“And how did he pay you? With a credit card?”

“No, sir. Cash.”

“Cash. Did you find that suspicious?”

“No, sir. Many of my guests prefer to pay in cash.”

“I see. Are you positive that the man you have pointed out is the same man who registered as Keith Mosley?”

“Absolutely.”

“And how is it that you came to be here today?” Quentin asks.

“Well . . . at the beginning of the week, or Tuesday rather, my wife called me over to where she was reading the newspaper—”

“Excuse me, what paper was that?”

“The Natchez paper. The Examiner.”

“Thank you. Please continue.”

“There was a picture of this man in the paper. And my wife said, ‘Vivek, this looks like the man who stayed with us last December.’ When I looked at the photo, I instantly agreed. But then I noticed that he was called by another name in the caption, and in the story.”

“What name was that?”

“Mr. Lincoln Turner. This puzzled me, and I tried to convince myself that we were mistaken. But then my wife began to read every detail of the story, and the trial. She went on the Internet and studied back issues of the newspaper. She found another picture of the man, and I showed both pictures to one of our housekeepers at the motel. She identified Mr. Turner immediately as Keith Mosley.”

“What did you do then?”

“I telephoned the authorities.”

“The city police, or the sheriff’s office?”

“The municipal police, but they referred me to the sheriff’s office.”

“And what did the sheriff’s office tell you?”

“They told me I was mistaken.”

Quentin pauses again to let this sink in, and he cuts his eyes at Sheriff Byrd as he does so. “How could they be so sure?”

“I do not know, sir.”

“You told them everything you told us here today?”

“Most assuredly, sir.”

“But they wouldn’t listen.”

“Objection,” Shad says. “Leading.”

“I’ll rephrase,” Quentin says smoothly. “What action did the sheriff’s office take, if any?”

“None, to my knowledge, sir.”

Judge Elder is glaring at Billy Byrd.

“What did you do then?” Quentin asks.

“I tried to forget about it.”

“And could you?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“My wife would not let me. My wife . . . once she gets hold of something, there’s no stopping her. It was she who told me I should contact the attorney for the defense of Dr. Cage.”

“And why would she suggest that?”

“As I said, she had been following the trial. And she understood that Mr. Mosley—or Mr. Turner, rather—had claimed that he only arrived in Natchez on the morning his mother died. That in itself was not technically false, since my motel is in an adjacent county. However, he also claimed to have just arrived from Chicago on that morning, which I knew to be false.”