The Part He Kept

Jonah left the pages on the table between them. His hands stayed on either side, as if he were keeping the papers from sliding apart.

Mercer waited. The station’s ventilation clicked overhead. Outside the interview-room glass, an officer walked past with a paper cup and glanced in without slowing.

“I knew my father was going to use the chair,” Jonah said. “Before the first body.”

Mercer kept her pen still. “What did you think he meant by use?”

“To make Vale sit in it. To make him hear the recording, or see the room. I don’t know. Dad said Celia was going to bring someone there.” He rubbed his thumb along the paper’s edge. “He said it would be safe.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I knew what the chair did.”

That was not the same as saying no. Mercer let him hear the distinction in the room.

Jonah looked down at Elias’s handwritten directions. “He showed me the measurements at Marrowick. He’d gone back to the dry room. He wanted to know if I could get into the old control passage without setting off the alarm.”

“You went there with him?”

“I was already going there. He knew that.”

“When was this?”

“Three days before the first death. Maybe four.” He shifted in the chair, then planted both feet. “I told him the room wasn’t safe. He said he’d changed the feed. I asked if he’d tested it. He said he had.”

“Had he?”

“I don’t know.”

Mercer wrote down the date range. “What else did he tell you?”

“That Celia had someone in mind. I didn’t ask who. He didn’t say.”

“You knew a person would be put in the chair, and that the mechanism had been restored.”

Jonah watched the pen move. “Yes.”

There it was, plain enough for a report. Mercer thought of the wet pages from the lower room, the chair that had filled with vapor, Vale’s wrists bruised by the restraints. Elias had been in custody when he began describing the scene directions as a means to bring the truth out. Jonah had heard a version of that explanation before anyone died.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I left.”

“That’s all?”

“I told him I wouldn’t help.” Jonah glanced up. “Then I left him with the machine.”

Mercer set the pen down. “You could have called us.”