"He's going to die," Chris snapped. "Think how bad he'll feel then. If we hurt his feelings and he lives, we can try to fix that later. But we can't fix a dead man."
"Who's already tried to kill himself," Tammy answered. "The way I understand this, Terri's managed to keep him going. You want to fuck that up, Chris?"
"No," Chris said evenly. "But I'd rather gamble on Rennell helping us out now, and us being able to help him later, than on Bond's compassion for a putatively retarded man he's never seen—as described by lawyers he'll never trust."
Lane's forehead knit, a sign of his annoyance. "You're missing something," he remonstrated. "This time around, Rennell will know a court can kill him. Because of Payton. Can you imagine how scared he'll be once Pell starts asking questions? Especially once I've told him how unfit he is to cope with that.
"You haven't seen this man. I have. I don't want to devastate him in order to 'save' him."
"Then he doesn't have to be there for your testimony. Only for his—"
"If I don't destroy him," Lane shot back, "Pell will on cross-examination—"
"How?" Chris retorted. "By making him look retarded? Unless we win, Rennell's terminal. I find it odd to be discussing his quality of life, like we're some kind of hospice."
In the tense silence that followed, Terri felt torn between Lane's concern about scarring Rennell further and the ruthless logic of her husband, founded in a compassion that the others, except for Carlo, might not see. "We've got a lot to do," she said. "I'm visiting Rennell after his grandma's funeral. Then we can decide."
* * *
Eula Price's funeral was beautiful, the church filled with mourners, the casket covered in flowers. When the choir sang "Amazing Grace," Terri could feel Eula's soul nestling with the angels.
That was what Terri told him. None of it was so, save for the flowers, the Pagets' gift. But the business of the angels made Rennell's eyes glisten.
"She was a good woman," Terri said. "And she loved you." The truth, at last.
Rennell closed his eyes. Silent, Terri studied the book of string and cardboard he had brought to her. Its pages were bright-colored cards sent him by Eula Price, Scotch-taped to rough drawing paper, and the letters "DNA" were scribbled in crayon on the cover.
"What's this book?" she asked.
It took Rennell a moment to refocus. "It's about me being innocent, like my grandma knew I was. I want you to show it to those people."
"Which people?"
"Them that come to give me those tests. Tired of tests."
Terri tilted her head. "Know what our tests were about, Rennell?"
He grasped one curled hand with the other. "I'm not dumb," he said with sudden anger. "I was just a fuck-off, like Payton said. Didn't care about no schoolin'."
Terri had never heard this before. For a moment it startled her, and then she saw that, in Rennell's mind, it made him like anyone else he knew—just another street kid who made bad choices. "What makes you say that?"
"Don't want to see those people from the State no more." Rennell's face was a mask of rage. "Don't want them comin' at me. Don't want nobody fucking with me. Even you."
With the jolt of a connection made, Terri remembered the story which made his aversion to hurting the powerless—including Thuy Sen—more plausible. "When you were in juvenile hall," she ventured, "people did something terrible to you. Things that made you even more afraid to sleep at night. Can you tell me about that?"
Rennell shut his eyes again. The skin around his knuckles, clenched tightly together, seemed paler. "Nothin' happened."
"It's okay to talk," she assured him. "Payton told me about it."
Rennell's eyes flew open. "Don't want no more tests. Don't want no more people comin' after me. Had too much of that."
Terri touched his wrist, waiting for him to calm. "I'll try," she promised. "That's all I can do."
EIGHT
ON THE MORNING RENNELL'S HEARING BEGAN, DEMONSTRATORS slowed the Pagets' progress to the entrance of the Federal Building. Near the glass doors, a clump of antideath penalty protesters—including a prominent actor and a Pulitzer Prizewinning poet—faced a smaller but vehement group beneath a sign which read JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS. One of its members, a graying woman whose plump face might have seemed pleasant but for its anger, stepped in front of Terri.
"I've seen you on TV," she said in accusation. "How can you be so sick and twisted?"
Chris took Terri's arm, signaling his intention, if he must, to shoulder the woman aside. But Terri would not move. Calmly, she said, "If I'm 'sick and twisted,' so are Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, and the Pope. And every Western democracy but us—"
"Then send all our murderers to France," a man called out, "if they're so morally superior. Lawyers like you are the reason animals like him can force children to have sex."
"Let's go," Carlo murmured. This time Terri did not resist.
* * *
Gazing down from the bench, Judge Bond, dressed in his crisp black robe, spoke so that his voice would carry to the reporters who filled his airy but Spartan courtroom. That and his manner, slightly preening, reminded Terri of the grand inquisitor in a venerable Italian opera.
"The first phase of this hearing," Bond declared, "will focus on whether Rennell Price is mentally retarded and therefore immune from execution. As well as whether—assuming this argument is not foreclosed by AEDPA—mitigating evidence omitted at his original trial militates against imposition of the death penalty.
"I'm limiting each side to a single witness." The judge curtly nodded in Terri's direction. "Unless, Ms. Paget, you've decided to call Mr. Price himself."
"As of now," Terri answered, "we're relying on our expert."
With that, she stood, preparing to place the burden of explaining Rennell Price on the shoulders of Dr. Anthony Lane.
* * *
Facing Terri from the witness stand, Anthony Lane, a double-breasted suit swaddling his bulky frame, looked far more professorial than the casual black man who had first met with Rennell Price. Part of Terri found this disconcerting—it reminded her of the gulf between the rawness of Rennell's life as he had lived it and its translation by a psychiatrist in a sterile courtroom light-years from the Bayview.
As they had planned, Lane tried to bridge the gap, framing the facts for Bond as plainly as he could. "Rennell Price," he said succinctly, "was cursed from birth. Or, more precisely, from the moment of conception.
"His mother was intoxicated during pregnancy, blacking out from poisonous levels of alcohol in her first trimester. His nominal father—whose psychosis rendered him a sadist—gave Rennell beer so he could watch his two-year-old fall off the porch. Then his mother put more beer in his baby bottle so that Vernon Price wouldn't beat her because the child cried.
"When Rennell was seven, Athalie Price took him to the hospital with a head injury, a concussion, clearly inflicted in his home—"
"Which," Bond interjected, "if true, is tragic. But many children get concussions, Doctor—by accident or design. We can't hold them less accountable as adults."
"Perhaps," Lane answered in a respectful tone. "But not many suffer from organic brain damage, caused by fetal alcohol syndrome and aggravated by deliberate blows to the head. In my opinion—based on testing and on his performance from early childhood—Rennell Price does."
"Are these alleged organic problems," Bond inquired, "the cause of his supposed retardation?"
"No," Lane answered crisply. "The damage inflicted by his family was their own special, and quite separate, environmental contribution. But Rennell would have been retarded if he'd been raised in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood—instead of in the Bayview, by a psychotic father and a retarded, alcoholic, paranoid schizophrenic mother—"
"Then do you also infer," Bond asked sharply, "that Payton—on whose deposition so much of your petition rests—was retarded?"