“Quentin, you’ve got to ask Elder for a recess until we know whether those tapes are coming in. You should have asked him as soon as he made it clear he would allow the tapes in if they can be restored.”

“He’s not going to look favorably on that.”

“I know. But you can’t put Dad on the stand when there’s a chance the tapes could come in. If he denies knowing about either one, and then the content proves him a liar . . . that’s it. He’s going to Parchman.”

“You heard your father earlier. He’s not going to do what I tell him to do.”

“Would he actually get up there while that chance exists?”

“He might.”

“I want to see his face when you tell him about this. If he panics, then we’ll know something we didn’t know before. At least I will.”

“Tom won’t panic. I’ve never seen him panic. But you’re not going to be there for that conversation.”

“Why not?”

“Penn . . . I’m too tired to have this argument again.”

Anger rises in me with frightening force, but there’s nothing to be gained from yelling at Quentin. “Just tell me this, then. That tape they found in the hospital Dumpster. Did Dad put it there or not?”

Quentin looks up at me with a far more convincing portrayal of ignorance than Shad Johnson could ever muster. “I don’t know.”

I hear myself sigh. “That hospital serves a lot of doctors. Plenty of them probably have mini-DV cameras. I’m sure some even use them in their practices.”

“Maybe,” Quentin allows, but his eyes tell me what he really believes.

“If Dad did take both tapes . . . why would he erase one tape one way, and another a different way?” The question spins through my head for a few seconds. “And why would he ditch one immediately but hang on to the other for a week?”

Quentin only shrugs, but the answer comes to me. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“Dad felt like he owed it to Viola to hang on to the tape she made for Henry. He only erased it when he felt he had no choice. But the other—the one that was in the camera while the murder was committed—that one he erased the morning of the murder, by putting it through an MRI machine.”

Quentin is shaking his head. “You don’t know that.”

“No?”

Before we can go any farther, John Kaiser steps out of the stairwell and into the lobby. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Shad pulled an end run, and I’ve got no way to stop him.”

I wave him on.