Richard Patterson - Conviction

The jury seemed to tense as one. There was a long silence, and then, for the first time, the jury heard Rennell Price speak. "No."

His voice was dull and, to Lou Mauriani's practiced ear, utterly unconvincing. On the tape, Monk prodded, "You just wanted her to make you feel good."

Scrutinizing the jurors, Mauriani saw Anna Velez's eyes close. In the same emotionless monotone, Rennell's voice asked Monk, "What Payton say?"

"What does it matter?" Monk rejoined. "Was Payton the one who killed her?"

"No." Rennell answered abruptly. "No way."

"No," Monk quietly agreed. "It was you. But you didn't mean for that to happen."

Intent, Henry Feldt leaned forward in the jury box. "No," Rennell's voice said.

The damning one-word answer seemed to make Feldt freeze. "I didn't think so," Monk concurred. "You were holding her head down. When she started choking, you didn't know what to do."

There was more silence. With sudden vehemence, Rennell answered, "I didn't do that little girl."

In the courtroom, Candace Bender was staring at Rennell. Her look conveyed the disbelief which, Mauriani was sure, now pervaded the other eleven jurors. But Rennell Price only nodded to himself, smiling at the sound of his own voice.

EIGHTEEN

MAURIANI'S NEXT WITNESS WAS THE SNITCH, JAMAL HARRISON.

"Why not end with him?" Carlo asked Terri. "If they took events in sequence, he'd be last."

Terri looked up from the transcript of Liz Shelton's testimony. "He was just too weird," she answered. "Mauriani wanted to finish with Shelton, the calm voice of authority. If Jamal blew up on him, Mauriani could use the medical examiner to recoup his credibility."

Carlo flipped another page, scanning it for a moment. "The way this is reading," he observed, "Mauriani didn't need to worry."

Pausing, the prosecutor reached the climax of his direct examination. "What happened," he inquired, "after you promised Payton that you'd murder Eddie Fleet?"

Twitchy, Jamal Harrison shot a glance at the defendants. Payton glared back at him with anger and contempt; calmly, Rennell finished writing on a yellow legal pad and then looked up, pen poised to take more notes. Turning to the prosecutor, Jamal said softly, "Payton didn't say nothing to me, only nodded. Then he set down next to Rennell and whispered in his ear."

"What did Rennell do?"

Jamal's restless gaze darted about the courtroom. "Just smiled, man. I guess thinking about Fleet being dead must have tickled his fancy."

To Mauriani's surprise, James did not ask Rotelli to strike the answer. Swiftly, the prosecutor followed, "But you didn't hear what Payton told him."

Shifting his weight, Jamal crossed and then recrossed his legs, as though his own skin were a prison. "All I know," he said with venomous quiet, "is what I saw—the first smile I ever saw the whole time Rennell Price was in that cell."

Satisfied, Mauriani chose to end there. "No further questions," he told Rotelli.

As he headed for the prosecution table, he shot a surreptitious glance at Rennell Price's notepad. But all he could make out was a jumble of printed words linked by arrows and, more obscure, what might have been the stick figure of a child.

* * *

James stared balefully at the witness. "You made up this whole story," he charged. "Just to curry favor with the police."

Jamal's eyes flashed. "Cops didn't do me no favors."

"Not today, Jamal. You're here doing them one by making out the brothers to be killers."

Sitting back, Jamal gave James a small smile of superiority, and a glint of triumph crept into his eyes. "Think so, Mr. Lawyer? Then how you think I knew Eddie Fleet was gonna be a witness for the prosecution?"

Nettled, James snapped, "I'm asking the questions here—"

"Cops and prosecutor didn't tell me," Jamal cut in. "Payton told me about Fleet. Those brothers were stuck in jail, and they needed Eddie dead."

Mauriani suppressed a smile. Unperturbed, Rennell kept taking notes.

* * *

Carlo flipped back several pages, then placed one finger on Mauriani's last question to Jamal. "Explain this one to me," he said to Terri. "Jamal Harrison implies that Rennell's smile meant he knew Jamal had agreed to kill Fleet, and James doesn't object. Great for the prosecution. Then Mauriani forces Jamal to admit he didn't hear what Payton whispered to Rennell."

"Read this," Terri suggested, sliding the open transcript of Elizabeth Shelton's testimony across the conference table. "Start with James's final question on cross, and then go on to Mauriani's redirect. The absence of DNA technology when Thuy Sen died didn't help. But what you're seeing is the beginning of a pattern."

* * *

"So," James thundered, "you don't know whose semen you found in Thuy Sen's throat."

To Mauriani, Liz Shelton remained the embodiment of professional composure, a counterpoint to James's theatrics. "No," she answered. "All I know is that the secretor, or secretors, of the semen were type O. The same blood type as both your clients."

"Thank you," James declaimed smoothly and, to Mauriani's surprise, sat down. Perhaps James wanted to end on a note of triumph—if only through the bewildering satisfaction conveyed by his own voice.

At once, Mauriani stood. "Dr. Shelton, I'd like to clarify the answer you just gave to Mr. James. Are you resting any part of your opinion on the blood type of the semen, or suggesting that it implicates either Rennell or Payton Price?"

At once, Shelton grasped the import of the question. "Not at all. In African Americans, roughly half the population is type O. The most I can say is that I can't exclude the brothers as possible secretors."

"So you're not suggesting that the jury should base their verdict on blood type."

"I am not. No responsible expert would."

Mauriani nodded his satisfaction. "In light of that," he continued, "and as an expert in both areas, could you summarize the medical and forensic evidence which you believe the jury should consider."

"Of course." As Shelton paused, turning to address them, Mauriani felt the jury's close attention. "To begin, Thuy Sen was asphyxiated by approximately five cc's of ejaculated semen which collected in her throat. At the defendants' house—along with a green thread consistent with her sweater, and a partial print from her right index finger—we found traces of semen and saliva on the carpet. We found the same thread, and the same traces, in the trunk of Fleet's car. And Thuy Sen's body washed up approximately where, according to the Coast Guard, it would have had it been dumped where Fleet claimed it was. With what appeared to be a pubic hair caught in her barrette."

In the jury box, Henry Feldt had begun nodding. "I can't tell you," Shelton concluded, "whose ejaculation caused this child's death. But the physical evidence is consistent with the testimony of Fleet and Flora Lewis.

"Thuy Sen was in the brothers' living room. Her body was in Eddie Fleet's trunk. And she choked to death on semen—just as, according to Fleet, Rennell Price said she did."

And that, Mauriani thought, was the perfect coda to his case.

As his final witness stepped down, he looked toward Thuy Sen's parents, hoping to convey at least some comfort. But they were huddled together in abject misery and did not see him.

Glancing at Eula Price, he detected tears glistening in her eyes.

A deep pity overcame him. She, too, struck Mauriani as a victim, perhaps even more alone than the Sens. Though part of her purpose in suffering this ordeal must have been to humanize the brothers, at whatever pain to her, there was no one to give her comfort—James had taken no note of her since the trial began and neither, with the exception of the ill-timed smile from Rennell, had her own grandsons.