The Answer Under Oath
The clerk called Edgar Vale’s name, and the courtroom turned toward him.
Vale stood. His lawyer had told him to wait for the question before moving, so he waited while the judge confirmed that he understood the oath. He raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth. The words were familiar from the earlier hearing. Here they sounded less like a form than a threshold he had chosen to cross.
The jury watched him settle into the witness chair. Jonah sat behind the prosecutor’s table, close enough that Vale could see the seam on his coat sleeve. He looked toward the front of the room. Vale kept his gaze on the clerk as the oath book was removed.
His lawyer began with the mill. Vale gave the date, the purpose of the visit, the apparatus he had built, the room in which he meant to test it. Questions came in a measured order. Vale supplied measurements when asked and corrected the date of one inspection by a week. He had always been good at placing a thing precisely on the page.
The jury had to understand the chair before it could understand the door. His lawyer walked them through the pressure mechanism, the vapor feed, the danger of sitting in it. Vale answered without embellishment. The mechanism could release a lethal quantity of vapor. He knew that before he entered the room.
“Was anyone else present?” his lawyer asked.
“Jonah Rusk was inside the mill.”
“Did you know he was there?”
“Yes.”
His lawyer paused, just long enough to let the answer stand. Vale understood the shape of the next questions. The lawyer was trying to separate the facts of the apparatus from the choices that followed. It was a reasonable effort. Vale had agreed to testify knowing it would be made.
“Did you intend to use the chair on Jonah?”
“No.”
“Did you intend for him to be harmed?”
“No.”
“Did you intend for him to witness the experiment?”
Vale looked past his lawyer to the jury. He had wanted the room to hear his account. He had not planned to make the account easier to bear.
“Yes.”
His lawyer took a breath. “Why?”
“I wanted him to see it.”
“Did you tell him to leave?”
“I told him to watch.”
The lawyer’s hand closed around his notes. He asked about Vale’s understanding of the risk, then whether he believed Jonah could leave the room. Vale answered that he had not restrained him. He had heard him ask to leave. His lawyer moved on to the time between that request and the door closing.
Next
With Vale’s testimony now alongside Jonah’s and Mara’s, the jury must decide whether his confessed choice meets the charge against him.