“I should probably get going, Doris.”
“Wait.” She takes another drag, then turns her face and blows out the smoke. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, it’s scared me so deep.”
Fresh fear makes my face feel cold. “Doris, for God’s sake—”
“Remember when I said Quentin and Tom are like two wounded old lions who’ve crawled into a thicket together?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m afraid they’ve made a bargain with each other.”
“What kind of bargain?”
“Like the one Tom made with Viola.”
Horror prickles the hair on my neck. “Doris—”
Her eyes go wide with confessional urgency. “I’m afraid Quentin has agreed to throw the trial if Tom will pay him back by helping Quentin pass without any pain.”
At first I don’t grasp what she’s suggesting. But then I get it. On its face, the idea seems crazy . . . and yet a strange sense of déjà vu has started a thrumming in my chest. “Doris . . . that’s impossible. If Dad were convicted of killing Viola, he’d never be free to fulfill his half of the bargain.”
She counters this argument with eerie certainty. “Tom could make it happen, if he wanted to. He knows a lot of people. Doctors, druggists . . . nurses. People who’d do anything he asked.”
“Do you really think Quentin’s that depressed?”
“Oh, yes.” At last the tears come, wet streaks glinting in the streetlight’s spill. “I try, Penn. I do everything I can to keep his spirits up. But Quentin’s sin is pride. He’d be the first to tell you that. The problem is simple: He can’t do what he used to do. You know what I’m talking about. Survival means more than that to most men, I guess. But Quentin’s an all-or-nothing kind of man. And he can’t abide pity. He won’t.”
I take Doris in my arms and pull her tight against me. “Stop thinking about it. Just shut your mind off.”
“I wish I had a shot of morphine myself. Enough to knock me out for twenty-four hours. Just to catch my breath.”
“What if I take you dancing instead?”
She laughs, but then her bosom begins to heave and shudder against my chest. All I can do is hold her tight. After a while, she draws back her head and fixes me with her liquid brown eyes, now shot with blood. “I guess we’ll just have to see what happens in court tomorrow.”
“I guess we will.”
She walks with me to the head of the near staircase, then lets her hand trail down my arm as we separate. When I’m halfway down to the sidewalk, she says, “You told Quentin earlier you’d give him half a day to turn things around. What will you do if he keeps going the way he has so far?”
“Whatever it takes to have him removed from the case. Help me help him, Doris. Any way you can think of. Can I count on you?”
After several seconds of what must be agony, she nods three times. Then she turns and walks to the tall doors that lead back to the bed where Quentin Avery sleeps.
Chapter 35
Walking back up Washington Street, I pass between the courthouse and the sheriff’s department once again. I hope Dad has found a way to sleep in his cell three floors above Billy Byrd’s office. He’s never slept much, and with his joint pain he needs a lot of medication to find any rest. Medications and dosages have become a source of squabbling between Quentin and the sheriff, and I’m betting Dad is sitting up there pondering dimensions of this case that remain unknown to me.
The specter that Doris raised—that Quentin might allow Dad to be convicted in exchange for a painless death—has stuck with me. I’m tempted to go in and ask to see my father, if only to confront him about that. But even if she’s right, he would never confess it. The real question is why he would want to be convicted in the first place.
The lesser of two evils, answers a voice in my head.
“Did you say something?” Tim asks from behind me.
“No.” Taking out my phone, I check for text messages, hoping for word from Serenity. But there’s nothing. “Let’s get home, man. You want to run it?”
Tim grins. “Oh, yeah! Let’s do it.”
He breaks past me, then spins and starts backpedaling, waiting for me to come after him. Filling my lungs with cool night air, I dart forward and pass him, sprinting like I once did on these same streets when I was a much younger man. Tim’s footsteps pound up behind me, and I know he could easily pass me, but for a few seconds I enjoy the illusion that I’m winning, that I’m actually outrunning the darkness that has followed me for as long as I can now remember.
After letting myself into the house, I walk through to the den and find Mia lying on the sofa with a hardcover book propped on her stomach. I say hello, and she answers, but ten seconds later she’s back to studying the pages like Champollion over the Rosetta Stone.
“What you reading?” I ask, walking closer.
She holds the book higher for me to see. The jacket is from an old first edition I bought in England, The Eagle Has Landed, by Jack Higgins.
“That’s not your kind of thing. You couldn’t find something more your style in my office? Or have you read everything in there already?”
“I actually like this. Was Doris okay?”
“She’s worried about Quentin’s health. I think they’re both depressed.”
“I’m not surprised,” Mia says without looking up.
Sensing that she wants me to leave her alone, I start to walk into the kitchen, but then I go back to the sofa. “Is Annie asleep?”
“No, she’s up in your mom’s room. Peggy and I talked while Annie was taking a bath, but I wanted Annie to get some alone time with her.”
Before I can thank Mia, my cell phone rings.
“It’s Jenny, calling me from upstairs,” I say, looking at the LCD. “Probably wants to talk about the trial.”
Mia clucks her tongue critically. “High maintenance, man.”
I could go upstairs to talk to Jenny, but I’d rather not. She will have a dozen points to make, most of which are irrelevant to the core issues of the trial, and mostly she’ll want reassurance. I call her back and do my best to sound attentive, but plead that I need to do some legal research downstairs. While my sister chatters on, I walk a slow circuit around the main floor, keeping a good distance from Mia. But as I extricate myself from the conversation, I pass back into the den and steal a glance at the running heads on the two exposed pages of the book in her hands. The left-hand one reads: Serenity Butler. The right-hand one: The Paper Bag Test.
“Oh, boy,” I say, trying not to laugh as I hang up. “Why didn’t you want me to know you’re reading that?”
Mia slams the book shut and drops it on the floor, her cheeks pink. “Hell, I don’t know. I guess because I was catty this morning. I’m embarrassed now. It’s a damn good book.”
She sits up and gives me an abashed smile, but it fades quickly.