Conviction

NINE

MONK AND AINSWORTH SAT SIDE BY SIDE IN AN INTERROGATION room, a tape recorder between them and Eddie Fleet.

"So why'd you call me?" Monk demanded curtly.

Fleet mustered a smile which combined nervousness with bravado, displaying a row of gold teeth—a status symbol behind which, Monk supposed, the enamel was rotting away. The smile faded in the face of Monk's impassive stare. "Had somethin' to run by you," Fleet ventured at last. "Call it a hy-po-thetical."

Monk was not certain whether the satiric twist given the last word was intended to obscure Fleet's difficulty in enunciation. But it did not conceal his fear, or the guile which had driven him here.

"Spit it out."

Fleet fidgeted, trying out the smile again. "Not that it happened this way, understand. I'm just wanting to hear what you might think."

Monk said nothing. Silent, Fleet watched the tape keep spinning.

"Can you turn that damned thing off?" he asked.

Monk did. "So?"

Fleet glanced at Ainsworth, then tried to look Monk in the eyes. "S'pose somebody asked to borrow my car the day that girl disappeared."

"Somebody?"

A trapped, furtive look crept into Fleet's eyes. "This can't get out, man. You can't tell no one."

Still Monk stared at him. "I can't tell 'no one' about something that 'somebody' asked you that maybe never happened. You call so I can watch you tap-dance?"

Fleet looked away. Finally, he said, "What if I said it maybe was Rennell."

"Maybe? I'd say we need a warrant for your car. You just went and gave us probable cause."

* * *

Fleet's ancient blue Cadillac Eldorado smelled like sweat and cigarettes and pot. Payton's prints were on the passenger-side dashboard, Rennell's on the handle of the right rear door.

The rough gray carpet in the trunk compartment was spiky and matted. Caught in its fibers was a strand of green wool; the portion cut out by the crime lab yielded a mixture of semen and saliva. There were also traces of urine—as Monk well knew, corpses often leak.

* * *

They picked up Fleet and the brothers again, separately, then stuck them in three rooms. Monk's message to each was simple: whoever talks first does best. But Payton was stone silent, and Rennell kept repeating in a monotone what Monk now thought of less as a mantra than as a life raft—"I didn't do that little girl."

In the fourth hour of questioning, Monk came back to Eddie Fleet with the same relentless patience. "We know she was in your trunk, Eddie. We know that she was dead. Sooner or later someone's gonna tell me how she got that way. When he does, this thing is over."

Fleet hunched in the chair with folded arms. "Was she dead when you first saw her," Monk inquired, "or were you part of how she died?"

Fleet's lips parted, as if to speak. Then his jaw clamped tight again.

"Don't know about my friend here," Rollie Ainsworth said in a tone of deep sincerity. "But in my heart and soul I don't believe you killed Thuy Sen. Maybe I'm wrong, but you don't seem like the type to me." His voice hardened. "The thing we know for sure is that you had a part in it."

The room felt hot and close now: the first sheen of sweat began appearing on Fleet's forehead. Monk and Ainsworth contented themselves with watching.

At length Monk asked, "You know about accessories?"

Fleet did not answer. Only his body, tense with anticipation, betrayed him.

"I'm not talking about do-rags, Eddie."

Slowly Fleet looked up at him. "I'm talking about murder," Monk continued softly. "So let's see if you can follow what I'm telling you.

"With murder there's only three types of accessories. First there's accessories before the fact. They're the worst ones—they know a murder's gonna happen, and don't do anything about it. Maybe they even help things along.

"Then there's accessories during the fact. Want to guess who they are?"

Fleet barely seemed to breathe. "I'll tell you then," Monk said in a conversational tone. "They're present when the murder happens, and still don't lift a finger to stop it. You with me so far?"

Still Fleet was silent. "You're with me," Monk said. "You're a real smart young man, and I just know you're with me. So you know damned well if you're one of the first two kinds.

"Course maybe that's why you're so quiet. If I were an accessory before or during, I'd have a whole lot to think about."

A trickle of sweat made Fleet's left eyelid flutter. He was too proud or scared to wipe it. "Want to hear the rest?" Monk inquired.

