“Seconds later, the woman you claim you loved is jolted from sedated sleep in terror—terror powered by a drug that bursts blood vessels throughout her disease-ridden body. In her struggles, Viola rolls over the remote control lying in her bed, switching on that hard drive and creating the record that will ultimately lead us all to this courtroom. In her final death throes, she calls out your name, but you remain in the shadows, waiting for her to fall silent forever. Once she does, you leave the house, two videotapes tucked safely in your bag.”

Shad is breathing hard when he finally stops speaking. He looks as if he’s forgotten there’s anyone else in the room but himself and the man he hopes to break.

“Isn’t that what happened, Dr. Cage?” he asks with surprising conviction.

Shad’s tale has gained some traction in the jury box. Several faces show clear signs of emotional upset: flushed skin, pale lips, sweat on the forehead.

When Dad answers, it’s in a voice I recognize from my youth—the one he used to chide me with when I let my imagination run a little too wild.

“You should have been a screenwriter, Mr. Johnson. That’s a dramatic story you just told. But like a lot of movies, from a medical perspective, it’s absurd.”

Shad seems taken aback by Dad’s matter-of-fact tone. “Absurd? How is it absurd?”

“Had I botched an injection of morphine, as you suggested, and I still wanted to kill Viola, I could have used the fentanyl I had ready to hand.”

“Fentanyl?” Shad echoes, rifling his memory for every possible association with that word.

“It’s a potent narcotic analgesic,” Dad informs him. “A painkiller—only it’s one hundred times more powerful than morphine. If I’d needed to finish off Viola in a hurry, as you suggested, I could have given her a little fentanyl, and that would have been the end of her. No pain, no muss, no fuss. That’s what a devious doctor would have done.”

After a few seconds of processing, Shad turns and walks to the prosecution table, where he picks up a sheet of paper, then starts back toward the witness box.

“Doctor, the evidence report introduced by the sheriff’s department does not include fentanyl as one of the drugs listed as confiscated from the house.”

“That’s because it was in my bag.”