by Greg Iles
“The tape that was in the camera that night.”
“What about it? Are you saying that you believe you found that tape as well?”
“You’re damn right we did.”
Shad Johnson comes to his feet. “Your Honor—”
“Yes, Counselor?”
Quentin looks over his shoulder at Shad. “Is the prosecutor objecting to his own witness, Your Honor?”
“I’m not sure,” Joe Elder says. “Mr. Johnson?”
“I beg your pardon, Your Honor.”
Shad returns to his seat slowly enough that I can tell his witness has gone off script.
“Tell us about this other tape,” Quentin says.
“We found it in the hospital Dumpster,” Billy Byrd says in a defiant voice.
For a couple of seconds I stop breathing.
“What hospital?” Quentin asks.
“St. Catherine’s, where Dr. Cage puts his patients.”
Oh, man . . .
“And when was this?”
“The day after Viola Turner was found dead. As I said earlier, we made a maximum effort to find those tapes. We covered every place Dr. Cage might have been, and one was the hospital. And we found a Sony mini-DV tape in that Dumpster.”
I’m balling my fists so hard that my right tricep starts twitching. As I suspected all along, Quentin made a suicidal mistake in electing not to request discovery.
“And did the tape have anything on it?” Quentin asks.
Billy grimaces like a man with an ulcer. “No. It had been erased, just like the other one.”
Hell, yes! shouts a voice in my head, and my hands relax. Lost in the sands of time.
“I see,” Quentin says. “And did it also have Dr. Cage’s fingerprints on it?”
My right hand clenches once more.
“No, it had no fingerprints. It had been wiped clean.”
“Clean,” Quentin echoes. “No prints. On a tape found in a Dumpster.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know what you’re assuming. But in this case, I see no connection whatever between that tape and my client.”
“You will.”
“What does that mean?”
“The lot number on that tape matched the one that had the doc’s prints on it and the two that we found sealed in Ms. Revels’s house. And Dr. Cage had gone to the hospital the morning of Viola Turner’s death. I know that for a fact. He also went the next day, before skipping bail.”
This time Billy silences Quentin, and the pleasure in his face is almost sexual. After about ten seconds, Quentin says, “But there was nothing on the tape, correct?”
“That’s right.”
After several seconds of absolute silence, Quentin turns his chair and drives back to the defense table. “No further questions at this time, Your Honor.”
The courtroom feels as though some machine just sucked half the air out of it. No one knows quite what to do. In this strange silence, Judge Elder looks at his watch, and I do the same. It’s 4:09 p.m.
“Mr. Johnson,” says the judge, “do you have another witness?”
Shad comes to his feet and speaks in a measured voice. “I do, Your Honor. I had intended to call Lincoln Turner. However, in the heat of cross-examination, Sheriff Byrd mentioned evidence that I had not intended to bring forward until tomorrow. That has created a difficult situation.”
Judge Elder doesn’t look very sympathetic. “Explain, Counselor.”
“The tape he referred to was indeed found, but at this time it is undergoing complex forensic analysis and processing.”
“Of what nature, Counselor?”
“Your Honor, only very recently I was told that technology exists that might allow a partial restoration of the videotapes in question. I queried the FBI about this, and I was told that my best bet was to contact the manufacturer. I did so. At this time, those two tapes are being worked on in a California lab owned by the Sony Corporation . . .”
The acid flooding my stomach is probably minor compared to the reaction Quentin Avery must be enduring.
“. . . if I may beg the court’s indulgence,” Shad continues, “I could call Mr. Turner at this time, but my direct examination could take quite a while. And since Sheriff Byrd brought up the tape found in the hospital Dumpster, I would prefer to enter both it and the tape found in Mr. Garrity’s van into evidence and deal with them before examining any other witnesses.”
“And will you be ready to proceed with that evidence first thing in the morning?”
“I believe so, Your Honor.”
