“Yes. The issue wasn’t just pain for Viola. It was personal dignity. Viola Turner was a proud woman, and as a nurse she had watched countless patients die over the years. There were certain indignities to which she did not want to subject herself—or others.” Dad pauses, inwardly reflecting. “Viola also had religious qualms about committing suicide. She was a devout Catholic. She didn’t simply want me to provide a lethal dose of drugs. She wanted me to perform the injection.”

My pulse has begun to race. I can’t believe Quentin is letting Dad wrap a rope around his own neck.

“And were you willing to do that?” Quentin asks.

“I thought I was. I didn’t want to do it. But because of our personal history, and a feeling that I had let Viola down badly back when she worked for me, I felt I owed it to her.”

Quentin nods thoughtfully. “So . . . when you entered Cora Revels’s house in the early hours of December twelfth, you intended to accede to Viola Turner’s wishes and inject a lethal dose of a drug into her body?”

“Yes.”

The crowd reacts with sharply cut-off breaths.

“Had Mrs. Turner requested a particular drug?” Quentin asks.

“She asked for morphine sulfate, a narcotic pain reliever.”

“Dr. Cage, did you in fact administer the fatal dose of morphine that Viola Turner had requested?”

“No. I did not.”

Stunned silence envelops the courtroom.

“Why not?”

Dad takes his time with this. “For several reasons. One, when I arrived, Viola and I had a conversation. During that talk, she told me several things that disturbed me. One was about a videotape she had made for a reporter, Henry Sexton. She wanted Sexton to have the tape after her death, to assist him with his investigations into the crimes of the Double Eagle group, who had murdered her brother. But the most important revelation was that I was the father of Viola’s grown son, Lincoln Turner.”

“You did not know that information prior to that night?”

“I did not.”

“But Mrs. Turner’s sister testified that you’d known this for many years.”

“She lied about that.”

Turning to my left, I realize that while Lincoln is in court today, Cora Revels is not. Not unless she’s sitting back in the more anonymous rows.

“But Dr. Cage,” Quentin continues, “the district attorney has established that you sent Mrs. Turner money every month from 1968 until she moved back to Natchez to die. What man would do that if he had not fathered an illegitimate child by that woman?”

“I would. And I did.”

“But why? Why did you do that?”

“Because I loved her.”