by David Walton
We all nodded glumly, except for David Haviland, who positively smirked.
Disaster. It had seemed like such a good plan, but it was all falling apart. The jury had seen me, briefly, so maybe it would influence their verdict despite Roswell’s instructions, but as she had pointed out, the existence of two of me wasn’t evidence that I hadn’t committed the murder. With the judge instructing them to dismiss what they saw, the jurors would assume it had been a trick of some kind—much easier than actually believing my story. And there were still the fingerprints, and the gun, and the bloody shoes. My double would have to endure the rest of cross-examination, and the judge was likely to give Haviland wide latitude in his questions. This wasn’t going to fall my way.
Roswell called the bailiff in to escort me off the premises, and I was left on the sidewalk while the trial continued on without me. I stood outside the courthouse, not sure what to do next. Alex was inside, but I couldn’t go in and tell her where I was. She would only have seen me go back toward the judge’s chambers and then not come out again.
I looked around and saw someone jogging toward me. “Jean!” I said.
“What happened back there?” she asked.
“The judge was mad at our little stunt. I’m banned from the courtroom. Could you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Go in and tell Alex that I’m out here?”
“Sure thing.”
Jean ran back up the courtroom steps. Two minutes later, she came out again with Alex and Marek, who had been inside watching the court proceedings as well. We found Colin’s car in the parking garage and climbed in, Alex in the passenger seat and Jean and Marek in the back. I sat in the driver’s seat and shut the door. I didn’t turn the engine on, because I didn’t know where to go.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, twisting to look at them. “I don’t know how much longer I have left. I don’t know if the jury is going to exonerate or condemn me, and I don’t know when or how my waveform is going to collapse. I think it’s too late for any of us to affect the outcome of the case. So with the time I have left, I want to figure out what happened to the rest of my family.”
“Count me in,” Jean said. I thought about the phone call from Nick and decided that I wouldn’t mention it. It wasn’t really any of my business, and Jean, whatever her problems, had been a good friend to me. She had to work out her family problems on her own, and if she didn’t see fit to confide in me, I wasn’t going to interfere.
Alex slipped a hand over and squeezed mine. “Count me in, too,” she said. I gave her a warm smile. Neither of us mentioned that she, too, didn’t know how long she had left, or just who she would be when her waveform collapsed.
Marek didn’t say anything, but I knew he was in. Over the preceding months, he had shown himself to be as good a friend as I had ever known. Certainly a better friend than Brian Vanderhall. He didn’t say much, and he didn’t get sentimental, but he wasn’t going to leave me until this was all resolved, one way or another.
I checked my phone and saw that there was a message from Lily Lin. “Hang on,” I said. “This might be important.”
The message was brief, but there was a link to a viewfeed. She had decided to let us see it after all.
Quickly, I explained to the others what we had learned from Lily. “She was the last person to see them,” I said. “This might tell us what happened.”
My heart was pounding as I waited for the others to sync their lenses to my phone. When everyone was ready, I played the feed.
The beginning was familiar—we had seen it before from Sheila’s point of view. Elena asked about me, and Lily offered to take her to Brian’s office. This time, however, we kept watching. They left the Feynman Center and headed along the gravel path toward the Dirac building. It was December, so the sky was already dark. A sliver of moon hung over the horizon. Lily wore a sweater, but no coat, and she hugged herself as she led the way.
Suddenly there was a man on the path in front of them. He didn’t step out of a building or out from behind a tree; he just appeared. Even from this distance, the bones of his face looked wrong, and his elbows and knees bent awkwardly. He had no eyes.
Lily took a step back, and I could see the look of confused fear in Elena’s eyes. The varcolac advanced, its forward motion not hindered by its awkward gait. Lily shrieked and backed out of its way. The varcolac ignored her.
Elena stepped in front of it, blocking it from the children. “Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want?”
It reached out to her, and I cringed, expecting a repeat of the death scene from my house. Instead, a portion of space seemed to rotate on invisible hinges, and a dozen more varcolacs appeared, identical copies of the first, surrounding the party on the grass. The children screamed and huddled close as the varcolacs advanced. When they had formed a tight circle, the space around them rotated again, like a three-dimensional trapdoor, and when it returned to its original position, Elena, the children, and the varcolacs were gone. Only Lily was left, her view blurred by her tears.
The viewfeed ended. This was why Lily hadn’t told anyone what she had seen. It was horrible and impossible, and who would believe her? She had been only too glad to avoid testifying in court.
But now I was one step closer to learning what had happened to my family. It was possible, maybe even probable, that the varcolacs had killed them, but not certain. Despite the fact that they hadn’t been seen for months, it was conceivable that their waveforms might not have collapsed. There was no way to tell where the varcolacs had taken them, or even if it was a where in the traditional sense, but it was possible—just possible—that they might still be alive.
I twisted in my seat to face the others. “They must have had a copy of the Higgs projector letter,” I said. “The varcolac realized they had split, and after it destroyed the copy that Alessandra was holding, it went back to the NJSC to destroy the other version.”
“Wait,” Alex said. “I’m confused. Just how many copies of this letter were there?”
