“I can do without the condescension, Quentin. I’ve tried more murder cases than you ever did.”

“But always as a prosecutor. Penn, you spent a decade working to prove your cases so thoroughly that twelve jurors would vote unanimously for conviction. That’s a tough job. But me? I’ve spent my whole life as a farmer.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Planting seeds. That’s my job. Seeds of doubt. I plant a tiny seed, water it a little—with words, not H2O—and then I patiently tend it, nurse it to life. Most times, the seed dies aborning. But now and then, that doubt grows so strong in the soil of some sympathetic heart that one person finds the courage to stand against the combined anger and prejudice of eleven other people. And when that happens . . . my client goes free.”

“Poetic,” I mutter, “but not particularly helpful in light of today’s disaster.”

“One juror, Penn. That’s the business I’m in.”

“That’s not enough. Eleven to one, you hang the jury, and there’s a retrial.”

Quentin’s beatific smile becomes still more serene. “Even the longest journey begins with one step. An avalanche can start with one snowflake. One whisper, my brother. One word.”

I hold up both hands to stop his flow. “Preacher Avery,” I mutter, “the evangelist of reasonable doubt.”

“That’s right. And in this trial, I’ve got the dream client. Your father’s done so much good in this town, somebody on that panel’s got to be yearning for a way to let him go home to his family. All I’ve got to do is give them a hook to hang their doubt on.”

“You’ve got a long way to go. You let Shad dig a mighty deep hole today.”

“A circumstantial hole.”

“And the tapes?”

This time he drops the smile, but he lets me know he resents me forcing him to be so pragmatic. “Look, on the way over here, I called a forensic guy I use in New York, top of his field. He tells me there’s less than a ten percent chance that Sony can restore the data on those tapes to any usable form. I’ll take those odds any day.”

Relief floods through me with surprising power. “That’s good to know. But even if the tapes stay erased, the forensics aren’t your only problem. Shad’s outflanked you on race.”

“How you figure that?”