“Goddamn it,” I mutter under my breath. “That tears it.” If Shad ever proves he knew about that tape, much less erased it in an MRI machine, Dad will be convicted of murder.
Shad says, “I would find it very difficult to believe that someone would begin the process of euthanasia with a live camera pointed at the sickbed.”
“I’d have to agree with you there,” Dad replies, and several people in the audience chuckle.
“What I’m suggesting is that you must have checked that camera to make sure it wasn’t recording. At least made sure the red light wasn’t on.”
Dad shrugs. “I don’t recall seeing any red light.”
“So you deny, under oath, any knowledge of a videotape that might have recorded Viola Turner’s murder or events shortly before it?”
“Yes.”
As Dad awaits the next question, I realize that even if the Dumpster tape is restored and shows Dad inside Cora’s house, that doesn’t mean he knew anything about it. Nor does it prove that he erased it in an MRI machine.
“Listen to me carefully, Doctor. Did you remove one or two tapes from the Revels house that night?”
“One.”
“Did you erase a Sony mini-DV tape in the MRI machine at St. Catherine’s Hospital?”
This time Dad hesitates before answering. But after a few seconds, he says, “I did not.”
What will he do if John Kaiser walks in here with a fully restored Dumpster tape . . . ?
“I only know of one tape,” Dad continues. “The one Viola made for Henry Sexton.”
As my father falls silent, I am filled with a horrific conviction that he is lying. He’s making a brazen gamble, betting his life on his belief that the FBI won’t be able to bring that Dumpster tape back from the dead. And that is exactly what Shad wanted him to do. The whole cross up to this point was designed to take Dad to this assertion.
“Well, Doctor,” Shad says, “I think we’re going to be able to judge that for ourselves in due course. Now, I’d like to—”
The door at the back of the courtroom stops Shad in midsentence. Sheriff Billy Byrd steps inside. Catching Shad’s eye, he raises one finger to his right cheek. Shad goes still. Then he holds up two fingers and raises a single eyebrow. Billy Byrd turns up his palms.
“Your Honor,” says Quentin, “the district attorney and the sheriff appear to be practicing baseball signals.”
“I see that, Mr. Avery. Mr. Johnson?”
My cell phone vibrates in my pocket. With a sickening sense of dread, I pull out the device, already certain of what it will say.
“Your Honor,” Shad says, “I believe we’re about to find out just how truthful the defendant has been with us today.”
“Is that so? Please explain.”
John Kaiser’s newest text message flashes onto my phone screen with the impact of a prison sentence.
The Attorney General just signed off on permission for restored Tape S-15 (tape from Roadtrek) to be used in the trial. Faxing copy of the signed order to Judge Elder’s office. I’m 15 minutes from Natchez on a Bureau chopper. Will land at Fort Rosalie. I will personally deliver the disk to the courtroom. No luck with S-16 (Dumpster tape) yet. Cannot predict success or failure.
A shudder runs through my body. Like voices from the grave, the restored videotapes could damn my father as a facile liar and a murderer. While I try to regain my composure, Shad announces that the FBI will shortly deliver a restored copy of the tape Viola made for Henry Sexton and may soon provide a usable version of the tape Sheriff Byrd’s men found in the hospital Dumpster. Then Judge Elder grants a one-hour recess to await the tape and view it before presenting it to the jury.
Chapter 65
After Kaiser delivered the restored videotape, Judge Elder asked the attorneys back to his chambers to view it. I tried to accompany Quentin, of course, but he told me that Dad didn’t want me in the room. I absorbed this blow as I had all the others, with little grace and less charity, and spent the recess with my mother, trying to keep up her spirits while two men set up a large screen against the wall opposite the jury box.
When counsel finally returns from their private premiere and court is called to order, Quentin’s face and manner tell me nothing. I try to catch his eye, but he remains focused on the defense table as he drives his wheelchair to it. Judge Elder makes a few remarks about the chain of custody, and the restored tape is entered into evidence as State’s Exhibit 18.
Then the lights go down.
At first we see nothing. Then several bright flashes hit the screen. I hear Judge Elder grumbling. When the FBI agent tasked with projecting the restored video file finally succeeds in opening an image on the screen, I don’t see what I expected. The whole image is rendered in shades of blue, which by itself would not be too bad, but the resolution is very grainy. Besides that, the whole visual field is obscured by hundreds of flickering artifacts, some—bizarrely enough—bright pinks and greens. But the longer the tape runs, the more my mind adapts to what it’s seeing. What at first seemed only a hazy outline of the sickroom I saw so clearly on Henry’s accidental hard-drive recording soon becomes a familiar scene, like that same sickroom illuminated by a dim blue nightlight. And in the middle of the frame, a little left of center, is the woman at the heart of this case.
In America, we don’t often see people in their final days prior to death, not even in photographs. For those unused to the sight, it can be a significant shock. The emaciation in particular triggers a natural revulsion in healthy people. I saw this when my first wife died of cancer, and I never really got used to it. The faces of the jury members tell me that despite having seen the hard drive recording of Viola in her death throes, most were unprepared for the sight of the wraithlike figure propped motionless in the hospital bed, staring into the camera lens. Only Viola’s eyes, like wet stones, project any sense of life from the screen. But when she begins to speak, the hoarse but articulate voice lifts me erect in my seat.
“Hello, Henry,” Viola begins. “I can’t speak too well. I can’t catch my breath.
“You asked me to talk about Jimmy, and what I might know about what happened to him. You asked me to talk about my life as well. I don’t have the strength for much of that. But some of what I went through is tied up with what happened to Jimmy. I took a shot of cortisone this morning, and some morphine a few minutes ago. I drank some sweet tea for the sugar, too, so I might have the energy to talk three or four minutes.