Conviction

by Richard North Patterson

"How many blocks is it from school to home?"

  Chou shook her head. "Don't know."

  "Sixteen blocks, Mrs. Sen. Do you know what goes on in sixteen blocks in the Bayview District?"

  Out of compassion for Chou Sen, Mauriani considered objecting, then decided not to disrupt her antagonist's suicide-in-progress. "What you mean?" she asked.

  "Do you know that some young girls in the Bayview start trading sex for cocaine?"

  Chou swallowed. "Don't know."

  "You don't know? You live in the Bayview for seven years, and claim not to know of the dangers Thuy Sen might fall prey to?"

  "Don't know," Chou repeated stubbornly.

  James moved closer. "So you don't know," he asked with insinuating quiet, "whether Thuy decided to visit with some young men, maybe listen to music."

  Mauriani experienced an emotion close to awe: James's miscalculation was attaining a grandeur all its own. The accountant, Henry Feldt, watched the lawyer with a grimness that betrayed his anger.

  "Thuy not like that," her mother insisted.

  Her resistance seemed to fuel James's lack of judgment; he drew himself up straighter, and his tone grew more aggressive. "How did you know, Mrs. Sen, how Thuy might react when she was on her own?"

  Chou Sen looked bewildered by the question. "Thuy Sen good girl," she said plaintively.

  "Even a good girl," James pressed on, "can sometimes be led astray. You just don't know who she might have fallen in with, do you? Or what distraction she might have found on any one of those sixteen blocks you let her walk alone."

  Mute, Chou Sen hung her head. In her miserable silence, Mauriani glanced at the day-care worker. To his surprise, Bender's silent fury was focused not on Yancey James but on Rennell.

  He was smiling at his grandmother. Sitting in the front row, she wore a more appropriate expression—mortification at Yancey James's questions. But when Eula Price turned to him, Rennell's smile only broadened.

  * * *

  After James's abuse of Chou Sen, Mauriani thought, his own crisp examination of Flora Lewis was the perfect counter.

  Yes, Lewis said with certainty, she had seen Rennell pull the frightened girl off the sidewalk. Yes, it was Payton who closed the door behind them. After all these years living across the street, she knew those brothers as well as she knew her own hand. And no person of feeling could ever forget Thuy Sen, stumbling as Rennell pulled her inside.

  Standing to cross-examine, James got right to work. "How do you feel about blacks?" he asked.

  Lewis stiffened. "Depends on the individual."

  "Really? Well you sure didn't like these black men, did you? Long before Thuy Sen disappeared, you called the police on them."

  "Only about their noise. They kept me up at night."

  "So you didn't like them."

  "No, I did not." Lewis paused. "I disliked them both, and felt sorry for their grandmother. She was far more at their mercy than I was."

  Eula Price, Mauriani saw, lowered her eyes. But James seemed impervious. "So maybe," he said with a note of triumph, "you wanted them to be the ones charged with this terrible crime. If not for your own sake, for Eula Price's."

  Flora Lewis stiffened on the witness stand. "That's just not so."

  "No? Then why didn't you tell your story to the police until three days later, when Inspectors Monk and Ainsworth showed up at your door?"

  "I was afraid of them. Payton and Rennell, I mean."

  James walked toward her, standing so close now that Mauriani, had he cared to, could have objected. "Was that your reason, Mrs. Lewis? Or did the police start asking questions about Thuy Sen, and then you saw your chance to get rid of Rennell and Payton Price—for good."

  Flora Lewis half-rose from the witness chair, as though to thrust her face even closer to his. Her voice quavered with fury. "I saw Rennell Price drag that little girl inside. I saw how scared she was. And now I can't sleep for seeing that every night.

  "Make something like that up? I wish I had. Then I wouldn't feel like a murderer for not calling the police."

  James paused, taken aback. Mauriani glanced at the brothers. Payton glared at the witness with a naked hostility the prosecutor could feel. But not Rennell. Stretching his legs in front of him, he gazed at the ceiling, a study in ostentatious boredom.

  * * *

  "Jesus," Carlo murmured across time. It struck Terri that for Carlo, as for her, the anger and reprisal enveloping Rennell Price fifteen years before had become a presence in the room.

  "Oh," she assured her stepson, "there's so much more."