Almost imperceptibly, Fleet nodded. "Okay," Monk said. "Last one's an accessory after the fact. That's where the victim's already dead, and you help cover up. Maybe like getting rid of the body.

"That's the least culpable kind of accessory." Sitting back, Monk gave him a slow, appraising stare. "Don't know where you fit in, Eddie. But all three of us know there's a slot for you. Sooner or later we're going to decide which one you are."

In the silence, Fleet's light brown face glistened beneath the fluorescent lights.

"Thirsty?" Ainsworth asked.

After a moment, Fleet nodded again. Companionably, Ainsworth said, "I'll get us all a Coke." He left Monk staring at Fleet.

With mild interest, Monk wondered if Fleet would meet his eyes. For a moment Fleet seemed ready to try, then looked down again.

Ainsworth came through the door, which was still ajar, clutching three cans of Coke.

Monk accepted one, then placed the second can in front of Eddie Fleet. Ainsworth took a swallow of his and leaned against the wall. Still quiet, Fleet studied the cool red cylinder, beading with its own sweat as he watched.

"Maybe," Ainsworth suggested, "we should leave you with your thoughts. Maybe you'll figure things out before Rennell or Payton does."

Monk stood abruptly. Before Fleet could form an answer, they closed the door behind them.

* * *

In another interrogation room, feet propped on the table, Monk and Ainsworth drank their Cokes while they observed Eddie Fleet on a video monitor.

Fleet was slumped forward, face in his hands. The inspectors kept watching with the casual interest of anthropologists studying an all-too-familiar species. "Sort of sluggish," Ainsworth remarked. "Quiet, too. Not like Ralphie Menendez."

Monk emitted a laugh. Left alone after absorbing Monk's dissertation on the degrees of murder, Menendez had muttered on videotape, "Goddam, fifteen fucking years"—repeating the minimum sentence for murder in the second degree.

"Ralphie," Monk said nostalgically. "Hardly left us anything to ask."

"At least he was entertaining. I'm getting fed up with these three." Ainsworth turned from the monitor. "So which one we go back to?"

"Fleet." Monk nodded toward the video cam. "Look at him."

On the monitor, Fleet's hands were cupped over his mouth, as though he were about to vomit.

* * *

"You ready to help us out?" Monk asked.

Eyes averted, Fleet nodded.

"No rehearsals," Monk said curtly, switching on the tape recorder.

For a time, Eddie watched it spin. Then he gathered his thoughts and began to speak. Listening, Monk had to give him this much—Eddie Fleet could tell a story so vividly that Monk could see it happening.

* * *

The knock on Eddie's door had sounded heavy, urgent.

Eddie was alone. One eye shut, he peered out through the keyhole. In the night outside stood a massive form which could only be Rennell.

Eddie cracked open the door. "What is it, bro'?"

"We got need for your car."

Somehow Eddie knew that "car" included him. Beneath Rennell's accustomed monotone he heard an urgency close to panic, and the big man's feet shifted from side to side. In Rennell this passed for jitters, Eddie thought—he must be high on crack.

Eddie fished his car keys from the drawer where he kept his Saturday night special, taking the gun as well.

* * *

In the six-block ride to the brothers' house, Rennell said only, "This is trouble, man."

He would not say more. But whatever Eddie had imagined was erased from his memory once Payton, eyes bright with crack and panic, yanked him inside.

Lying on the floor was a small Asian girl with spittle coming from her open mouth. It took a few seconds for Eddie to absorb that she was dead.

"What the fuck . . . ?" he whispered.

Payton backed one step away. From behind him, Rennell said dully, "Choked on come."

"Whose come?"

When no one answered, Eddie felt himself begin to shake. "You make her do this? That's a kid, man."

A spark of anger flashed in Payton's eyes. "No time for this shit," he snapped. "We got to get rid of her."

Fleet stared down at the girl as though he'd been asked to pick up a dead rat. "No way, man. Not me."

Payton's fevered eyes shot a peremptory glance at Rennell. From behind him, Fleet felt the big man pin his arms back in a hammerlock. He cried out, Payton's half-crazed face two inches from his.

"Shut up," Payton hissed. "You trying to wake up Grandma?"

* * *

They forced Eddie to pick up the child by her hands.

