“Is something wrong with Quentin? Health-wise?”
“Health-wise? Of course. Where do you want to start?”
“I meant mentally.”
She takes some time with this. “Is he mentally competent? Yes. Is he as sharp as he used to be? Sometimes I think he’s even sharper.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
She walks to the rail and gazes off the bluff toward the great twin bridges to the south, their silver metal glowing like an erector set project spanning the dark river. “I was third in my law school class at Emory, Penn. Did you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“I’m not surprised. I live in a mighty big shadow. I worked for the U.S. attorney in Atlanta as well, on a federal task force.”
Her revelation amazes me. “Why have you never told me?”
“You never asked. You just assumed I was the trophy wife. Which I am, to a degree.”
“But Quentin—”
“He never told you either, right? There are good and bad reasons for that. I do a lot of work for my husband, but sometimes it suits his purposes for juries to see him struggling alone against a battery of corporate sharks. David and Goliath, right? That’s why I sit behind his table, and sometimes even behind the bar. He lets them think I’m his trophy wife, and I let him let them think that.”
These revelations have scrambled my assumption that Doris is an essentially powerless bystander to what’s been going on. “Well . . . Jesus. As a lawyer privy to the defense, can you tell me what the hell Quentin was doing in court today?”
She sighs heavily. “What people saw in court today was a horse with hobbles on. You ever seen that?”
“I’ve always heard the term. I’ve never seen it, though.”
“Hobbles are like handcuffs for a horse. Keeps them from walking away.”
“Who’s handcuffing Quentin?”
She shrugs her shoulders, and in her eyes I see pain. “I don’t know. But that’s what’s wrong. I usually know everything about his cases. Quentin bounces ideas off me all the time. Every case. I’ve won more than a couple for him, I can tell you.”
“But this one’s different?”
Doris blows out a stream of smoke as she nods. “He’s walled me out completely.”
A worm of fear begins gnawing at my heart. “Just like my father and me.”
She nods with the weariness of someone who is far ahead of me in her fears. “They’re like two old lions who’ve crawled into a thicket to lick their wounds.”
“And Quentin hasn’t told you why.”
Doris goes rigid; then I see she’s pointing into the shadows beneath the crape myrtles on Washington Street. A deep, man-shaped umbra is just discernible against the dark background.
“He’s with me,” I tell her, laying a hand on her arm. “Protection.”
The tension drains out of her as if from an uncoiling spring.
“Surely you have some theory about what’s behind Quentin’s reticence?”
“All I know for sure is that he’s scared. And if he’s scared, it’s because your father’s scared.”
“What are they scared of?”
Doris shakes her head like someone who’s been trying to answer this question for months. “Your father wouldn’t act out of fear for his own life. That I know. Quentin wouldn’t, either. Sometimes he doesn’t want to go on living anyway.”
“Has he said that to you?”
She looks me fully in the eyes at last, and I realize how beautiful she really is. Her eyes are large, though filled with sadness, and her jaw is perfectly curved, the line of bone as clean as a strung bow.
“You think a man with Quentin’s vanity can lose both legs and keep going like it’s nothing? Quentin Avery used to be tall and strong—vital even at seventy. Now he has to look up to everybody he meets. How do you think he handles that?”
“I’m sorry, Doris.”
She leaves those bottomless eyes on me for a couple of seconds more, then turns away. “This, too, shall pass.”
After staring out at the dark river for a while, she says, “Penn, I think we’re all hostages, even though we’re walking free. Annie, you, me . . . all of us.”
“You mean literally? Hostages to the Double Eagles?”
She nods. “Quentin’s dealt with death threats all his life, especially back in the sixties. But the thing is, very few people follow through on death threats. Even hardened criminals. A few racists did, and those are the stories we remember. But nobody shot Jackie Robinson. I’m sure you were threatened plenty of times as an ADA.”
“Sure.” And a few tried to make good on their threats. “I’m listening.”
“But in this case, the men we’re talking about are racists and criminals. Terrorists, really. Two or three generations of tightly knit sociopaths, committed to violence and involved in the drug trade. Anybody with any sense knows they were behind the killings that happened before your father was arrested. They killed Caitlin. These men kill their own, Penn. Do you think they would hesitate to kill you or me? Or Annie?”
“Have you talked to Quentin about this?”
“Sure. God forgive me, I tried to get him to walk away from your father’s case. I knew right away it meant trouble. Most of the world has moved past all this hatred. Even in Mississippi. And Quentin doesn’t have much time left, Penn. Whatever he does have, he deserves to live it out in peace.”
“Doris, the world hasn’t moved past any of this. Bosnia? Rwanda? It’s the same atavistic horror. Tribalism. But I hear what you’re telling me.”
“I feel for Viola Turner. She led a tragic life. But God knows her time had come. Why can’t we let the dead bury the dead this time?”
“Look . . . I don’t know what the hell Dad and Quentin are up to. Shad Johnson was never going to let Dad plead down to no jail time, but I know this jury can be sold on reasonable doubt. At least I believed it until I heard about those tapes.”
A flicker of fear shows in her eyes.
“Was Quentin as shocked as I think he was to hear about that Dumpster tape?”
“I think he was. But what shocked him most was that Sony has it.”
“He hasn’t given you any idea what might be on it?”
“He hasn’t even conceded that he knows anything about it.”
As I look at her distraught features, a deeply unsettling thought awakens in me. I lay my hand on her shoulder, and she leans toward me, not away. “Doris, would Quentin intentionally lose a case in order to protect our lives? Yours? Mine? Annie’s?”
She mulls the question for a bit. “If your father asked him to, he might.”
“Jesus.”
“That would be the only reason, though.” She stubs out her cigarette on the rail, then flicks the butt out onto the sidewalk and looks up into my eyes. “There’s something else that worries me. I don’t even know how to put words to it. But there’s something dark at the heart of this case. Something we don’t even begin to see . . . but they know. Quentin and Tom. I don’t know why they’re keeping it from us. How could it be worse than what we know already?”
“Things can always be worse, Doris. There’s no use speculating about that. Just tell me this. Does Quentin have any surprise witnesses lined up?”