“Disappeared? What did you think had happened to her? Did you think the Klan had found her?”
“For a couple of hours I did. But then I found out she’d given Nellie a note for me. Viola wrote that she was certain her brother was dead, and she couldn’t bear to stay in Natchez anymore. She said she loved me, but that there was no future for us and never had been. She told me not to look for her. That was all. Nellie told me one of her men had driven Viola up to the train station in Memphis, but beyond that, she wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“And the next you heard of Viola was the letter that came to your office, from a P.O. box in Chicago?”
“That’s correct.”
“When was the next personal contact between you and Viola Turner?”
“Ten weeks before she died, when she called my office and told me that she was dying, and that she intended to come home to do it.”
Quentin gives the jury time to digest this. “You’re saying that thirty-seven years passed without any direct contact between the two of you?”
“That’s right. Just the checks. A couple of times I put a note in with my check, asking if she was well, that kind of thing. But Viola never responded.”
“I see.” Quentin rotates his wheelchair to face the jury. “So in the eyes of Snake Knox, Viola had not only returned to Natchez—an act for which the Double Eagles had vowed to kill her—but was also talking to Henry Sexton, a reporter actively investigating unsolved murders committed by the Double Eagle group.”
“That’s correct.”
“And you believe Snake Knox had some suspicion that Mrs. Turner had killed his brother Frank back in 1968?”
“I can’t be sure of that. I believe he did.”
Quentin nods slowly. “Dr. Cage, after you left Cora Revels’s house, did you see or hear anything that led you to believe that the Double Eagles might have been involved in Viola’s death?”
“Yes. As I drove away that night, down Pine Ridge Road, I saw a pickup truck parked on the shoulder near the turn to Cora’s house. In the trees, the way you see trucks parked when people are hunting deer. But I didn’t see any people inside it.”
“Was there anything remarkable about this truck?”
“There was a sticker on the back windshield. A big yellow ‘D.’”
“And what does that sticker stand for?”
Almost everyone in this room knows that sticker is the emblem of Darlington Academy, a predominantly white school founded the year that the federal courts began enforcing desegregation in our area.
“Darlington Academy,” Dad says. “Later on, after I’d been charged with Viola’s murder, Walt Garrity and I tracked down that truck. I hoped the owner would turn out to be Snake Knox, but it belonged to Will Devine.”
“The Double Eagle murdered in this court yesterday.”
“Yes. Devine lived less than a mile away from Knox, and I believe Knox took his truck that night to threaten or kill Viola.”
Shad doesn’t bother to object. Dad has already convicted himself of murder—or accessory after the fact, in any case. Which makes me wonder what in God’s name Quentin thinks he’s doing. I half expected Dad to destroy himself on the stand, but not this. Quentin is helping him do it.
Quentin rolls closer to the witness box. “You’ve given us a lot to process, Doctor. But let’s return to the rather astonishing statement you made a few minutes ago. That Viola Turner wanted Knox and Thornfield to murder her.”
“All right.”
“Did you mean that literally?”
Dad bites his lip and stares at the floor for several seconds. “Yes and no,” he says finally. “Nobody wants to be murdered. But Viola had flagrantly defied a credible death threat in order to come home and die under my care. Once here, the threat against her was renewed, and by the very men who had raped her and murdered her brother. They had escaped punishment for four decades. Viola knew she was going to die in any case. If, by her death, she could ensure that those men would meet justice . . . I think she would have made that bargain.”
“But how could that have been arranged?”
“I don’t know exactly. But maybe that had something to do with Henry’s camera setup and the tapes he left there. Maybe Viola hoped to catch them in the act. Record her own murder. I think the only two people who could have answered that question are dead.”
Quentin appears to be analyzing this theory. As he does, the genius of it hits me with bracing force. Dad has just justified the existence of another videotape in a way that doesn’t implicate him. So long as the Dumpster tape cannot be restored, he’s dodged the only damage it can do in its erased state. The sheer audacity of this move is stunning. He’s bet everything on black—a fifty-fifty shot that the Bureau won’t be able to restore that tape. But why? We already know that they’ve managed to restore Henry’s tape. Why should Dad be more confident about the Dumpster tape? Is it possible that he’s telling the truth about his theory of Viola planning to provoke Snake to kill her?
“Mr. Avery?” Judge Elder prompts. “Have you completed your examination?”
“Ah . . . I beg your pardon, Judge. I was having a senior moment.” Quentin turns back to Dad. “So, Doctor, when you left the Revels house, you believed that Viola was mildly sedated and would wake up no worse off than she had been before the morphine injection?”
“Exactly.”
“Thank you.” Quentin rolls back to his table as though finished, but then, as though just remembering something, he says, “Dr. Cage, did you honor the promise that Viola Turner asked you to make?”
“Which promise?”
“The promise to take care of her son in the future?”
“Yes. I set up a trust that will begin releasing funds to him when he’s fifty years old.”
“Objection!” Shad cries with surprising force. “Whatever scheme Dr. Cage may have set up, he obviously did it to try to mend fences with the man who was pushing the murder charges against him.”
“Not true, Your Honor,” Quentin says, lifting an inch-thick sheaf of legal-size paper off his table. “Nine days after Viola Turner’s death, Dr. Cage established an irrevocable trust for Lincoln Turner. My wife, a licensed attorney, is the trustee. That trust contains three hundred thousand dollars, and even if Dr. Cage is found guilty, it cannot be revoked. I can also assure you that Mr. Turner knew nothing about it until this moment. I ask that this trust be entered into evidence as Defense Exhibit Six.”
Glancing back at Lincoln, I see that he’s more surprised than anyone by this revelation.
Judge Elder looks put out by the radical turn this trial has taken. “Do you have any further questions, Mr. Avery?”
“Not at this time, Your Honor.”
Judge Elder regards Quentin in stern silence, his eyes filled with reproof. Then he turns to the prosecution table. “Your witness, Mr. Johnson.”
For the first time since this trial began, Shadrach Johnson appears to be at a loss for words.
Chapter 64