“Hearsay, Your Honor,” Shad objects.
Quentin is prepared for this objection. He smiles and says, “Your Honor, the testimony clearly falls under 803(24). All the criteria are met.”
Judge Elder opens a small softbound book, licks his finger, and quickly pages through it. After a few seconds, he says, “Present sense impression . . . I’ll allow it.”
“Please continue, Dr. Cage,” Quentin says with satisfaction.
“The Double Eagles had traced Viola to Chicago only a year after she left Natchez, and they told her that they would kill her if she ever returned here. Will Devine actually visited her in Chicago and made the threat.”
“Objection, Your Honor,” Shad says again. “Hearsay. That allegedly happened thirty-seven years ago, and neither Viola Turner nor Mr. Devine can substantiate any such threat.”
Joe Elder reaches for his book again, but this time does not open it. “I’m going to sustain that.”
Quentin could argue another exception to the hearsay rule, but he doesn’t. As he and Dad continue, I’m surprised Shad doesn’t object more often. Perhaps he knows that if he does, Quentin will argue that everything Viola said to Dad that night could be considered some sort of exception, as there are so many and Quentin undoubtedly knows them all. But more likely, Shad well knows that he induced his witnesses to break the hearsay rules almost continuously, making discretion the better part of valor now.
“Despite the Double Eagle threat,” Dad says, “the recent one, Viola told Snake Knox and Sonny Thornfield that she would not stop talking to Mr. Sexton, and that they would have to kill her to shut her up.”
Quentin’s voice conveys surprise and more than a little skepticism. “Did Mrs. Turner call the police about this incident?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she wanted those men to kill her.”
Chapter 63
It takes Judge Elder half a minute to silence the gallery after Dad’s assertion that Viola had wanted the Double Eagles to kill her.
“I beg your pardon, Doctor?” Quentin says. “Are you suggesting that Viola Turner wanted to be murdered?”
“Yes, sir. She discussed it with me.”
“Why would she want to be murdered?”
“So that the men who had destroyed her family would finally be punished.”
“I think we’re going to need you to explain that, Doctor.”
Dad folds his hands together and speaks directly to the jury. For the first time, his voice begins to rise in volume, taking on some of its old power and persuasiveness.
“As has been testified already, Viola was gang-raped in 1968 by five members of the Double Eagle group. They were Frank Knox, Frank’s teenage son Forrest, Frank’s brother Snake, Sonny Thornfield, and Glenn Morehouse. Those men brutalized Viola for hours in her home. The trauma of this experience scarred her forever. Viola was never the same afterwards. She ended our relationship because of that crime, although she must have been pregnant by then. It’s a miracle that the child survived at all, considering what they did to her.”
Quentin appears to be as shocked as the audience by these statements. “And you’re telling us that, for this reason, Viola was willing to be murdered? To punish the men who had raped her?”
“It’s not that simple. Viola had suffered much more than rape at their hands. At the time Viola was assaulted, her brother, Jimmy, and another civil rights activist named Luther Davis were in hiding. The Double Eagles raped Viola in an effort to lure them into the open. And their plan worked. Jimmy and Luther did leave their refuge—a place called Freewoods—shortly after the rape, and then they disappeared. Of course, Viola also broke off her relationship with me shortly after the rape.”
“How long had your affair been going on?”
“About seven weeks, in the physical sense. Emotionally, for much longer.”
“How did she end the relationship?”
“Painfully.” Dad closes his eyes briefly, like a man calling on deep reserves of fortitude. “Completely by chance, one of the men who had raped Viola was brought into our clinic for treatment. He had been seriously injured on the job.”
I feel my pulse start to pick up again.
“Who was that?” Quentin asks.
“Frank Knox. He was hurt while working at the Triton Battery plant. I was the contract physician for that company. Knox should have been taken to the hospital, but his coworkers brought him to me. In those days we did a lot more aggressive trauma treatment in the office.”
“What happened when Knox was brought in?”
“Viola initially refused to treat him. But she had always assisted me with trauma cases, so I insisted that she prep him. When I arrived in the surgery, however, I found Knox on the floor. His skin was blue and he was gasping for air.”
Every person in the courtroom is on the edge of his seat.
“What was Viola doing?” Quentin asks.
“Standing by the table, watching him die.”
“She wasn’t trying to treat him?”
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I knelt and checked Knox’s airway, then tried to find the source of his difficulty. He’d suffered terrible trauma. A pallet of car batteries had fallen on him, rupturing his chest wall. But I sensed that wasn’t the source of his acute problem. I tried to get Viola to help me, but she refused. I actually got up and slapped her, but it did no good. When I asked why she wouldn’t help, she told me that Frank Knox and several other men had raped her two days prior.”
“Was that the first you’d heard of this rape?”
Dad’s face remains stonelike, except for a brief movement of his lips. “Yes.”
“What did you do then?”
“I asked why Knox was on the floor and in such bad shape. Viola told me she had injected air into a major vein. I could see the syringe she had used lying on the floor. A very large syringe.”
“Air. In a vein. What would be the result of such an act?”
“A bubble of air in a blood vessel won’t actually hurt you—not generally. But after questioning Viola, I learned that she’d injected Knox a total of three times. Probably two hundred cc’s of air, maybe more. An air embolus of that size would kill the patient when it reached his heart. Knox probably couldn’t have been saved even if he’d been in an urban trauma center.”
“Nevertheless, did you do what you could to try to save him?”
Dad looks directly at the jury. “No.”
This time the spectators make no sound at all. In fact, they are so silent that I can hear my heart pounding in my ears. My father has just admitted malpractice on the stand. And I am certain he is about to make it worse.
“No?” Quentin asks, as though shocked. “What did you do?”
“Nothing. Her answer had stunned me, but I was also enraged by what I’d heard about the gang rape. I couldn’t bring myself to try to save the man who had done that. I heard a siren. An ambulance my staff had called arrived outside. After a moment’s hesitation, I picked up the syringe Viola had used and hid it in a drawer.”