“Very well.” Elder looks at his watch once more. “Court is adjourned until nine a.m. tomorrow.”
The crowd comes to its feet as one, like a human hive about to set out on an evening hunt. I need to talk to Quentin, but rather than try to buttonhole him in this mob, I’ll wait a bit, then get Tim to run me over to Edelweiss.
Joining the river of people sweeping through the back doors, I text my bodyguard to pick me up on Market Street. As I cut that way to make my exit, I realize that while it’s only two blocks from the courthouse to the bluff, the trial has brought chaos to the one-way streets of downtown Natchez. It could easily take Quentin and Doris half an hour to make it to Edelweiss in their van.
“Penn!” shouts a male voice. Tim Weathers’s voice. “Down here!”
The armored Yukon is parked in the middle of Market Street, blocking traffic like it’s waiting for Jay-Z and his entourage. I dart around a man trying to negotiate the steps in front of me with a walker, then race down to the street and jump into the backseat.
“Where to?” Tim asks, only half turning his head.
“I need to talk to Quentin, but we’ve got thirty minutes to kill. How about we take Annie and Mia to get a hamburger?”
“Sounds good to me.”
As we roll up Market Street, we pass a half-dozen TV satellite trucks, with reporters doing stand-ups under the courthouse oaks. Undoubtedly they are trumpeting to the world the existence of two videotapes that might be miraculously restored from oblivion. If they are—if the Sony Corporation’s wizards can perform a digital resurrection—what truths will those tapes reveal?
I don’t want to think about it.
Chapter 31
After sharing hamburgers and shakes with Annie and Mia, I convinced Tim to let me drive my own car down to Edelweiss. I’m sure he’s not far behind me, but it feels good to escape the shell of the close-protection drill for even a few minutes. Downtown traffic is still congested, but my Audi is small enough to dart between disoriented drivers on Washington Street.
Seeing an opening between an SUV and a Honda, I gun the S4 through the narrow gap and race for Broadway, which runs along the river. Eighty feet before I reach it, I pull the Audi between two crape myrtles on the right and drive across the grass to a hidden garage in the backyard of Edelweiss. Peering beneath the massive ginkgo tree that dominates the backyard, I can just see the nose of Quentin’s white Mercedes van sticking out from the corner of the house, parked on Broadway. A cable TV van with a big dish on its roof has set up base camp on the bluff side of the street, so reporters must be lurking nearby.
Using the ginkgo trunk for cover, I move stealthily toward the house. The broad gallery that wraps around the old chalet makes Edelweiss seem to float about ten feet above ground level. A line of green pickets shields the brick-pillared ground floor on all four sides, but there’s a gate in back, and a single stair leading up to the gallery. After unlocking that gate, I run up the stairs and reach the kitchen door without any media hounds sniffing me out.
I knock gently several times, but no one comes to the door. There’s no glass set in the back door, so I can’t see anything. Moving to my left, I look through a window and see Quentin and Doris in the kitchen, Quentin in his wheelchair talking on the phone while Doris peers toward the front of the house. A plate of Ritz crackers lies on the counter, beside it a jar of peanut butter and a can of Corona.
&nb
sp; I tap gently on the window.
Quentin and Doris both jump as though someone fired a shot. I point to the door to my right. As Doris moves toward it, Quentin hangs up the phone and angrily shakes his head. Doris walks to the window, leans up to the glass, and says, “I’m sorry, Penn, he doesn’t want to be bothered right now. He needs to stay focused on the case.”
“What case?” I ask, too loudly. “If you don’t let me in, the reporters will hear me and come running.”
Through the glass I hear Quentin cursing behind Doris. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “There’s nothing I can do.”
I’m about to bang on the window when Doris very pointedly looks downward. Following her eyes, I see her hand at her waist, beckoning me inside. At first I think she means to let me in, but then I realize that since she was hiding the gesture from Quentin, that’s unlikely. Then it hits me.
