Conviction

"Just hidin'. Sometimes Payton tell me stories."

Lane smiled again. "What kind of stories?"

" 'Bout what he'd be doin', when he growed up. Like havin' a big house with guard dogs all around it. He tole me I could live with him."

"Bet that sounded good."

"Yeah." Terri heard a complex mix of warmth and fear and melancholy seep into Rennell's words. "When we was kids, it sounded real good."

"Sure. I get the part about hiding," Lane ventured. "Sometimes when we're little kids, our daddies get mad at us."

In the silence which followed, Terri and Lane watched Rennell settle into an expressionless torpor. "Yeah," Rennell finally allowed. "Sometimes he get mad."

"Tell about a time your daddy gets mad."

Rennell's shoulders twitched—a shrug, Terri thought, or perhaps a flinch. "Gets mad a lot."

"How can you tell he's mad?"

"When his eyes get bigger."

"What happens when you see his eyes get bigger?"

Rennell raised his hands to his face, rubbing both eyes with his thumbs. "He does bad things to me."

Terri felt herself tense. But Lane maintained the same manner of empathic curiosity. "What things are those?"

"Things." Rennell kept rubbing, and his next words had a strangled quality. "He hurts me."

"Yeah," Lane answered. "I'm sorry he hurt you."

Rennell's body shuddered, as though he was receding into his moments of darkest fear. Softly, Lane asked, "What does he do to you, Rennell?"

Rennell shook his head. No more words came out.

Lane considered him and then, glancing at Terri, briefly frowned. After a moment, he asked Rennell, "What did you do to be safe?"

Slowly, Rennell let his fingers slip from his face. "Find Payton," he answered. "Sometimes he takes me to the bush."

Lane, Terri saw, had begun studying Rennell's hands. "Tell me about your mom," he said.

Rennell's eyes remained closed. "She didn't want me."

"How do you know that?"

Rennell inhaled, inward pain filling his voice. "She always tole me that."

"Why'd she say that?"

Rennell's silence was followed by a shrug of resignation. " 'Cause I did stupid things, I guess. Just acted stupid without knowin' I was."

Terri could feel him sliding into a depression. "When you were a kid," she asked as a diversion, "what did you want to be?"

Rennell's eyes remained closed. "Maybe a pilot, or a superhero. Like Hawkman. Just fly over everything, where it's safe."

The poignancy of his last phrase made Terri pause. "What were the best things that ever happened to you?"

"Don't know." Rennell's voice softened. "Maybe when Payton took me to the store. Or maybe," he amended, "when he sat with me in the cafeteria at school. Sometimes no one else ever sits with me."

Lane, Terri saw, was still gazing at Rennell's hands. "I guess that made you feel bad," he said. "What else made you feel bad?"

Rennell's head bent forward slightly. "When it rained."

"Why don't you like rain?"

"Can't go outside then."

"Why'd you want to go outside?"

Pausing, Rennell seemed to swallow. "Daddy. Rain was like it was at night."

"And you didn't like night, I guess."

Rennell shook his head.

"Why not?"

" 'Cause I'm afraid. Don't want to go to sleep."

"Why?"

Lightly, Rennell touched the side of his face. "Sometimes I wake up crying."

"Is that what you were afraid of—crying?"

Silent, Rennell rested his forehead in the chain between his hands.

"Rennell?"

"Sometimes I'd hear Daddy, my mama screaming." His eyes shut tighter. "Head hurts so much it's like it's going to explode. Least it keeps me awake."

"What did your daddy do to Mama?"

Rennell shook his head, a stubborn gesture of refusal. Gently, Lane took Rennell's hands from beneath his face and laid them on the table, tracing a scar on Rennell's left wrist that Terri had not noticed. Voice still quiet, Lane asked, "When did you try to hurt yourself, Rennell?"

Once more, Rennell shook his head. No words came out.

"Okay," Lane said softly. "Okay. We'll just take a rest for a little while, and then maybe you can help me out with something."

Rennell's eyes slowly opened.

"Okay." Lane's fingers intertwined with Rennell's. "Stay with me, son."

Waiting, Terri felt the gooseflesh on her skin, a hollowness in the pit of her stomach. "I want you to remember something for us," Lane told Rennell. "Something hard. Because it's important."

Rennell's eyes screwed up again. "Your mama stabbed your daddy," Lane said, "when you were nine years old. Terri and I need for you to tell us what you saw."

Rennell raised his face as though to gaze at the ceiling, save that his eyes remained closed. "Blood," he answered finally and then, with his next few broken words, summoned an image which pierced Terri's heart.

  * * *

Vernon Price lay on the carpet, eyes wild with shock and fright and hatred, white T-shirt shining with his blood pumping from his chest. Rennell could not speak or move.

"Want my blood?" Price shrieked at the boy. "Then you come here, you stupid pussy."

Fear made Rennell's feet move closer to his father. With a spasm of rage, his father grabbed his wrists, drawing Rennell's face close to his. His ragged breath smelled like blood and whiskey.

"She did this, you son of a whore." Price placed his palm to his pulsing wound, then slowly wiped his blood across the boy's face and eyes. "Only blood of mine you'll ever get."

A stream of red came gushing from his mouth.

  * * *

That was all Rennell would say.

When they were done, Terri stood with Anthony Lane in the parking lot. "It's way too hard on him," she said. "And there's too damned much I know we're missing."

Lane nodded. "Wish we could talk to Payton. Before they shut him up for good."

"I've tried. His lawyers say no."

Lane considered this. "It may seem pointless," he said with resignation, "but Tammy needs to take another run at Mama."

THIRTEEN

"WE TRIED WITH THE SEMENM," DR. DAVID LEVY TOLD TERRI. "No soap. It's way too degraded to yield DNA."

Terri did not know whether to feel disappointment or relief. Telephone in hand, she began to pace, gazing out her office window as Alcatraz began merging in the dusk with the dark waters of the bay. "What about the hairs?" she asked.

"The so-called Asian-type hairs from the brothers' carpet turn out to be Thuy Sen's—no surprise there." The criminalist's tone turned dry. "As for the hairs from her barrette, it's a classic case of 'good news, bad news.' Which do you want first?"

"The good news," Terri answered promptly. "I could use a little."

"It's not Rennell's. The DNA doesn't match with his."

Terri felt her own slow release of breath. "And the bad?"

"The DNA's so similar to his that the hair must have come from a very close relative. I guess we can rule out Grandma."

"Payton," Terri said softly.

"Pretty much has to be," Levy agreed. "I guess that's not so helpful. But I suppose it still leaves open the question of Rennell."

Terri thanked him and got off. She did not raise the other question David Levy could not answer: what Yancey James might know about Payton and, she feared, Rennell.

  * * *

It was past seven at night when Tammy Mattox appeared in Terri's conference room, perusing its table strewn with records from Rennell's past—what Tammy called the bones of the dinosaur. The mitigation specialist looked weary; she plopped herself in a chair and sat flat-footed, the folds beneath her chin compressing as she bowed her head.

"Well," she said, as much to herself as Terri, "that was a long day."

"Rennell's mother?"

Tammy nodded. "My new friend Athalie Price. Mama's still in an asylum. Even if she weren't pretty much bughouse, you have to circle around her defenses a good while." Tammy emitted a sigh of fatigue. "And you never know what may come out. Does she hate Rennell and want him dead? Does she know something no one else does? But you can't just come out and ask that—you have to try and divine it. For a woman with a low IQ, our Athalie's a devious one."