Henry nodded.
“But still you were surprised.”
“I was.”
Shad pointed to the camcorder on the tripod. “Tell me about the video camera. It seems odd for a reporter to leave a video camera in the house of a dying old woman. What was your reason?”
Henry didn’t like the DA’s presumptuous tone, especially since Johnson had given him so little help in pursuing unsolved civil rights cases. “I’ve been a reporter for a long time,” he said grudgingly. “Sometimes I can sense when a person is in torment.” He thought of Glenn Morehouse, sitting in his sickroom across the river, fearfully facing eternity. “A lot of people from the civil rights era are sick or dying now, and a lot of them are carrying secrets. Something was working on Viola Turner. She wanted to tell it, but she hadn’t quite reached the place where she could. That’s why I left the camera with her. You never know when the mood to talk is going to strike somebody, and I sensed that Miss Viola didn’t have long. So I aimed the camera at her, plugged it in, gave her the remote control, and showed her how to use it. Any time she wanted to, she could make a video recording of herself.”
“What do you think she knew, Mr. Sexton?”
Henry had to struggle to bring up the words. “I believe she knew what happened to her brother, Jimmy Revels, back in 1968. And to Luther Davis, of course.”
Shad Johnson made a sour face. Henry figured the DA resented his mention of the case because Henry had pushed him for months to look into it. Johnson claimed he could take no action without new evidence, but Henry had pointed out the catch-22 that there was unlikely to be any new evidence until the investigation was reopened.
“Be that as it may,” said Johnson, “you seem to be the last person outside the family who spoke to Mrs. Turner, other than her doctor. Did she say anything during your interview that might make you think she was contemplating suicide?”
“Suicide?” Henry felt his cheeks grow hot. His preconceptions about Viola’s death went spinning off into space. “No, she didn’t. I interviewed her twice, by the way. And she gave me no reason to think she was contemplating something like that. She seemed like a strong woman, despite her illness. Spiritually, I mean. Physically she was very weak.”
“Did she say anything about her doctor?”
Henry detected a hostile edge in the DA’s voice. “You mean Dr. Cage?”
“Yes, Tom Cage. How did you know Dr. Cage was her doctor?”
“Mrs. Turner reminisced a little about working for him. She seemed very fond of him. She complimented Dr. Cage’s dedication to his patients, regardless of their race. Dr. Cage was making daily visits to her home, I believe, trying to ease Mrs. Turner’s last days as much as possible. She couldn’t breathe very well by the time I interviewed her. Conversation was difficult.”
“Did you ever see Dr. Cage at the Revels home?”
“No. But I was only there twice.”
Shad suddenly stood, which revealed his somewhat diminutive height. Henry was a gangly six feet two, and towered over the DA, but the smaller man was animated by an energy that more than equalized the difference.
“Can you keep a secret, Mr. Sexton?”
“I’ve kept some for nearly forty years.”
“Will you respect a request to go off the record?”
“That’s my bread and butter, Mr. Johnson.”
The DA’s eyes bored into Henry’s with unsettling intensity. “We may be dealing with a case of assisted suicide here. Or even murder by a physician. That’s why I’m involved in this matter.”
Henry had already accepted the possibility of murder, but this new suggestion floored him. “You mean Tom Cage?”
“That’s what the evidence points to at this time.”
Henry gulped audibly. “Whoa. Look, I don’t even want to hear that. I don’t believe it, either.”
“Nevertheless, there seems to have been a pact between Mrs. Turner and Dr. Cage to that effect.”
Henry felt more flustered than he had in some time. “Well … what exactly do you want from me?”
When the DA didn’t answer, a horrifying thought hit him. “The camera wasn’t on when she died, was it?” he asked, with a macabre feeling that Johnson was going to answer in the affirmative.
“We don’t know. The switch was in the on position, but the tripod was overturned and the camera was on the floor. Its cassette door was open, and there was no tape inside. The plug was out of the wall, and the battery was dead as well.”
Henry tried to imagine a scenario that could have led to such circumstances.
“Had Viola Turner made any tapes for you prior to last night?” Johnson asked.
“None that I know of. Did you find an audio recorder in the house?”
The DA’s eyes narrowed. “No. Why?”
“I left a handheld analog voice recorder with Viola after my first visit, for the same reason I left the video camera a week later.”
Johnson wrote something on a piece of paper. “The sheriff’s department searched the house, but no tape recorder was found. What brand was it?”
“Olympus.”
Johnson noted this. “The killer must have stolen that as well, then. Do you know if Mrs. Turner had recorded anything on that?”
“No idea.”
Shad frowned and looked down at his desk.
“How did she die?” Henry asked. “If you don’t mind my asking?”