Her fingers were stiff and cold. Drool kept dribbling from her mouth, like she couldn't keep the come down. Eddie felt the bile rising in his throat.

Payton took her feet; Rennell cracked open the front door. Jittery and silent, they edged out the door in the cool night air.

No cars.

They dumped her on the sidewalk while Eddie fumbled for the trunk key. When they dropped her inside the trunk, he smelled the pee.

* * *

Payton told him to drive down the hill to India Basin, pull into Shoreline Park.

Payton sat beside him, Rennell in back. When they entered the darkened park, Payton signaled Eddie to stop.

They looked around. To the left rose the stacks of a massive power plant; another car was parked close to the water. Through the windshield, Eddie saw a small orange cylinder inside, the glow of what was probably a joint passing from hand to hand.

"Not here," Payton said tightly.

For a moment, he started chattering about the warehouse district of Potrero Hill. Then Eddie reminded him of the homeless who camped out there.

All at once, it seemed, Payton remembered the tallow plant.

* * *

They turned down an unmarked road past the shadowy forms of warehouses. Through the driver's-side window, cracked open to help him keep from vomiting, Eddie caught the stench of burning fat and animal remnants. No one else would be here.

Silent, Eddie clamped his jaw against his own fear and nausea.

On the spit of land where the road ended was a construction site, sand and gravel sitting in piles like burial mounds. To the left was a channel of brackish water. The wreck of an old barge was grounded there, next to a neglected wooden pier, which stuck from weeds and sand into the water. Across the channel was an outpost of the Port of San Francisco, the black skeletons of loading cranes towering above. Eddie heard no sounds at all.

"Get her out," Payton directed.

Eddie sat there like he was paralyzed. Only when Payton opened the car door and barked something more did Eddie force himself into the chill, toxic air.

Curtly, Payton nodded toward the trunk. He seemed to have come down off his high.

With renewed dread, Eddie opened the trunk.

The child was still curled stiffly, her posture frozen. "You do it," Payton told his brother.

To Eddie, the order carried the edge of reproof. In silence, Rennell lifted the dead child.

Payton angled his head toward the channel. "Out there."

Rennell started toward the water's edge. Following, Eddie thought his lumbering shape resembled that of a monster in a horror film. Their feet crunched stunted shrubbery.

They reached the sand at the edge of the channel. "Dump her in the water," Payton said.

Corpse cradled in his arms, Rennell walked to the pier, testing it with his weight.

The beams creaked. Shaking his head, Rennell backed off.

"In the water," Payton repeated. "We want her away from here."

Like an automaton, Rennell stepped out into the channel.

Right away, Eddie saw that its current was swift—Rennell staggered sideways, clutching at the nearest piling, the girl's body tucked beneath one massive arm. He righted himself, then began edging farther out, to where the ruined wood tumbled into the water.

Almost gently, he laid the body on the surface of the channel.

At once the current began sweeping her away. The last Eddie saw of Thuy Sen was strands of long black hair, swirling away in dark, moonlit water.

Surprising tears sprung to his eyes. "Let's get high," he heard Payton say.

* * *

"He was shook up," Fleet finished now. "Don't think he meant to do it. Don't even know if he did do it." He puffed his cheeks and exhaled. "Whatever, you got to feel sorry for her."

You're a real humanitarian, Monk thought. In his flattest voice, he asked, "The brothers like doing nine-year-olds?"

Fleet moved his shoulders. "They were high, man—do crazy things when you're high."

"That all you know?" Ainsworth asked.

Fleet turned to him. "It is," he said fervently. "I swear it."

"So you wouldn't mind taking a lie detector."

Fleet faced Monk again. "You want me to?" he asked.

Not really, Monk thought—they didn't need a murky polygraph. With a shrug, he said, "Up to you, Eddie."

Fleet seemed to consider this. "Yeah," he said finally, "I guess it's okay."

You just passed, Monk thought.

"Best to keep you around," he said. "You don't want to be out on the street."

* * *

The next thing Monk did was call the Coast Guard. Suppose, he asked, you dumped that nine-year-old girl at the foot of that tallow factory. Two days later might a floater end up on the rocks near Candlestick Park?

Sure, came the answer. That's how the current goes.

Monk put down the phone. "First Payton," he told Ainsworth. "Then Rennell."