I’m looking for fear in Lincoln’s eyes, but all I see is sullen anger. Yet this time there’s a second of awkward hesitation before his answer.

“No,” he says. “Absolutely not.”

Quentin seems pleased by this answer. “Were you surprised that your mother would leave money to her husband, a man who treated her rather poorly?”

“It was her money. He was her husband. That makes it her business.”

“I see. And were you happy with your share of the seventy-two thousand dollars?”

“I’ve got no complaints.”

“No. Clearly not. Thank you, Mr. Turner. I tender the witness.”

This time, as Quentin rolls back to the defense table, Shad gazes at Lincoln on the stand. The district attorney looks like a man in a poker game with people he thought he knew, but who have turned out to be imposters.

“Mr. Johnson?” prompts the judge.

“No questions, Your Honor.”

“The witness may step down.”

As Lincoln returns to his seat, he glances at Quentin only a moment, but held in that moment is rage sufficient to drive a knife into Quentin’s chest. Quentin responds with a knowing smile.

“Call your next witness, Mr. Avery.”

“The defense calls Mrs. Virginia Sexton.”

A few moments later, a deputy escorts Henry Sexton’s mother through the back doors. She looks like my maternal grandmother once did: an elderly country wife dressed for church, in a white blouse and a skirt that falls well below her knees. After she seats herself and is sworn in—in a shaky voice, I notice—Quentin rolls up to the witness box and smiles.

“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Sexton.”

The old woman nods once, her expression grave.

“Were you related to Henry Sexton, the newspaper reporter?”

“He was my son.”

“Did your son ever talk to you about interviewing Viola Turner?”

“Yes, he did. He talked to me about most of his cases.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He believed Viola Turner was the source he had been looking for since he’d begun his work. Henry called her his ‘dream’ source.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“Objection,” says Shad. “Opinion rule. Irrelevant.”

“Overruled on both counts,” says Judge Elder.

“Henry worked on a lot of cases from the civil rights period, but the three major ones were the murder of Albert Norris, the kidnap-murder of Joe Louis Lewis, and the kidnap-murders of Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis. He told me that—”

“Objection,” Shad says irritably. “Hearsay. Irrelevant.”

“Overruled.”

“Exception.”

“Noted.”

Quentin says, “Did he talk to you about these cases on the day Viola died, Mrs. Sexton?”

“Yes. Henry believed the Double Eagle group was responsible for all those crimes, and he said that Viola was one of the rarest things around here.”

“What was that?”