another human. 'He'll probably be pretty subdued,' an older lawyer had predicted to her. 'The 'People's' victims don't tend to be kickers or screamers, or even very defiant. A decade or two on death row breeds a certain level of acceptance.'
Terri drew a breath.
Desperate for distraction, she began a surreptitious study of Thuy Sen's family. Only Chou Sen was familiar. Her husband, Meng, was a small, well-knit man with jet-black hair and a seamed face which betrayed his age and, perhaps, years of grief. Stoic, his wife stood between him and the young woman whom Terri thought of as the second victim, Kim Sen.
She was slight, with straight black hair cut shoulder length and a look of keen intelligence accented by gold wire-rim glasses, suggesting the graduate student that she was. Though they stood close to each other, the Sens neither spoke nor touched. To Terri, they seemed bereft, a family smaller than it should have been. Only when Kim Sen flinched did Terri's gaze return to the execution chamber.
Its door had opened. Through it shuffled Payton Price, shackled, dressed in the stiff new denim work shirt and trousers issued for the occasion.
He stood straighter, mustering what dignity he could, and then paused to register each face on the other side of the glass, lingering on the three Asians whose suffering he had caused, as if to assess the changes fifteen years had wrought. Only when his gaze met Terri's did he nod, a brief acknowledgment that she, the surrogate for friends or family, had kept her word to Rennell. Forcing herself to smile, she took out Rennell's drawing from the pocket of her suit, holding it up for him to see.
Payton stared at it, then slowly shook his head. The faintest of smiles did not conceal the sorrow in his glistening eyes.
He looked down, composing himself. Then the guards escorted him to the center of the execution chamber. Terri could hear his shackles clink through the sound system linking him to those who watched.
Payton seemed to reach within himself. When at last he faced the Sens, Kim raised a black-and-white photograph of the solemn Asian child she had left to walk home alone.
Briefly, Payton shut his eyes. When he spoke it was to Kim. 'I'm sorry—not 'cause I'm gonna die, but for what I done to all of you. If watching me die makes any difference to you, then maybe there's some good in this. But they got no reason to kill Rennell.' His voice quavered. 'Rennell's innocent. It was Eddie Fleet that choked her. I know, 'cause I was part of it.' His gaze moved from Thuy Sen's sister to her mother, and finally to her father. 'Killin' my brother,' he finished softly, 'be one more murder. No good can come to you from that.'
Meng Sen stiffened, a posture of anger and rejection. Kim raised Thuy Sen's photograph between Payton and her own face.
Payton's eyes dulled. Slowly, he faced Terri. 'Tell my brother I didn't feel no pain.' His voice was tired and husky, a near-whisper. 'Tell him I'm sorry for leavin', and for what I done to put him here.'
Turning to one of the guards, he nodded toward the table.
In silence, they moved him there. Payton sat, then lay on his side, rolling himself onto the table. The guards strapped him in, face upward. He no longer looked around him.
Slowly, the warden nodded.
A prison technician entered the chamber. He approached Payton, face as devoid of expression as was the warden's, and connected two IVs into the tubes already inserted in the flesh of his left forearm. Terri forced herself to watch.
'You may carry out the death warrant,' the warden intoned.
Through the plastic tubes, Terri knew, would flow fifty cc's of potassium chloride. As the doctor stood beside him, Payton closed his eyes.
Minutes seemed to pass. Neither Payton nor those who watched him made a sound. Please, Terri thought, let it be done.
Abruptly, Payton's mouth opened, expelling a deep, guttural exhalation which preceded a final gasp for air. His body convulsed, as though from an electric shock, followed by shudders. Terri felt Rennell's drawing crumple in her fist.
At last the shuddering subsided. As Terri turned to her, Kim Sen, tears streaming from her eyes, held out Thuy Sen's photograph as if Payton still could see.
PART THREE
THE CIRCUIT
ONE
ON THE DAY AFTER THE EXECUTION OF PAYTON PRICE, CAROLINE Clark Masters, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and her onetime mentor, Judge Blair Montgomery of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, decided to follow their leisurely and discursive lunch at the Old Angler's Inn outside Washington with a walk along the shallow river which ran beside it.
It was a crisp day in early November, suitable for a stroll along the well-worn path which meandered amidst the rocks and gravel, and the echo of water rushing blended with the bright orange woods around them to make Caroline feel, for a blessed afternoon, far removed from the cloistered intensity of the ideologically riven Court over which—however uneasily—she presided. But her slow pace reflected less a desire to escape than her knowledge that Blair Montgomery, while still spare and bright-eyed, was frailer and more halting than the last time she had seen him.
At fifty-three, Caroline was a fitness fanatic, and her height and leanness accented the attributes which made other hikers notice her at once: an erect posture, a casual grace of movement, and striking features—a long, aquiline nose; wide-set brown eyes; a high forehead; and still-glossy black hair, which began with a widow's peak. She looked and sounded like what she was, the daughter of a patrician New England family, save for a touch of the exotic—emphatic gestures, olive skin, a somewhat sardonic smile—which suggested her mother, a French Jewish beauty whose parents had died in the Holocaust.
