But jumping bail?
This takes me a little longer, but at last the answer comes. So long as Dad remained silent while awaiting trial—and so long as I and others protested his innocence—people might continue to investigate Viola’s death. Friends like Jewel Washington might have gone back over the crime scene, or probed more deeply into Lincoln’s whereabouts on the night of her death. They might have asked, as I did, why Lincoln hadn’t been in Natchez for the past month while his mother slipped inexorably toward death. But by jumping bail, Dad swept all those possibilities off the table. From the moment his flight became public, every cop, lawyer, and average citizen would view him as a killer trying to escape punishment.
I can’t begin to guess what Dad was doing with Sonny Thornfield last night at the Ferriday hospital. Maybe he wasn’t there with Thornfield at all. Maybe he had coronary symptoms himself, and stopped to get a nurse or doc he knew to provide him some meds or do an EKG. Hell, maybe he was meeting Drew there. Whatever his reason, it doesn’t matter now. What matters is that every cop in Mississippi and Louisiana is chasing the wrong man. And now I know who the right man is. There’s just one little problem—
Proof.
Could anyone other than my father prove that Lincoln euthanized his mother? Lincoln has a perfectly defensible reason for his fingerprints to be all over Cora Revels’s house. Even if they’re on the medicine vials and the syringe, that only proves he handled those items at some point—after the fact, he would argue. Worst of all, the case is being handled by a hostile DA and sheriff who’ll ignore any evidence I present them, short of a videotape showing someone other than Dad killing Viola.
With that thought, I recall the missing tape from the camcorder Henry left in Viola’s sickroom. The hard drive attached to Henry’s camera showed only Viola’s death throes, not what precipitated them. But according to Henry, what triggered that hard drive to start recording was the mini-DV tape in the camera running out. And that tape was supposedly missing when the deputies arrived at the scene. Who took it? When I questioned Dad in his office on Monday evening, I got the feeling he might have taken it. But what if Lincoln removed that tape before the deputies arrived? Could that tape show Viola’s actual murder? And if so, does it still exist?
Before I can second-guess myself, I speed-dial Quentin Avery’s house in Jefferson County, thirty miles north of here. I’m not going to ask Quentin if Dad and Walt are hiding out there—as badly as I’d like to. No one answers my call, just as they haven’t for the past two days. But this time, when the beep of the answering machine sounds, I leave a message.
“Quentin, it’s Penn. I just spoke to Lincoln Turner, and my worldview changed radically. I think you probably know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, you need to catch up in a hurry. If you don’t call me back in ten minutes, I’m going to drive up there and tell the police I’m worried you’ve had a heart attack. That’ll—”
“Hold on, Penn,” says a female voice. “This is Doris. Quentin’s right here.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry to make threats, but things are pretty serious down here.”
“They’re serious up here, too, but here he is.”
After several clicks and grunts, Quentin says, “Telling me you’d call the police was a veiled threat against my weed stash, boy. Don’t think I don’t know that.”
“Lincoln Turner just told me Dad is his father.”
Quentin is silent for several seconds. “And that surprised you?”
“Are you telling me it’s true?”
“I don’t know whether it’s true or not. But it doesn’t surprise me that he said it. Hell, a blind mule could see that boy’s game from twelve rows away.”
“Quentin, what are you talking about?”
“Why wouldn’t Viola tell that boy Tom was his father? Beats the hell out of telling him he was fathered by some booger-eating Ku Klux Klansman.”
“You’re deflecting, Quentin. I’m asking you what’s true. Has Dad ever told you he had an illegitimate son?”
“That’s privileged information, as you well know. But I’ll tell you anyway. Hell, no.”
“Lincoln offered to take a DNA test.”
“Well, it may come to that. But that’s not the primary issue right now.”
“What is?”
“I would have said the trial, until I heard about the dead state trooper and the APB.”
At this, I fall silent. Quentin doesn’t sound like a lawyer hiding his client from the police, but he’s a subtle character. “And …?”
“I wish Tom had come to me rather than go running off with Walt Garrity. But I don’t control the man.”
If Dad and Walt are hiding out at Quentin’s isolated compound, then Quentin is a consummate actor. He is, says a voice in my mind. There’s no one better.
“How about we get back to Lincoln for a minute?” I quickly summarize my deductions since leaving the CC’s Rhythm Club, culminating with my theory that Dad is protecting Lincoln, who probably killed his mother. Quentin listens in surprising silence. “Well, what do you think?” I ask.
“That all makes sense, I’m sorry to say. Covering for Lincoln sounds exactly like Tom. Sacrificing himself out of guilt, I mean. He’d probably do that on Viola’s word alone, without even checking to make sure the boy was his.”
“But he hasn’t said anything to you along these lines?”
“No. But I can imagine what you’re thinking now. You figure that if you can prove Lincoln killed Viola, your father’s home free.”
“If I can get him into protective custody before some gung ho cop shoots him.”