Caroline considered her. "I guess Price wants an immediate stay of execution," she said. "Until this Court, or some other Court, rules on his new evidence."
"Yes."
"How many days until his execution?"
"Five."
Caroline glanced at her calendar. "Write this one up," she ordered. "And keep close contact with the Governor's office. I want to know what happens with clemency."
* * *
Three days passed, filled with fruitless scraping for new evidence, searching for Fleet, jumping when the phone rang, checking for faxes at the office and at home. Chris looked tired; Carlo was irritable and jumpy. No one could find Fleet.
"The Court's playing chicken with the Governor," Chris opined. "No one wants to go first."
Rennell had stopped eating. "Don't need food no more," he said to Terri. The fear in his dull eyes made Terri miserable.
"Don't give up," she told him.
Two nights before the date of execution, Eddie Fleet came to Terri in a dream. Hugging her, he said quietly, "I can't let Rennell suffer anymore. Tell me what I need to do."
When she woke, reality overtaking her, only Chris was there.
* * *
Three hours later, at the office, the fax machine emitted a letter from the Governor headed "In the Matter of the Clemency Petition of Rennell Price."
Every court available, the Governor explained, had reviewed this matter—several times—including an exhaustive analysis by the United States Supreme Court. Given this meticulous and repeated judicial scrutiny, the deplorable nature of the crime, and the wishes of Thuy Sen's family, the execution of Rennell Price could not reasonably be called a miscarriage of justice. Clemency denied.
There was no time for emotion. Swiftly, Chris and Terri sent a supplemental pleading to the death penalty clerk of the United States Supreme Court, attaching the Governor's letter, for review by the Chief Justice.
Thirty-seven hours separated Rennell from death.
* * *
On receiving Governor Darrow's letter, the Chief Justice went to Justice Huddleston.
He had read Callista Hill's memo and now reviewed the letter before looking up at Caroline. "It's like some terrible conveyor belt," he said. "Rennell Price is inexorably gliding toward the jaws of death, and one keeps expecting someone else to take him off. And no one does."
"So now it's down to me, as Circuit Justice. But I'm also the Chief Justice."
"And, as such, charged with doing what you can to lessen friction within the Court. Which involves preserving your own credibility."
"What about my own conscience?"
Huddleston rubbed his eyes. "Well," he said, "there is that." Picking up the letter, he scanned it again. "If you do decide to issue a stay, at the least you may buy him a few hours—our Court's not in session, and our colleagues are scattered to the winds or, in Fini's case, a condominium in Hawaii. That should put some pressure back on the Governor." Huddleston paused. "I'll support you, of course. But no one else may. And you'll need five votes to keep the stay in place—including one from a justice who only last month condemned Price to death. So how you spend your capital as Chief really is your call."
Caroline glanced at her watch. It was close to three in the afternoon, 10:00 A.M. in Hawaii. "Let's hope Fini's up and out already," she said. "If Price is extra lucky, Tony's surfing the Devil's Pipeline."
* * *
A little after one o'clock in San Francisco, the death penalty clerk advised Christopher Paget that Chief Justice Caroline Masters had entered a stay of execution in the matter of Rennell Price.
Chris felt little jubilation. Before informing Terri and Carlo, he called the Governor's office. To his surprise, the Chief Justice had already sent the Governor a copy of her order staying execution.
"She's playing hardball," Chris told Terri and Carlo. "Now it's up to Fini and Darrow."
* * *
At six o'clock that evening in Washington, an e-mail from Justice Fini appeared on Caroline Masters's home computer.
Fini's analysis was terse. Skirting the thornier legal questions, he called the new evidence of Fleet's pedophilia "woefully deficient" and "irrelevant to the crime of which Price stands convicted."
Immediately, the Chief Justice began typing a response. "Tomorrow," she began, "Rennell Price is scheduled to die. We must ask ourselves whether this latest evidence should give us pause before sanctioning such a dubious execution . . ."
* * *
At five o'clock in the afternoon Pacific time, the telephone in Terri's office rang.
It was the Supreme Court's death penalty clerk. "There's been a new order in the Price case," the man told Terri somberly. "By a vote of five to four, the Court has dissolved its stay in the matter of Rennell Price."
Mechanically, Terri thanked him for calling and put down the phone. Thirty-one hours from now, at 12:01 A.M., the State of California was scheduled to carry out the death warrant.
Frenziedly, Chris started trying to track down the Governor's scheduler.
* * *
At close to midnight, Terri was still in her office, preparing yet another petition in case new evidence was found. When her telephone rang, she started. Turning, she saw Johnny Moore's cell phone number.
"I've got some news," he said tersely.
Terri hesitated, suspended between hope and the grimness of his tone. "About Fleet?"
"About Fleet, Terri. He's dead."
Terri felt herself go numb, disbelief warring with relief, followed by a lawyer's sense of foreboding. "How?" she asked in a hollow voice.
"It happened yesterday morning, in East L.A. Fleet was hiding out with some woman he'd met, using a false name. According to the cops, he beat her up, then forced her to go down on him. When he fell asleep, she stuck a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger." Moore's voice was soft. "There's a touch of poetry in that. I like to think he woke up first, if only for a moment."
Terri forced herself to think. "Dead," she repeated. "Somehow I kept hoping we could force him to confess. Trap him, some way."
"It never would have happened," Moore answered. "You had no leverage—other than Fleet, if you believe he was there, Payton was the only witness to Thuy Sen's death."
"Fleet was there," Terri answered. "And now they're all dead, the three people in Eula Price's living room."
A sense of tragedy overcame her and then, by reflex, a lawyer's logic. There was no more evidence to be had in Thuy Sen's death, or any hope of evidence. Only whatever inference could be gleaned from the reason for Fleet's own death. "This is part of the pattern," she said. "We can use it in a new petition."
By rote, Terri dictated the bare bones of an affidavit for Moore to execute and fax. Only then did she permit herself to be a mother, not a lawyer, and thank whatever God existed that Elena would be safe.
* * *
As soon as she could, Terri took her work home and went to Elena. It was nearly two o'clock in the morning, but what Terri had to tell her could not wait.
Restless, the girl stirred, lips parted as if to speak, and Terri wondered if her nightmare of Richie had come again. When Terri touched her shoulder, Elena started awake.
"It's only me," Terri said softly. "Just your mom."
Her daughter gazed back at her, too newly awake, and perhaps frightened, not to appear vulnerable instead of guarded. Anxiously, the girl demanded, "Is something wrong?"
"Something happened," Terri answered. "Something I want to tell you. But nothing's wrong."
Taking Elena's hand, Terri waited for her daughter to collect herself. "What is it?" Elena asked.
"The man who may have followed you, the one I believe killed Thuy Sen all those years ago. He's dead."