“And what about the two tapes I sent to the Sony lab for this purpose?”
Mr. Chin nods once, then lifts a piece of paper from his lap. “The Sony technicians were unable to restore the data on the videotape taken from the RV belonging to Mr. Walter Garrity. The magnetic content was permanently altered when the tape was reloaded into a camcorder and put in record mode for its entire one-hour length. The original data could not be recovered.”
It takes a couple of seconds for me to register what he said. Then a voice in my head says, One down, one to go.
“What about the other tape?” Shad asks, voicing the crowd’s thoughts.
“The tape found in the hospital Dumpster was a different matter.”
Oh, God . . .
“That tape was erased using a different method.”
Shad nods soberly, as though learning this information for the first time.
“And was the Sony team able to restore this tape?”
Everyone in the courtroom leans forward.
“No, sir. They were not.”
The crowd’s expectation becomes shock, then disappointment, then tangible frustration, even anger at Shad Johnson for toying with their expectations. For teasing them. But true to his nature, Shad presses doggedly forward.
“Did you learn any useful information from their report on the videotape taken from the hospital Dumpster?”
“Yes, sir. The magnetic data on that tape was actually far more scrambled—disrupted—than the data on the tape taken from the RV. It had been passed through a magnetic field of enormous power.”
“Will you elaborate, please?”
Even before he answers, I feel nausea in the pit of my stomach.
“Yes, sir. The effects noted on that tape were almost certainly produced by a magnetic resonance imaging device.”
“Are you referring to an MRI machine?”
“Yes, sir. The kind of device hospitals use to image soft tissue.”
“I see. Thank you, Mr. Chin. Tender the witness.”
The familiar click and whir sounds as Quentin drives himself toward the witness box.
“Mr. Chin, you testified that these two videotapes were erased by two different methods, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So the State would have us believe that some person used two completely different methods to erase two videotapes in his possession?”
“That’s what the facts show. In my opinion—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Chin, you’re an expert in videotape restoration, and not a criminologist or psychologist, correct?”
Joseph Chin’s disappointment is plain; he was salivating over the prospect of giving his theory on why a murderer might choose different methods to erase two tapes. The obvious answer—at least to me—is that the tape exposed to the MRI machine contained more sensitive or incriminating information than the one erased in the camcorder.
“I’m not a criminologist or a psychologist,” Chin admits with regret.
Quentin gives him a conciliatory smile. “So, to summarize, the technicians were unable to reconstruct any data from the tape erased in the camcorder, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“So, why should a person with something to hide risk being seen doing something suspicious or even as risky as gaining access to an MRI machine when he could erase both tapes in complete privacy using a camcorder?”
“Uh . . . maybe he didn’t know the camcorder method was just as thorough?”
Quentin appears to consider this answer. “All right. Just to be absolutely clear, Mr. Chin, no usable information has been recovered from either videotape you were asked to help analyze, is that correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“So those tapes can give us zero information about what happened in Cora Revels’s house on the night Viola Turner died?”
Chin glances uncomfortably at Shad, then says, “Well . . . by the strict criteria of the data they contain, that’s correct.”
“Can your analysis, or that of the Sony technicians, prove that the tape was ever in Cora Revels’s house at all?”
“The fingerprints—”
“Fingerprints are not your domain, Mr. Chin. Can any analysis conducted by you or the Sony techs prove that those tapes were ever in Cora Revels’s house?”
“No, sir.”
Quentin touches his joystick and turns dismissively from the witness. “No further questions, Judge.”
While Quentin returns to his table, Shad calls a man named Byron Reed to the stand. A thin black man with gold spectacles gets up and walks to the witness box to be sworn.
I don’t know Mr. Reed, but I can guess what he’s here for: to confirm something that most people in the courtroom already know—that St. Catherine’s Hospital has an MRI machine. In short order this witness—who works as an MRI tech at St. Catherine’s—does just that, but Shad does not release him. Instead Shad walks over to the jury, looks back at the witness box, and asks, “Mr. Reed, on the morning Viola Turner was found dead, did you see Dr. Thomas Cage in St. Catherine’s Hospital?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What time was that?”
“Between eight thirty and eight forty. I can’t be any more specific than that. I was between patients.”
“And where did you see him?”
“In the hallway on the first floor.”
“And how far was he from the room housing the MRI machine at that time?”
“Um . . . about sixty feet.”
I close my eyes and force myself to breathe deeply. As I exhale, I feel my mother’s hand grip mine. She’s not looking for comfort, I realize. She’s trying to comfort me.
“And what was Dr. Cage doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“Yes. I always speak to Dr. Cage. He always has a word for everybody.”
“And how did he seem on that day?”
Reed takes his time with this question. “About like any other day, I’d say.”
“He didn’t seem preoccupied?”
“Objection,” Quentin says. “Leading.”
“Sustained,” Judge Elder declares.
“Withdrawn. Mr. Reed, did Dr. Cage have patients anywhere in the area of the MRI unit?”
“Ah . . . not really, no. But Dr. Cage is the kind of doc who’s all over the hospital all the time. Old school, you know? Visiting techs and nurses, other people’s patients. You might find him fiddling with a microscope in the lab, helping the techs try to fix it.”
“So, in your experience, Dr. Cage was handy with technology?”
“Oh, yeah. A lot of doctors know medicine but don’t know anything about the technology that gives them the data to make their diagnoses. A lot of docs couldn’t shoot an X-ray if they had to.”
“But Dr. Cage is different?”
“Yes, sir. When it comes to lab tests, X-rays, surgical equipment, rehab stuff, he can tell you the way they did it in the Civil War, World War One, World War Two, and right on up to now.”
Shad is working hard to conceal his pleasure. Byron Reed doesn’t seem to understand that by his enthusiastic praise of my father, he is damning him further with every word.