As an answer, it was at least as credible as the alibi the defense had offered at the brothers' trial. But one or the other could not be true, suggesting—unhelpfully—that neither was.
Terri simply nodded. There was little else to ask until she combed the record, little purpose to her visit beyond starting to persuade Rennell Price—against the odds, given his life lessons—that someone cared about him. 'I'll be coming to see you every few days,' she assured him. 'Is there anything you need?'
Rennell gazed at the table. 'A TV,' he said at last. 'Mine's been broke for a long time now.'
'Before it broke, what did you like to watch?'
'Superheroes. Especially Hawkman. Monday through Friday at four o'clock.'
She could not tell if this commercial announcement was a statement of fact or suggested an unexpected gift for irony. Whatever the case, given the size of his cell and the cubic footage limitations on his possessions, a new TV would not bankrupt the Paget family. And fifty-nine days of Hawkman was not too much to ask—though it was not easy for Terri to imagine the waning existence which would be measured out, hour by hour, in images on the Cartoon Network.
'I'll get you a new one,' she promised.
Her client did not answer. Maybe, Terri thought, he did not believe her. Even when she stood to leave, he did not look up.
Only as the guard approached did Rennell Price speak again, his voice quiet but insistent.
'I didn't do that little girl,' he told his lawyer.
TWO
'TO LOOK AT HIS REACTIONS,' TERESA PAGET TOLD HER HUSBAND and stepson, 'most people would wonder if there's a human being inside. But I began to wonder if he's retarded.'
Chris's mouth formed a smile. 'Or maybe just antisocial. In the Attorney General's Office, that means just smart enough to feel no remorse.'
The three of them—Terri, Chris, and Carlo—sat on the deck of the Pagets' Victorian home in the Pacific Heights section of San Francisco, three tall glasses resting on the table in front of them. In the foreground of their sweeping view, Victorians and Edwardians and red-brick Georgians crowded the hill, which descended to the Italianate homes of the Marina District. Beyond that, the bay was still crowded with boats in the failing sun of a late Saturday afternoon, their sails swelling with a steady wind, which on the Pagets' deck calmed to a fitful breeze. Though the panorama relieved Terri's sense of claustrophobia, so intense in the Plexiglas booth, it heightened her consciousness of the surreal gap between Rennell's existence and her own, intensified by the familiar visages to either side of her.
At fifty-five, Christopher Paget remained trim and fit, the first streaks of silver barely visible in his copper hair, the clean angles of his face as yet unsoftened by age. Wealthy by inheritance, Chris carried an air of sophistication and detachment which never obscured, at least for Terri, his devotion to their reconfigured family: her thirteen- year-old daughter, Elena; their seven-year-old son, Kit; and, as always, their newest legal associate—Chris's son Carlo, fresh from Yale Law School at the age of twenty-five.
If anything, Carlo appeared more blessed than Chris. His mother, of Italian descent, had been a beauty, and Carlo had dark good looks which Terri had seen stop women on the street. Among Carlo's many graces was that he seemed unaware of this. Unlike Chris, who superficially did not appear so, Carlo was idealistic, a sweet and loving soul—all of which, Terri knew, had everything to do with Chris himself. That was part of what had caused Terri to fall in love with Chris. So here she was, the daughter of a struggling Hispanic family, sitting in a beautiful house in a beautiful city with two men who, by all appearances, had been showered with God's favors since the moment they were born.
It was not quite true, of course. Chris's parents were unloving and alcoholic socialites whose wasted lives had ended in a car wreck. Carlo had been the by-product of an affair, the miserable and unloved son of a single mother who despised Chris too much to let him raise Carlo—until the moment, fearful that the stunted seven-year-old child would become a damaged adult, Chris had given her no choice. It was this sense of life's underside that had given Chris the capacity to understand, at least as much as he could, what it was like for Terri to grow up in a household where her father raped and brutalized her mother, indifferent to what their daughter saw or felt. That this experience had led her—with whatever emotional crosscurrents—to comprehend the lives which so often created death row inmates, and to feel that representing them was recompense for her own escape, was something that Chris still strove to understand; that their law firm would subsidize her efforts, and that Chris would help, was a given. Which was why Carlo—preserved in his idealism, Chris wryly remarked, by an absence of student loans—had chosen to join them.
They drank iced tea; though it was close to the Pagets' accustomed cocktail hour, the conversation was too purposeful for that. 'Still,' Chris ventured, 'it's a strange crime.'
Only after a quick glance at Terri did Carlo turn to him, and she was acutely aware of the sensitivity toward her that, for a moment, delayed his question: 'Strange in what sense?'
'That it would involve both brothers. It's a matter of shame—if you put a nine-year-old boy on the fifty-yard line at Notre Dame stadium, and packed the seats with pedophile priests, none of them would move. Child molesters tend to act alone.'
This remark, with its echoes from her daughter Elena's past, reminded Terri that walling herself off from the nature of Rennell Price's alleged crime might be far more difficult than she had made herself believe. Then Chris reached across the table and touched her hand. Quietly, he said, 'You don't have to take this case, you know.'
Pensive, Terri curled her fingers in his. 'The Habeas Corpus Resource Center is jammed, and they're out of volunteers. So it's me or no one.' She faced Carlo. 'About child molesters,' she told him baldly, 'your dad's right. Elena could tell you that. But Rennell Price still claims he's innocent. That's where we have to start—and quickly.'
This settled the matter, as Terri had known it would. After another glance at his father, Carlo nodded.
'So,' she continued, 'we have to look at the facts as if no one ever has before. Review the police reports, the physical evidence, the witness statements, the trial transcript. Track down the key witnesses—could they have been mistaken, we'll want to know, or have had a motive to lie? Both happen more often than you'd think.'
'What about the cops?'
