Dad bites his lip and stares at the floor for several seconds. “Yes and no,” he says finally. “Nobody wants to be murdered. But Viola had flagrantly defied a credible death threat in order to come home and die under my care. Once here, the threat against her was renewed, and by the very men who had raped her and murdered her brother. They had escaped punishment for four decades. Viola knew she was going to die in any case. If, by her death, she could ensure that those men would meet justice . . . I think she would have made that bargain.”

“But how could that have been arranged?”

“I don’t know exactly. But maybe that had something to do with Henry’s camera setup and the tapes he left there. Maybe Viola hoped to catch them in the act. Record her own murder. I think the only two people who could have answered that question are dead.”

Quentin appears to be analyzing this theory. As he does, the genius of it hits me with bracing force. Dad has just justified the existence of another videotape in a way that doesn’t implicate him. So long as the Dumpster tape cannot be restored, he’s dodged the only damage it can do in its erased state. The sheer audacity of this move is stunning. He’s bet everything on black—a fifty-fifty shot that the Bureau won’t be able to restore that tape. But why? We already know that they’ve managed to restore Henry’s tape. Why should Dad be more confident about the Dumpster tape? Is it possible that he’s telling the truth about his theory of Viola planning to provoke Snake to kill her?

“Mr. Avery?” Judge Elder prompts. “Have you completed your examination?”

“Ah . . . I beg your pardon, Judge. I was having a senior moment.” Quentin turns back to Dad. “So, Doctor, when you left the Revels house, you believed that Viola was mildly sedated and would wake up no worse off than she had been before the morphine injection?”

“Exactly.”

“Thank you.” Quentin rolls back to his table as though finished, but then, as though just remembering something, he says, “Dr. Cage, did you honor the promise that Viola Turner asked you to make?”

“Which promise?”

“The promise to take care of her son in the future?”

“Yes. I set up a trust that will begin releasing funds to him when he’s fifty years old.”

“Objection!” Shad cries with surprising force. “Whatever scheme Dr. Cage may have set up, he obviously did it to try to mend fences with the man who was pushing the murder charges against him.”