Conviction

by Richard North Patterson

  Thirty-seven hours separated Rennell from death.

  * * *

  On receiving Governor Darrow's letter, the Chief Justice went to Justice Huddleston.

  He had read Callista Hill's memo and now reviewed the letter before looking up at Caroline. "It's like some terrible conveyor belt," he said. "Rennell Price is inexorably gliding toward the jaws of death, and one keeps expecting someone else to take him off. And no one does."

  "So now it's down to me, as Circuit Justice. But I'm also the Chief Justice."

  "And, as such, charged with doing what you can to lessen friction within the Court. Which involves preserving your own credibility."

  "What about my own conscience?"

  Huddleston rubbed his eyes. "Well," he said, "there is that." Picking up the letter, he scanned it again. "If you do decide to issue a stay, at the least you may buy him a few hours—our Court's not in session, and our colleagues are scattered to the winds or, in Fini's case, a condominium in Hawaii. That should put some pressure back on the Governor." Huddleston paused. "I'll support you, of course. But no one else may. And you'll need five votes to keep the stay in place—including one from a justice who only last month condemned Price to death. So how you spend your capital as Chief really is your call."

  Caroline glanced at her watch. It was close to three in the afternoon, 10:00 A.M. in Hawaii. "Let's hope Fini's up and out already," she said. "If Price is extra lucky, Tony's surfing the Devil's Pipeline."

  * * *

  A little after one o'clock in San Francisco, the death penalty clerk advised Christopher Paget that Chief Justice Caroline Masters had entered a stay of execution in the matter of Rennell Price.

  Chris felt little jubilation. Before informing Terri and Carlo, he called the Governor's office. To his surprise, the Chief Justice had already sent the Governor a copy of her order staying execution.

  "She's playing hardball," Chris told Terri and Carlo. "Now it's up to Fini and Darrow."

  * * *

  At six o'clock that evening in Washington, an e-mail from Justice Fini appeared on Caroline Masters's home computer.

  Fini's analysis was terse. Skirting the thornier legal questions, he called the new evidence of Fleet's pedophilia "woefully deficient" and "irrelevant to the crime of which Price stands convicted."

  Immediately, the Chief Justice began typing a response. "Tomorrow," she began, "Rennell Price is scheduled to die. We must ask ourselves whether this latest evidence should give us pause before sanctioning such a dubious execution . . ."

  * * *

  At five o'clock in the afternoon Pacific time, the telephone in Terri's office rang.

  It was the Supreme Court's death penalty clerk. "There's been a new order in the Price case," the man told Terri somberly. "By a vote of five to four, the Court has dissolved its stay in the matter of Rennell Price."

  Mechanically, Terri thanked him for calling and put down the phone. Thirty-one hours from now, at 12:01 A.M., the State of California was scheduled to carry out the death warrant.

  Frenziedly, Chris started trying to track down the Governor's scheduler.

  * * *

  At close to midnight, Terri was still in her office, preparing yet another petition in case new evidence was found. When her telephone rang, she started. Turning, she saw Johnny Moore's cell phone number.

  "I've got some news," he said tersely.

  Terri hesitated, suspended between hope and the grimness of his tone. "About Fleet?"

  "About Fleet, Terri. He's dead."

  Terri felt herself go numb, disbelief warring with relief, followed by a lawyer's sense of foreboding. "How?" she asked in a hollow voice.

  "It happened yesterday morning, in East L.A. Fleet was hiding out with some woman he'd met, using a false name. According to the cops, he beat her up, then forced her to go down on him. When he fell asleep, she stuck a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger." Moore's voice was soft. "There's a touch of poetry in that. I like to think he woke up first, if only for a moment."

  Terri forced herself to think. "Dead," she repeated. "Somehow I kept hoping we could force him to confess. Trap him, some way."

  "It never would have happened," Moore answered. "You had no leverage—other than Fleet, if you believe he was there, Payton was the only witness to Thuy Sen's death."

  "Fleet was there," Terri answered. "And now they're all dead, the three people in Eula Price's living room."

  A sense of tragedy overcame her and then, by reflex, a lawyer's logic. There was no more evidence to be had in Thuy Sen's death, or any hope of evidence. Only whatever inference could be gleaned from the reason for Fleet's own death. "This is part of the pattern," she said. "We can use it in a new petition."

