Dad’s heavy sigh makes it plain how much he’s enjoyed sitting here strategizing with us, free from manacles and the stink of the jailhouse.

“I’ll see you all in the courtroom,” he says, getting to his feet with a loud creaking. “Goddamn knees.”

“Be glad you got ’em,” Quentin says with a wink.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Dad squeezes my shoulder, then leans down between Quentin and me and says, “Ya’ll make the call about Lincoln’s tape. But either way, I’m going to testify.”

As he walks into the custody of the deputies, Quentin and I share a look of perfectly attuned awareness. We may disagree about most issues in this case, but on one point we are as one: Dad does not need to take the stand.

“Penn, it’s John,” Kaiser calls from my secretary’s office. “Judge Elder wants you over in Shad’s conference room, and he’s in no mood to wait. I need two minutes with you guys before we go.”

“Come in.”

Kaiser waits for the deputies to escort Dad through the door, then hurries into my office. “We’ve got about a minute before we have to start walking.”

I can tell by the FBI agent’s face and posture that he has bad news for us. “Are our families okay?”

“Yes. It’s not that.”

“Then it can’t be that bad.”

“You be the judge.” Kaiser looks at Rusty. “Mr. Duncan, I need you to leave the room.”

“Whaaaat?” Rusty almost whines.

“Go, Rusty,” I snap, sensing more gravitas than usual in Kaiser’s manner.

After Rusty closes the door behind him, Kaiser begins speaking quickly.

“Since 9/11 the U.S. intel community has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into digital forensics. Maybe billions. When your only looks at Osama bin Laden come from videotapes or discs, that’s where you put your money. Every major tech university in the country has a classified program working on new methods to recover, restore, or rebuild captured digital material, whether deleted, erased, shredded, or burned.”

“Shit.” I sense where this is going. “And?”

“The Bureau has the best restoration technology extant today. Better than the NSA, better than the CIA. And a lot better than Sony.”

“What did you do, John?” I ask, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice.

“I’ll tell you what I did,” he says defensively. “I held off asking Shad Johnson for those tapes for a lot longer than I should have. But when Devine was murdered on the stand, I got a call from an assistant director in D.C. And he told me we need to know what’s on those tapes.”

“Wait a minute,” Quentin says. “An assistant director called you out of the blue about a state murder case?”