“Thank you, Mr. Reed.”
Quentin declines to cross-examine Byron Reed, and Judge Elder releases him. Then Shad calls a man I do know to the stand, an X-ray technician named Gerald McGraw. Gerry McGraw is about sixty, with a bald head and a salt-and-pepper beard. A Vietnam vet, the X-ray tech has been a friend of my father’s for years. As the clerk swears McGraw in, I realize exactly what Shad is doing. Having been deprived of the content of the videotapes, Shad means to demonstrate that Dad had both the opportunity and, more important, the technical know-how to erase them so thoroughly (and exotically, in the case of the Dumpster tape).
Though obviously reluctant to hurt my father in any way, Gerry is forced to concede that the basis of their friendship centered around shared enthusiasm for various technologies. McGraw is a ham radio operator, and Dad loved to stop by his house and help him tinker with his setup. Both Gerry and Dad had photographic darkrooms in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this memory makes me remember standing in our bathroom/darkroom as a boy, counting seconds as my wet hands moved between the trays of developer, stop bath, fixer. The pungent smell of those chemicals comes back in a powerful rush, and with it a sense of oneness with my father that I haven’t experienced in a long time.
Somehow Shad has even dug up the fact that both Gerry and my father were hi-fi fanatics, and built Heathkit receivers and speakers at home. Gerry is forced to concede that Dad was as good with a soldering iron as he was with a suturing needle, and even more damaging, that both men were familiar with—and owned—“bulk degaussers” used by enthusiasts to erase old reel-to-reel tapes.
By the time Shad releases Gerry, the damage has been done, and Quentin elects not to cross.
Judge Elder looks at his watch, then says, “Mr. Johnson, it’s almost eleven o’clock. Can you examine your next witness in an hour?”
“I believe so, Your Honor. The State calls Lincoln Turner.”
As Lincoln enters the courtroom wearing a sport coat and tie, I realize that things are about to get worse, not better.
Chapter 37
When Lincoln Turner enters the witness box to be sworn, every eye in the courtroom but my mother’s follows him, and every head but hers strains forward so as not to miss anything he might say. For if anyone knows the truth or the cost of Tom Cage’s past sins, they reckon, it is the big black man facing them now.
My half brother looks out over the assembled citizens with something between detachment and disdain. While the bailiff gives Lincoln the oath, I think back to last night, when Doris Avery revealed to me her darkest fear: that her husband and my father have bound themselves in an unholy bargain to provide services that only they could give each other. If my father will give Quentin a painless escape from this life, then Quentin will allow Dad to be convicted. This scenario only makes sense to me if my father believes he’s protecting one or all of us from pain or death by his sacrifice. If that is the case, then the evil he fears can only be Snake Knox and his henchmen. I know far better than to discount this threat, yet I can’t help but hope that Dad has not despaired of saving himself altogether.
As the bailiff takes back his Bible and Shad rises from his table, my sister, Jenny, squeezes my left wrist hard enough to bruise. She’s fidgeting and sweating as though unconsciously trying to prove she’s my mother’s opposite.
“You were sworn in as Lincoln Turner,” Shad says, standing about ten feet from his witness. “Who is your biological father?”
“That man sitting right there,” Lincoln says, pointing at my father. “Dr. Tom Cage.”
“How do you know that?”
“A DNA test proved it.”
“That DNA test has been entered into evidence and marked State’s Exhibit Seven, Your Honor.” Shad spreads his hands, touches his fingers together, and addresses Lincoln like a more restrained version of Dr. Phil. “When were you first told that Tom Cage might be your father?”
“I wasn’t told. Not really. I had to dig that information up myself.”
“And how did that come about?”
“About six months ago, I discovered some checks and letters in my mother’s personal effects in her Chicago apartment, plus a photograph of Dr. Cage and my mother in a state of undress. My mother finally told me the story then. Up to that time, she had lied to me.”
“From 1968 until 2005 she had kept this information from you?”
“Yes, sir. She’d been lying about who my father was ever since I was born. And not just to me. She lied to everybody.”
Shad pauses to let this tragedy—or outrage—sink into the minds of the jury members.
“Will you tell us what your understanding of your paternity was, from the earliest time you remember?”
Quentin should object that the defense has already stipulated that Tom Cage fathered the witness and no further questioning on this point is necessary.
But Quentin says nothing.
“From the time I was a little boy,” Lincoln says, “I believed my mother’s husband was my father. The man I called Daddy. That’s what she told me.”
“What was that man’s name?”
“His legal name was Junius Jelks, but I didn’t know that for a long time. In my first memories, my last name is Taney, which was the name Daddy was going by then.”
“Excuse me, let’s be clear for the jury. Whenever you say ‘Daddy,’ you’re referring to Junius Jelks, and not Tom Cage, your biological father?”
“That’s right. I’ll try to call him Mr. Jelks, but it gets confusing when I think back to different times.”
“I think we can all follow you. Please just tell us what you knew and when. And, Judge, let me state for the record that all relevant documentation such as birth certificates, adoption records, et cetera has been stipulated into evidence.”
Judge Elder glances at Quentin Avery as though wondering why he didn’t challenge some of the documents to which Shad refers, but Quentin seems oblivious to this.
“I was born in December of 1968,” Lincoln begins, “in Charity Hospital in Chicago. When I first went to school, our family went by the last name of Taney. But I know now that was just an alias.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Daddy had a lot of jobs over the years, but the truth is, he was a con man. A grifter. Because of that, he always went by different names. Aliases. That goes with that kind of work.”
“Where is Junius Jelks now, Lincoln?”
“The Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet, serving a fifteen-year sentence for fraud.”
“Go on.”
“When I was six years old, Mama moved me to a different school. She told me then that our last name was going to be Turner from then on. She said that had been our real name all along. Which was true, in a way. It turns out that Turner was the name on my birth certificate.”