  By rote, Terri dictated the bare bones of an affidavit for Moore to execute and fax. Only then did she permit herself to be a mother, not a lawyer, and thank whatever God existed that Elena would be safe.

  * * *

  As soon as she could, Terri took her work home and went to Elena. It was nearly two o'clock in the morning, but what Terri had to tell her could not wait.

  Restless, the girl stirred, lips parted as if to speak, and Terri wondered if her nightmare of Richie had come again. When Terri touched her shoulder, Elena started awake.

  "It's only me," Terri said softly. "Just your mom."

  Her daughter gazed back at her, too newly awake, and perhaps frightened, not to appear vulnerable instead of guarded. Anxiously, the girl demanded, "Is something wrong?"

  "Something happened," Terri answered. "Something I want to tell you. But nothing's wrong."

  Taking Elena's hand, Terri waited for her daughter to collect herself. "What is it?" Elena asked.

  "The man who may have followed you, the one I believe killed Thuy Sen all those years ago. He's dead."

  Elena's eyes fluttered, then studied Terri with a look of hope and disbelief. "How did he die?"

  Terri hesitated, remembering Elena's tortured outcry, "Maybe I'll kill a man for forcing me to do things." But nothing but truth could come to Terri's lips. "He beat a woman, Elena, then forced her to give him oral sex. So she shot him in his sleep."

  Elena covered her face. After a moment, she murmured, "Will the woman be all right?"

  "I don't know."

  Elena sat up again. "I wanted him dead," she said after a time, "and now some other woman will pay for it. Why wouldn't it be better if they'd sentenced him to death?"

  At first, Terri had no answer. Then she said, "It would have been better, Elena, if they'd sentenced him to life. You'd still be safe now, and so would Rennell."

  Elena did not answer.

  "You are safe," Terri said softly. "Just sit with it for a while, and know I love you."

  Mute, the girl nodded, and then Terri returned to the library, to try to save Rennell Price from a dead man, and the State of California.

  * * *

  In the morning, Elena appeared in the library.

  It was six o'clock, and Terri was revising her petition. To her surprise, Elena stood behind her, silently rubbing her shoulders. Terri did not ask why, and Elena gave no reason. But when Elena was finished, she kissed her mother softly on the crown of her head, a brush of lips, and then went back to bed.

  TWENTY

  FACING RENNELL, TERRI KNEW WITH QUIET MISERY THAT, WITHOUT some startling event, he would be dead at this time tomorrow.

  Dead like Eddie Fleet, she thought.

  It was nine in the morning, but her own words of reassurance sounded as rote to Terri as cocktail party patter at the end of a long day. "We're still working," she told him, "trying to find out more about Eddie Fleet. Chris is hoping to see the Governor."

  After all of the procedural twists and turns she had tried to explain—clemency, a new petition to the Ninth Circuit; a request for a stay from the United States Supreme Court—Rennell gazed right through her, as though she were speaking in Urdu. All he seemed to know was that each step had moved him closer to his death,
and that now death was at hand. Perhaps that was the only thing worth knowing.

  She took his hand, as much for herself as for Rennell, an effort to ground herself for the long day ahead. "Rennell . . . ?"

  He shook his head. After a time, he mumbled, "I was gonna be free . . ."

  You nearly were, Terri thought. It seemed as though she were living in a dream state: between seven and eight, trying to steal an hour's more sleep, she had suddenly awakened, skin clammy, heart beating swiftly. Now her every word and gesture felt unreal.

  "I'll be back," she promised. "At five o'clock. Maybe I'll have some news."

  * * *

  Tammy Mattox was crammed in a cluster of cubicles with two private investigators, fielding Internet tips and calls to the hotline number they had established, all the while keeping contact with Johnny Moore. "Still nothing more on Fleet?" Terri asked.

  Tammy looked up, dark circles of weariness smudging the skin beneath her eyes. "Nothing new. Except that he's still dead."

  Terri stood by Tammy's chair, gazing at the telephone. "You know what's worse?" she said. "We're still tracking Fleet because we know he was a pedophile. But now no one knows which one of them killed Thuy Sen. Absent an improvement in DNA technology, no one else will ever know. Rennell's dying from uncertainty."

