Conviction

THREE

"KIDS," CHARLES MONK SAID SOFTLY. "TO ME, THEY WERE ALWAYS the worst. Never quite got used to it."

Fifty-seven days to go. Perhaps that was why, Terri thought, Monk's words had a valedictory tone; perhaps it was just the reflective melancholy of a veteran homicide inspector who, freshly retired, had the freedom of acknowledging emotions which for too long had been a luxury. Then she wondered if the melancholy was her own, more about the daughter she knew than the children Charles Monk had seen.

They sat at a sidewalk café in North Beach, the early morning pedestrians—tourists and schoolkids and office workers headed for the Financial District—passing by their table. The morning was bright but a little chill; Monk stiffened, a wince briefly disturbing the granite angles of his seamed brown face, and then stretched one leg in front of him. "Knee," he told her with resignation. "Vietnam."

"Want to go inside?"

Monk slowly shook his head. "Not if I can help it. Just make me feel like an invalid. Worse than that—retired."

Terri smiled. They had been adversaries, sometimes bitterly so, but never enemies. Monk was smart and honest, a legend on the street; he seemed willing enough to talk with her, maybe because he was bored, more likely because he was satisfied with the integrity of his work. For Monk, the execution of Rennell Price was a given—the recompense, too long delayed, for what he had seen fifteen years before.

"Let's start from the beginning," Terri requested.

* * *

It had been late September, the waning of the baseball season, and the Giants were playing a Thursday night game at Candlestick. Through Monk's windshield, the circular glow of klieg lights rose from the bowl of the stadium.

It sat on a promontory jutting eastward into the San Francisco Bay, the ill-advised project of a mayor who seemed never to have visited at night, when the stiff winds buffeted your face and chill fog seeped into your bones. A cop waved Monk past the barrier erected to divert the flow of traffic, and Monk's headlights found the parking lot closest to the bay.

He parked beside the water. Stepping out, conscious of the shadow of the stadium a quarter mile behind him, the thin cries of deluded fans carrying in the cold, damp air which made this such a miserable place to play—or watch—a ball game. Or for Monk to be now.

Pulling up the collar of his windbreaker, he crossed a strip of sand and underbrush to the low wall of rocks which edged the bay. Far across the water were the glistening lights of the Oakland hills; a few feet from him, in the black shallows of the water, the new medical examiner, Liz Shelton, dressed in a down jacket and hip boots and clutching a flashlight, braced herself against the current as she scrutinized a dark form which had washed up against the base of the rocks. A lab technician knelt beside it.

"Didn't know you fished," Monk said.

Liz glanced up at him. Her dirty-blond hair was tied back off her neck, and her level gaze was somber in the moonlight. "Fly-fishing," she answered and moved her flashlight toward the shadowy form.

Captured in its yellow glow was the bloated face of a child who appeared to be Asian. Long black hair, swirling in the water, marked her as a girl.

Monk peered down at her. He could not see her legs; though soaked with water, her wool sweater appeared dark green. As her hair swirled again, Monk caught the glint of what might have been a silver barrette.

"Who found her?" he asked Shelton.

"Samoans. A bunch of them were sitting on the rocks, drinking beer."

Which figured; in Monk's reckoning, they were about the only folks scary enough, or maybe just dense enough, to hang out here in the dark and cold. Monk's knee had begun to throb.

"How long she been in the bay, you think?"

Shelton peered at the body with narrowing eyes, as if trying to see the child beneath the bloated mask. "Two days, maybe."

Beside the victim, the criminologist studied her for signs of trauma. In terms of external evidence, it was all he could accomplish now, and perhaps ever: a floater in the bay would have all sorts of stuff on it, from seaweed to the residue of toilets, and there would be little way of telling where any of it came from. Far better if she'd been wrapped up in a blanket and dumped in Golden Gate Park.

Monk looked up again. "How long dead?" he asked Shelton.

"Not sure. Maybe about the same."

"Any guess on cause?"

"Not yet."

Monk stared down at the victim. More quietly, he asked, "Think it's her?"

Shelton considered this. Monk did not need to explain: two afternoons ago, in a crack-infested section of the Bayview District, the nine-year-old daughter of Cambodian immigrants had vanished after school. She had stayed late for extra help with English; she had left alone; and as of now, her teacher was the last person who claimed to have seen her. In the photographs shown on television, the girl, named Thuy Sen, appeared grave and delicate.

"I'd say I hope not," Shelton answered, "but then she'd just be someone else's daughter."

Turning from the body, Monk gazed out at the sloping hills of the Bayview District, their light and shadow some distance beyond the stadium. "Why," he wondered aloud, "would Cambodians decide to settle in Bayview?"

"It's like Bogart said in Casablanca," Liz responded wearily. "They must have been misinformed."

* * *

After Liz took charge of the body, transporting it to the Hall of Justice, Monk had gone to his office and begun calling the plainclothes cops who were searching for Thuy Sen.

The lead cop was in a sports bar in the Marina District. Above the din of voices and the Giants game, he told Monk where things stood.

