“Fine, I agree. But you don’t have to do it from the witness stand. Not with your life on the line. You can work side by side with Kaiser and me to make sure every last Double Eagle goes to jail or to the grave. But don’t destroy your own life in the process.”

“I’ve come damn close to destroying it already. What more harm can I do?”

“Things can always get worse. Quentin?”

The wheelchair creaks as Quentin leans forward. “He’s right, Tom. Have we established reasonable doubt? Absolutely. But there are two things you never know in life: who your daughter’s going to marry, and what a jury’s going to do. The forensic case against you is still strong. You and Walt destroying that videotape looks bad, if they believed that.”

“That’s another reason I need to testify. I need to deny erasing that second videotape from the hospital Dumpster.”

For the first time since we arrived here, my office goes quiet. No one, it seems, wants to touch the matter of the DV tape blanked by the MRI machine.

“I didn’t finish what I was saying,” Quentin says. “Despite Lincoln’s little scheme with the will, he got to the jury when he talked about you hurting his mother.”

“Junius Jelks landed a blow, too,” Rusty says with reluctant admiration.

“That no-’count bastard,” Quentin says. “I’ll be damned if I’ll ever take a look at his case. He can rot in Joliet till he’s lost his last tooth.”

“We don’t have a lot of time, guys,” I remind them. “As far as alternate suspects for sympathetic jurors to pin the murder on, I see two candidates. First, Lincoln. Could the jury believe that Lincoln might have killed his mother?”

After a brief silence, Quentin says, “No.”

“Then why did he come to Natchez early and lie about it?”

“He was waiting for your father to fulfill the assisted-suicide pact. And he wanted to be close by to orchestrate the destruction of the will and the reporting of the crime.”

“Is the jury smart enough to figure all that out?”

Quentin nods. “Twelve people can see through a brick wall if you give them enough time.”

“Rusty?” I prompt.

“That jury won’t think Lincoln killed his mother.”

“Why not?”

“You want it straight?”

“Yeah.”

“Black folks don’t kill Mama.”

Dad looks up at this. “Why do you say that, Rusty?”

Rusty gives my father his lopsided smile. “That’s conventional wisdom with prosecutors, Doc. When you get a perp who killed his father or mother, it’s almost always a white male. Now and then a white girl will do it, to stop sexual abuse, something like that. But as a general rule, blacks don’t kill their mothers.”