  Tammy shook her head. "Rennell," she amended, "is dying from artificial certainty. The system demands an end to things, and Darrow needs a ritual execution."

  There was nothing to say to that, and no use dwelling on it. Terri was headed for her office when Tammy's phone rang.

  Terri paused, turning back to look at the flashing phone line. Tammy waved toward the phone. "Go ahead," she said. "Maybe our luck will change."

  Terri answered. "Who's this?" a woman's voice demanded.

  "Teresa Paget—I'm a lawyer for Rennell Price. Can I help you?"

  "More like I can help you. Hear you lookin' for dirt on Eddie Fleet."

  The voice was young, Terri felt certain, its intonations African American. Swiftly, she picked up Tammy's pencil, saying, "If it's true."

  "Oh, it's true. I used to watch his girlfriend's kid—she lived in the neighborhood."

  This seemed meant to establish the caller's credentials. "Where was that?"

  "South Central. Eddie came here 'bout the time we had the Rodney King riots."

  In terms of chronology, that sounded right—Fleet had vanished from the Bayview about four years after Thuy Sen's death. Tense, Terri asked, "What do you know about him?"

  "He's a pig." The voice became a low hiss of anger. "One day he come to the house when Jasmine wasn't there, and her kid was napping."

  The story stopped abruptly, as though its end was obvious. Straining to infuse her voice with sympathy, Terri asked, "Can you tell me what he did?"

  "He was high," the woman burst out in anger. "Said he'd been watchin' me, knowin' I'd been watchin' him. I said he was crazy."

  Hastily, Terri began scribbling notes. "Yes?" she prodded.

  The woman seemed to inhale. "Said he want me to go down on him. I told him to do himself. Then he takes out a gun . . ."

  Startled, Terri asked, "He threatened to kill you?"

  "He puts it to my head," the woman continued huskily. "When I still wouldn't do it, he said it didn't matter shit to him whether I lived or died. But if I died chokin' on his come, at least it be an accident."

  Terri leaned on the desk, feeling a flutter in her throat. Tammy watched her closely. "What you've told me could save a life," Terri said simply.

  The woman was silent. "That's why I'm callin' you. So you can tell my story to whoever."

  "Our investigator, Johnny Moore, is in South Central now. I want him to come see you—"

  "What I need to do?"

  "Just take me through what happened. Then I'll type up a statement and send it to Johnny for you to sign."

  "Like for court?"

  "It doesn't need to be long. But the Court has to know I didn't make this up."

  "I told you, all right? I don't want to see no court—got my own problems with the law. Just want to see your guy not get killed. How you do that's up to you."

  Terri's chest tightened. "The execution's tonight," she said. "Without your help, he's going to die—"

  Terri heard a click, then silence.

  Quickly, she hit a button on the telephone to trace the woman's number. "Unavailable" flashed on the screen.

  "What was that?" Tammy asked.

  Terri sat on the edge of the desk. "She's gone."

  * * *

  They gathered in the conference room—Chris, Terri, Carlo, and Tammy Mattox, with Johnny Moore on the speaker phone.

  Chris began pacing. "They'll never buy it," he predicted. "Pell will imply that we made this up, knowing a dead man can't refute it, or that our anonymous caller was a crackpot. Or maybe knew from the media what story to tell."

  Terri leaned toward the speaker phone. "You have to find her," she told Moore. "Maybe she's somebody you stirred up when you were poking around. Maybe someone knows who she is, like Fleet's girlfriend—Jasmine."

  "No telephone number," Johnny said. "No address. Twelve hours to go."

  "Try," Terri said. "At least we've got the girlfriend's name."

  * * *

  After ten minutes of debate with Chris and Carlo, Terri glanced at her watch. It was 12:51.

  "We've got no choice," she said flatly. "We have to request leave to file another petition with the Ninth Circuit, and send a supplemental letter to the Governor, citing Fleet's death and an anonymous call. They'll take my word for that or not—at least until Johnny finds this woman."

  Carlo looked from Terri to his father. "There's no other way to do it," Chris said finally. "We've got an artificial deadline of twelve-oh-one tonight. I'll keep trying to find the Governor."

