“I’m not talking about in 1968,” I press. “I’m talking about the present day. Since Viola came back from Chicago. Do you know that white men came to see her? Threatened her?”

Quentin turns his wheelchair and runs his long fingers over the stainless steel face of the refrigerator. “All-Viking kitchen, baby. Me and Doris got the same thing at home. Made in Mississippi, just like the best music, the best women, the best—”

“Quentin! Do you have proof of any Double Eagle threat in the present?”

With a flick of his joystick, he whirls on me and yells: “If I had that, this case wouldn’t even have come to trial!”

“Then what do you have? A surprise witness? Is that why you didn’t request discovery? So Shad wouldn’t know you have a secret weapon?”

He laughs with scorn. “Surprise witness? Secret weapon? Man, what you think this is? Ironside? Matlock?”

“Quentin, for God’s sake. Dad’s life is at stake. You can’t simply imply that because he and Viola may have killed a Double Eagle, the Eagles took their revenge forty years later. Tell me you’ve got more than hints and ancient history.”

Quentin finishes chewing a cracker with angry force, then sets his jaw and stares back at me without a word.

“I’m only asking,” I tell him, “because I happen to have checked the alibis of Snake Knox, Sonny Thornfield, and every other Double Eagle whose identity is known to the FBI for the night Viola died. John Kaiser helped me. And all those bastards have alibis. Sonny, Snake, and three others have a rock-solid one.”

Quentin chuckles softly. “That bullshit about playing cards all night at Billy Knox’s hunting camp?”

“That’s right.”

“You know that’s a lie. That’s just the guilty parties covering each other’s asses.”

I don’t mention what Dad told me about Will Devine’s pickup truck. “Camp employees swore they were there.”

“And every damned one of those Mexicans earns his living from Billy Knox. What else they gonna say?”

“Quentin . . . this is a criminal trial. What we suspect doesn’t mean shit. You know that better than anybody. If you think Snake and Sonny killed Viola, you’ve got to prove it.”

Quentin smiles as though from some inward pleasure, then steeples his fingers before him. “Penn, what do you think a murder trial is?”

“Please don’t start with the Will Rogers legal philosophy.”

“I’m not. Just tell me the fundamental essence of a murder trial.”

“The State attempts to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed murder, and the defense tries to prevent that by every means at its disposal.”

Quentin is still smiling like a Socratic professor. “If this was grammar school, I’d give you a gold star.”

Doris shakes her head from the door.