“Let me stop you right there,” he says, and I brace myself for protests that his declining health prevents him from being able to help me. “I’ve already talked to your father.”

“What? When was this?”

“That’s neither here nor there, Brother Penn. Like everything else relating to this matter, that falls under the attorney-client privilege. But I know most of the details of the case, and there’s no need for you and your mama to get worried. Not yet, anyway.”

After I get my wind back, I ask, “Are you telling me you’ve agreed to represent Dad in the murder of Viola Turner?”

“Obviously.”

“But Doris said—”

“My wife don’t run my practice, boy! Your father needs a lawyer. I’m it.”

“But … he told me not to call you, not to bother you. Had he already called you by then?”

“That’s a family matter, son, not a legal one. But I wouldn’t press him too hard right now. What matters at this point—and what I got directly from Tom—is that he wants me handling this case. Alone.”

“Alone” in this case means only one thing: without me. “Why, Quentin?”

“You’ll have to ask your daddy that. But again, I wouldn’t yet. He’s carrying a heavy load just now.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s not my place to tell you.”

“Jesus, man. Did he confess or something?”

An incredulous laugh makes me pull back from the receiver. “Boy, you know I’d never ask a client that. Not even Tom Cage.”

“I know. I just … I don’t know. It’s like Dad has become someone else overnight.”

“Well,” Quentin says in a sage voice, “that happens to everybody sooner or later. Every son eventually learns his daddy has feet of clay. You just happen to have a father of singular rectitude, so it took until you were forty-five. That doesn’t make it any less painful.”

Echoes of Pithy Nolan. “I need to tell you something, Quentin.”

“I’ll just sip this glass of whiskey while you do.”

“Doris must have gone out to the store.”

He laughs softly. “Speak on, brother.”

I tell him what happened to Henry Sexton, then give him a quick summary of Shad Johnson’s moves, news of the FBI’s pending involvement, and the findings in the preliminary autopsy report. As I conclude, I get up and take that report from the sofa back, then sit back down.

“Good work getting hold of that report,” Quentin says. “You haven’t lost your touch, I see. And we could have got a lot worse judges than Joe Elder. The Sexton thing is disturbing, though. Makes me think the Double Eagles are night-riding again.”

“Are you familiar with that group?”