  Tammy went back to the phones.

  TWENTY-ONE

  AT FOUR-THIRTY ON THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 21, HAVING DRAFTED an emergency petition to the United States Supreme Court in the event the Ninth Circuit turned them down, Terri and Carlo went to San Quentin for what would likely be their final visit with Rennell.

  It was a bright Monday afternoon. As he drove, Carlo intently watched the road, and yet Terri could read the distance in his eyes, an absorption in the imminent death of another human being. In the last ten months, Terri realized, Carlo had changed—he looked older, and his air of careless ease had diminished. The death penalty had killed his innocence.

  "Why Tuesday?" he finally asked. "Why twelve-oh-one?"

  "A death warrant's good for only twenty-four hours. They don't want an execution date to slip away . . ."

  "So if we get a stay from the Ninth Circuit, or the Chief Justice, they'll still have time for the full Court to dissolve it."

  "Uh-huh. As for why Tuesday, it used to be Friday." Terri took out her sunglasses. "My theory is that Tuesday cuts down on out-of-town demonstrators, because they'd have to go to work the next day. It also allows three-day weekends for prison personnel, and early getaways for vacations."

  Carlo did not respond. Abruptly, he said, "If they execute him, I'm coming."

  Terri turned to him. "You don't ever want to see one, Carlo. Let alone Rennell's."

  "You're going."

  "I have to be there. That's the last place he needs to feel abandoned."

  Carlo took the exit for San Quentin. "Just by you?" Softly, he added, "I don't need anyone's permission but his. If you check the list, you'll see I'm on it."

  Sometime in the last few days, Terri realized, Rennell and Carlo had discussed this. "Did you bring it up?" she asked.

  "No. He did."

  They said nothing more until they reached the prison. Gazing up at the ventilator above the death chamber, Terri wondered if Chris had tracked down the Governor, and when they would hear from the Ninth Circuit. Maybe Johnny Moore would still find Jasmine.

  There were seven hours left.

  * * *

  Inside, they m
et Anthony Lane and went to the cinder-block room where, until six o'clock on the day the State meant to be his last, Rennell was allowed to greet visitors.

  Rennell sat alone at a folding table with plastic chairs, his arms and legs shackled, a stolid prison guard watching over him. The windowless room was roughly nine feet by ten; beside Rennell's table was another with plastic spoons, a bowl of red Jell-O, and slices of nondescript meat, snacks for Rennell's visitors. Terri could not imagine eating.

  As Rennell stood, Tony Lane enveloped Rennell in a bear hug. Watching Lane over Rennell's shoulder, Terri saw him close his eyes.

  Carlo hugged Rennell as well, fiercely and for some moments. When Rennell bent toward her, Terri kissed him on the forehead. He smelled like soap, she realized, as though he had prepared himself for visitors.

  Rennell looked down at her. "Been waitin' here. I always knew you'd come."

  The simple words pierced her. When he was a child, Terri thought, there had been no one but Payton to rely on, no parents coming to his school or keeping a promise to take him somewhere special on a weekend. His three visitors had become, at the end of his life, the family he had missed.

  "Chris wanted to come, too," she told him. "But he's meeting with the Governor and waiting to hear from the courts. No one's giving up."

  Rennell nodded, a trace of hope appearing in his eyes. "Chris is real smart," he said as if to comfort himself. "I can tell that."

  Terri mustered a smile. "No one smarter. Except for maybe Carlo and me." Remembering Lane, she added lightly, "And Tony, of course."

  Rennell leaned his head back, taking in his guests. "All you guys is smart," he said sagely. "Know you be takin' care of things."

  Once more, Terri felt the gap between their desperate last maneuvers and the dimness of Rennell's perception of them. Reaching inside her suit pocket, she took out a picture she had found among his grandmother's effects—Eula Price with her arms around a bright-eyed Payton and a solemn, round-faced Rennell at roughly the age of ten. "I brought this for you," she said.

  Rennell gazed down at the photograph, eyes dimming, and Terri realized that the photograph must remind him of death—his grandmother's and Payton's—and how his brother had died. "I love this picture of you," she swiftly added. "You look like a little man."