Conviction

TWENTY-FIVE

THAT EVENING, THE PAGET FAMILY ATE LATER THAN USUAL, ABOUT seven-thirty, and the conversation was quieter, although Carlo, their frequent guest, tried to focus on Elena and Kit. But Carlo, too, was somber. Only Kit seemed unaffected; Elena, knowing her mother's plans for that evening, had lapsed into a silence Terri found ambiguous. Terri ate little, declining Chris's offer to open a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, a favorite from their Italian honeymoon. In the midst of their dinner, softly lit by candles whose flicker refracted on the crystal facets of their chandelier, it struck Terri that by the unvarying protocol of San Quentin, Payton Price was being offered his last meal. She put down her fork.

"I'll read to Kit tonight," she told her husband. "I haven't in a while."

In the event, this ritual of parenthood, usually Chris's domain, soothed her for a time. The current book was from the Lemony Snicket series, and Terri's rendering of its skewed humor was satisfactory enough that she was intermittently rewarded with the laughter in Kit's dark eyes, the play of humor around his mouth, which reminded her of Chris and yet was wonderfully Kit's own. Finishing, she kissed his forehead and repeated a prayer with him, as her own mother had with her, then went down the hall to Elena's room.

Terri's knock on her door was tentative, a mother's request for admission into the moody realm of a thirteen-year-old girl. But Elena's expression was opaque. "Are you really going out there?" she inquired.

Nodding, Terri sat on the edge of her bed. "No choice. Rennell asked me to."

"Too bad," Elena answered. "But I guess you'd do anything for Rennell, wouldn't you. No matter what it does to us."

Terri composed herself. "I know you hate my work. But no one matters as much as you."

The child-woman in the Winnie-the-Pooh T-shirt gave an indifferent shrug. "I don't understand your work," she said in an accusatory voice. "And no one matters as much as it does. Rennell Price deserves to die, and it will just kill you when he does."

Though this cutting remark was, at bottom, about something more, Terri had little will to surface that tonight. "It will," she answered finally. "But not nearly as much as what happened to you."

The look on her own face must be miserable, Terri realized; as Elena studied her mother, her expression changed. "Then why," she asked, "do you spend more time on him than me?"

The accusation pierced Terri's heart. As with Kit, Terri kissed her forehead. "I'm sorry about tonight," she tried. "I'm sorry about everything."

Elena gazed at her, tears welling, and then she turned away.

Chris was in the kitchen, listening to Carlo describe his new girlfriend. Of Terri, Chris inquired, "Did Kit induce you to read the entire series?"

"I was counting Elena's moods."

Chris gave her the long, somewhat veiled look he reserved for efforts to gauge her own moods. "Let me drive you, Terri. Carlo's volunteered to watch the kids."

"No," she said sharply, then saw the brief flicker of worry on Carlo's face, the residue of the child who feared conflict. In a more temperate tone, she added, "Really, this is mine to do. I honestly don't want either of you holding my hand."

She went to their bedroom to change. Reflecting on which of her suits was most suitable for an execution, she chose gray over black.

When she returned, Carlo was gone and Chris was sipping brandy. He looked up at her, openly concerned.

"I'm really not punishing you for the Governor," she said.

"I didn't think you were."

She walked over to him, resting a hand on his chair. "I don't know how this is going to be for me. It just feels like I'll do better alone."

Standing, Chris gave her a tentative hug. Then she went to the garage and backed her car out into what, even without the chill and drizzle, would have seemed a miserable night. Even the vigil outside the gates of San Quentin, deprived of candlelight, seemed dispirited and ill-attended. For a brief moment, in the cool breath of night, Terri felt the presence of Eddie Fleet.

* * *

At eleven-thirty, thirty-one minutes before Payton Price was to die, Terri was admitted to the viewing room.

The guard directed her to the far side of the chamber, reserved for the friends or family of the prisoner about to be executed. No one else stood with her. Several reporters and the warden separated her from Thuy Sen's family, huddled close together on the other side. Silent, they stared through the windows of the execution chamber.

