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
