Devious my father may be, but I’m betting his reckless honesty and conviction moved at least one or two jury members.
“Mr. Johnson,” Dad replies, “the only thing you just listed that felt wrong to me was having the affair. Hiding it from my wife. A few minutes ago, I swore to tell the whole truth and nothing but. I intend to do that, come hell or high water. What happened back then has been secret for too long. That’s why I admitted my part in Frank Knox’s murder. That son of a bitch deserved to die, and whoever killed Viola deserves the same treatment.”
Shad starts to protest, but in the end he settles for shaking his head in amazement.
“Do you know what strikes me most about your testimony, Doctor? That so little of it can be substantiated. Oh, it’s a known fact that Snake Knox was a member of the Double Eagle group. But there’s no proof whatever that he or anyone else threatened to kill Viola Turner. No one has come forward with any audiotape, and the police found nothing like that at the crime scene.”
When I glance back at Lincoln, I find him staring a hole through me. He knows that such a tape exists—or did—yet he says nothing. Would he sell me that tape for a million dollars now? Or would he rather watch his father twist in the wind? Or has he taken the choice out of his own hands by destroying it, as he threatened to do?
“The things you attribute to Will Devine cannot be substantiated,” Shad goes on, “for the man himself is dead.”
“Murdered before our eyes,” Dad responds. “After coming forward voluntarily to testify against his former comrades in arms. Don’t you find that a little suspicious?”
Shad’s temper shows in his taut smile. “Dr. Cage, I can’t account for the private feuds of former Ku Klux Klansmen. If Mr. Devine corroborated any of your statements on the record before he died, I’d certainly welcome seeing the evidence. But my understanding is that Mr. Devine refused to tell the FBI anything about what he was going to say on the stand.”
Dad shrugs. “I believe Mr. Devine meant to unburden his soul before he died. I can relate to that sentiment.”
“Can you really? As for all you claim that Viola Turner said on the night she died, we have only your word for it—you, the man accused of killing her. And that brings us to the only evidence we may actually be able to use to test you. The erased videotapes.”
Again Dad shows no reaction.
“Dr. Cage, you admitted that you erased one tape after Mrs. Turner’s death because it contained information you couldn’t bear to have made public.”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t bear it. I said I would prefer my wife and children not have to deal with it.”
“Hair-splitting, Doctor. But what I wonder is, what else did that tape contain? Did it show you killing Viola Turner?”
“No.”
“You’re under oath, sir.”
“It couldn’t have shown that. Because I didn’t kill Viola.”
I shake my head, knowing that Shad’s sole objective is to elicit statements from my father that the tapes will prove were lies.
“Did it show you injecting her with morphine?”
“No.”
“Do you appear on that tape at all?”
“No. Viola finished making that tape before I ever arrived at the house that night. She talked about me on it, but that’s all.”
God, I hope he’s telling the truth. Surely he knows he must—
“Let’s talk about the tape that was in the video camera when you arrived.”
“I didn’t know there was a tape in that camera.”
“Goddamn it,” I mutter under my breath. “That tears it.” If Shad ever proves he knew about that tape, much less erased it in an MRI machine, Dad will be convicted of murder.
Shad says, “I would find it very difficult to believe that someone would begin the process of euthanasia with a live camera pointed at the sickbed.”
“I’d have to agree with you there,” Dad replies, and several people in the audience chuckle.
“What I’m suggesting is that you must have checked that camera to make sure it wasn’t recording. At least made sure the red light wasn’t on.”
Dad shrugs. “I don’t recall seeing any red light.”
“So you deny, under oath, any knowledge of a videotape that might have recorded Viola Turner’s murder or events shortly before it?”
“Yes.”
As Dad awaits the next question, I realize that even if the Dumpster tape is restored and shows Dad inside Cora’s house, that doesn’t mean he knew anything about it. Nor does it prove that he erased it in an MRI machine.
“Listen to me carefully, Doctor. Did you remove one or two tapes from the Revels house that night?”
“One.”
“Did you erase a Sony mini-DV tape in the MRI machine at St. Catherine’s Hospital?”
