“I think he was. But what shocked him most was that Sony has it.”

“He hasn’t given you any idea what might be on it?”

“He hasn’t even conceded that he knows anything about it.”

As I look at her distraught features, a deeply unsettling thought awakens in me. I lay my hand on her shoulder, and she leans toward me, not away. “Doris, would Quentin intentionally lose a case in order to protect our lives? Yours? Mine? Annie’s?”

She mulls the question for a bit. “If your father asked him to, he might.”

“Jesus.”

“That would be the only reason, though.” She stubs out her cigarette on the rail, then flicks the butt out onto the sidewalk and looks up into my eyes. “There’s something else that worries me. I don’t even know how to put words to it. But there’s something dark at the heart of this case. Something we don’t even begin to see . . . but they know. Quentin and Tom. I don’t know why they’re keeping it from us. How could it be worse than what we know already?”

“Things can always be worse, Doris. There’s no use speculating about that. Just tell me this. Does Quentin have any surprise witnesses lined up?”

“If he does, they’ll be a surprise to me, too.”

In this moment I’m suddenly certain that Quentin has no secret plan, no masterfully subtle strategy, that he is not in truth a magician but a frightened old fool. “My God,” I breathe. “Don’t you see? Quentin’s throwing the case.”

Though I spoke softly, Doris brings up both hands and waves them before me as though trying to calm a spooked animal. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Penn. I didn’t say that.”

“What else could it be? And what’s the dark thing you’re worried about? You must have some idea.”

She reaches into her pocket and brings out her cigarettes and a lighter. The flame illuminates her smooth skin for a few moments, and I fight the urge to cough. “I don’t want to speculate,” she says, smoke drifting upward from her lips. “But I guess we have to.”

“Go on.”

“Do you think your daddy killed Viola?”

I turn away from her and gaze off the precipice of the bluff, into the vast, dark stream that divides the continent. “I don’t know. He once told me he did, but I’m not positive that he meant it literally. If he did kill Viola, it wasn’t for the reason Shad claims—to keep her quiet. It was a mercy killing. A mercy killing gone wrong somehow.”

“I feel just the opposite,” Doris says. “If Tom really loved Viola, I don’t believe he could have put her down like a lame horse. She was a nurse, Penn. She could have injected herself, if she really wanted to die that badly.”