“Hey, I don’t want to pry.”
“You deserve to know. But you won’t like it. I was talking to Lincoln Turner. And his aunt, Cora.”
Nothing she could have said would have shocked me more. “Seriously?”
“You think I’d kid you about that?”
“I guess not.” I reach and turn on the sink tap, then turn it off. “What the hell, Tee?”
She slides her chair back with a screech. “Penn . . . I don’t know what idea you have about me, but I’m not here to tell your family story the way you see it. I’m here to find out the real story—the truth, whatever that is. And to find that, I have to go where the story takes me. You’re a writer, for God’s sake. Do you disagree with that?”
I take a deep breath and try to push down all the anger that’s built within me today. “No, I get it. It’s just hard, from where I stand. What did Lincoln have to say?”
“A lot. That’s one angry man. And he has reason to be.”
She said this with a note of challenge in her voice. “Yes,” I concede.
At last Tee gives me a reprieve from her stare. “I could relate to some of what he went through growing up, but I tell you, my childhood was The Cosby Show compared to his.”
I try to look interested, but the truth is, I’m not.
“I’ll tell you something, though,” she goes on, her eyes lost in the middle distance. “Him and Aunt Cora . . . they’re lying about something.”
This makes me stand up straight. “What do you mean? About what?”
“I don’t know. A lot of what they told me was straight from the heart. Lincoln’s pain is genuine, but . . . he’s holding something back. Something big. Him more than her, but they both know whatever it is.”
“But you don’t have any idea?”
“Not yet. But I’ll get to it.” Tee looks up again, her eyes less accusing than before. “Heck, I’m liable to wake up in the middle of the night and just blurt it out.”
This image actually brings a smile to my face.
“Anyway,” she says, her eyes almost elfin, “I’m thinking maybe you ought to be there in case that happens.”
For a couple of seconds I’m not sure she said what I think she did. Then she reaches out with her left hand, her forefinger slowly turning in the air, beckoning my hand to hers. When I raise mine, she touches the tip of my forefinger with hers, then hooks her finger around mine.
“What you think, mister?” she says, flexing her finger and pulling my hand back and forth like we do this all the time.
Her unconscious echo of Doris Avery gives me a strange chill. “Um . . . I figured after you disappeared like you did, you wanted to give it a break. Process everything.”
Serenity clucks her tongue twice, her eyes never leaving mine. “I’ve processed it. In fact, I’ve been thinking about it all night. What about you?”
“I’ve thought about it. I guess maybe that’s the real reason I came down here.”
At last she breaks eye contact and uses her free hand to take a sip of her coffee. “Well, then. Let’s not overanalyze. The way I figure it, I can go upstairs and take care of things myself, or you can come up with me and show me how creative you can be.”
“Do I get a vote?”
“I’m afraid you do.”
Wednesday
Chapter 36
At 9:02 Wednesday morning, Judge Elder asks if the prosecution is ready to proceed on to the matter of the videotapes. Shadrach Johnson answers in the affirmative, and then—by some logistical machinations that must have cost the taxpayer dearly—enters into evidence the two videotapes that were yesterday evening in the hands of the Sony Corporation. For the trial, the tape found in Walt’s Roadtrek becomes State’s Exhibit 15, and the hospital Dumpster tape S-16. While I stare in dread—and the people in the gallery wait with bated breath—Shad recalls Sheriff’s Detective Robert Joiner to the stand and begins weaving a net that will tie my father to what I still think of as the Dumpster tape.
Shad is wise not to recall Billy Byrd on this subject. The black jury members aren’t fans of the sheriff, and they’ll be much more amenable to the younger and more professional-looking detective. Joiner begins by confirming what Byrd blurted out yesterday: that a search team led by himself discovered a Sony mini-DV tape in a Dumpster behind St. Catherine’s Hospital on the afternoon of the day after Viola was found dead. While Joiner speaks, I look for signs that the tapes are about to be played for the jury, but I see no media cart, no screen or TV being set up. Detective Joiner establishes that the tape found in the Dumpster came from the same lot as the two sealed tapes discovered in Cora Revels’s house, and also the tape allegedly found in Walt’s Roadtrek (and surreptitiously taken by the Adams County Sheriff’s Office). Finally, he reports that his investigation determined that Dr. Tom Cage had made rounds at the hospital the previous morning between eight and nine o’clock. Hospital employees also reported seeing Dad in the hospital parking lot on the afternoon of the following day. When Shad tenders the witness, Quentin rolls forward and asks only one question: Were my father’s fingerprints found on the tape discovered in the Dumpster?
“No, sir,” Detective Joiner answers.
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
The air of expectation in the courtroom has diminished somewhat. Shad is trying everyone’s patience by putting off the playing of the tapes. Next, Shad calls an Atlanta-based expert in video forensics named Joseph Chin and begins to qualify him as an expert. Quentin has stipulated the man’s expertise, earning brownie points with the jury.
“Mr. Chin,” Shad begins, “what is your connection to my office?”
“I’ve been acting as a forensic video consultant. I have also acted as liaison between your office and the technical division of the Sony Corporation.”
“Thank you.”
As Shad starts to ask his next question, my faith in Quentin Avery’s instincts crumbles under the weight of the DA’s relentless work ethic and hunger for revenge. We are about to learn whatever information those “erased” tapes contained.
“And what can you tell us about the type of videotape in question?”
Chin answers with the dry precision of an engineer. “Digital videotape of the kind found in the cassettes in question—mini-DV tapes—is much more difficult to erase than other types of tape, such as VHS, reel to reel, or the cassette tapes of the 1970s. It uses evaporated metal technology, and devices like bulk degaussers—popularly known as demagnetizers—will not erase them with any degree of completeness. Sometimes they won’t even affect them.”
“But can mini-DV tapes be erased?”
“Oh, yes. Recording over their length in real time will realign the magnetic particles on the tape—permanently, for all practical purposes.”
“But in some cases such tapes can be restored?”
“I have never seen it myself. But in a very small number of cases it has been accomplished.”
Shad lets this statement hang for a few seconds.