“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 mention 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.”
I hold up both hands to stop his flow. “Preacher Avery,” I mutter, “the evangelist of reasonable doubt.”
“That’s right. And in this trial, I’ve got the dream client. Your father’s done so much good in this town, somebody on that panel’s got to be yearning for a way to let him go home to his family. All I’ve got to do is give them a hook to hang their doubt on.”
“You’ve got a long way to go. You let Shad dig a mighty deep hole today.”
“A circumstantial hole.”
“And the tapes?”
This time he drops the smile, but he lets me know he resents me forcing him to be so pragmatic. “Look, on the way over here, I called a forensic guy I use in New York, top of his field. He tells me there’s less than a ten percent chance that Sony can restore the data on those tapes to any usable form. I’ll take those odds any day.”
Relief floods through me with surprising power. “That’s good to know. But even if the tapes stay erased, the forensics aren’t your only problem. Shad’s outflanked you on race.”
“How you figure that?”
“He didn’t sidestep it. He shoved race right onto the front burner. And not even the great Quentin Avery can predict how a jury of seven blacks and five whites is going to react to evidence of an interracial affair, a mixed-race baby, and a white man killing a black woman to keep her quiet. The blacks may want to punish Dad for not acknowledging that baby, and the whites might crucify him for letting down his own race and his legal family. Hell, Shad could argue that every good thing Dad has done to help blacks since 1968 was a pathetic attempt to expiate his guilt over Viola and her child.”
“Is that what you’d argue in his place?”
“You’re damn right.”
Quentin nods slowly, as if listening to me for the first time. “Do you think Shad’s smart enough to do that?”
“Harvard Law isn’t a charm school.”
“No. But it’s the kind of place that turns out lawyers so clever that sometimes they outsmart themselves.”
“That’s wishful thinking, Q. Look, either you give me some sort of substantive outline of your strategy, or a change is going to have to be made.”
He glances back at Doris, but she’s looking at the floor. “You hear that, baby? Penn’s talking like he’s my client.”
“I heard him,” she says softly.
The old man turns back to me with hardened eyes. “Boy, you know only your father can fire me.”
“Quentin, Dad may be your client, but Mom’s paying your fee.”
“Bullshit.”
“He put his assets in her name long ago.”
The old eyes flare with indignation. “I’ll handle the case pro bono, then.”
This brings a faint smile to my lips. “Will you?”
“You’re damn right I will. I’m rich as Croesus, goddamn it!”
“It may come to that, buddy. But it doesn’t have to.”
“So long as I run every step of my case by you for approval? No, thank you. Hey, what have you been spending your time doing? You made any progress convincing a Double Eagle to flip?”
This stops my train of thought. So Dad told him about our conversation in the Pollock FCI.
“What about Will Devine’s truck?” he asks. “The Darlington Academy sticker?”