  SEVENTEEN

  IT WAS EDDIE FLEET, MAURIANI HAD TOLD TERRI, WHO BROUGHT his case to vivid life.

  The first image Fleet implanted in the jurors' minds was of Rennell, materializing from the darkness outside Fleet's door. From the witness stand, he sounded haunted and subdued. "He just stood there," Fleet told Mauriani. "All he said was, 'We got need for your car.' But I knew right then this was something like I never seen before."

  "Why was that?"

  "It was cold out, but the sweat was runnin' off his face. More than crack, man—the dude was scared."

  Fleet's eyes appeared to fill with remembered panic. In the silence of the courtroom, Mauriani could sense the jury's rapt attention.

  "So you both got into your car?"

  "Yeah." Fleet paused to gaze at his hands, as though studying the dirt beneath his nails. "We drove down to their house," he said at length. "Payton and Rennell's. And still Rennell's not tellin' me nothin.' Just lookin' out the window, like there must be people after us, and sayin', 'This is trouble, man.' " For the first time, Fleet's eyes flickered toward the defendants, and then he added softly, "It surely was all of that."

  "What happened next?"

  "We got there. Then Payton opens the door." As though remembering, Fleet shook his head. "He looks so scared he's like to crazy. Then he lets me inside."

  The last few words were infused with awe. Mauriani let it echo for the jury, then asked, "What did you see there?"

  "Her." For an instant, the words caught in his throat. "The girl that was missing."

  He stopped abruptly, as if this could forestall the events which followed. It struck Mauriani that, by craft or accident, Fleet had a gift for drawing in his listeners. In deliberate contrast, the prosecutor inquired matter-of-factly, "Where exactly did you see her?"

  "On the floor." Fleet's voice combined reverence with dread. "She was dead, and drool was coming out her mouth onto the rug."

  In that moment, Mauriani sensed, James's attack on Flora Lewis had turned back against him, and the jurors' disgust at his treatment of Chou Sen was transforming into hatred of his clients. Mauriani's next question might be all they needed to feel at home with that.

  "Did anyone describe what happened?" he inquired.

  Once more, Fleet glanced at the defendants. "Yeah," he responded quietly. "Rennell did."

  For whatever reason, Mauriani thought, Fleet was stretching the drama out; perhaps there was no tragedy so terrible that it did not afford someone a moment's pleasure. "What exactly did Rennell say, Eddie?"

  Fleet looked down. More softly yet, he answered, "He said she'd choked on come."

  * * *

  There were moments where Mauriani could feel the flow of a trial change, like a suddenly quickening stream sweeping all before it. Those words were such a moment. By the end of Fleet's narrative, when Rennell was laying Thuy Sen's body on the water, Mauriani imagined death entering the courtroom, and not just Thuy Sen's.

  Before he sat, Mauriani glanced at both defendants. Payton riveted Fleet with a look of hatred so visceral and venomous that it felt like an electric current. But Rennell sat back, eyes veiled, as though Fleet's narrative did not involve him. Mauriani spotted Candace Bender in the jury box, watching the brothers with something akin to horror—not only at what she had heard, Mauriani felt certain, but at the men she saw before her now.

  * * *

  For the fir
st segment of cross-examination—too long, Mauriani thought—James drew out the litany of Eddie Fleet's criminal record. By its end, the jury could have had no doubt that Fleet was a crack-dealing, girlfriend-beating, gun-trafficking sociopath and, as such, fit company for Payton and Rennell. But not that he was a liar.

  "This tale you've told us," James said with theatrical disdain, "you made a deal with the prosecutor to tell it, right?"

  Fleet merely shrugged. "No deals, man."

  "No deals? Didn't they find crack cocaine in your girlfriend's apartment she said belonged to you?"

  "She said that." The sheer pettiness of such a crime, compared with the weight of Thuy Sen's death, seemed to evoke in Fleet a flash of amusement at Yancey James. "Two lousy rocks ain't enough to make me a liar. Not about somethin' like this."

  James placed both hands on his hips, softening his voice. "What about something like dumping a dead nine-year-old? The only thing we know for sure is that Thuy Sen's body was in your trunk—the whole rest of the story we've only got your word for. The jury needs to know what Mr. Mauriani promised you to tell it."