This time Dad hesitates before answering. But after a few seconds, he says, “I did not.”
What will he do if John Kaiser walks in here with a fully restored Dumpster tape . . . ?
“I only know of one tape,” Dad continues. “The one Viola made for Henry Sexton.”
As my father falls silent, I am filled with a horrific conviction that he is lying. He’s making a brazen gamble, betting his life on his belief that the FBI won’t be able to bring that Dumpster tape back from the dead. And that is exactly what Shad wanted him to do. The whole cross up to this point was designed to take Dad to this assertion.
“Well, Doctor,” Shad says, “I think we’re going to be able to judge that for ourselves in due course. Now, I’d like to—”
The door at the back of the courtroom stops Shad in midsentence. Sheriff Billy Byrd steps inside. Catching Shad’s eye, he raises one finger to his right cheek. Shad goes still. Then he holds up two fingers and raises a single eyebrow. Billy Byrd turns up his palms.
“Your Honor,” says Quentin, “the district attorney and the sheriff appear to be practicing baseball signals.”
“I see that, Mr. Avery. Mr. Johnson?”
My cell phone vibrates in my pocket. With a sickening sense of dread, I pull out the device, already certain of what it will say.
“Your Honor,” Shad says, “I believe we’re about to find out just how truthful the defendant has been with us today.”
“Is that so? Please explain.”
John Kaiser’s newest text message flashes onto my phone screen with the impact of a prison sentence.
The Attorney General just signed off on permission for restored Tape S-15 (tape from Roadtrek) to be used in the trial. Faxing copy of the signed order to Judge Elder’s office. I’m 15 minutes from Natchez on a Bureau chopper. Will land at Fort Rosalie. I will personally deliver the disk to the courtroom. No luck with S-16 (Dumpster tape) yet. Cannot predict success or failure.
A shudder runs through my body. Like voices from the grave, the restored videotapes could damn my father as a facile liar and a murderer. While I try to regain my composure, Shad announces that the FBI will shortly deliver a restored copy of the tape Viola made for Henry Sexton and may soon provide a usable version of the tape Sheriff Byrd’s men found in the hospital Dumpster. Then Judge Elder grants a one-hour recess to await the tape and view it before presenting it to the jury.
Chapter 65
After Kaiser delivered the restored videotape, Judge Elder asked the attorneys back to his chambers to view it. I tried to accompany Quentin, of course, but he told me that Dad didn’t want me in the room. I absorbed this blow as I had all the others, with little grace and less charity, and spent the recess with my mother, trying to keep up her spirits while two men set up a large screen against the wall opposite the jury box.
When counsel finally returns from their private premiere and court is called to order, Quentin’s face and manner tell me nothing. I try to catch his eye, but he remains focused on the defense table as he drives his wheelchair to it. Judge Elder makes a few remarks about the chain of custody, and the restored tape is entered into evidence as State’s Exhibit
18.
Then the lights go down.
At first we see nothing. Then several bright flashes hit the screen. I hear Judge Elder grumbling. When the FBI agent tasked with projecting the restored video file finally succeeds in opening an image on the screen, I don’t see what I expected. The whole image is rendered in shades of blue, which by itself would not be too bad, but the resolution is very grainy. Besides that, the whole visual field is obscured by hundreds of flickering artifacts, some—bizarrely enough—bright pinks and greens. But the longer the tape runs, the more my mind adapts to what it’s seeing. What at first seemed only a hazy outline of the sickroom I saw so clearly on Henry’s accidental hard-drive recording soon becomes a familiar scene, like that same sickroom illuminated by a dim blue nightlight. And in the middle of the frame, a little left of center, is the woman at the heart of this case.
In America, we don’t often see people in their final days prior to death, not even in photographs. For those unused to the sight, it can be a significant shock. The emaciation in particular triggers a natural revulsion in healthy people. I saw this when my first wife died of cancer, and I never really got used to it. The faces of the jury members tell me that despite having seen the hard drive recording of Viola in her death throes, most were unprepared for the sight of the wraithlike figure propped motionless in the hospital bed, staring into the camera lens. Only Viola’s eyes, like wet stones, project any sense of life from the screen. But when she begins to speak, the hoarse but articulate voice lifts me erect in my seat.
