“Yes. Cancer patients like Viola build up huge tolerances for narcotics. To kill her with morphine, I would have had to inject the full dose directly into the vein, and in a reasonably short time. Otherwise, she wouldn’t absorb the drug rapidly enough to send her into respiratory failure. The rate of absorption is everything in that equation.”

“How could you be positive you had pushed through the vein before completing the injection?”

“I’ve been practicing medicine more than forty years. My judgment’s pretty accurate about such things. And the final proof is that Viola did not in fact die from a morphine overdose. The autopsy showed just what I described, a seemingly botched IV morphine injection, and a subsequent death by adrenaline overdose.”

Shad is furiously taking notes at the prosecution table.

“Did you at any time that night inject Viola Turner with adrenaline?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“All right. What did you do after Viola fell unconscious?”

“I looked around the house for an audiotape she had told me about, one she had made for Henry Sexton.”

So Dad knew all along about the audiotape Lincoln tried to sell me—

“Did you find this tape?”

“No.”

“What did you find?”

“I found the videotape she had made for Henry Sexton. It was in the bedside table, where she had said it would be. I decided to take that with me when I left.”

Another rush of whispers passes through the gallery.

“With what intention?” Quentin asks.

“I wanted to watch it before I passed it to Henry. I was worried it contained information I’d prefer not to be made public. Things I wouldn’t want my family to see.”

“Such as mention of your paternity of Lincoln Turner?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” Quentin steeples his fingers and tilts his face upward, as though pondering abstract matters of great import. “While you were doing all this, did you feel under any time constraint?”

“No.”

“But Cora Revels testified that on the night her sister died, she told you that Lincoln Turner was on his way to Natchez from Chicago.”

“She never told me that. And besides, we now know Mr. Turner was in Natchez four days prior to his mother’s death. All I knew about Lincoln Turner was that he hadn’t visited his mother in all the weeks she’d been back in Natchez, despite the fact that she was dying.”

A quick glance at Lincoln shows me rage in his face.

“What was the last thing Cora Revels told you on that night?” Quentin asks.

“That she was walking over to a neighbor’s house to watch television and get some rest, if she could.”

“So you’d found the tape intended for Mr. Sexton. What did you do then?”

“I left the house.”

“Where did you go?”