They had done it by the numbers—cruised the neighborhood, searched her house, broadcast her description to operations, called hospitals, interviewed her teacher and, of course, her father, mother, and sister. "You know how it is in the Bayview," the cop told Monk. "Ninety-nine percent of the kids just decide not to show, or Mama lets 'em run around loose. Maybe nine or ten o'clock she'll get curious about where the kid might be. But Cambodians are different."

From blacks, you mean, Monk thought but did not say. "The parents have any ideas?" he asked.

"Nope. Last time they saw her she was heading off to school with her twelve-year-old sister. Sis's job was to walk her to school every morning, and home every afternoon. This time she didn't—she seems pretty much of a mess. You can see the parents staring at her—they don't need to say a word."

Monk found himself studying the picture on his desk, his wife and their two daughters. "How are they?" he inquired. "The parents."

"Mom's jittery and anxious, can't sit still. Dad's, as they say, inscrutable. But they say they had no problems with Thuy Sen—no acting up, no conflicts, no hanging around with drug dealers or bad kids on the street. Her teacher agrees; as far as she knows, the girls keep pretty much to themselves."

"What does Sister say?"

"Not much," he answered, "except that they took the same route every day from home to school. We've been knocking on doors to ask if anyone saw her. Nothing yet."

In the bar, Monk heard a ragged chorus of cheers—the Giants, he guessed, had just done something good. "When she left for school," he asked, "did they say what she was wearing?"

"Yeah—a plaid skirt, Mom says. And her favorite green wool sweater."

* * *

By the time Monk caught up with Liz Shelton, the victim was on the autopsy table, her eyes shut, her naked limbs rigid and pitifully thin under the harsh light of an overhead lamp.

Monk gazed at her. "So?" he asked Shelton.

"No evidence of a beating, no obvious indications of brain damage. The only bruises seem to be postmortem."

"What about penetration?"

"No sign of it, vaginal or anal. We'll take swabs, of course. But I doubt we'll find anything."

"Any guesses?"

Touching one side of the girl's face, Shelton extended her forefinger and gently opened an eyelid. At the edge of the sightless brown eye were starbursts of red.

"Like she was strangled," Monk observed.

Gently, Shelton removed her hand from the child's face, closing her eyelid again. "Except that there's no external evidence of that. It's like she maybe choked on a sandwich. That's why we perform autopsies."

Monk nodded. "I'll call the parents," he said. "See if they can ID her."

Shelton emitted a sigh. She was new on the job, Monk thought.

* * *

Monk and his partner, Rollie Ainsworth, sat in Shelton's office with Thuy Sen's father, mother, and the police translator, a petite young woman who had fled the Cambodian killing fields.

As had the Sen family, Monk learned in the ghastly form of small talk which occupied their anxious waiting. The mother, Chou, had lost her parents to the murderers of the Khmer Rouge; the brother and two sisters of Meng, the father, had been taken by the government and never seen again. Both seemed traumatized anew—the woman trembled, and the father, sitting stiffly in a chair, stared at the wall with foreboding.

"How did they get to the Bayview?" Monk asked the translator.

The young woman, reluctant, turned to the father and uttered words which sounded to Monk like a question. After a moment, Meng Sen answered in a monotone.

"His great-aunt was already there," the translator told him. "She wanted family around her."

* * *

When Liz Shelton was ready, Monk led the Sens to the glass window. The translator lingered behind.

The window was covered with curtains. Though it was intended to minimize shock and cut off the odor of death, neither, in Monk's experience, was much help at moments like this.

From inside, Shelton slowly drew back the curtains. The child lay on a gurney, draped in a white sheet.

The parents gazed at her. It was the mother who broke first, emitting a muted shriek, hands covering her face. For what seemed a long time, the father did not react. Then he closed his eyes, still silent, and nodded.

* * *

Thuy Sen did not play near the shore, Monk learned through the translator. She did not swim, and did not like the bay. The water was too cold.

After a few minutes, Monk told the woman to take them home.

* * *

It was midmorning before Shelton finished the autopsy, and Monk had barely slept before returning to her office.

"She choked to death," the medical examiner said baldly. "But not on a sandwich. On semen."

Monk said nothing. Briefly, it struck him that Thuy Sen's older sister was in for a lifetime of guilt and anguish.

"We found semen in her mouth and throat and airways," Shelton continued. "One male can ejaculate three to five milligrams. More than enough to choke a nine-year-old girl."

Monk considered this. "Anything to show she didn't volunteer?"

"No. But judging from what you know, how likely does that seem? Even over there."

Monk answered with a shrug. "What else?" he inquired.

With a tentative air, Shelton steepled her fingers, resting them against her chin. "There was a hair snagged in her barrette. For all we know, it came from the bay, and hair identification by ethnicity is hardly an exact science. But more likely than not it's Negroid."

Again Monk said nothing. Neither needed to comment on the inflammatory images this might summon, even in San Francisco—a nine-year-old girl choking to death during forcible oral copulation with a black man. Whoever the sperm donor turned out to be, Monk's job was to find him.

* * *

For some moments, Terri had not touched her coffee.

" 'Him' turned out to be 'them,' " Monk said with quiet emphasis. "We found them both."