David Walton - Superposition

“She’s upset,” Alex said.

“She might know where they are, but she won’t show us,” I said. “I’m not inclined to be generous.”

We jumped into the car. I tried to reach Terry on the phone, but all I got was a voice mail message saying that he was in trial proceedings and would return my call as soon as he was able.

“Hopefully, the police will think she’s crazy when she calls,” I said. “Since I’m obviously on trial right now, not driving around New Jersey.”

The phone rang. “Terry?” I said.

“No, this is Nick Massey,” said an angry voice on the other end. “I’m looking for my wife.”

It took me a moment to switch gears. “Wait, what? Who is this?”

“Nick Massey.” He stressed each syllable as if I were an imbecile.

“You’re looking for Jean?”

“That’s what I said.”

“I haven’t seen her.”

“Listen up, asshole,” Nick said. “I don’t have to catch you in bed together to know what’s going on. She’s barely been home for weeks, and now she’s not even answering my phone calls. If she’s leaving me, fine, but I need to know the score, and we need to settle up in court. If she doesn’t want me or Chance, she could at least have the decency to tell us to our faces.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it again, not sure how to respond. This was completely out of the blue, and I didn’t need any more problems. “You’ve got this wrong,” I said. “I’m not sleeping with Jean. She’s helping me with my court case. She’s an expert witness.”

“Put her on the phone.”

“She’s not here. I’ve seen her, but not today. I don’t know where she is, but my guess would be the Philadelphia courthouse.”

“A husband knows, Mr. Kelley. She’s not just busy with some court case. She’s been emotionally checked out for months, and now I know why. She’s sleeping with you, and she’s left me and Chance behind.”

“Look, I’m sorry for that, really, but I had no idea,” I said. “If I see her, I’ll tell her you called.”

“Do that. And think about whether a woman who abandons her child is really somebody you want to be involved with.”

“I’m not sleeping with her, Nick.”

“Well, if that’s the truth, I apologize. But I’m pretty sure somebody is.”

The second I hung up, the phone rang again in my hand. This time it was Terry. “Jacob, where are you? We’re putting you on the stand this afternoon.”

“What? Today?”

“Of course! Listen, if you’re not here in less than an hour, you’re going to miss your chance. This whole thing hangs on you being here.”

“We have new evidence,” I said, and explained to him what we’d discovered. “We have a witness, one of Brian’s old girlfriends, who says that Brian was using the gun to perform dangerous experiments on himself. He convinced her to fire it at him, and maybe other people as well.”

“It’s not very much,” Terry said.

“What do you mean? It’s an alternate theory if I ever heard one.”

“We already have an alternate theory. It’s too late to switch gears. Besides, the judge is going to be very suspicious of any new information materializing this late in the trial. Will your witness testify?”

“Uh, no, probably not. Not willingly, anyway.”

“It won’t work. Too many desperate lawyers try to throw up smokescreens at the end of a trial. Opposing counsel would scream foul, and the judge would agree.”

“And they’re not going to scream foul about me?”

“Of course, they are. But that’s our ace in the hole, and I don’t think there’s going to be anything they can do about it. It’s worth the risk.”

“This woman’s a more credible suspect than I am. She should at least provide some reasonable doubt.”

“If we had her a month ago, maybe. Today, we have to stick with what we have. Get back here in an hour, or we won’t have anything.”

Terry stood and announced the next and final witness. Me. I felt the eyes of everyone in the courtroom on me as I walked to the stand. The room looked different from this perspective. I felt the jurors watching me, and I met their eyes with as honest an expression as I could muster, just like Terry had coached me. He said jurors always liked when a defendant testified. It gave them a chance to hear the defendant’s side of the story, something that seemed strangely missing in most trials. Despite the appeal to the jury, defendants almost never testified, and for a very good reason. It gave the prosecution the chance to ask tough questions and bring things into the court record that might otherwise be kept out, like a criminal past or incriminating statements previously made. It also meant a guilty client would have to lie, straight-faced, to the court and make the lie stick. Not many lawyers were willing to take the risk.

Terry thought this was one of the rare times that the benefits outweighed the risks. My story was so bizarre that presenting it in any other way but through my voice would be laughable. Jean had laid the scientific groundwork, and Marek had given his first-hand account; now I just had to tell them the story from my perspective. We expected Haviland to make my claims sound ridiculous, but we had set a trap for him which might just turn the trial around, if it worked.

Terry had coached me on how to behave. Don’t smile. Don’t fold your arms across your chest. Keep your hands away from your mouth. Never say, “To the best of my knowledge.” Don’t mumble. Speak confidently. Sit up straight. I was so busy trying to remember all these tips, I barely had time to worry about what I was going to say. Maybe that was part of the idea.

At the lectern, Terry shuffled his papers and took his time. I guessed he was trying to raise the suspense, to heighten the sense that whatever had gone before, this was the part of the trial that really mattered. I hoped he was right.

“Mr. Kelley,” he said. “Did you kill Brian Vanderhall?”

I waited a beat, just like he taught me, then leaned forward into the microphone. “I did not.”

“Did you cause his death in any way?”

“No, I did not.”

“When was the last time you saw Brian Vanderhall alive?”

“On the afternoon of December third.”

Terry paused to let that sink in. “Other witnesses have testified that Brian’s dead body was found, by you, on the morning of December third.”

“Yes, that’s true,” I said, enunciating clearly. “I found Brian’s dead body in the bunker in the morning. I also saw him alive that afternoon.”

Even though Marek had said essentially the same thing, the courtroom erupted in a buzz of noise. The camera flies whizzed around my face. Haviland actually laughed and clapped his hands together, apparently thinking his case was as good as won. I kept my face solemn, neither smiling nor acknowledging the reaction.

Judge Roswell pounded her gavel—I wondered how often she actually got a chance to do that—and the room quieted.

Terry pretended to be astonished by my claim. “Are you suggesting Brian Vanderhall rose from the dead? Or is it time travel, perhaps? Or does he have an identical twin who was hidden away by his parents at birth?”

“None of those,” I said. “This admittedly unusual event was a direct result of Brian’s research into quantum fields.”

Terry stepped me through it, point by point. We could have taken a different tack, tried to frame my story in completely normal terms, leaving Brian out of it, or else not told my story at all. But I had told the police the truth when they interrogated me, which meant the whole story was on record. If I left out the unbelievable parts, Haviland could just trot them out and use them to make me look ridiculous anyway.