Superposition

by David Walton

  “What about it?”

  “I can’t just leave.”

  “Yes, you can. If they need you, you can come back for a few days. In the meantime, you need to find a new life.”

  Alessandra came over and touched my arm. I saw that she had already packed a bag with the clothes Marek had brought from our house. “Come on, Dad,” she said.

  “I’m not ready,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” Colin said. “It’s time. You need to see people. Life goes on.”

  I stood and turned my back on them. “Why does everyone insist that I move on? Am I supposed to forget my wife and kids? Act as if they never existed?”

  “You have a daughter,” Colin said. “She needs you.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Alessandra asked, her voice breaking. “Live in a basement forever? Mom and Claire and Sean didn’t make it, but we did. We’re alive. You’re alive. So live.”

  I turned back to face her, feeling more exhausted than ever in my life before. “I can’t do it, Alessandra.”

  “Then what?” she asked. “What does that mean, you can’t do it? Are you going to kill yourself? If so, then get on with it. I’m tired of you.”

  “Don’t talk to me that way,” I said.

  “Or what? Are you going to ground me? Take my allowance? You can barely get out of bed. I hate you.”

  I could feel the heat rising. “Hold your tongue. What would Mom think, if she heard you talking like that?”

  “I hate you,” she said. “You never loved me. It was always Claire, Claire, Claire.”

  “That’s crazy. Of course I love you.”

  “Then show it,” she said. “Take me away from here.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but something was blocking my throat, and before I knew it, I started to cry. It started as a kind of hiccup, then burst out of my throat in strangled sobs. It made me feel ashamed and weak and ridiculous, and I knew it was partly the alcohol, but I couldn’t help it. They just stood there and watched me until I got under control.

  “I can’t,” I finally said. “Don’t you see? I can’t leave. They might still be here somewhere. Maybe it’s crazy, but it just might be true. How can I go to the West Coast when it still might be true?”

  Alessandra stared at me, and it wasn’t disgust in her eyes, as I had feared, but compassion. She nodded slightly, but her eyes were still determined. “So figure it out,” she said. “Solve the puzzle. You’re supposed to be so smart. Find out what happened to Mom and Claire and Sean. Or track down the varcolac, and we’ll kill it. Just let’s get out of this basement and do something.”

  I took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “We’ll do it.”

  CHAPTER 22

  DOWN-SPIN

  “The defense calls Marek Svoboda to the stand,” Terry said.

  Marek took the stand in a suit and tie that I had never seen him wear before. He gave his name, took his oath on the Bible, and sat down.

  “What is your relationship to my client?” Terry asked.

  Marek explained that he was married to Elena’s sister Ava and answered a few more questions about his background.

  “What time did you meet Mr. Kelley on the morning of December third?”

  “It was about nine o’clock,” Marek said.

  “And what did you plan to do?”

  “His friend Brian had come over to the house the night before. He said and did some strange things and took a shot at Elena. Jacob wanted to go to the NJSC and try to find out what was going on.”

  “Did he say anything about wanting to kill Mr. Vanderhall?”

  “No.”

  “What about wanting to hurt him or make him pay or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “So, you met him at nine o’clock in the morning,” Terry said. “On December third. Five hours after the prosecution’s witness says Mr. Vanderhall was killed. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Marek said.

  “So, if my client had killed Mr. Vanderhall, he would have to have driven back from New Jersey in time to meet you at nine o’clock, and then drive with you back to New Jersey again. Why would he do that?”

  “He wouldn’t, if he was the killer,” Marek said.

  “Objection.” Haviland stood. “Speculation.”

  “Sustained and stricken,” Judge Roswell said.

  Terry nodded. “When he got in the car with you at nine o’clock, were his shoes bloody?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did he have a gun in his pocket, that you could see?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you tell the police this, Mr. Svoboda?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they believe you?”

  Haviland stood. “Speculation again, your Honor.”

  “Sustained,” the judge said. “Mr. Sheppard, please stick to the witness’s direct experiences.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I’ll rephrase,” Terry said. “When the police interviewed you, did they say whether they believed you or not?”

  “They said they didn’t believe me,” Marek said. “They kept pushing, asking the same questions over and over again, asking me if I was an accomplice.”

  “And were you?”

  “Was I what?”

  “Were you an accomplice? Did you help Jacob Kelley kill Mr. Vanderhall or cover it up?”

  “No.”

  “All right, Mr. Svoboda. When you arrived at the NJSC, where was the first place you went?”

  “To Mr. Vanderhall’s office.”

  “Why did you go there? Surely you didn’t expect to find him in such an obvious place, with the police searching for him.”

  “Jacob wanted to see if he could find anything that would tell him about Mr. Vanderhall’s research,” Marek said. “Anything that could explain what Mr. Vanderhall had done in his house.”

  “And did he find anything?”

  “Yes. He found a suicide note.”

  The courtroom exploded in buzzing. Haviland jumped to his feet, objecting loudly.

  “Your Honor, this is the first I have heard of any such document,” Haviland said.