“Hello, Henry,” Viola begins. “I can’t speak too well. I can’t catch my breath.
“You asked me to talk about Jimmy, and what I might know about what happened to him. You asked me to talk about my life as well. I don’t have the strength for much of that. But some of what I went through is tied up with what happened to Jimmy. I took a shot of cortisone this morning, and some morphine a few minutes ago. I drank some sweet tea for the sugar, too, so I might have the energy to talk three or four minutes.
“After my husband was killed in Vietnam, I was very lonely. That was 1967. About a year went by when it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other, and get my work done. I was empty. Hollowed out. The only thing I could feel was worry—about Jimmy, who was working with the NAACP, and doing other things to help the Movement. But then, somehow, I fell in love with my boss, Dr. Tom Cage. I knew it was wrong, him being married, but I couldn’t turn away from that feeling he gave me. It was . . . the only thing that made me feel alive.
“But as good as that was, things started going bad very quickly. It was hard times for black folks, as you know. The Klan was everywhere, killing people on both sides of the river. What brought Tom and me together finally was that Jimmy and his friend Luther got into a scrape with some Klansmen. Part of that group you’re investigating now. But back then I just knew them as Klan. Most worked at Triton Battery, or out at the paper mill. One time I woke Dr. Cage at midnight to come patch up Jimmy, and he came, God bless him. Then the Klan who’d been in the fight showed up at the office, too. We hid in a treatment room till Tom got rid of them. Then he patched up Luther and Jimmy. That was when I first knew something was going to happen between Tom and me. That sooner or later we’d consummate whatever we’d been feeling.
“After that night, the Klan started hunting all over for Jimmy. Finally he went to hide out in Freewoods, which you know about from your work. Jimmy stayed there a few weeks, and it was during this time that Tom and I had our affair. It was like a dream, looking back. But you can’t commit a mortal sin and expect to get off easy. As soon as I missed my time that month, I knew I was pregnant. I didn’t tell Tom about it, for fear he might do something crazy, like leave his family, even though the selfish part of me wanted that very thing.
“Then the nightmare began. I came home from work one day and found five men waiting for me. I recognized them from the office. It was Frank Knox, his brother Snake, Sonny Thornfield, and a big fat boy named Glenn Morehouse. There was a boy with them, too. Now I know that was Forrest Knox, the state police man. They held me down and forced themselves on me. They stuffed a dishrag in my mouth to stop me screaming. Then they all took turns. They sodomized me, like it says in the Bible. I’m speaking as a nurse now, but they tore me up pretty bad inside. One of them used a Coke bottle. The whole time, they told me they were going to kill my brother when he came to get revenge for what they were doing. I knew I’d never breathe a word of what they’d done, but it didn’t matter. They spread the word themselves, and Jimmy did just what they knew he would.
“I got word that Jimmy and Luther had left Freewoods, and nobody had seen him or Luther since. I was going out of my mind. Then God smiled on me. Or maybe it was Satan, tempting me, I don’t know. But I went in to work, and those same men brought in Frank Knox, half-dead from a bunch of batteries falling on him. As soon as I got into the room alone with him, I knew I was going to make sure he went the rest of the way. His side was split open, and there was a good-size vein showing. I took the biggest syringe we had, filled it up with air, and shot it into that vein. I did that twice, then once in the antecubital. It took longer than I expected, but that air hit that man’s heart like Daddy’s twelve-pound maul, and that was the end of Frank Knox.
“When Tom came in to treat him, Frank was about gone. Tom asked why I wasn’t trying to save him. That’s when I told Tom what they’d done to me. He stopped what he was doing then and tried to comfort me. When we heard a siren, he hid the syringe and made things look like they should have looked. Once the ambulance men got there, Tom told them Knox had expired from his wounds.
“Lord, I’m losing my breath.” Viola takes a drink of water. “I told Tom our affair was over that day. But that didn’t spare us any pain. The next night Knox’s gang grabbed me out of my house about two in the morning. They took me to a machine shop out in the county. A place they used to question people. They had special equipment out there, for hurting people. You could see old blood on it. They had knives and chains and iron bars and torches. I . . . don’t want to talk about that.