“By my count, there were four,” I said. “Brian had the original letter, and he split, making two. One was destroyed in the pine forest; the other he mailed to me. That version split twice, both times with Alex. One version went to the NJSC, one stayed at home and was destroyed by the varcolac, and the other she dropped by the fence, where we retrieved it. As far as we know, I have the only copy left.”
“What should we do?” Jean asked. “Go find Lily again? Maybe she knows more.”
“No,” Alex said. “We need to find the new girlfriend.”
“That’s right!” I snapped my fingers. “Brian had already dumped Lily when he died, but she mentioned a new girlfriend, someone Brian had left her for. Someone else who was helping him with his experiments.”
“Who was it?” Jean asked.
“She didn’t know.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a lead.”
“If we could find her, though, she might know more about how Brian died. She might even be the murderer. She might have pulled the trigger at Brian’s request, like Lily said, only the experiment went wrong. Or she was angry at him, and there was the gun, loaded and in easy reach, and she grabbed it and shot him,” I said.
“But he was found in a fingerprint-locked room. Only you or Brian could have locked it,” Jean said.
“Or else someone who knew how to reprogram the lock.”
“The police looked for that. They said it hadn’t been reprogrammed in years,” Jean said.
“Okay, then someone who both knew how to reprogram the lock and hack its internal logs so nobody could tell.”
“Doesn’t sound like the type of woman Brian usually slept around with,” Jean said.
“Look, someone killed him. It wasn’t me. The varcolac isn’t likely to use a gun. That leaves other people. So someone must have gotten past that lock,” I said.
Jean made an exasperated noise. “We’ve had this conversation a dozen ti
mes. Logically, the only person who could have locked the door and left the room was Brian himself. The other version of himself.”
I sagged against my seat. I still didn’t think Brian had killed himself, but she was right, we weren’t getting anywhere. Besides, my goal wasn’t to solve Brian’s murder anymore. It was too late for that. Now I just wanted to find my family.
“We need to go back to the NJSC,” Jean said.
“We’ve been there three times this week,” Alex said. “What else are we going to find?”
Jean leaned forward. “We have to find whatever it is the varcolac wants. In order to know where it took your family, we have to know where it is. We have to find the varcolac. The only way to do that is to go back down to the CATHIE bunker.”
I started to shake my head. “That’s not a good idea. You haven’t seen it, Jeannie, not in real life. It nearly killed us.”
Jean crossed her arms. “If you want to find them, that’s where we have to go. That’s where the answers are.”
A sudden rap on the car window made me jump. I looked out to see a journalist peering in at me. “Mr. Kelley? Can I ask you a few questions?”
“Time to go,” I said. I turned the car on and pulled it into gear.
The journalist rapped on the window again. “Mr. Kelley?”
I rolled the window down an inch. “I’m innocent,” I said. “I have nothing more to say.” I backed the car out of the parking lot. He followed me and stood in front of the car, blocking my exit. I drove toward him anyway.
“Wait,” he said, but he didn’t have the courage to stand his ground with me bearing down on him. I didn’t stop, and he jumped aside at the last minute. “Hey!”
As soon as we reached the street, another journalist spotted me and ran in our direction, camera drones whizzing ahead of her. “Court must have let out,” I said. “We should have gotten farther away.” More of them appeared, like seagulls after bread, materializing out of nowhere. I blasted the horn and pulled away, leaving them calling after me from the curb.
“Where are we going?” Jean asked.
“Where do you think?” I asked. I didn’t like it, but I had to admit that she was right. There was no way around it. The super collider ring was the varcolac’s lair, if anything was, and if we wanted answers, we had to go back down into it.
CHAPTER 28
DOWN-SPIN
Waiting for a jury to come back with a verdict is the worst sort of torture. The seconds drag by, and there are too many of them in each minute. Sometimes, when I looked at the clock, I could have sworn it went backward. Not that the time really mattered. There was no deadline. The jury was free to take all week to make a decision if it needed it.
Haviland’s final interrogation of me had been bloody and merciless. He dragged me through my story detail by detail, making me repeat it again and again, until it sounded as hollow and ludicrous as a fairy tale. Along the way, he asked me if I believed in gnomes, Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or if I’d ever been abducted by aliens, each time shrugging as if, given my tale, these were reasonable points to establish. Terry stared stonily ahead, giving no indication that he noticed the beating we were taking.
When the bloodbath was finally over, the lawyers delivered their closing arguments. Terry made a valiant effort, reminding the jury that the only physical evidence the prosecution had against me showed that I had been at the scene, which I had freely admitted. It didn’t prove that I had pulled the trigger. There were no witnesses that placed me at the scene at the actual time Brian had been killed. The prosecution had provided no motive for me to commit such a crime, beyond their contention that I was a violent man. He didn’t push the science, except to claim that significant evidence had been brought to bear to demonstrate the plausibility of an alternate theory. Roswell frowned a bit at that and seemed about to interrupt, but she let it slide. He ended by reminding the jury that they didn’t need to believe the alternate theory entirely, only be able to see that things could have happened in more than one way, and thus that my guilt had not been proven.
