Eula felt herself suspended between the two young men she still loved—the incomprehensible human remnants of the scared boys she had inherited—and the house which they had appropriated: which now, she acknowledged despite a rush of shame at her selfishness, might become truly hers again. 'Don't even know a bank would do that . . .'
'It's not a problem,' James assured her. 'I have a notary public who works with me. We can do the paperwork ourselves.'
Eula felt the last vestiges of the life she had known slipping through her hands. But surely God would send no more than she could bear.
'I'll pray on it, Lawyer James. I surely will.'
'And you should.' Decorously, he dabbed at his nose. 'But don't take too long, ma'am—please. In matters like this, every day is another strike against your boys.'
* * *
'Allergies,' Terri said to Carlo. 'What you're going to find out is that 'Lawyer James' discounted the second mortgage, then sold it for cash.' Glancing at her husband, she added mordantly, 'I can't wait to read the trial transcript. 'Allergies' can really screw up your defense.'
Smiling faintly, Chris remarked, 'I keep thinking about the old white lady—the neighbor. Cross-racial identifications are the least reliable.'
She nodded. 'Monk and Mauriani thought of that. They ran two lineups—six-packs for each brother.'
'What about Fleet?'
'Oh, they thought of that, too.'
* * *
Flora Lewis peered through the one-way glass, flanked by Monk, Ainsworth, Mauriani, and the brothers' lawyer, Yancey James.
Mauriani, Monk noted with approval, was taking no chances. As with the first lineup, the second contained six young black men of roughly similar size. Standing beside Eddie Fleet, Rennell Price stared straight ahead.
Flora Lewis pointed a long finger toward the glass. 'That's him,' she said decisively, 'The third man from the left, Rennell Price.'
As if he had heard her, the big man in the black sweatshirt shifted his weight. Then he resumed his menacing stare toward the woman he could not see.
'You're sure?' Monk prodded.
'Absolutely.'
'And that's also the man you saw forcing Thuy Sen inside the house.'
'That's right.'
'Okay,' Monk continued. 'Now I want you to look at the man standing next to him, the one in the red windbreaker. Ever seen that man before?'
As the woman regarded Eddie Fleet, one corner of his mouth moved fractionally, as though his presence were a macabre joke.
'Take your time, Mrs. Lewis.'
Lewis squinted through her glasses. 'Maybe,' she allowed. 'It seems like maybe I have. But so many people come to that house—all the time, at all hours.'
Her tone was puzzled, as though she were disappointed in her gifts of recall. 'But the one thing I do know,' she added firmly. 'I know Rennell Price when I see him. And that man in the black sweatshirt is Rennell, the man I saw with Payton and the Asian girl those two murdered. You always see them together.'
Still impassive, Rennell Price stared through the glass. 'Thank you,' his lawyer said politely, dabbing at his nose again.
TWELVE
'MAYBE PROSECUTORS PICK THE DEFENDANTS,' LOU MAURIANI remarked to Terri. 'But we don't get to pick their lawyers.'
Sun bathed the deck of Mauriani's retirement home, a modest A-frame in the foothills of the Sierra. His vista of rolling hillocks and pine trees and twisting roads was, Mauriani acknowledged, as different from the cramped urban neighborhood of his youth as he could afford. The crisp fall air was scented with pine needles.
'Lawyer,' Terri amended. 'Singular. You were clearly conscious of that problem.'
Mauriani sipped his lunchtime glass of cabernet, blue eyes glinting with good humor. 'And you, Ms. Paget, have clearly read the transcript of the prelim.'
* * *
As Mauriani saw it, his biggest problem was Yancey James.
Otherwise, the prosecutor knew, the preliminary hearing should be simple. The sole obvious pitfall concerned a possible defense motion for a change of venue; in this courtroom, the brothers' only friend was Eula Price.
She sat to one corner, overwhelmed by the reporters crammed into the wooden benches or standing at the rear. On the other side, at Mauriani's gentle urging, Chou Sen waited with her husband, Meng, a silent portrait of suffering and incomprehension, reminding the media and the Court of the terrible reason for this hearing. And presiding was Mauriani's ex-colleague from the D.A.'s office, Municipal Court Judge John Francis Warner, a man not about to make headlines by setting these defendants loose—even if their grandmother could scrape up enough security to satisfy a bail bondsman.