  Fleet steepled his hands together. "All the cops and the D.A. told me," he answered with studied composure, "was they'd consider my cooperation if I told what happened in court. They said I'd better not be lying, and never made no deals."

  James moved closer. "But you are lying, aren't you. You're lying about my clients to cover for your crime."

  Abruptly, Fleet's expression turned defiant. "All I was doin'," he retorted, "was helpin' out my friends. Didn't want this little girl to die, don't know exactly how it happened. By the time I saw her she was already dead."

  "But we've only got your word for that, don't we. Just like we've only got your word about Payton and Rennell."

  Calm renewed, Fleet regarded James impassively. "Don't know about that," he answered. "Before I told the police what happened, they'd already tore up the grandmother's house for evidence.

  "We're not all sittin' here just because of me. Seemed like a lot of what I told them they already knew." He paused, eyes sweeping the courtroom, and a sense of the inevitable crept into his voice. "Like that this little girl choked to death right where I saw her. Just the way Rennell told me she did."

  * * *

  On the stand, Charles Monk pressed the button on the tape recorder.

  His own disembodied voice sounded in the courtroom. "You didn't want for her to die, did you?"

  The jury seemed to tense as one. There was a long silence, and then, for the first time, the jury heard Rennell Price speak. "No."

  His voice was dull and, to Lou Mauriani's practiced ear, utterly unconvincing. On the tape, Monk prodded, "You just wanted her to make you feel good."

  Scrutinizing the jurors, Mauriani saw Anna Velez's eyes close. In the same emotionless monotone, Rennell's voice asked Monk, "What Payton say?"

  "What does it matter?" Monk rejoined. "Was Payton the one who killed her?"

  "No." Rennell answered abruptly. "No way."

  "No," Monk quietly agreed. "It was you. But you didn't mean for that to happen."

  Intent, Henry Feldt leaned forward in the jury box. "No," Rennell's voice said.

  The damning one-word answer seemed to make Feldt freeze. "I didn't think so," Monk concurred. "You were holding her head down. When she started choking, you didn't know what to do."

  There was more silence. With sudden vehemence, Rennell answered, "I didn't do that little girl."

  In the courtroom, Candace Bender was staring at Rennell. Her look conveyed the disbelief which, Mauriani was sure, now pervaded the other eleven jurors. But Rennell Price only nodded to himself, smiling at the sound of his own voice.

  EIGHTEEN

  MAURIANI'S NEXT WITNESS WAS THE SNITCH, JAMAL HARRISON.

  "Why not end with him?" Carlo asked Terri. "If they took events in sequence, he'd be last."

  Terri looked up from the transcript of Liz Shelton's testimony. "He was just too weird," she answered. "Mauriani wanted to finish with Shelton, the calm voice of authority. If Jamal blew up on him, Mauriani could use the medical examiner to recoup his credibility."

  Carlo flipped another page, scanning it for a moment. "The way this is reading," he observed, "Mauriani didn't need to worry."

  Pausing, the prosecutor reached the climax of his direct examination. "What happened," he inquired, "after you promised Payton that you'd murder Eddie Fleet?"

  Twitchy, Jamal Harrison shot a glance at the defendants. Payton glared back at him with anger and contempt; calmly, Rennell finished writing on a yellow legal pad and then looked up, pen poised to take more notes. Turning to the prosecutor, Jamal said softly, "Payton didn't say nothing to me, only nodded. Then he set down next to Rennell and whispered in his ear."

  "What did Rennell do?"

  Jamal's restless gaze darted about the courtroom. "Just smiled, man. I guess thinking about Fleet being dead must have tickled his fancy."

  To Mauriani's surprise, James did not ask Rotelli to strike the answer. Swiftly, the prosecutor followed, "But you didn't hear what Payton told him."

  Shifting his weight, Jamal crossed and then recrossed his legs, as though his own skin were a prison. "All I know," he said with venomous quiet, "is what I saw—the first smile I ever saw the whole time Rennell Price was in that cell."

  Satisfied, Mauriani chose to end there. "No further questions," he told Rotelli.

  As he headed for the prosecution table, he shot a surreptitious glance at Rennell Price's notepad. But all he could make out was a jumble of printed words linked by arrows and, more obscure, what might have been the stick figure of a child.

