“Because he used me in his cons. From the time I was little. People will believe almost anything when you’ve got a child with you. And if you teach that child to help you, the marks are like fish in a barrel.”

“When did you learn that James Turner was not your father’s true name?”

“We got arrested when I was thirteen. A vice cop recognized Daddy’s face. He’d arrested him before, down in Minooka. That cop didn’t care what the driver’s license said; he knew he’d collared Junius Jelks. Daddy had to do another stretch in jail, and I was lucky not to go to the reformatory.”

“How did your mother explain the problem with the names to you?”

“Mama told me we’d had to use the name Turner because Daddy had been framed for something a long time ago. She had no idea that I’d been helping Daddy work cons for years. He’d take me out of school to do it. I was his meal ticket for a while. All Mama did back then was work and drink. I think she suspected how bad things were, but she couldn’t face it. She was depressed. They didn’t have drugs for that then, so she just drank and chain-smoked her Salems.

“I was pretty confused by then,” Lincoln goes on. “I made decent grades, but I was in and out of trouble all the time. I had anger problems. Fought a lot. I was lucky that Child Protective Services didn’t take me out of the home during that period.”

“But still you managed to attend college.”

“That’s right. Mama had always worked hard, and she managed to hide a lot of her money from Mr. Jelks. She had a decent little nest egg put back for me.”

“Enough to pay for four years of college?”

“No. But she’d worked for the same doctor for seventeen years, and he put up some money for me to go. Whatever Mama didn’t have, he paid.”

“Was this doctor black or white?”

Lincoln seems almost reluctant to answer. “White.”

This answer obviously resonates with the jury, who now realizes that Viola went to Chicago and put herself into a situation almost identical to the one she’d left behind in Mississippi. At least some jury members must be wondering whether Viola might have been sleeping with that doctor, too. A smart defense lawyer would bring this up during cross-examination, subtly suggesting that Viola Turner had a very practical—perhaps even predatory—side when it came to survival. But of course Quentin will suggest no such thing. He probably won’t even bother to question Lincoln.

“What was Mr. Jelks doing during your teen and college years?”