Chapter 40 of 40·5 min read·Two weeks later, over one day of hearings
The Question Without a Footnote
The hearing began two weeks after Vale signed his statement, in a courtroom with rain ticking against the tall windows.
He had imagined a larger room. This one held the judge, the lawyers, Mercer, a clerk, and enough public seats for the people who had come to see whether a crime novelist could be made to answer for a story. Most of them watched Vale when he entered. One woman held a copy of The Hollow Men across her knees, its spine softened from use.
His solicitor leaned close before he took the witness chair. “Answer the question asked. If you don’t understand it, say so. Don’t give them a better sentence than the one you mean.”
“I know.”
“You know how to write one. That’s different.”
Vale glanced at her. She had not meant it kindly, but she had meant it for him. He nodded and raised his right hand to swear the oath.
The first questions came from the prosecutor. They established his identity, his connection to Marrowick, and the fact that his statement had been recorded and signed. He gave short answers. When asked whether he had tested the methods in his novel at the mill, he said yes. When asked whether he knew the chair could kill, he said yes.
Then the prosecutor asked about Jonah.
“Was Jonah Rusk inside the eastern room while you conducted the candle experiment?”
“Yes.”
“How old was he?”
“Eleven.”
“Did he ask to leave?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you do?”
Vale looked at the page before him. The words were written there in the statement he had signed, but the judge had asked him to speak, not read.
“I closed the door.”
The prosecutor let the answer stand. “Why?”
His solicitor shifted in the front row. Vale could feel the advice she had given him, the careful boundary between answering and offering. He could also hear the old voice that had arranged every account of Marrowick to preserve the clean line of a scene.
“I wanted a witness,” he said. “I wanted someone to see that I had done it correctly.”
The prosecutor asked him to explain what he meant by correctly. Vale began with the measurements, then stopped himself. The details belonged to the method. They did not answer the question.
“I wanted to be seen doing what I had chosen to do,” he said.
The prosecutor’s next question was whether he had believed Jonah was safe. Vale said no. When asked if he had made any effort to open the door after Jonah asked to leave, he said no.
Next
Tomorrow Jonah must face questions about the knowledge he withheld before the first death, while Vale waits to learn whether his own testimony will bring charges.
Elias Rusk’s counsel stood. He was a compact man with a pale tie and an even voice. He carried no book, no notes that Vale could see. That made Vale more wary of him.
“Mr. Vale, you’ve written about murder for twenty years.”
“Yes.”
“You know how to make an answer memorable.”
“I know how to write.”
“So when you say you wanted a witness, that sounds rather good, doesn’t it? A neat phrase. It gives your conduct a shape.”
Vale’s solicitor lifted her head, but the judge gestured for the question to continue.
“It’s what I wanted,” Vale said.
“You wanted Jonah to see you perform the experiment.”
“I wanted him to see what I had done.”
“Even after he asked to leave?”
“Yes.”
The lawyer took a step toward the witness box. “You have supplied us with a series of precise statements. You knew the chair could kill. You knew Jonah was eleven. He asked to leave. You closed the door. You continued. Is that your account?”
“Yes.”
“Is it your account because it is true, or because you believe a confession this complete will make you appear honest?”
Vale’s mouth had gone dry. He could ask for water. Instead he pressed his thumb against the edge of the witness box until the wood hurt.
“I don’t know how it makes me appear.”
“You have spent your career deciding how things appear.”
“Yes.”
“And you made the events into a novel.”
“I wrote a novel about the methods.”
“Based on methods you tested on bodies.”
“Carcasses. And myself.”
“So you understand the difference between a true account and a compelling one.”
“I understand that a compelling account can still be true.”
The lawyer gave a slight nod, as if Vale had confirmed something for him. “Then let’s leave the account aside. You could have opened the door.”
“Yes.”
“You could have stopped.”
“Yes.”
“You could have called for help.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Vale had expected the question. He had answered it in rooms with recorders, in statements, in his own mind during long nights when the rain ran down his windows. Each version had come with its own respectable escort: curiosity, fear, momentum, the false belief he had time to stop.
In the witness box, none of them arrived in a usable order.
“I wanted the experiment to continue,” he said.
“Why?”
His voice caught. He tried again, and heard the strain before the words came out.
“Because I wanted to know what would happen. Because I wanted to finish what I’d started. And because I had made a child watch me, and I was too vain to let him see me stop.”
The lawyer waited. Vale could feel every face turned toward him. He looked at the prosecutor’s table, where Mercer sat with her hands folded over a closed notebook. She did not look away.
“I heard him ask to leave,” Vale said. “I knew the chair could kill him. I closed the door because I wanted him there. There isn’t a reason that makes it less deliberate.”
His voice had broken on deliberate. He looked down, rubbed his palm once against his trouser leg, and stopped. No one spoke for a moment. The pause could have been used as a cue in one of his books. It did nothing of the sort here. It was simply time in which the answer remained his.
The cross-examination moved on to Elias’s technical directions, Celia’s role in selecting victims, and Vale’s knowledge of the murder scenes. Vale answered what he knew and refused to guess at what he did not. When the judge excused him, the prosecutor thanked him. The defense did not.
Outside the courtroom, his solicitor gave him a paper cup of water. He drank half of it before the tremor in his fingers eased enough to keep the rim from tapping his teeth.
“You answered,” she said.
“I did.”
“You also gave them material they may use against you.”
“I know.”
“Knowing that and accepting it aren’t the same thing.”
Vale looked through the courtroom doors. Mercer stood with a clerk, reviewing the next day’s witness list. A few seats away, Junie Park was speaking quietly to a reporter. She held her phone in her hand but kept its screen dark.
“Will they charge me?” Vale asked.
His solicitor set her own cup down. “No one has told me they intend to. Your testimony doesn’t decide it. It gives them more to consider.”
“And if they ask?”
“Then we deal with what they ask. One question at a time.”
The clerk came over with a fresh sheet. Mercer read it, then looked toward the corridor where Jonah had been waiting with an officer. He was not in the courtroom. Vale had not seen him all morning.
“Rusk is on tomorrow’s list,” Mercer said when Vale approached. “He’s been asked to testify about what he knew before the first death.”
Vale read Jonah’s name on the page. The letters looked no different from the others. He had to keep himself from asking Mercer to remove it, as if the request could be made without becoming another attempt to control the story.
“He’ll answer for his part,” Mercer said. “You’ve answered for yours.”
Vale handed the list back.
In the waiting area, his solicitor had found a seat beside the radiator. He went to join her, carrying the untouched second half of his water. Tomorrow, Jonah would sit in the same chair and be asked what he had known, and when he had decided to keep it to himself.