A deputy lets me into the courtroom just as Judge Elder’s recess ends, and his friendly scowl makes it obvious he’s only doing it because he knows me. As I move to the front of the gallery, I realize there’s not a single open seat behind the bar. For a moment I consider taking one of the chairs immediately behind Quentin’s table—beside Doris—but that would draw too much attention to me. In the end, I return to the back of the room and lean against the wall with my arms folded. Quite a few people in the courtroom have recognized me, and they’re not shy about staring. A photographer I don’t recognize snaps my picture with a zoom lens.

When Sheriff Billy Byrd’s name is called, he rises from the line of deputies’ chairs against the left wall and makes his way toward the witness box. Byrd looks like a drugstore cowboy with a beer belly, or a used car salesman got up in a sheriff’s costume. He settles into the witness box with the confidence of a man who’s been there hundreds of times. As they swear him in, Shad Johnson stands up from the prosecution table with a Ziploc bag in his hand. Looking closer, I see a mini-DV tape inside the bag.

I hope Quentin isn’t as frightened by the appearance of that tape as I am. But from the back wall, I see what looks like tension in his posture.

“Sheriff Byrd,” Shad says, “this morning your chief investigator testified that on the morning Viola Turner died, you found a video camera in her sickroom, and that this camera was found to belong to the reporter Henry Sexton. Is that correct?”

“It is.”

“Your investigator testified that no tape was found in the camera.”

“That’s correct.”

“Were any other tapes found in the house?”

“Two blank tapes sealed in their original packages. Mini-DV type, brand Sony. Mr. Sexton informed us he had left four blank tapes for Mrs. Turner when he delivered the camera. All new and sealed.”

Shad holds up the Ziploc bag. “I have here one of those two sealed tapes, which were stipulated into evidence as State’s Exhibits Eleven and Twelve.

“Sheriff, Cora Revels told us that there was a tape in the camera when she left for her neighbor’s house, but none when she returned.”

“Ms. Revels made a statement to that effect when we interviewed her the day of her sister’s death.”

“What did you and your investigators surmise from this?”

“Whoever killed Mrs. Turner took the tape with him.”

“Why would the killer do that?”

Quentin could object here, but he doesn’t.