finger, eyes widening with what seemed like wonder at the cursive name at the bottom. 'Sharon Brooks,' he read aloud.
That was all the meaning the report card seemed to have. 'Mrs. Brooks was a good teacher,' Lane said. 'She knew it was hard for you to read sometimes. The tests will help us understand why.'
Rennell's upper teeth dug into his lip. 'I'm not sure about no tests. Might not want to take them.'
Tense, Terri wondered what to say: if Rennell failed to cooperate, the defense of retardation—Rennell's last and best hope of living—would evaporate. Instinctively, she reached for his hand. 'Please,' she said. 'If you help Dr. Lane test you, I'll be there.'
Surprised, Rennell gazed down at her hand, small and delicate on top of his. Then he looked into her face with the eyes of a frightened child. 'Will the test make me innocent?' he asked.
Terri's throat tightened, and her hand clasped his wrist. 'I hope so,' she answered and realized how much, for her own sake, she wished this could be true.
NINE
JOHNNY MOORE ARRIVED AT TERRI'S OFFICE WITHIN TEN MINUTES of her return. 'Yancey James,' he told her without preface, 'got disbarred six years ago. I guess Kenyon and Walker forgot to get back to him.'
'Amazing.' She waved him to a chair in front of her desk. 'Getting disbarred is a trick,' she told him. 'Anything in James's record relevant to us?'
'Twelve clients on death row by the time he lost his ticket—they just kept piling up. Eventually he earned the charming sobriquet Death's Co-Counsel.' Moore's blue eyes held a cynical amusement. 'His defenses were so cursory they give new meaning to the concept 'speedy trial.' '
'Any sins in particular?'
'One failure after another to investigate, all rationalized as 'tactical decisions'—which tended, unsurprisingly, to shaft his clients.' Moore pulled a notebook from his briefcase and put on his half-glasses. 'I've got notes on his five other capital cases in 1987, the year he represented the brothers Price.
'In the Curtis Smith case, he failed to present Smith's only meritorious defense. On behalf of Earl Prentice, he failed to challenge the eyewitness ID of his client, though he had a witness who could have. He defended Stevie Washburn by depending entirely on the investigation conducted by the lawyer for Stevie's codefendant and doing nothing on his own—'
'Like our case,' Terri interjected, 'except there was no codefendant to rely on. Yancey had them both.'
'Indeed,' Moore answered dryly. 'But at least he gave them a two-day defense—a day for each client. In the Serge Dieterman case, James lost a one-day murder trial. Reason it was so short is that he didn't call the defendant and three other witnesses to testify that the defendant had withdrawn from a conspiracy to murder and, in fact, was leaving the scene when one of the others shot the victim . . .'
'It's almost comical,' Terri observed. 'Except for the lives at stake.'
'I doubt you'll find the last one very amusing—the Calvin Coolman case.' Moore glanced at his notes. 'Try this, Terri. Calvin, James's client, was accused of shooting Roy Sylvester to death in the Double Rock section of the Bayview. The only person who claimed to have seen the killing was Stace Morgan, a convicted rapist and crack dealer. Stace did not hurry down to the police station with his story. But three weeks later the cops busted him for dealing, and he came up with his story about Calvin capping Sylvester in exchange for probation on the drug rap —'
'Eddie Fleet,' Terri said flatly.
'That's what jumped out at me. But James never went after Stace Morgan—even though the cops had found a possible murder weapon in his apartment. Nor did James share with the jury that Morgan and poor old Calvin were rivals in the drug trade, or that the victim, Sylvester, worked for Calvin.' Moore closed the notebook. 'Inquiring minds might wonder why. But James refused to discuss his so-called strategy with the State Bar investigators—a matter of keeping client confidences, he said.'
'Sounds familiar. In our case, James should have gone after Fleet like hell wouldn't have it. You find him yet?'
'Eddie? No. There's a trail of battered girlfriends from here to Oakland and beyond. But so far, no Eddie. If nothing else the sonofabitch is a survivor.'
'Keep looking. And try Betty Sims, the girlfriend Laura Finney tried to interview. Something in Finney's story keeps tugging at me.' Terri picked up her pen. 'Out of the five cases you told me about, how many clients got the death penalty?'
'Four. Everyone but Calvin Coolman.'
'And how many sentences were reversed because James was found constitutionally ineffective?'
'One—Calvin's. In the other four, the appellate courts said James was good enough to get his client executed.'
'Why am I not surprised.' Hastily Terri scribbled a note: 'Carlo—read Coolman appellate case.' 'Eula Price,' she continued, 'wanted the best counsel she could buy, and got the worst. So what was James disbarred for?'
'You'd suppose incompetence. But you know your own fraternity—shafting your clients isn't enough to get disbarred. You have to steal from them.'
'James misused client funds?'
'Yup—beginning in 1986. In extenuation, he pleaded his cocaine addiction. Money went up his nose.' Moore's smile was jaded and a little weary. 'You've got exactly what you guessed you had—a crappy lawyer who ripped off Grandma to keep himself in coke, then blew off Rennell's defense once he'd blown her money.'
'Terrific,' Terri remarked. 'I just love being right.'
* * *
