Pensive, Carlo touched the bridge of his nose, a characteristic gesture Chris first had noticed when his older son had been the age Kit was now. "So how did you decide you were against the death penalty?"
Chris gazed out toward left field, with its giant baseball mitt rising above the stands, the palm trees jutting from behind them toward an electric blue sky. "When I was eight or nine," he answered finally, "and I heard there was a thing called the death chamber, I had a kid's visceral sense that it wasn't right. But I was twenty-one when Sirhan Sirhan shot Bobby Kennedy, and I felt like I could have pulled the switch on that sonofabitch myself, for murdering our future." Turning to Carlo, his father smiled briefly. "Marrying your somewhat determined stepmother required me to sort death out for good. In the end, what clinched it for me was the real fear of executing the innocent, and the absolute conviction we've done that already."
"Think we'll ever prove that?"
"Sure. Maybe starting with Texas, if the state doesn't cover up its crime to spare the rest of our delicate sensibilities. I only hope it'll make a difference." Chris's tone became sardonic. "A lot of people figure it won't happen to folks like them—white, well-educated, privileged—so why does it matter? At the very least, they rationalize, someone charged with a capital crime probably did something, so we're merely weeding out a few social undesirables."
Carlo nodded. "The people who most people never see."
"Uh-huh. When it comes to capital punishment, America suffers from a massive failure of empathy and imagination." Chris's face was somber now. "A sentence of death cuts fault lines through the lives of everyone involved: not just Rennell and Payton Price, but their grandmother; the father, mother, and sister of Thuy Sen; and Yancey James. Perhaps even Eddie Fleet, and whatever lives he may have touched since he dimed out his two friends. The death sentence becomes a life sentence for those it doesn't kill."
Saying this, Chris Paget fully confronted his subconscious fear: Carlo, like Terri, might devote his life to this. This was selfish, he acknowledged, but not entirely—he did not want his son to take on a career that hard, or to develop all the defenses he would need to endure it. He did not want the death penalty to claim Carlo Paget.
Suddenly, Carlo smiled at him—the easy, charming grin Chris had known since Carlo was seven—and turned his eyes toward home plate. "You'd better pay attention, Dad. Bonds is up, and something might actually happen here. Another piece of family lore."
ELEVEN
SAN QUENTIN PRISON ALLOWED PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING MONDAYS, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays between eight-thirty and two, and on Thursdays or Fridays for another three hours beginning at eleven in the morning. Even if the testing consumed the maximum five and a half hours, the prison authorities allowed no food in the psychiatric conference room—not for Rennell, Lane, or Terri. Though she disliked the inhumanity of forcing Rennell to go five hours without food, a condition which made Terri herself irritable, this was one test she badly needed him to fail.
Among the problems of retardation, Lane had confirmed, is that it affects attention—the ability to sustain it, and to chose among competing stimuli the one which is most important. A second area for testing was the ability to absorb and remember information. Another lay in the visual and perceptual function—whether Rennell could see a triangle and then copy it. Yet another was basic reading, spelling, and arithmetic. For the first three and a half hours, Terri observed what she had expected: that Rennell was easily distracted; that his memory was short-lived and erratic; that shapes translated poorly from his eye to his hand, triangles becoming cubes and squares morphing into rectangles; and that Rennell's scholastic skills remained roughly those of the third grader taught by Sharon Brooks. Yet Rennell tried so hard that Terri found it heartbreaking to watch. By the time he began the IQ test, it was past noon. The big man froze, a vacant-eyed replica of himself, with his pencil suspended over the paper as though fearing further shame.
And still he tried.
Now he glanced sideways at Terri, as though fearful of her judgment or, perhaps, imploring her to stop. Tiredly, Rennell said, "You're really workin' my mind today."
She forced herself to smile and stay quiet. "You're doing good," Tony Lane assured him. "Just stick with it awhile longer, and this stuff will all be over."
Rennell closed his eyes, sucking stale air into his lungs. Outside, one guard with a baton took the place of another, this one looking bored and disdainful, as though watching a dumb show performed by a murderer attempting to cheat justice.
Rennell resumed the test, pencil stabbing at the paper.
* * *
At a little past one-thirty, Lane placed a wooden board in front of Rennell—a replica of the child's game Elena and Kit had played in preschool, which challenged them to fit wooden pieces into the hollow shapes presented by the board. Rennell stared at it, suspicion warring with embarrassment.
"I seen this before. In school."
Lane smiled. "But I do this one a little different—it's for adults."
Rennell's shoulders sagged. "How's that?"
"Before you put the shapes in, I'll be covering your eyes with a blindfold."
For the first time, Rennell's tone bespoke resistance. "What's that for?"
"It's just part of the rules. Helps us know what you remember."
Staring at the board, Rennell shook his head from side to side. "At that trial, I didn't have no blindfold."
Silent, Terri watched, worried Rennell was on the edge of exhaustion, so fearful of looking stupid that he would refuse to go on. "True enough," Lane answered. "But they didn't test you at the trial. This will help us explain you to the judge. How you think and all."
"This game's got nothin' to do with me being innocent." Rennell's tone of voice became implacable. "I don't want no blindfold, man. Damn straight I don't."
Terri realized that fatigue and hunger had slowed her thoughts and dulled her instincts. "This is the last part," she interjected with quiet urgency. "We need it to try and save your life."
Once more Rennell shook his head. "I didn't do that little girl. Don't want no blindfold—just tell that judge I didn't do her."
"Please trust me about this, Rennell. I'd never ask if this test wasn't good for you . . ."
He stared at her, as though straining to hear Terri through his need to resist. Terri looked into his eyes. "Please," she repeated. "It won't take long at all."
The distance seeping into his gaze began to frighten her—it was as though he were reverting to the stranger who first had confronted her with the wall of his seeming indifference. "Why don't we take a minute," she suggested. "Try and relax."
Turning from her, Rennell folded his hands in front of him and stared mutely at the wooden board. Terri let the second hand on the schoolroom clock above the guard's head trace its circle twice, then nodded at Lane.
"Look at the pieces," he said encouragingly. "Just try to remember where a piece fits on the board. Then we can start."
Rennell did not acknowledge him. Terri couldn't tell whether he was struggling to absorb the instructions or had receded to some other place or time.
"I'll put the blindfold on now," she told him. "Okay, Rennell?"
When he did not answer, Lane handed her the black swatch of cloth. Standing behind Rennell, she paused, one hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Then she folded the cloth once and placed it over his eyes, tying it behind his head.