  “I have no document to submit as evidence,” Terry said smoothly. “I am merely asking the witness for his recollection of the events of that day.”

  “It’s hearsay, then,” Haviland said, but the judge raised her hand before Terry could respond.

  “I’ll allow it, Mr. Sheppard,” she said. “But you’re walking a fine line.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Terry said.

  Haviland looked like he’d swallowed a lemon. There was no possible way he and his team could have seen it coming. I hadn’t told anyone about Brian’s letter, and I didn’t have it anymore, since the varcolac had destroyed it.

  “A suicide note?” Terry said. “Could you describe it for us?”

  “Yes, sir. It was in an envelope with Jacob’s name on it, so he felt perfectly within his rights to open and read it.”

  “Do you remember what the note said?” Terry asked.

  “Yes, clearly,” Marek said.

  “Tell us, to the best of your recollection.”

  “It said, ‘I should have told you about this in person, but I didn’t have the nerve. I think it’s for the best this way. You’re smart; you’ll figure it out. Say goodbye to Cathie for me. Brian.’”

  I noticed that Marek had left out the “maybe someday you’ll join me” line, which we hadn’t understood at the time. I was pretty sure I knew what that meant now. At the time he wrote it, Brian still thought that the varcolacs were going to make him a god, immortal and with all their powers. He was expecting to be missing, not dead, and he thought I could read the notes on his smartpad and figure out where he’d gone, maybe even contact the varcolacs myself and join him. He didn’t expect to turn up dead.

  “Did you actually read the not
e yourself, or did Mr. Kelley read it to you?” Haviland asked.

  “I read it myself,” Marek said. “It was handwritten on password-protected smart paper.”

  “And Jacob knew the password?”

  “He figured it out. It was some number that was important in quantum physics.”

  “So it was clear that Mr. Vanderhall wanted Mr. Kelley to get this note?”

  Haviland shot up. “Objection. The witness can have no knowledge of the victim’s intentions, or even that he wrote the note.”

  “Sustained,” Roswell said.

  “To whom was the note addressed?” Terry asked.

  “To Jacob.”

  “Thank you. And who is Cathie?”

  “CATHIE is a place, not a person,” Marek said. “It’s the name for the bunker where we found Mr. Vanderhall’s body.”

  “So that’s how you knew to go down there?”

  “Yes. Jacob interpreted the letter as telling us we should go down to the CATHIE bunker.”

  “Did Mr. Kelley seem to already know what he would find in the bunker?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Terry walked Marek through how we had found Brian in the bunker, but how we didn’t call the police because we didn’t have phone reception. Terry and I had argued about whether Marek should mention the varcolac, but eventually decided not to. It was tough either way. The story didn’t hang together very well without the varcolac, but what jury would believe him if he told them we’d been attacked by a demon?

  We would be asking a lot of them already. In order to generate a reasonable level of doubt in my guilt, the defense had to present another possible alternative that fit the facts. True or not, if an alternate theory was just as convincing as the defense’s theory of my guilt, then there was clearly some doubt as to whether I should be convicted for the crime. The alternative story that Terry was spinning, as had been introduced in Jean’s testimony, was that one version of Brian had killed the other one. It was a tough sell already, and Terry didn’t want descriptions of alien intelligences confusing the matter.

  Marek told the jury that I had been so overcome with grief about my friend’s death that I had run away, up the stairs. He described it as a kind of claustrophobia, a need to get some fresh air, and under Terry’s gentle questioning, it sounded credible. Marek had followed, both to help me and to see if there was phone reception outside, but there wasn’t. That was when we found Brian’s car, with the keys still in the ignition, and used it to drive away.

  The problem with the story was that it was mostly true, but not quite. All considering, I thought it was the best we could do, but it made me wonder how much of the trial system had to do with truth, and how much of it was a competition between the two opposing sides to see whose fiction was the more believable.

  Terry dropped the bomb out of nowhere.

  “When you got into the car, you discovered that you were not the only one there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Marek said. “Brian Vanderhall was sleeping in the backseat.”

  The courtroom erupted in noise, and Judge Roswell had to bang her gavel for order.

  Terry feigned confusion. “Let me understand this,” he said. “You just told us you found Mr. Vanderhall dead in the bunker, and now you’re saying he was sleeping in the backseat. Which is it, Mr. Svoboda?”

  “Both. We found him in both places. There were two versions of him. One was dead, the other was still alive.”

  Haviland objected again. “Your Honor, this is insane. Mr. Sheppard is turning this courtroom into a circus for the media. I move that Mr. Svoboda be placed under contempt for his mockery of these proceedings and—”

  “That’s enough, Mr. Haviland,” Roswell said. “Mr. Sheppard?”

  “This is the alternate theory of the defense, Your Honor,” Terry said. “As my expert witness contended earlier, this is a scientifically plausible scenario. Not only is it plausible, but we intend to prove that it actually happened.”

  “Very well,” Roswell said. “Objection overruled.”

  “Judge, I request a sidebar,” Haviland said.

