Terri forced herself to think systematically, like a lawyer. 'How old did he look?'
Elena's brow knit. 'How old would that man be?'
'Late thirties.'
'Yes. That was how old he was.'
'What color was the car?'
Elena thought, then looked away. 'I don't remember.'
Terri glanced up at Rossella. 'Did you see him?'
Once more, silent, the housekeeper shook her head.
Terri took her daughter's hand. 'We're going to see the police,' she told Elena.
* * *
With two plainclothes cops from the Sex Crimes Unit, Monk spread six mug shots on the conference table where he once had questioned Rennell Price.
Fleet, Terri saw at once, was the third face on the right. But his photograph, too, was a piece of history, an artifact of the time Fleet had traded Rennell and Payton Price for his own freedom. His eyes glinted with a young man's insolence, and the hint of a smile, perhaps perceptible only to Terri, seemed to play at one corner of his mouth.
Elena gazed at the photographs, her own face a mute portrait of fear and confusion. In that instant, Terri imagined Flora Lewis, staring at the mug shots Monk had brought to her living room and picking out Rennell and Payton Price.
'I think it was this one,' Elena said and pointed to a photograph next to Fleet, a man Terri had never seen.
It turned out the man was dead.
* * *
That night, just before eleven, Terri softly opened Elena's door and peeked into her bedroom.
It seemed that her daughter was sleeping. Then Elena's voice came from the darkness.
'Did he have a bad childhood, too, Mama?'
Terri hesitated. She did not know whether the question, chilling to her ears, referred to Fleet, or to Rennell, or to Elena's own father.
'Who, Elena?'
Elena did not answer. 'I want to know,' she said. 'Does everyone that something bad happened to have to do those things to someone else?'
Terri thought of herself and then, more piercingly, of Rennell. 'Not always . . .'
'Maybe I'll hate men.' Elena's voice was shaking now, close to hysteria. 'Maybe I'll kill a man for forcing me to do things to him. Will you defend me, Mama?'
Elena began sobbing. Rushing to her side, Terri held her, her body stiff and resistant.
I hate you, Terri told her long-dead husband.
For some families, as Mauriani had said, they can never be dead enough.
FIFTEEN
ALONE, CHRISTOPHER PAGET ENTERED THE STERILE GOVERNMENT building in Sacramento to speak for Rennell at the clemency hearing.
The steps were lined with reporters and jammed with pickets and counterpickets, some with signs seeking or decrying the execution of Rennell Price. The presence of two liberal film stars, a male and a female who lived together, guaranteed yet more media attention but underscored Chris's misgivings; the recall movement against Governor Darrow was growing in numbers and intensity, and more publicity might create a high-profile opportunity for Darrow to bless the execution of a child killer, burnishing his law-and-order credentials. Only new evidence of innocence was likely to serve Rennell, and Chris had none to offer. The last-ditch effort to save Rennell had become a search for Betty Sims, or anyone to whom Eddie Fleet might have made some careless remark suggestive of his guilt.
'Good luck,' Terri had said as he left. But her voice was tired, and her tone held little hope.
* * *
The room dedicated to clemency hearings felt like a high school auditorium—three sections of seats sloping downward, sectioned by two aisles—and the proceedings were presided over by stone-faced mutes, a tribunal of eleven members, most of them white and male. In the front row, Thuy Sen's mother, father, and sister were equally impassive, save that Kim Sen kept glancing at a piece of paper grasped tightly in both hands.
Standing at the podium, Chris pled for Rennell's life. 'Despite the terrible violence inflicted on Rennell Price, there is no record—either before or after prison—of Rennell inflicting violence on another living soul. Let alone a single act of sexual deviance or cruelty.
'The evidence before you shows a gentle man, confused by the world, who may very well be innocent. If the State of California executes him, our chance to prove that ends, and this will be Eddie Fleet's last, and cruelest, victory.'
From the panel, he saw no glimmer of expression. Its chairman, a heavyset political functionary, gazed at some indeterminate spot above Chris's head. With an undercurrent of anger, Chris said, 'I ask this board to stop for a moment—just stop—and look at the charade of justice the State asks you to take part in. Before the Supreme Court, Mr. Pell suggested that this board—not the courts—is the proper forum to consider our new evidence of
