prisoners think they don't deserve to live.' Terri smiled faintly. 'I guess they don't see the irony.'
'Where do Rennell and Payton fit in?'
'Child sex criminals. From top to bottom, the hierarchy goes from rage killings—some guy catches his girlfriend with someone else—to someone convicted of killing a child in the course of sex. That's the Price brothers.
'In a way, they're lucky. Snitches can't go in the yard. But sex offenders get to exercise with their own kind, several hours a day.' Turning down a two-lane road toward the prison, Terri added softly, 'Rennell gets to see his older brother almost every day. So they get to go through life together, just like before.'
* * *
San Quentin sprawled across an isolated finger of land. Parking in the lot below the guardhouse, Terri and Carlo got out.
She had schooled him in the rules. They both wore gray suits to differentiate themselves from the prison population—blue or denim was forbidden. They locked all their possessions in the Jeep except for a notepad, pen, their drivers' licenses, Terri's State Bar ID, and the clear plastic bag filled with quarters, which—on Terri's instructions—Carlo carried so that they could get Rennell food from the vending machine. Then they headed for the guardhouse which screened all visiting lawyers.
'We're the privileged visitors,' Terri remarked. 'Nonlawyer visits are a bitch.'
'How so?'
'People like Rennell's grandmother can only call a few hours every week to schedule visits. And the phones are so busy you have to keep hitting the rep dial and hope that you'll get through.
'Often, you won't. That means no visit. If you get lucky, then you go to the general visiting area and sit in a cage with your prisoner, surrounded by more cages holding other prisoners and their visitors. It's been like that ever since members of a rival gang got into a fight—what had been an open room became a zoo.' Terri opened the door to the guardhouse, a one-story wooden structure that resembled a cheap trailer. 'To the authorities, visitation is just another problem they'd sooner be without. So they make it as hard as possible for someone like Eula Price to even schedule a visit. But then running death row's no picnic, I suppose.'
At the desk inside, a somewhat chatty guard—happy to be working outside the prison walls, Carlo assumed— waited while they filled out a visitor form before shooing them through security. Carlo stripped off his belt and shoes and watch and passed through a metal detector; retrieving them, he emerged from the building with Terri to find himself inside San Quentin State Prison.
To his right were mock Tudor homes, housing for prison staff; ahead, looming above the sprawling stucco prison, was a tower manned by guards with rifles. To the left was death row, next to a ventilator shaft jutting from the prison's roof.
Terri followed his gaze. 'The gas chamber,' she told him. 'It's still available for occupancy. But lethal injection's now the death of choice.'
'Who decides?'
'Rennell.' Her tone was clipped. 'A bullet in the brain seems more humane than either. But that's too up close and personal.'
They passed through a second security station with a guardhouse and metal detector. Beyond that a neatly tended square of grass surrounded a marker engraved with the names of murdered prison guards. 'You mentioned gangs?' Carlo said. 'You'd think they'd keep a pretty tight lid on this place.'
'They do. But somehow the folks inside come up with knives and makeshift weapons. And there's still an underground economy: people making 'pruno'—alcohol fermented from fruit—or getting drugs, maybe through employees gone bad. There's everything from weed to crack and black tar heroin.' Stopping at an iron gate, the entry to death row, Terri added, 'As for gangs, it's a veritable United Nations. You've got the Bloods, the Crips, the Skinheads, the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, and the North and South Mexicans. There's even alliances: at the moment, the North Mexicans and the Bloods are united against the South Mexicans and, of all people, the Aryans. Go figure. I guess it's a case of self-protection over principle.'
'What about our guys?'
'They're just survivors.' She paused. 'I've never met Payton. But I hear he's spent the last fifteen years becoming a real badass—abs of steel, two hundred push-ups at a crack. He's made himself mean enough to live, and maybe for Rennell to live, too.'
The gate buzzed open. Inside a cramped space a guard in a plastic booth took their visitor forms. Then they passed through a door composed of iron bars into the visiting area.
It was as Terri had described it—two parallel rows of Plexiglas booths encased in wire. One row had views of the bay through high windows; the second, which did not, included 'Visitors' Booth 4.' The guard opened its metal doors and locked them inside.
'Too bad,' Terri remarked. 'Rennell likes the view. But this way he'll focus better.'
As they settled in two plastic chairs on one side of the small wooden table, Carlo prepared himself to meet his new client. 'Building a relationship,' he remembered Terri saying, 'is the only way to pose hard questions and deal with hard subjects—like abuse. And we need to prepare Rennell to meet with Tony Lane.' Then she had paused, and her green-flecked eyes had become more distant. 'We also have to prepare him to die. That's not a job for strangers.'
At the entry to the row of booths, Carlo saw a large black man with his hands shackled behind his back, flanked by two guards in bulletproof vests. 'Rennell,' Terri said softly.
Silent, Carlo watched them approach.
Briefly, Terri touched his arm. 'Just remember this: as long as we're in this cage, and no matter what we think, there's never a reason to doubt Rennell's innocence. Never give him one. Not in your words, or your expression—for you to help him, he has to believe in you. No matter what.'
How, Carlo wondered, could she control her thoughts with such discipline, or even believe she could? Then the guard opened the cage, and Rennell stepped inside.
The guard locked the door behind him. Rennell stood over them, an otherworldly gaze dulling his large brown