The chamber itself was much as Terri had envisioned—an octagon roughly eight feet in diameter, with a padded table beside a cardiac monitor and a machine for intravenous injection. But for the straps, Terri thought, the table was eerily like the hospital bed in an intensive care unit, a site dedicated to preserving life. The large oval door at the rear of the chamber, through which Payton Price would enter, seemed to hypnotize those awaiting him.

With that thought, the strangeness of this setting hit Terri hard—the raised platform for the witnesses, the five windows of the chamber, their blinds raised to permit those assembled to view the state-sanctioned death of another human. "He'll probably be pretty subdued," an older lawyer had predicted to her. "The 'People's' victims don't tend to be kickers or screamers, or even very defiant. A decade or two on death row breeds a certain level of acceptance."

Terri drew a breath.

Desperate for distraction, she began a surreptitious study of Thuy Sen's family. Only Chou Sen was familiar. Her husband, Meng, was a small, well-knit man with jet-black hair and a seamed face which betrayed his age and, perhaps, years of grief. Stoic, his wife stood between him and the young woman whom Terri thought of as the second victim, Kim Sen.

She was slight, with straight black hair cut shoulder length and a look of keen intelligence accented by gold wire-rim glasses, suggesting the graduate student that she was. Though they stood close to each other, the Sens neither spoke nor touched. To Terri, they seemed bereft, a family smaller than it should have been. Only when Kim Sen flinched did Terri's gaze return to the execution chamber.

Its door had opened. Through it shuffled Payton Price, shackled, dressed in the stiff new denim work shirt and trousers issued for the occasion.

He stood straighter, mustering what dignity he could, and then paused to register each face on the other side of the glass, lingering on the three Asians whose suffering he had caused, as if to assess the changes fifteen years had wrought. Only when his gaze met Terri's did he nod, a brief acknowledgment that she, the surrogate for friends or family, had kept her word to Rennell. Forcing herself to smile, she took out Rennell's drawing from the pocket of her suit, holding it up for him to see.

Payton stared at it, then slowly shook his head. The faintest of smiles did not conceal the sorrow in his glistening eyes.

He looked down, composing himself. Then the guards escorted him to the center of the execution chamber. Terri could hear his shackles clink through the sound system linking him to those who watched.

Payton seemed to reach within himself. When at last he faced the Sens, Kim raised a black-and-white photograph of the solemn Asian child she had left to walk home alone.

Briefly, Payton shut his eyes. When he spoke it was to Kim. "I'm sorry—not 'cause I'm gonna die, but for what I done to all of you. If watching me die makes any difference to you, then maybe there's some good in this. But they got no reason to kill Rennell." His voice quavered. "Rennell's innocent. It was Eddie Fleet that choked her. I know, 'cause I was part of it." His gaze moved from Thuy Sen's sister to her mother, and finally to her father. "Killin' my brother," he finished softly, "be one more murder. No good can come to you from that."

Meng Sen stiffened, a posture of anger and rejection. Kim raised Thuy Sen's photograph between Payton and her own face.

Payton's eyes dulled. Slowly, he faced Terri. "Tell my brother I didn't feel no pain." His voice was tired and husky, a near-whisper. "Tell him I'm sorry for leavin', and for what I done to put him here."

Turning to one of the guards, he nodded toward the table.

In silence, they moved him there. Payton sat, then lay on his side, rolling himself onto the table. The guards strapped him in, face upward. He no longer looked around him.

Slowly, the warden nodded.

A prison technician entered the chamber. He approached Payton, face as devoid of expression as was the warden's, and connected two IVs into the tubes already inserted in the flesh of his left forearm. Terri forced herself to watch.

"You may carry out the death warrant," the warden intoned.

Through the plastic tubes, Terri knew, would flow fifty cc's of potassium chloride. As the doctor stood beside him, Payton closed his eyes.

Minutes seemed to pass. Neither Payton nor those who watched him made a sound. Please, Terri thought, let it be done.

Abruptly, Payton's mouth opened, expelling a deep, guttural exhalation which preceded a final gasp for air. His body convulsed, as though from an electric shock, followed by shudders. Terri felt Rennell's drawing crumple in her fist.

At last the shuddering subsided. As Terri turned to her, Kim Sen, tears streaming from her eyes, held out Thuy Sen's photograph as if Payton still could see.