Taking my keys from my pocket, I simply unlock the back door and walk into the kitchen.
“You’re trespassing, goddamn it!” Quentin snaps.
“I own this house.”
“We’ll move to a goddamned hotel, then!”
“We’re not moving anywhere,” Doris says firmly, “unless it’s back home.”
I try to catch her eye, but Doris Avery is far too smooth a customer to let her husband detect conspiracy between us. I’m happy to have this woman as my ally. I met Doris two years ago, but I still don’t know how she wound up married to a man my father’s age.
“What do you want?” Quentin demands. “You ruined my lunch. Have you come to ruin my dinner, too?”
Before I can answer, he says, “The least you could have done is brought a couple of those bodyguards of yours with you. We need the help. The tourists are bad enough, trying to walk in the front door every ten minutes, but now we have the media maggots all over this case.”
“I’ll see about getting a man for your door.”
“Make sure he’ll protect me from you, too.”
“I’m surprised, Quentin. You usually like holding forth to the press.”
He gives me a quick glare, then rolls away and starts eating Ritz crackers from the plate on the marble island. Doris walks into the doorway that leads to the front room, then leans against the casing and waits to see what I’ve come to say.
“Quentin, I’m here because my mother wants to fire you.”
“Is that all?”
“No. Every lawyer in the courtroom thinks you’re suffering from dementia.”
He actually cackles at this. “Yeah, I see all those hacks out there second-guessing me. Armchair quarterbacks. Your fat pal Rusty’s been staring a hole in my back all day. I’ve been worried he might have a stroke.”
“Do you blame him? I’m surprised the judge hasn’t stepped in from being worried about being reversed on appeal.”
“On what grounds?”
“Ineffective assistance of counsel.”
He chuckles with defiant pride. “I’d like to see the judge with the balls to say that of me.”
“Joe Elder’s no pushover.”
Quentin’s eyes glint with emotion I cannot read. “No. But he’s not about to stop this thing. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because he wants us to lose. He’s enjoying this.”
This takes me aback. “Why do you say that?”
“When you’ve spent as many years in court as I have, you sense things. Hell, he’s practically acting as co-counsel for the prosecution. I just don’t know whether Joe wants to see me lose—you know, the Freudian kill-the-father thing—or whether he has some kind of grudge against your father. But it’s one or the other. You ought to do a little digging and find out which.”
“I will. Is that why you’re not objecting? Because you think Elder will overrule?”
Quentin doesn’t deign to answer. Spreading peanut butter on his Ritz seems to interest him a lot more.
“If that’s it, at least make him overrule you. Then it’ll be preserved for appeal.”
His eyes flick my way for a second. “I’m not worried about the appeals court, man. I’m gonna win this trial.”
I look to Doris for help, but she only shrugs.
“You haven’t said what you think of my strategy,” Quentin says in a teasing voice.
“Strategy? You let Shad make his entire forensic case with no opposition. You haven’t challenged any evidence or objected to patently inadmissible testimony. You didn’t even make an opening statement!”
“Are you finished?”
“Quentin, you only cross-examined two witnesses out of eight.”
“It ain’t the quantity of the questions, Grasshopper. It’s the quality.”
“You let Shad convince at least half the jury that the killer removed both videotapes from Cora’s house. Most of the jury believes Dad took those tapes.”
Quentin waves away my points as though I’m raising trivial issues.
“What the hell are you going to do if Shad walks in tomorrow with digital restorations of those tapes?”
“I’m not worried about those tapes.”
“Why not? Have you spoken to Dad about them?”
“I just did.”
“Do you know what’s on them?”
He smiles like a Jamaican handing out joints on a beach. “No idea, brother.”
I take a deep breath and try to rein in my anger. “Quentin . . . those tapes could destroy you tomorrow. And send Dad to Parchman.”
At last he fixes me with a serious gaze. “Are you that sure your father is guilty?”
“What the hell am I supposed to think at this point?”
