Unwritten Laws 01(42)

“Did you ever see Dr. Cage at the Revels home?”

“No. But I was only there twice.”

Shad suddenly stood, which revealed his somewhat diminutive height. Henry was a gangly six feet two, and towered over the DA, but the smaller man was animated by an energy that more than equalized the difference.

“Can you keep a secret, Mr. Sexton?”

“I’ve kept some for nearly forty years.”

“Will you respect a request to go off the record?”

“That’s my bread and butter, Mr. Johnson.”

The DA’s eyes bored into Henry’s with unsettling intensity. “We may be dealing with a case of assisted suicide here. Or even murder by a physician. That’s why I’m involved in this matter.”

Henry had already accepted the possibility of murder, but this new suggestion floored him. “You mean Tom Cage?”

“That’s what the evidence points to at this time.”

Henry gulped audibly. “Whoa. Look, I don’t even want to hear that. I don’t believe it, either.”

“Nevertheless, there seems to have been a pact between Mrs. Turner and Dr. Cage to that effect.”

Henry felt more flustered than he had in some time. “Well … what exactly do you want from me?”

When the DA didn’t answer, a horrifying thought hit him. “The camera wasn’t on when she died, was it?” he asked, with a macabre feeling that Johnson was going to answer in the affirmative.

“We don’t know. The switch was in the on position, but the tripod was overturned and the camera was on the floor. Its cassette door was open, and there was no tape inside. The plug was out of the wall, and the battery was dead as well.”

Henry tried to imagine a scenario that could have led to such circumstances.

“Had Viola Turner made any tapes for you prior to last night?” Johnson asked.

“None that I know of. Did you find an audio recorder in the house?”

The DA’s eyes narrowed. “No. Why?”

“I left a handheld analog voice recorder with Viola after my first visit, for the same reason I left the video camera a week later.”

Johnson wrote something on a piece of paper. “The sheriff’s department searched the house, but no tape recorder was found. What brand was it?”

“Olympus.”

Johnson noted this. “The killer must have stolen that as well, then. Do you know if Mrs. Turner had recorded anything on that?”

“No idea.”

Shad frowned and looked down at his desk.

“How did she die?” Henry asked. “If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Morphine overdose, almost certainly. That’s off the record. We’ll have to wait on the toxicology report to be sure.”

Glancing at his camcorder, Henry felt the burn of acid in his stomach. Still attached to the back of the Sony was a rectangle of beige plastic, slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes. This was a Superstream hard drive, an accessory Henry had mounted before he left the camcorder at Viola’s house. A filmmaker friend had told him about the drives while working on a documentary about Henry’s investigations. The Superstream could be set to record simultaneously with the camera’s tape heads, which not only eliminated the laborious process of capturing taped video onto a computer drive before editing could begin, but also made the DV tape a backup of what was on the hard drive. The Superstream could also be set to begin recording when the mini-DV tape ran out, extending available recording time if you were stuck somewhere without extra tapes. Henry rarely kept extra tapes on hand, so he usually left the unit in that mode. He was almost sure the Superstream had been set that way when he left the camera at Viola’s house. Which means there might be something recorded on the hard drive right now—

“What is it?” the district attorney asked sharply. “Why are you staring at the camera?”

Henry was tempted to say nothing. Johnson probably meant to return the camcorder to him; Henry could almost certainly walk out of here with whatever was recorded on the drive. But though he disliked the DA, he believed in the rule of law. If there was something on that hard drive, it might be evidence of a crime. And if he walked out of this office without telling the DA about it, he would probably be committing a crime himself. Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t think twice about filching evidence like that, but Henry couldn’t do it. That was probably why he worked at a weekly paper with only five thousand paid subscribers.

“The camcorder might have recorded something,” he said in a monotone.

“So what?” Johnson said. “The tape’s gone.”

Henry almost held his silence, but his sense of fair play pushed him on. “There may be a recording attached to the camera. Now.”