* * *
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.
