Eula Price had lost the house over fourteen years ago, to the poisonous confluence of Thuy Sen's murder and Yancey James's coke-addicted greed. And yet the external world must remain, in Rennell's limited imaginings, that which he had left. 'Yes,' Terri answered, 'in her room.'
He bowed his head. 'That's where she hide. Like she be scared.'
Had Eula Price not felt like a prisoner, it struck Terri, Thuy Sen might not have died. But this was only one of the many mischances which worked variations on Rennell's fate, ordained by family, the Bayview, and Rennell's inability to cope with either. 'She was just tired,' Terri said. 'She got old, and started wearing out.'
Rennell did not raise his head. 'Started once that cop came for us—the black dude. At that trial, I kep' tryin' to smile at her. She just kep' shakin' her head. Like we been bad to her so long she don't know how to smile back.'
A deeper sadness overcame Terri, both at what Rennell remembered and at how little he understood it: Eula Price had surely known how he appeared to others and done her best to warn him. 'She was afraid for you,' Terri said. 'That's all it was.'
Rennell said nothing. Terri sat back, gazing down the row of cubicles at other prisoners in conference with their lawyers. For a curious moment it reminded her of confession, condemned men seeking absolution in plastic booths from priests disguised in suits.
'How she die?' Rennell asked.
'In her sleep. She just slipped out of life to heaven, without feeling any pain.'
He looked up at her. 'Like Payton?'
Terri winced inside. Much better, she thought. She never knew it was her time, and she didn't die twitching and gasping for breath. 'Like Payton,' she answered.
* * *
'There was no way to talk about the hearing,' Terri said, 'or whether he might testify. But we have to decide whether we put him on.'
Her listeners—Chris, Carlo, Anthony Lane, and Tammy Mattox—sat around the conference table with soft drinks and sandwiches on paper plates. They all looked tired.
'High risk,' Chris answered. 'But maybe high reward.'
'How so?'
'If Bond finds that we haven't shown sufficient proof of retardation, or innocence—it will be fatal.' Chris allowed himself a quick, sharp taste of Diet Coke. 'One way to change the balance is to show Bond—and the media—a retarded man, and then ask how the Court can affirm his sentence of death.'
Lane shook his head. 'Rennell doesn't get that he's retarded. So he doesn't know how he's supposed to act, any more than Bond will know how to interpret what he sees. Too many people expect a drooling moron, or someone who looks like he's got Down syndrome. Bond may see Rennell as an actor in our morality play, trying to fake his way off death row. And if we coach Rennell to the point where he can cope with Larry Pell, and make a case for his innocence, we may have made him smart enough to kill—'
'If he's not at the hearing,' Carlo objected, 'he's an abstraction fought over by lawyers and mental health experts—ours, and theirs.' His tone became angry. 'How the hell can you have a hearing about whether Rennell lives or dies without Rennell?'
'Because he looks normal,' Lane retorted. 'I remember one sensitive pair of lawyers who gave their arguably retarded client a suit and glasses and law books to 'read' at the defense table, all so he could feel as smart as they were. In that case, he probably was. They got him executed.'
'Aren't we forgetting Rennell?' Tammy asked. 'We've all been all caught up on how he might look at a hearing, or what he might say, but not about how he might feel.
'He'll get to hear us tell Bond what a nightmare his childhood was, how Payton screwed him over, and how his last fifteen years were all about him being too stupid to defend himself in a courtroom. All while he's sitting in a courtroom—'
'He's going to die,' Chris snapped. 'Think how bad he'll feel then. If we hurt his feelings and he lives, we can try to fix that later. But we can't fix a dead man.'
'Who's already tried to kill himself,' Tammy answered. 'The way I understand this, Terri's managed to keep him going. You want to fuck that up, Chris?'
'No,' Chris said evenly. 'But I'd rather gamble on Rennell helping us out now, and us being able to help him later, than on Bond's compassion for a putatively retarded man he's never seen—as described by lawyers he'll never trust.'
Lane's forehead knit, a sign of his annoyance. 'You're missing something,' he remonstrated. 'This time around, Rennell will know a court can kill him. Because of Payton. Can you imagine how scared he'll be once Pell starts asking questions? Especially once I've told him how unfit he is to cope with that.
'You haven't seen this man. I have. I don't want to devastate him in order to 'save' him.'
'Then he doesn't have to be there for your testimony. Only for his—'
'If I don't destroy him,' Lane shot back, 'Pell will on cross-examination—'
'How?' Chris retorted. 'By making him look retarded? Unless we win, Rennell's terminal. I find it odd to be discussing his quality of life, like we're some kind of hospice.'
In the tense silence that followed, Terri felt torn between Lane's concern about scarring Rennell further and the ruthless logic of her husband, founded in a compassion that the others, except for Carlo, might not see. 'We've got a lot to do,' she said. 'I'm visiting Rennell after his grandma's funeral. Then we can decide.'
* * *
Eula Price's funeral was beautiful, the church filled with mourners, the casket covered in flowers. When the