“I guess you’ve given up, then.”
Doris’s presence should hold me back, but I can’t keep from demanding one specific answer. “Man . . . why the hell were you probing at the Frank Knox business with Cora?”
“It’s central to the Double Eagle thread of the narrative.”
This direct answer is such a novelty that it brings me up short. “Do you have proof of what you suggested about the Double Eagles threatening to kill Viola?”
Once again he exercises the royal prerogative not to answer.
“I’m not talking about in 1968,” I press. “I’m talking about the present day. Since Viola came back from Chicago. Do you know that white men came to see her? Threatened her?”
Quentin turns his wheelchair and runs his long fingers over the stainless steel face of the refrigerator. “All-Viking kitchen, baby. Me and Doris got the same thing at home. Made in Mississippi, just like the best music, the best women, the best—”
“Quentin! Do you have proof of any Double Eagle threat in the present?”
With a flick of his joystick, he whirls on me and yells: “If I had that, this case wouldn’t even have come to trial!”
“Then what do you have? A surprise witness? Is that why you didn’t request discovery? So Shad wouldn’t know you have a secret weapon?”
He laughs with scorn. “Surprise witness? Secret weapon? Man, what you think this is? Ironside? Matlock?”
“Quentin, for God’s sake. Dad’s life is at stake. You can’t simply imply that because he and Viola may have killed a Double Eagle, the Eagles took their revenge forty years later. Tell me you’ve got more than hints and ancient history.”
Quentin finishes chewing a cracker with angry force, then sets his jaw and stares back at me without a word.
“I’m only asking,” I tell him, “because I happen to have checked the alibis of Snake Knox, Sonny Thornfield, and every other Double Eagle whose identity is known to the FBI for the night Viola died. John Kaiser helped me. And all those bastards have alibis. Sonny, Snake, and three others have a rock-solid one.”
Quentin chuckles softly. “That bullshit about playing cards all night at Billy Knox’s hunting camp?”
“That’s right.”
“You know that’s a lie. That’s just the guilty parties covering each other’s asses.”
I don’t menti
on what Dad told me about Will Devine’s pickup truck. “Camp employees swore they were there.”
“And every damned one of those Mexicans earns his living from Billy Knox. What else they gonna say?”
“Quentin . . . this is a criminal trial. What we suspect doesn’t mean shit. You know that better than anybody. If you think Snake and Sonny killed Viola, you’ve got to prove it.”
Quentin smiles as though from some inward pleasure, then steeples his fingers before him. “Penn, what do you think a murder trial is?”
“Please don’t start with the Will Rogers legal philosophy.”
“I’m not. Just tell me the fundamental essence of a murder trial.”
“The State attempts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed murder, and the defense tries to prevent that by every means at its disposal.”
Quentin is still smiling like a Socratic professor. “If this was grammar school, I’d give you a gold star.”
Doris shakes her head from the door.
“I can do without the condescension, Quentin. I’ve tried more murder cases than you ever did.”
“But always as a prosecutor. Penn, you spent a decade working to prove your cases so thoroughly that twelve jurors would vote unanimously for conviction. That’s a tough job. But me? I’ve spent my whole life as a farmer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Planting seeds. That’s my job. Seeds of doubt. I plant a tiny seed, water it a little—with words, not H2O—and then I patiently tend it, nurse it to life. Most times, the seed dies aborning. But now and then, that doubt grows so strong in the soil of some sympathetic heart that one person finds the courage to stand against the combined anger and prejudice of eleven other people. And when that happens . . . my client goes free.”
“Poetic,” I mutter, “but not particularly helpful in light of today’s disaster.”
“One juror, Penn. That’s the business I’m in.”
“That’s not enough. Eleven to one, you hang the jury, and there’s a retrial.”
Quentin’s beatific smile becomes still more serene. “Even the longest journey begins with one step. An avalanche can start with one snowflake. One whisper, my brother. One word.”
