Richard Patterson - Conviction

* * *

The night of the day Payton sees Eddie come out of the interrogation room with Monk and the other cop, Payton meets him at the Double Rock Inn.

A few nobodies are hanging off the bar. Payton and Eddie are sitting in a dark corner drinking malt liquor, voices too quiet for the others to hear. Payton stares into his face. "You don't know nothin'," he orders. "Let the cops start fuckin' with us, we both go down. You don't want to be on trial for no dead little girl even if they're what you like best. If I ever feel you even thinkin' about any more talks with Monk, last thought you'll ever have."

Fleet looks antsy. "What Rennell know?"

"Nothin'," Payton snaps. "Think I'm the kind of fool tell secrets to a fool? Like it or not, this fucking secret belongs to you and me."

* * *

"I was right about that," Payton said to Terri. "I was more the kind of fool let Eddie set me up." He shook his head in anger and disgust. "Couldn't say nothin' against Eddie without implicatin' myself, and Rennell couldn't say or do nothin' to help. That's what Eddie figured out before me."

Pen clasped in her hand, Terri stared at her client's brother. "So you decided to help yourself. Starting with the brilliant idea of asking Jamal Harrison to cap Eddie."

Payton shrugged. "County jail was short of talent. Weren't nobody better in the next cell."

"What did Rennell know about Jamal?"

"Nothin', like always. When Jamal saw me whisperin' to Rennell, all I was tellin' him was everything was cool." Payton's voice was soft with irony. "Rennell smiled 'cause he believed me."

Dismayed, Terri rubbed her temples. "Same with Tasha Bramwell's alibi?"

"For all Rennell remembers, maybe it's true. Near as I can make out, his days sort of run together."

The full dimensions of Rennell's potential innocence, Terri realized, were hard for her to grasp. "Does anyone else know what you've just told me?"

"Just Eddie." Payton looked somber. He paused and then asked softly, "Do you know what ever happened to her? Tasha, I mean."

Surprised, Terri heard the regret in his voice, a sense of loss that involved more than his own death. "No," she answered, "I don't know anything about Tasha."

Payton closed his eyes. "She just disappeared, 'bout a week after we was convicted. Don't blame her, really, the shit I did, even things she never found out about. Just wish I knew . . ."

His voice trailed off. In a tone devoid of sentiment, Terri redirected his attention to Eddie Fleet. "Do you think Fleet told anyone what you two did?"

After a moment, Payton shrugged. "Why would he do that?"

"Why would you do that?" Terri stood, palms resting on the table as she stared down at Payton Price. "You're the smart brother, after all. So you let a judge and jury sentence Rennell to death for a sex crime committed by you and the principal prosecution witness. Then you watched him sit here for fifteen years, waiting to die, and said nothing. All to save your own ass."

Expressionless, Payton met her eyes. "Maybe so, counselor. But you tell me this—if I'm inside, and he's on the streets, how's Rennell gonna survive?" The mirthless smile returned. "Least here I could keep an eye on him."

Terri drew a breath. "But now you've found religion. At last."

Payton gave her a long, cool look. "You're a caring person, Ms. Teresa. You know Rennell can't stay here no more. Remember what they did to his ass in juvenile hall?" His voice softened. "Next place I'm goin', don't want that sucker taggin' after me. Maybe you can see to him now."

Terri sat down again. "Thank you," she said succinctly. "Too bad for 'all our sakes' it's probably too damned late. You've out-waited your credibility."

She watched the comprehension in his eyes turn to apprehension. " 'Cause now I've got nothing to lose?"

"Worse," she answered. "Now you've got something to gain—time. That's the other problem with waiting until they're ready to kill Rennell. They're planning to kill you first."

SEVENTEEN

AT ELEVEN THAT NIGHT, AS ELENA AND KIT SLEPT UPSTAIRS, the adult Pagets—Terri, Carlo, and Chris—met with Anthony Lane and Tammy Mattox around the Pagets' kitchen table. The conversation was tense and muted. Only Johnny Moore was absent; he was already searching for Eddie Fleet's ex-girlfriend, Betty Sims. Only Terri knew, behind her façade of detachment, how much she needed Rennell to be innocent for her own sake, and for Elena's. And only Terri knew how much she wanted to tell Elena what she had learned, before her own complex set of boundaries—that it was wrong to further immerse Elena in the case, false to intimate that Terri's continuing involvement rested on Rennell's innocence—made her withhold Payton Price's confession from the member of her family who, for her own reasons, might have cared the most.

" 'I didn't do that little girl,' " Tammy murmured aloud.

"Could just be the truth," Lane told her. "Rennell's got a low capacity for lying, I think. And Monk couldn't draw him into a confession."

"Course not, the A.G.'s gonna say. Even a dummy's too smart to hang himself."

"Maybe so. But I think Rennell's asexual, or pretty close to it. Being retarded may have held him back."

"There's at least one problem with that," Terri cautioned. "Payton's story about their father forcing Mom to go down on Rennell. It's a paradigm for what happened with Thuy Sen: the A.G.'s shrink could argue that the family normalized pedophilia—it seems to have done that for Payton, after all. A shrink could also say that a retarded man is more likely to feel comfortable with children than to feel shame about having sex with them."

Tammy nodded. "Grandma's important here. Doesn't Rennell claim she taught him to be 'a respectful man'?"

"True," Terri answered. "But how persuasive that is depends on who else Rennell identified with most. Maybe it's Eula. But there's Payton, who abused Thuy Sen, then lied to the cops about it. Then there's Mom. Does Rennell identify with her, the victim—or Dad, the abuser? And given what he saw as a child, where would Rennell learn the difference between sex and sexual violence?" Pausing, Terri looked at Lane. "Unless," she inquired softly, "the sex act his father forced on him would cause him to identify with someone as helpless as Thuy Sen?"

"That's possible," Lane agreed. "In Rennell's own childhood, sex probably meant dominance and aggression. But there's no evidence that experience made him into a child predator."

Carlo touched the bridge of his nose. "What about being gang-raped at juvenile hall?" he asked Lane. "What might that do to him?"

"Nothing good." Lane's voice was tinged with melancholy. "I'd guess that was what caused Rennell to slash his wrist. I think he tried to end his own misery—the sleeplessness, his constant fear of darkness and violation. Which no doubt goes back to his father sitting him naked on a space heater."

Carlo puffed his cheeks. "Unbelievable."

Though she cast an ironic glance around the gleaming modern kitchen, Tammy's voice was kind. "Welcome to the 'other America.' "

"There's another thing," Chris said evenly. "Maybe there's no evidence that Rennell's a pedophile. But child victims tend not to report abuse, and a chaotic environment like the Bayview makes underreporting more likely. Plus sexual predators tend to act alone."

"Except with Thuy Sen," Terri countered. "So everything you just said about Rennell applies to Eddie Fleet."

Tammy nodded. "We know Fleet beat up Betty Sims. And we're pretty sure Rennell's not violent. Ask me to 'pick the pervert,' and I'm going with Eddie."

"The problem's Payton," Chris rejoined. "He's admitted to abusing Thuy Sen; the only question left is who helped him. It's pretty easy to imagine Rennell falling in with whatever Payton wanted from her."