a new petition."
Caroline paused, waiting for sleep to loosen its grip on her consciousness. "Callista said Price had new evidence. So what happened?"
"Your colleagues did too good a job. In Sanders's mind, further provoking Fini et al. will eviscerate our already tattered credibility. This man's life just isn't worth it."
Caroline sat up. Her bedroom, though lit by a full silver moon, felt dark and solitary. "So what can I do? Your order's not appealable."
"I know. But these lawyers will find some way to petition you. They're smart and resourceful, and they don't give up."
"That," Caroline answered with bleak humor, "would be immensely inconvenient. Why can't Price just die like he's supposed to?"
The next morning, shortly after Caroline reached her chambers, Callista Hill brought her the papers faxed by Rennell Price's lawyers.
* * *
At eleven-thirty in San Francisco, Terri passed Elena's room and saw that her light was on.
Gently, Terri pushed open the door.
Elena was lying atop the bed, an open book beside her, gazing at the ceiling. "Are you all right?" Terri asked.
"Yeah. Only I can't get to sleep."
"Neither can I."
Rolling on her side, Elena faced her mother. "They're really going to kill him, aren't they?"
"Probably." Terri hesitated. "How does that make you feel?"
"Weird."
Tentative, Terri sat on the edge of the bed. Softly, she said, "Rennell's not like your father. I'm sure he never touched that girl."
"Then the other man did. The one who followed me."
Terri could not answer.
After a moment, Elena looked away. "I'm tired now," she said at last.
Terri kissed her forehead and left, gently closing the door behind her.
NINETEEN
"HOW DO PRICE'S LAWYERS RATIONALIZE THIS?" THE CHIEF JUSTICE asked Callista. "Under AEDPA, Price has no right to be here."
Callista remained standing in front of Caroline's desk. "They claim that the Constitution gives this Court jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions, including a claim of freestanding innocence, that can't be limited by Congress. In other words, AEDPA can't stop us from hearing a new claim."
"And just what is it we're supposed to hear?"
"They found a teenage girl who claims the State's key witness—Eddie Fleet—forced her to give him oral sex when she was ten years old. They also claim California's failure to immunize Fleet meant they couldn't cross-examine him about his own involvement in the victim's death." Callista paused for emphasis. "Bottom line, Price's lawyers say we're the last chance to stop the State of California from killing an innocent man."
"What about the Governor?"
"They're trying. But the Governor hasn't been heard from."
Caroline felt caught between her conscience and a wholly practical concern—that intervening would further inflame the tensions on the Court, pitting her against Justice Fini, to the discomfort and resentment of her colleagues. With an uncharacteristic sigh, she asked Callista, "What would you do?"
Without invitation, Callista sat. "I'm a black woman," she said bluntly. "You probably noticed. But a lot of white folks still barely notice me at all. And some that do couldn't pick me out of a lineup of other black women about my age and height. They've got no practice telling one of us from another—all they see is 'black.'
"Fleet has no credibility left—not after this latest thing against him. So we're going to execute Price because an old white lady thought she could differentiate him from Fleet looking through a window across the street? Come on. Anyone who's comfortable with that is way too white for words."
Despite her misgivings, Caroline smiled. "Even the Assistant Attorney General who argued the case for California?"
"Especially him," Callista answered with disdain. "Do you believe Price did it?"
The blunt question, stripping Caroline of legal hedges, gave her pause. "No," she answered. "But if you're Justice Fini, that's not the point."
Caroline saw Callista hesitate, torn between her sense of injustice and the fear of crossing the line between Chief Justice and clerk. More quietly, she said, "My mama's mouthy and opinionated, and I guess she raised another one. So I have to ask this, even though I know I'm out of line: What's the point for you?
"Can we just sit here and watch them kill this guy? Isn't Justice Glynn's penchant for worrying too much about Court politics exactly what got Price here? What greater good is the Court serving if it
sacrifices Rennell Price? And do we even have the right to ask that question?" Callista lowered her voice again. "Call me stupid—any black person in America can tell you 'justice' is hit or miss. But that's no reason for us to close our eyes."
Caroline considered her. "I guess Price wants an immediate stay of execution," she said. "Until this Court, or some other Court, rules on his new evidence."
"Yes."
"How many days until his execution?"
"Five."
Caroline glanced at her calendar. "Write this one up," she ordered. "And keep close contact with the Governor's office. I want to know what happens with clemency."
* * *
Three days passed, filled with fruitless scraping for new evidence, searching for Fleet, jumping when the phone rang, checking for faxes at the office and at home. Chris looked tired; Carlo was irritable and jumpy. No one could find Fleet.
"The Court's playing chicken with the Governor," Chris opined. "No one wants to go first."
Rennell had stopped eating. "Don't need food no more," he said to Terri. The fear in his dull eyes made Terri miserable.
"Don't give up," she told him.
Two nights before the date of execution, Eddie Fleet came to Terri in a dream. Hugging her, he said quietly, "I can't let Rennell suffer anymore. Tell me what I need to do."
When she woke, reality overtaking her, only Chris was there.
* * *
Three hours later, at the office, the fax machine emitted a letter from the Governor headed "In the Matter of the Clemency Petition of Rennell Price."
Every court available, the Governor explained, had reviewed this matter—several times—including an exhaustive analysis by the United States Supreme Court. Given this meticulous and repeated judicial scrutiny, the deplorable nature of the crime, and the wishes of Thuy Sen's family, the execution of Rennell Price could not reasonably be called a miscarriage of justice. Clemency denied.
There was no time for emotion. Swiftly, Chris and Terri sent a supplemental pleading to the death penalty clerk of the United States Supreme Court, attaching the Governor's letter, for review by the Chief Justice.
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