Haviland, on the other hand, was triumphant in his closing argument, almost gloating. He ridiculed my “pseudoscience,” even provoking a laugh from one juror. Then he grew solemn and sermonized on the ills of causing the death of another human being, the need for society to protect its own, and the responsibility of each juror to their fellow citizens. He summarized the evidence in rapid style, and he dismissed the attempts of the defense to spin a plausible alternative story as “fanciful” and “desperate.” He glossed over the idea of motive, and harped instead on the “reasonable doubt” theme of his opening, claiming that any reasonable person would have no doubt who had killed Brian Vanderhall.
When both lawyers had finished, Judge Roswell gave the jury their instructions. She ordered them severely to consider only the evidence, not the lawyer’s questions or statements “or anything else you might have seen.” Only what was officially entered in court record was to be considered.
“One final thing,” Judge Roswell said. “I’m afraid that I’m going to have to call for this jury to be sequestered until a verdict can be reached. If you reach a verdict this evening, you will not be further inconvenienced. If not, however, you will not be able to return to your homes until the case is decided. Meals and lodging will be provided to you.”
The announcement was met with groans and traded looks by the jurors, and I was struck again by how insignificant this case was in the lives of these men and women. Even if they were conscientious people—and I had no reason to doubt it—this would all be over for them in a day or two. They would return home to their families and their lives and, after regaling their friends with tales of their murder trial for a week or so, forget all about it. They probably cared more about whether their court-provided hotel room would have HBO than they did about the ultimate outcome of the case. Perhaps I was being too cynical, but from where I sat, I wasn’t feeling too optimistic about the legal system.
Roswell fixed them with her evil eye, no doubt picking up on the same reactions. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do not allow your desire to go home prevent you from giving this case your full efforts. A man’s life hangs in the balance. Should you keep a dissenting opinion to yourself, and not speak up against the ideas of your fellow jurors, you may be punishing an innocent man, or allowing a guilty one to go free. Our system of justice entrusts you with this responsibility, believing that you will treat the determination of this man’s guilt or innocence with the same gravity as you would if it were your own.”
With that, the jury stood, faces unreadable, and filed out of the room. I sat in the same chair I had warmed for most of this interminable week, waiting. There was a lot of dead time in a trial, so I had already spent a great deal of time waiting in this room—waiting for the jurors to arrive, waiting for the lawyers to finish a sidebar with the judge, waiting for any of a hundred secret rituals the judge performed in hushed voices with her aides, the court recorder, the court officers, the bailiff, and any of the other unidentified people who went in and out, disrupting the flow of the trial. I had studied at length the room’s elegant crown molding, its bland oil paintings, its massive chandeliers. There was nothing left to distract me from a bitter reflection on my situation.
Someone else was living my life. That the someone else was technically me didn’t help very much. He was running around free, going where he pleased, hanging out with my friends, eating at restaurants, and spending time with my daughter, while I returned to my jail cell each night and would probably be convicted of murder. The prospect of our waveform collapsing didn’t provide much encouragement: the more like him the final Jacob turned out to be, the more I would cease to exist. The more like me the final Jacob turned out to be, the more likely it was that I would spend the rest of my life in jail. I was helpless, while the man who was living my life investigated things without me. What if he discovered a way to force the waveform collapse and choose which way i
t resolved? I could hardly fault him for making the obvious choice.
It was strange how I had begun to use the third person to describe my other self. Jacob was me in principle, but it felt less and less like that was true the more our experiences diverged. We had both been the same person the day Brian died, but were we anymore? It was hard to say.
And still the jury didn’t return. Every time someone coughed or a door opened or closed, my stomach muscles clenched in a jolt of panic, thinking that the jury was back. The waiting was agony. I asked to use the restroom, though I really didn’t need to, simply to get up and move around.
The bailiff took me to a special restroom separate from the ones open to the public. Sitting alone in the stall, looking up at the narrow, barred window, I thought about suicide. I wasn’t even sure how I would do it—a shoelace around the light fixture? A piece of broken glass to the wrists? I wouldn’t technically be dead, if I did it—Jacob Kelley would still be alive. Eventually, only one of us could live anyway, and it seemed better that it be him. I didn’t think I could really do it, though, at least not using the brutal and chancy means available. These were just the idle reflections of a man feeling cheated by life.
Fifteen minutes after I shuffled back into the courtroom, the jury finally reappeared. They were welcomed by the scrape of shifting chairs and the rustle of papers as the courtroom came alive again. The jurors’ faces were somber, giving no hint of the verdict. They filed in awkwardly and a few glanced down at their chairs, as if uncertain whether they were supposed to sit. Finally, after a few false starts, they all sat down.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you have a verdict?” Judge Roswell asked.
The chairwoman stood. “No, Your Honor.” She looked embarrassed. “We didn’t have enough time to talk through everything, but the officer said we had to come back in now.”
I glanced at the time. It was five after eight.
Roswell didn’t look surprised at the lack of verdict. I guessed she had ousted them because it was past closing time, and her question had been mere formality. “Do you feel that with more time you will be able to reach a verdict?”