  * * *

  James stared balefully at the witness. "You made up this whole story," he charged. "Just to curry favor with the police."

  Jamal's eyes flashed. "Cops didn't do me no favors."

  "Not today, Jamal. You're here doing them one by making out the brothers to be killers."

  Sitting back, Jamal gave James a small smile of superiority, and a glint of triumph crept into his eyes. "Think so, Mr. Lawyer? Then how you think I knew Eddie Fleet was gonna be a witness for the prosecution?"

  Nettled, James snapped, "I'm asking the questions here—"

  "Cops and prosecutor didn't tell me," Jamal cut in. "Payton told me about Fleet. Those brothers were stuck in jail, and they needed Eddie dead."

  Mauriani suppressed a smile. Unperturbed, Rennell kept taking notes.

  * * *

  Carlo flipped back several pages, then placed one finger on Mauriani's last question to Jamal. "Explain this one to me," he said to Terri. "Jamal Harrison implies that Rennell's smile meant he knew Jamal had agreed to kill Fleet, and James doesn't object. Great for the prosecution. Then Mauriani forces Jamal to admit he didn't hear what Payton whispered to Rennell."

  "Read this," Terri suggested, sliding the open transcript of Elizabeth Shelton's testimony across the conference table. "Start with James's final question on cross, and then go on to Mauriani's redirect. The absence of DNA technology when Thuy Sen died didn't help. But what you're seeing is the beginning of a pattern."

  * * *

  "So," James thundered, "you don't know whose semen you found in Thuy Sen's throat."

  To Mauriani, Liz Shelton remained the embodiment of professional composure, a counterpoint to James's theatrics. "No," she answered. "All I know is that the secretor, or secretors, of the semen were type O. The same blood type as both your clients."

  "Thank you," James declaimed smoothly and, to Mauriani's surprise, sat down. Perhaps James wanted to end on a note of triumph—if only through the bewildering satisfaction conveyed by his own voice.

  At once, Mauriani stood. "Dr. Shelton, I'd like to clarify the answer you just gave to Mr. James. Are you resting any part of your opinion on the blood type of the semen, or suggesting that it implicates either Rennell or Payton Price?"

  At once, Shelton grasped the import of the question. "Not at all. In African Americans, rough
ly half the population is type O. The most I can say is that I can't exclude the brothers as possible secretors."

  "So you're not suggesting that the jury should base their verdict on blood type."

  "I am not. No responsible expert would."

  Mauriani nodded his satisfaction. "In light of that," he continued, "and as an expert in both areas, could you summarize the medical and forensic evidence which you believe the jury should consider."

  "Of course." As Shelton paused, turning to address them, Mauriani felt the jury's close attention. "To begin, Thuy Sen was asphyxiated by approximately five cc's of ejaculated semen which collected in her throat. At the defendants' house—along with a green thread consistent with her sweater, and a partial print from her right index finger—we found traces of semen and saliva on the carpet. We found the same thread, and the same traces, in the trunk of Fleet's car. And Thuy Sen's body washed up approximately where, according to the Coast Guard, it would have had it been dumped where Fleet claimed it was. With what appeared to be a pubic hair caught in her barrette."

  In the jury box, Henry Feldt had begun nodding. "I can't tell you," Shelton concluded, "whose ejaculation caused this child's death. But the physical evidence is consistent with the testimony of Fleet and Flora Lewis.

  "Thuy Sen was in the brothers' living room. Her body was in Eddie Fleet's trunk. And she choked to death on semen—just as, according to Fleet, Rennell Price said she did."

  And that, Mauriani thought, was the perfect coda to his case.

  As his final witness stepped down, he looked toward Thuy Sen's parents, hoping to convey at least some comfort. But they were huddled together in abject misery and did not see him.

  Glancing at Eula Price, he detected tears glistening in her eyes.

  A deep pity overcame him. She, too, struck Mauriani as a victim, perhaps even more alone than the Sens. Though part of her purpose in suffering this ordeal must have been to humanize the brothers, at whatever pain to her, there was no one to give her comfort—James had taken no note of her since the trial began and neither, with the exception of the ill-timed smile from Rennell, had her own grandsons.