Richard Patterson - Conviction

Terri wished she could.

* * *

Afterward the two Paget men sat in the living room amidst the bright modern paintings, drinking coffee.

"Nice birthday party," Carlo said. "Kit's pretty funny."

"He is." Still pensive about Elena, Chris glanced up the stairs. "I should put him to bed pretty soon. It's getting to be story time."

This was Chris's nightly task: Kit was the only one of the children he had helped raise from the beginning, and he savored the rituals of parenting in a way a younger man might not.

"What are you reading him?" Carlo asked. "I still remember James and the Giant Peach."

"Not violent enough. His current favorite is Greek Myths for Children. Incest, fratricide, and beheadings—in cartoon form, with funny captions."

"You're serious."

"Completely. Sorry you missed out on it."

Terri entered the room. "Kit's ready," she told her husband with exaggerated weariness. "At last." Turning to Carlo, she asked, "Did you hate having your hair washed?"

"Always," he answered with a smile. "Still do."

Terri sat beside her husband. "Sorry to interrupt," she told him, "but there hasn't been time to ask Carlo about Rennell's grandmother."

At once Carlo was somber. "Waiting for God to call her home. She's not got much to show for her last two decades on earth."

Surprised, Chris turned to his son. "She's still alive?"

"Barely," Carlo answered.

* * *

Eula Price was morbidly obese now, and plagued with diabetes. She lay in her bed, a massive form beneath white sheets with, Carlo was certain, legs too swollen to move. The gaunt, elderly friend in a straight black wig who had ushered Carlo in retreated to the tiny living room.

Eula lived in public housing in the Bayview: three cramped rooms in a complex largely inhabited by welfare recipients and crack dealers, families which formed and dissipated, seemingly at random. The remnant of Eula Price's own family was three framed photographs beside her bed—solemn school photos of Payton and Rennell, plus one of a thin woman with coal black eyes who grimaced for the camera, as if she were too crazy or too dull to know that she should smile.

"That's their mother," Eula explained after a few moments of small talk. "She's still in the psychiatric ward."

Not much to say to that, Carlo thought. "I guess you couldn't keep up the house by yourself."

Eula gazed at the ceiling. "Couldn't keep the house, period. Went to that lawyer, like everything else."

Carlo sat beside the bed. "How did you find him?"

"He found me." She turned her head to him on the pillow, her expression mournful. "That year, seemed like trouble just kept knocking on my door."

* * *

He stood on the porch, big and gentle-seeming, wide-brimmed brown hat already held in both hands. "Mrs. Price?" he asked in a respectful tone.

Eula barely nodded; since her encounter with the towering black detective, strangers scared her.

"I'm Lawyer James," he said. "Yancey James. I heard about your grandsons' troubles, and thought maybe I could help."

Eula hesitated. For the last two sleepless days and nights, she had been sickened and confused, praying while clinging blindly to her belief in the boys' innocence, not knowing what else to do.

"May I come in?" James asked softly. "If I'm not intruding . . ."

Slowly, Eula nodded. Remembering her courtesies, she opened the door and graciously motioned him inside.

"Would you like some iced tea?" she asked.

"No, ma'am, thank you—I don't want to presume too much on your time."

Eula felt too numb to insist. As she directed him to the couch, he stopped to stare down at the rectangular hole in the carpet that the police had cut out and taken away.

Softly, he said, "I'm sorry for your difficulties, ma'am."

Once more, Eula could only nod.

James settled back on the opposite side of the couch, beneath her painting of Jesus, the lawyer's sloping, prosperous-looking stomach straining the vest of his brown, three-piece suit. "Do your boys have counsel, ma'am? Experienced counsel, I mean."

To Eula, his voice was heavy with implied concern. "There's been talk about the public defender," she ventured.

He nodded gravely, as if this were the very problem he'd anticipated. "That so often happens," he commiserated. "The defenders' office gets anyone who can't afford a proper defense. When you're drowning in cases, like those poor lawyers are, you start grinding 'em out like Spam. It's just not possible to take your client's interests to heart.

"For petty charges, maybe they can't do much harm. But in cases like this, with two lives at stake . . ."

Eula felt the specter of her grandsons' execution enter the room and sit on the couch beside him. She found herself unable to speak.

"I have an office over on Third Street," Lawyer James continued. "I know people who go to your church—like Patricia Yarnell, whose boy I personally saved from execution." He leaned toward her a little, eyes seeking trust. "All in all, I've defended sixteen cases of capital murder, with good results."

Eula fidgeted with her dress. "I just don't know what to do," she answered miserably.

Nodding his sympathy, James fell into a respectful quiet. After a time, Eula asked, "Would you be helping both of them out?"

"I'd have to see them, ma'am. But I believe we could mount a u-nited defense." James paused, seeming to reflect. "A big advantage of that is it saves you money. No point in paying for two experienced private lawyers when all you need is one."

A fresh wave of helplessness overtook her. In the silence, the lawyer fished a handkerchief out of his inside breast pocket and, head politely turned from her, sneezed softly into the white cloth. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he apologized. "Allergies."

Eula acknowledged this with a nod, her thoughts elsewhere.

"You look perplexed," he ventured quietly. "Tell me how I can help."

"Even if you can help both boys, Lawyer James, the good Lord Himself would have to pay you."

James smiled at this. "I could never presume on His bounty." His eyes perused the room and its contents. "I appreciate that this is a burden, ma'am. But Mrs. Yarnell tells me your late husband bought this house quite some time ago, when he was working in the yards. By now it's surely worth some modest amount."

A visceral fear gripped Eula's heart—the house, almost all that Joe had left her, was all she had. "Maybe something."

"You have a mortgage?"

"A small one. It's nearly paid up."

Lawyer James nodded his approval. "That's a blessing," he told her. "It would allow you to take out a second."

Eula felt herself suspended between the two young men she still loved—the incomprehensible human remnants of the scared boys she had inherited—and the house which they had appropriated: which now, she acknowledged despite a rush of shame at her selfishness, might become truly hers again. "Don't even know a bank would do that . . ."

"It's not a problem," James assured her. "I have a notary public who works with me. We can do the paperwork ourselves."

Eula felt the last vestiges of the life she had known slipping through her hands. But surely God would send no more than she could bear.

"I'll pray on it, Lawyer James. I surely will."

"And you should." Decorously, he dabbed at his nose. "But don't take too long, ma'am—please. In matters like this, every day is another strike against your boys."

* * *

"Allergies," Terri said to Carlo. "What you're going to find out is that 'Lawyer James' discounted the second mortgage, then sold it for cash." Glancing at her husband, she added mordantly, "I can't wait to read the trial transcript. 'Allergies' can really screw up your defense."

Smiling faintly, Chris remarked, "I keep thinking about the old white lady—the neighbor. Cross-racial identifications are the least reliable."