Conviction

SIX

BRIGHT-EYED, EDDIE FLEET STARED AT TERRI, HIS SMILE SLOWLY widening to expose the gold in his teeth.

Meeting Fleet's eyes, Terri tried to calm her nerves. It was nine-thirty, and the sunlight through her law firm's conference room window cast a sheen across the cherry table. Beside Fleet sat Brian Hall, a gray-haired public defender with a curt manner and a cynical air. To Terri's right, at the end of the conference table, an elderly court reporter with his sleeves rolled up waited to transcribe the questions and answers. Carlo sat at Terri's left, between her and the representatives of the State, Laurence Pell and Janice Terrell.

Turning to the reporter, Terri nodded.

The man raised his right hand, inviting Fleet to emulate him. The breadth of Fleet's smile diminished to a play of lips.

"Do you solemnly swear," the reporter intoned, "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Please state your name for the record," Terri said.

"Eddie Fleet."

"What is your occupation?"

The twitch of a smile reappeared. "Handyman."

At once, Terri decided to bypass further background questions. In the same businesslike tone, she inquired, "Do you know a woman named Betty Sims?"

The smile vanished abruptly. Though Fleet did not move, a tensile alertness seemed to seize his body. "Knew her," he corrected.

"In what way did you know Betty Sims?"

Fleet glanced toward his lawyer. "She was my girlfriend."

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"Long time ago," Fleet answered with a shrug. "Don't remember exactly."

"Maybe I can jog your memory," Terri said. "Did Betty Sims have a daughter?"

Fleet's eyes narrowed. "Yeah."

"What was the daughter's name?"

"Can't remember."

"Was it Lacy?"

As Fleet hesitated, Terri watched him try to calculate how she knew this. "Yeah," he allowed. "Guess that's right. Been a long time since I seen her, too."

"How long?"

Hall placed a cautionary hand on Fleet's wrist. "What's the relevance of this?" he interjected.

Terri kept staring at Fleet. "Bear with me for another couple of questions. Unless you think Mr. Fleet's knowledge of Lacy Sims is somehow incriminating."

"No," Hall snapped. "Just irrelevant."

"Not your call. When you last saw Lacy Sims, Mr. Fleet, how old was she?"

Down the table, two heads—Pell's and Terrell's—leaned forward for a better view. Slowly, Hall pulled back his hand. With a shrug of calculated boredom, Fleet answered, "Maybe twelve."

"Thank you," Terri said amiably. "Ever put your penis in Lacy's mouth?"

Almost imperceptibly, Fleet's shoulders twitched. His eyes on Terri's were like burn holes. "What the hell is this?" Hall demanded.

"A question." Barely pausing, Terri asked of Fleet, "Do you need it read back to you, or do you still have it in mind?"

Fleet glared at her. Once again, Terri imagined him wondering if she had found Betty or her daughter—or both. Without looking at the reporter, Terri requested, "Please read back the pending question."

At the corner of her vision, the reporter held up his steno tape to read it, repeating in a monotone, " 'Ever put your penis in Lacy's mouth?' "

Larry Pell put down his pen. Briefly, Fleet looked in Pell's direction, a decision forming in his eyes. "Why'd I do that?" he demanded.

"So if Betty and Lacy say you forced Lacy to give you oral sex, they'd be lying?"

It was a bluff. But—instead of answering—Fleet began turning toward Hall, then stopped himself. Beneath his hesitance, Terri was suddenly sure, lay a poisonous fear. "That would be two witnesses against one," she prodded. "Care to ask your lawyer about perjury?"

"You can skip the commentary," Hall instructed Terri, and he took Fleet by the arm, turning him away from the conference table and Terri. In profile, Hall's lips moved, and then Fleet murmured an answer.

"Let the record reflect," Terri directed the reporter, "that the witness is consulting with counsel."

Fleet spun on Terri. "Anything that bitch says," he hissed across the table, "is gettin' back at me."

"Which 'bitch'?" Terri inquired softly. "Lacy, or her mother?"

A look of entrapment stole into Fleet's eyes; in that moment, Terri felt a flash of guilt, the visceral sense that she had placed another woman and her daughter at risk. "Betty," Fleet answered. "Who you think I meant?"

"Because you beat her?"

Fleet paused again. "Just cuffed her now and then, for mouthin' off. Weren't nothin' . . ."

"Ever hit her on the face?"

Fleet leaned back in his chair. Terri watched him consider his choices and then decide, quite visibly, that domestic violence was both a distraction and a defense. "Sometimes," he allowed. "Maybe a black eye or two."

"Thank you for your candor. Did you ever force Lacy Sims to give you oral sex?"

"Asked and answered," Hall snapped.

"Actually, he never answered that question. You both just hoped I hadn't noticed." Terri kept her voice quiet and even. "So let me ask the question one more time: Did you force Betty Sims's daughter Lacy to put your penis in her mouth?"

Hall clasped Fleet's wrist. "This is not relevant," he insisted.

Terri looked at Hall directly. "Your client's a pedophile. To say that's 'relevant' is an understatement. He's got two choices, and not answering isn't one of them."

Hall seemed to bristle and then, more slowly, to gauge the dilemma of a client he barely knew. "I'm going to discuss this with Mr. Fleet," he said brusquely. "Outside."

Fleet remained frozen, staring at Terri with naked hatred. "Come on," Hall told him.

Fleet slowly rose, gazing down at Terri. Yeah, she thought, with a loathing all her own, that's how you like it—standing up. And then she realized the molten force which lay beneath her lawyer's coldness—for her, Eddie Fleet was her husband Richie, except that she would destroy him this time before he wounded another child. But all she let Fleet see was the smile on her lips.

