“I kept it with me—both of them, actually. Peggy was home, pretending to be asleep. I couldn’t bear to go through all that pain with her right then. Think about it. As far as I knew, Viola was going to live for another week or ten days. There was time to manage things. If someone had been trying to trap me with that second tape, they had no evidence of anything.”

“But you erased it anyway, didn’t you? In the MRI machine?”

“Of course I did. I took it with me on morning rounds and taped it under the tray inside the MRI unit. For an hour that tech blasted it to hell without even knowing it. Then I retrieved the tape and took it back to my office. I thought everything was fine. I didn’t even throw that erased tape into the hospital Dumpster until the next day, on my way out to Walt’s van.”

“When did you talk to Mom about what had happened at Viola’s?”

“The previous morning. When you called me about Shad Johnson and the potential murder charge . . . I knew I had to talk to Peggy.”

“What did she say?”

“She wanted to tell the truth from the start. You know your mother. But I wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Why not?”

“Penn, once the facts about my affair with Viola came out—and they were going to come out—no one would have believed Peggy did what she did out of empathy, or mercy. They’d have said it was jealousy, or a cover-up, or murder for revenge, pure and simple. You know I’m right.”

I do. When I was an assistant DA, I saw plenty of cases where people in their seventies and even their eighties shot or stabbed each other over romantic triangles, or even past infidelities that only came to light years later.

“Then why the hell didn’t you confide in me? The very first day?”

“Because I knew your instinct would be to tell the truth and take our chances with the system. You’d have thought you could make people see the truth. And in a perfect world, you probably could have. But with Shad Johnson so hungry for revenge against you, and Billy Byrd aching to give me some payback, they’d have railroaded your mother to get their revenge.”

Dad brings his hands to his face and pulls his cheeks down like a man at his wit’s end. “For the last three months I’ve lived in dread that Peggy would snap and go to the police. Especially while I was in jail. But she turned out to be even stronger than I knew.”

“Not that strong. She broke today.”

At this he closes his eyes and bows his head again.

“So, Dad . . . I have to ask you. And I need an answer. Who really killed Viola?”