“Please bear with me, Sheriff. You’ll get your chance to respond, I assure you. Yes, Dr. Cage did jump bail, but he did not flee the jurisdiction. In fact, he spent every day trying to track down members of the Double Eagle group, whom he believed to be responsible for Viola Turner’s death. Further, he eventually attended the public funeral of Henry Sexton—the man who provided Viola the tape in the first place—and then turned himself in to the FBI. And all the while that videotape was in his van. Do those sound like the actions of a guilty man?”

“Hell, yes. He was a fugitive on a murder warrant.”

“On a charge that never should have been made.”

“Objection,” Shad interjects. “Badgering the witness.”

“Sustained.”

“If the doc was innocent, why did he erase the tape?” Byrd demands.

“We have no evidence that he did that,” Quentin says with conclusive authority. “Moreover, you just testified that the tape sat in an unattended van for, what? At least two days? Possibly three?”

Sheriff Byrd isn’t used to this kind of treatment in a courtroom. “This is ridiculous,” he says angrily.

“Further,” Quentin goes on, “since the tape is blank, the only indication we have of what might have been on it comes from the testimony of Cora Revels.”

“So?” Byrd violently turns up his palms as though weary of dealing with a fool.

Quentin answers with a lazy cadence that easily blunts Byrd’s anger and frustration. “So the veracity of her statements depends totally upon her credibility as a witness. And I will be returning to that subject in greater detail later.”

Billy Byrd looks at the prosecution table and swallows. Shadrach Johnson offers him no help.

“Sheriff Byrd,” Quentin says in the tone of a regretful headmaster to a student, “I have been told that prior to this case, relations between you and Dr. Cage were not exactly friendly.”

Byrd’s porcine eyes snap back to Quentin. “We spoke when we passed.”

“That’s not what my client told me. In fact, after learning the history between you two, I’ve had to ask myself whether, given the past friction between you, there’s any way you could deal impartially with him in this case.”

Shad could object here, but he doesn’t want the jury to spend a half hour listening to tales of Billy Byrd’s domestic abuse if he can avoid it. I’d like to see Quentin explore just that, but he doesn’t.

“For example,” he continues, “do you dislike Dr. Cage enough to have your men stage this deep-six incident over the Mississippi River in order to make Dr. Cage look guilty?”

Byrd’s face goes dark with blood. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to that!”