Richard Patterson - Conviction

Monk set down his coffee mug on a corner of Mauriani's cluttered desk. "First, we've got Rennell pulling a girl dressed like Thuy Sen into the house, with Payton closing the door behind them—"

"By virtue," Mauriani interposed dryly, "of a cross-racial ID, from all the way across the street, by a scared old lady who hates them both. If I'm the defense, I'm thinking this pillar of Bayview's vibrant white community saw exactly what she wanted to."

"We went back to her," Monk responded without rancor. "She's as solid as anyone like that can be. The forensics bear her out."

"The fibers, hair, and fingerprints," Mauriani amended, "put Thuy Sen in the house. But only Flora Lewis makes her playmates Payton and Rennell."

Ainsworth nodded. "True. But we also found clothes which more or less match what she says they were wearing—"

"Uh-huh. Them, and every third guy in the neighborhood. So what happened inside the house between her and whichever two guys these were?"

"That's where they forced her to have oral sex," Monk answered. "We found semen and saliva."

"Whose semen? Whose saliva? Suppose Payton or Rennell says they've lost track of all the age-appropriate young women who've blown them in the living room. Saves on condoms, after all."

"Semen," Monk countered, "is what choked this girl to death. We've got Liz Shelton for that. And we know Thuy Sen was dead when she left the house."

Mauriani gave them a beatific smile. "Ah, yes, on the word of the honorable Edward Fleet. I can't thank you guys enough for the chance to share him with twelve of our fellow citizens. Let's see—crack selling, gun peddling, and a social life spent slapping women silly. No wonder he couldn't wait to help us out."

Ainsworth flashed a grin. "You've put on worse, Lou. We've brought you most of them ourselves."

"And proud of it." Mauriani's smile faded. "You know the problem, Rollie. Fleet's a dirtball, and he admits to helping them dump the body. The only reason he's talking is so we can help him save his ass. If I'm the defense, I go after his credibility like hell won't have it—maybe imply he's the one who did her, and we're kicking him loose. There's no forensics that tells us whose 'weapon' killed her for sure."

"We know that," Monk said patiently. "But we've taken Eddie through this, over and over. From beginning to end, his story makes sense. They needed a car; Fleet had one. We found semen and saliva on the carpet; Fleet saw drool coming from her mouth. He says Payton forced him to help dump the body; forensics puts her in Fleet's trunk. Fleet says Rennell dumped her by the tallow plant; the body washed up where the Coast Guard says it should have. Logic and the evidence corroborate his story."

"What about its internal credibility. Any cracks?"

"Nope. Fleet doesn't try to say too much, or to be too helpful—like telling us who asphyxiated Thuy Sen. He didn't see it, he says, and no one told him."

"That's also the missing piece. No confession, or no witness to her death."

Monk fought back his annoyance. "You need us to go back at the brothers again?"

"No. We've got more than enough to take them to the Grand Jury." Amusement surfaced in Mauriani's clear blue eyes. "After that, they'll have two defense lawyers—one dedicated to Payton's interests, the other to Rennell's. We'll let them sort out this last piece by themselves. Maybe they'll even play Cain and Abel."

* * *

"So Mauriani indicted him," Terri said. "Then the media got hold of death by oral asphyxiation, and made sure everybody in the jury pool knew everything about it."

"No help for that, counselor."

"No help to Rennell, for sure. Both brothers became these scary black predators, kidnapping the daughter of Cambodian refugees and using her for sex." Terri leaned back in her chair, studying Monk's expression. "I was in law school, and it felt like I saw Thuy Sen's face every day for weeks. And theirs, staring out from the mug shots with no expression in their eyes. I was planning to be a defense lawyer, and I hated them anyway."

And that was before, she did not add, what happened to Elena.

"Yeah," Monk retorted with an edge in his voice. "Pretty rough on those boys, people learning what they'd done. Kind of like it was for Thuy Sen's parents."

This silenced Terri. For a while, they both sat there without speaking, Terri fighting back the images of what had seared Elena's soul.

"Early on," Monk ventured at last, "you wanted to do defense work. When I was young, I thought about that, too."

"I guess you got over it."

"Not over what made me consider it. Being a black man, I'd had occasion to ponder the fact that life wasn't fair. I pondered it in Vietnam, watching black men sent by white folks to kill Asians and sometimes dying instead, and I pondered it when I came home and saw too many of my friends drifting into trouble for lack of much else life offered them. I thought maybe I could defend them, get some a fairer shake." His voice remained soft. "Maybe you didn't know I came from the Bayview."

"No," Terri admitted. "I didn't. So what changed your mind?"

Monk's gaze grew distant and reflective. "More like I recalibrated my thinking. A cop can make the judgment on whether something is a case or not, try to make sense of it all. Whatever notion of justice he has, without the cop there'd be no case.

"The people I grew up with were struggling in their world, trying to survive. I thought maybe I could make that world a safer and fairer place—make the righteous cases, and let the rest go. Maybe even save a few young men and women by steering them right." Pausing, Monk shrugged, gazing back at Terri. "Like a lot of notions, life complicated it some. The more I lived it, the less sure I became of what justice really was. You just do the best you can. Like you're doing now, I guess."

"What I'm doing now," she answered, "is trying to keep the State of California from killing someone else. That includes figuring out how Rennell Price lost the lottery." She gazed at Monk, curious. "That day with Mauriani, did you think Rennell would end up being sentenced to die?"

Monk gave her an ironic smile. "Not in San Francisco," he answered flatly. "That took some doing of its own. Payton's work, mostly. Maybe with a little help from the lawyer."

ELEVEN

IT WAS KIT'S BIRTHDAY.

Christopher Peralta Paget, officially age seven, sat at the head of the Pagets' candlelit dining table, his piece of chocolate angel food cake now reduced to rubble. To his left sat his parents, to his right his thirteen-year-old sister, Elena—dark and slight like Terri, with round, expressive eyes—and his brother, Carlo, Kit's hero. With an expression of deep well-being, Kit contemplated the cake sitting on its pedestal, the familiar faces in the candlelit glow.

"I love my birthday," he announced to his parents. "Thank you for creating me."

Briefly, Chris smiled at Terri. "No trouble," he informed his younger son. "Just another day at the salt mines."

As Kit looked from one face to the other, seven-year-old merriment crept into his eyes; without being sure why, Terri saw, Kit knew that the exchange was funny. Except, perhaps, to Elena, who rolled her eyes in disgust.

"I know," Terri said to her with gentle wryness. "Unthinkable." But, though she could not acknowledge it, Terri knew too well that this involved far more than teenage squeamishness. Terri had once done these embarrassing things with Elena's father, before she discovered the unspeakable things Ricardo Arias had forced on his own daughter. Some trace of that would stay with Elena forever, as everyone present knew but Kit. Once more, cringing inside, Terri imagined Thuy Sen with Rennell Price, her client.

With the grace that characterized him, Carlo draped his arm around Elena's shoulders as though nothing notable had happened. "It's like earthquakes," he advised her. "You just put it out of your mind."