“Anyway, that’s where Jimmy and Luther were being held. They were both in bad shape by the time I got there, but the Klansmen never let up on them. Thornfield kept at them about them running guns, and something about Black Muslims, but I don’t think Jimmy or Luther knew anything about that. If they had, they would have talked, bad as those men were hurting them. Snake Knox skinned off Jimmy’s navy tattoo with a knife. The others raped me some more, right in front of Jimmy. It was like the old nuns used to describe hell in my grade school. Like those forbidden paintings from the Middle Ages. I don’t even know how long I was in that place. Maybe that’s why they say hell is eternal.
“But then a man sneaked in there with a big pistol and took me out. He was Ray Presley, a man so mean that even the Klan was scared of him. He’d been a dirty cop down in New Orleans, and he knew everybody on both sides of the law. Presley had something he held over Dr. Cage, but he liked him, too. Presley saved me as a favor to Tom.”
With a quivering hand, Viola takes another tiny sip of water. “But Presley didn’t save Jimmy. Luther, neither. Something broke inside me that night, when Presley dragged me out of there screaming. I knew those men were going to kill my brother. Presley knew it, too. He told me nothing could change that, not even President Johnson. It was just the way things were. And I guess he was right.
“There’s not much to tell after that. I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of how Jimmy died or where they hid his body. I didn’t see those men kill Jimmy or Luther, though they shot Luther in the arm with a pistol while I was there. The bullet broke the bone. They were both still alive when Presley took me out of there, but my opinion as a nurse is that without medical attention, they would have died from their wounds, or from shock.
“After that . . . it’s all a blur. Tom tried to hide me, and Miss Nellie Jackson helped him do it. She was a good woman, though she’d been a prostitut
e and ran girls down on Rankin Street. They saved my life by doing that, but the fact is, I didn’t care anymore whether I lived or died. I knew I was carrying a child, but not even that mattered to me. I don’t think I expected to live the nine months till it was born. About a week later, I went north to Chicago. And that’s where I stayed, until I got lung cancer.”
At this point, Viola ceases speaking. She pants softly for about forty seconds, her eyes half-closed. Just when I think she’s falling asleep, she starts awake, focuses on the camera, and begins speaking again.
“Things didn’t go too well for me up north. But how could they, when you think about what had brought me there? I did what I could to protect Tom. He sent money every month, and I never asked more of him. There were times I thought of telling him we had a child together, but I knew if he knew that, his life would be torture, the way mine was. I couldn’t do that to him. I had walked willingly into sin, and it was up to me to live with it. I may be flattering myself—and you may not believe it, seeing the way I look now—but I think Tom suffered enough all those years just from giving me up. He loved me, and he’d wanted to be with me. I was the one who ended it. So he lived with his pain, and I lived with mine.
“Henry . . . I’m about out of breath. I don’t have much strength left, and I don’t intend to hang around this earth until my sister has to wipe my backside. I can take the pain, but I can’t give up my pride. I’ve tended too many people to the bitter end. After tonight, or maybe tomorrow, I’ll be gone. So I want to say some last things.
“I’ve done what I told you about my will. I wrote it myself, and Cora witnessed it. Some hard things passed between us over the years, but we made up in the end, the way sisters should. Still . . . if there’s any problem about the money, you’ll have this tape to back you up. I also told Tom to make sure there was no trouble about you getting your money, just in case Cora gets weak, or Lincoln turns her head. As for your part, you promised you’d do all in your power to bring Jimmy’s killers to justice, and tell the world what happened to him. What happened to me, I’d just as soon keep private, but I’ll leave that to you. I want you to keep Tom’s part in Frank Knox’s death secret until after he’s dead. I don’t expect that’ll be too long. Tom’s heart is in bad shape, and he’s got other health problems. He’ll be following me pretty soon. Maybe we’ll be together after all, somewhere. Lord knows we earned it, even if we’re together in the bad place. I could have lied to protect him on here, but I’m done lying now. Even for him.”