  Roswell sighed and motioned the lawyers up to the front. She switched on a noise cancelling system that prevented any of the rest of us from overhearing what was said. I saw Haviland gesticulating and rolling his eyes. Before long, Roswell took her seat again and the lawyers returned, Terry looking serene and Haviland annoyed.

  “The objection is still overruled,” Roswell said. “Mr. Sheppard, please continue.”

  Haviland sat, and Terry continued to question Marek. This was the point at which things got a bit sticky, since now that Brian’s double had been introduced, his departure had to be explained. Marek said nothing about the Higgs projector, nor Brian’s attempt to use it to protect them from the varcolac. He merely claimed that, after explaining some of his quantum research to them, Brian had disappeared.

  “Disappeared?” Haviland said. “Into thin air?”

  “Yes, sir. Jacob explained it to me as the collapse of a probability wave, but all I know is, he vanished.”

  “No further questions,” Terry said.

  Haviland stood, shaking his head in apparent disbelief that such nonsense had been allowed in court. “Mr. Svoboda,” he said. “I’d like to ask you about the so-called suicide note that you say Mr. Kelley found. Did you see the note before Mr. Kelley picked it up?”

  I had wondered whether Haviland would ask about the note or just try to ignore it. It wasn’t really devastating to his case—his witnesses had already proven that Brian’s death couldn’t have been a suicide by any normal means. If he didn’t ask, however, it would allow the letter to stand without challenge. Haviland had apparently opted to ask.

  “No,” Marek said. “Jacob found the note and then showed it to me.”

  “Can you be certain he didn’t write the letter at home and then pretend that he found it to remove suspicion?”

  “If he wanted to remove suspicion, he would have planted the letter in the office and left it there for others to find, not shown it secretly to me,” Marek said. It was a good point, and I saw Haviland wince.

  “Let me rephrase. Do you know, beyond Mr. Kelley telling you so, that this note came from Mr. Vanderhall’s office?”

  “No.”

  “Where is this note now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  This was actually good luck for us. If we had a piece of physical evidence related to the crime in our possession, Terry would have been required to turn it over to the police, or risk considerable legal consequences, both in the trial and personally. Just having knowledge that such evidence had once existed, however, came with no such responsibility.

  Haviland laid the scorn on as thick as he could. “So we have no evidence, other than your word, that this so-called suicide note ever existed or—even by your own testimony—where it came from or who really wrote it.”

  “If you don’t believe me,” Marek said, stiffening, “then don’t ask me any more questions.”

  “A few more, I think,” Haviland said. “You say that when you found Mr. Vanderhall’s body, you didn’t call the police because you had no phone coverage. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the police never received a call from you or Mr. Kelley, not then or later. Are you telling us you didn’t have phone coverage that whole day?”

  “We didn’t call later because we had seen Brian alive,” Marek said.

  “Ah yes, I see. Just before he magically disappeared, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about after you stole Mr. Vanderhall’s car and drove to Pennsylvania? Did you have phone coverage then?”

  “We didn’t steal the car,” Marek said.

  “No? Did you own the car?”

  “No,” Marek said. I could tell he was getting angry at being disbelieved, but he was keeping it in check.

  “Did you have permission from the owner to drive it?”

  �
�The owner was in the car with us.”

  “Now, I’m confused,” Haviland said. “I thought you testified that he disappeared there in the woods. Was he in the car with you all the way to Pennsylvania?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you drive to Pennsylvania?”

  “That’s where Jacob lives,” Marek said.

  “But wait a minute. You found Mr. Vanderhall’s body dead in the bunker, and you testified that you didn’t call police because you didn’t have phone coverage. But then, instead of driving back to the NJSC or to a local police station to report what you’d found, you turned and drove in the victim’s car back to Pennsylvania. Why did you do that?”

  “Jacob was afraid his family might be in danger.”

  “In danger!” Haviland gave a short, disbelieving laugh and raised his hands to the ceiling. “Now why would Mr. Kelley’s family be in danger, if not from him?”

  “Brian told him they might be,” Marek said. It was a weak explanation, and Haviland knew it. He kept after him like a shark smelling blood. “And as you drove to Pennsylvania, you still had no phone coverage?”

  “We did, but as I said, we had seen Brian alive. Besides, Jacob was trying to reach Elena by then, to warn her.”

  “Isn’t it true that you had no intention of calling the police?”

  “No, we tried several times,” Marek said.

  “Weren’t you actually running away from the police?”

  “No.”

  “Did you go with Mr. Kelley on the night of December second, when he killed Mr. Vanderhall?”

  “No, I did not. And Jacob didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Why did you return to the bunker the next day? Were you hoping to clean up the crime scene? Or did you forget some incriminating piece of evidence? The gun, perhaps?”

  “The first time I ever saw the bunker was when we found Brian’s body there.”

  “Mr. Kelley was found with gunshot residue on his hands. How did that happen, if you simply found the body? Did he pick up the gun and fire it a few times just for fun?”

  Marek hesitated. There was no good way to answer that question. “We thought we saw something,” he said.

  “So he did fire the gun?”

  “Yes. It was dark, and Mr. Vanderhall was dead, and we were scared.”