Hall led Fleet outside. Through the glass windows of the conference room, Terri watched them: Hall's mouth, moving quickly, seemed to speak with increasing vehemence. A head taller than his lawyer, Fleet bent to hear him. Inside the conference room, no one spoke.

At last, Hall stopped speaking. Scowling, Fleet gazed down at him, then nodded. Ignoring the expectant gazes of those waiting, Fleet, then his lawyer, reclaimed their seats across from Terri.

"Mr. Fleet," Hall announced, "objects to this irrelevant harping on domestic disputes and other ancillary matters. Therefore, he's forced to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to answer the pending question."

"The purpose of the Fifth Amendment," Terri answered calmly, "is not to avoid questions simply because a witness doesn't like them." Turning to Fleet, she said, "I asked if you ever forced Lacy Sims to take your penis in her mouth. Are you invoking the Fifth Amendment because your answer might tend to incriminate you?"

Fleet folded his arms. "I invoke the Fifth Amendment."

Terri tilted her head in a pose of curiosity. "Have you ever forced a minor child to take your penis in her mouth?"

At the end of the table, Larry Pell shifted in his chair, fully appreciating, Terri felt sure, the nature of her trap for Eddie Fleet, and for him. Fleet's lip, curling to expose his upper teeth, lent a feral aspect to his eyes.

"I invoke the Fifth Amendment," he repeated.

"Have you ever put your penis in the mouth of a minor Asian female?"

Fleet's voice rose. "I invoke the Fifth Amendment."

Eyes still fixed on Fleet, Terri drew a photograph from the manila folder between them. Calmly, she slid it down the table to the court reporter. "I ask that this photograph be marked as Fleet exhibit number one."

Pale, the reporter gazed down at the exhibit, then made a notation in its margin.

He slid it back to Terri. Silent, she handed the photograph to Carlo. Turning to Janice Terrell, he placed it in her hands, eyes locking hers until she looked down at what he had given her. "Thank you," Carlo said politely. "Please pass it on."

Pell took the exhibit from Terrell's hands. After a perfunctory glance, he passed it back to Carlo.

Carlo placed it in front of Fleet. "This is for you, I think."

Expression frozen, Fleet studied the autopsy photo of Thuy Sen. With clinical detachment, Terri inquired, "Did you ever force this minor Asian female to put your penis in her mouth?"

Holding up his hand, Hall leaned awkwardly between Terri and the witness. "For the record," he interjected, "Mr. Fleet will invoke the Fifth Amendment in response to any further questions." Gathering himself up, he mustered a show of indignation. "Your strategy's transparent—to present Mr. Fleet as the guilty party and to expose him to charges of perjury. No matter how irrelevant to the matter at hand—"

"The matter at hand," Terri interrupted, "is the murder of this child. That was the subject of Mr. Fleet's trial testimony fifteen years ago, on which basis my client stands to die.

"So let's be clear, counselor. We're going to be here for however long it takes for me to read aloud every answer he gave, to every question Lou Mauriani asked him about the murder of Thuy Sen, and then to ask him if the answer's true. By my count, that's roughly sixty-seven chances to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Is that what Mr. Fleet intends to do?"

Hall folded his arms. "On my advice, yes."

Terri turned to Pell. "Any suggestions, Mr. Pell?"

"No."

"Then I've got one: grant Mr. Fleet immunity from prosecution—for both perjury and the murder of Thuy Sen—based on any answer he gives in this proceeding." Terri allowed disdain to seep into her voice. "That would satisfy all of our needs—Mr. Fleet's continuing need to escape prosecution for the murder of Thuy Sen, Rennell Price's need not to be executed for Mr. Fleet's crime, and your need to learn the truth. Which is the reason, I recall, you gave me for informing Mr. Fleet of Payton Price's confession."

With apparent effort, Pell remained inscrutable, marshaling the careful phrasing which, Terri knew, he had composed to evade entrapment. "Whether to grant immunity," he said in his most professional manner, "is a question of policy, based on a number of very complicated factors, to be decided at the highest levels of the Attorney General's Office. It's not within my authority to immunize Mr. Fleet in the middle of his deposition."

"Too bad," Terri answered. "I guess we're in for a long day. But please get back to me before the next time we see Judge Bond."

Across the table, Eddie Fleet watched her, malevolence filling his eyes.

"Why don't you take a break?" she said to him. "Your 'oral presentation' has just begun."

* * *

"Pell's expression was a study," Carlo told his father that evening. "But Fleet's made me afraid for Terri. He hates her as much as she hates him."

With an expression of worry, Chris sat back, the State's response to Rennell's postponed clemency petition spread across his desk. "She got what she wanted," he answered at length. "Maybe the A.G. will grant immunity—"

"Don't count on it." Terri stood in the doorway, causing Carlo to wonder how much she had heard. "It's a matter of 'policy,' " she continued. "If they start immunizing snitches to help petitioners on habeas corpus, just think how long these cases might go on. There'd be no end to them." Turning to Chris, she asked, "So, do I put Rennell on?"

Chris rubbed the back of his head. "Depends on what Pell does about Fleet, I think. Or Bond—"

The telephone rang. Picking it up, Chris listened for a moment, then pushed the speaker button. Tammy Mattox's smoke and whiskey drawl filled the office. "When you gonna see Rennell?" she asked without preface.

"Tomorrow," Terri answered. "Why?"

"Grandma's dead. After all this time, I think Payton dying was all she could take." Tammy's voice softened. "Rennell's got no family now but crazy Mama. Know you got a full plate, Terri, but someone needs to tell him."