Son of the Endless Night, page 50
"Then the trial has been for nothing. And Zarach' will own his soul. Permanently."
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Conor said on the phone to Gina that night, "So Rich has to take the stand. It's just about our last hope of convincing the jury."
"When will that be?" "Probably the day after tomorrow." "I'm coming," she said.
"Gina— I don't know; maybe that's not such a good idea. I'm afraid— "
"Afraid of what? Conor, he needs all of us now. All of our support and prayers. I'm going to be there."
109
"Martin," Tommie Harkrider said to his former client Martin Vale, after watching him finish off a fourth vodka and tonic in just under three minutes, "I'm going to throw caution to the winds at this point and predict the outcome of a trial, which is something I never do. The fact is, I just don't see how we can lose."
"How much time will he serve?" Martin Vale mumbled. "How many years for the years my daughter had coming to her? Is that a prediction you'd care to make?"
Tommie reached out and put a hand on the smaller man's shoulder. "I just don't know. But I can tell you we'll be asking the maximum."
"Whatever he gets, it won't be enough."
"Martin, as a sympathetic friend, I'd urge you to spare yourself and Louise by skipping the rest of the trial. I see you sitting there, day after day, and I know how it's eating you up."
Martin Vale's chin bunched and there were tears in his eyes. "Eating me up," he acknowledged. He licked a last drop from the inside rim of his glass. Tommie tightened his grip a little on Martin's shoulder. It was past midnight. They were sitting on the screened porch of the luxurious summer home which the Vales had rented for the duration of the trial. Ceiling fans with varnished wooden paddles cooled the air around them. Moths prostrated themselves on screenwire, magnetized by distant lamplight.
"Why don't you go on up and try to get some sleep?" Tommie advised. "I'll let myself out."
But long after he had gone Martin Vale continued to sit on the porch, moping on wicker, down to one lamp, down to an ounce of vodka in the bottle he had opened a few hours ago.
There were creatures in the dark, nightsingers. The track of the moon lay fernlike on the surface of the nearby lake. The moths on the screen in front of him had rearranged themselves subtly into an image that at first was as dim and shadowy as the face of Christ on the shroud of Turin. The last ounce of vodka, taken neat, helped to clarify what he was seeing. Karyn, pale but full-blown. The moon shining through her silent form except where the two dark ellipses of her eyes gazed steadfastly into his heart. Those eyes judged him. As a father. As a man.
The little Smith and Wesson Bodyguard Airweight revolver which Martin Vale held in his right hand weighed only fourteen and a half ounces. When loaded with the five .38 Special cartridges which he held in his left hand, it would weigh a little more.
He loaded it, and put out the last light. The image of Karyn on the screen faded gradually to a bearable distance from his mind. He fell asleep on the porch, the revolver in his hand.
110
As she had said she would do, Edith stalled for time. Sigrid was on her way back to Heraclio. Until she got there, Edith knew she couldn't put Rich on the stand.
Tommie lost his temper twice over the time she was taking to question Benny Childs on matters of theology that seemed to have been of interest to the defendant before the murder. Tommie argued with Winford, and he argued with Edith.
"All I want to know, and a simple yes or no will do, is: do you intend to call Richard Devon?" When Edith wouldn't answer him he appealed to the judge. "Because I fail to understand, Your Honor, how the information gleaned thus far from the memory of Mr. Childs has been worth three hours of our time."
Tommie lost his argument and was forced to sit through another forty-five minutes of Edith's painstaking interrogation of the witness before she turned Benny Childs over to him. By then it was four thirty-five in the afternoon; there was an air of torpor in the courtroom.
"No questions!" Tommie snapped.
The trial was adjourned for the day.
111
At noon on the following day on the island of Heraclio nearly two hundred people, Sigrid among them, gathered in the plaza around the bronze sundial. At that moment of the day when there was not a trace of a shadow on the face of the sundial, the members of the society linked hands and began the prayers that would continue until the rim of the setting sun was extinguished on the horizon nine hours later.
It was eight o'clock in the morning in Chadbury, Vermont.
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At six minutes after ten Edith Leighton announced to the court, "The defense calls Richard Devon."
The soporific dullness of the day before had been replaced by a tension that was almost morbid. Edith reacted to this negative charge by shielding herself with a psychic white light. She continued her close appraisal of Rich, begun the moment the bailiffs escorted him into the courtroom through a side door. He looked, more than ever, shackled by chains of guilt as he slumped into his chair at the end of the defense's table. The movements of his hands were tentative; he looked weak around the mouth, his face half wakened, with an unlit pallor despite the flow of sun through the windows. Edith was as fully absorbed as with an immense work of art that was simultaneously an allegory and a conundrum; she might have been studying a medieval tapestry into which one had to delve, to penetrate beyond thick interweavings and layers of meaning to an elusive image of God or His nemesis. There were no clues, yet, as to which personality she would encounter on the witness stand: the hell-bound youth, or the consummate, Infernal Trickster.
What she must do was done; she would not consider the possibility of failure.
From her seat beside her husband in the second row of the courtroom, Gina Devon leaned forward to get a better look at Rich in those moments of silence before he rose from the table to walk to the witness stand. She had to look away quickly, afraid she would cry. She pressed closer to Conor.
"What is that in your hand?" Judge Winford asked from the bench, before the defendant reached the witness stand.
Rich stopped as if he were about to stumble and looked confused; he stared up at the judge.
"I don't— did you say— ?"
"I said, you're carrying something in your right hand. Would you tell us what it is?"
Rich lifted his hand. From it dangled little baskets of yellow paper, a chain of them. There were twelve in all.
"These are"— Rich's voice was very low-pitched— "baskets I've been making." They could barely hear him in the jury box ten feet away; behind him, in the spectator's seats, he wasn't audible at all. His lack of volume provoked a stir.
Edith, coming up behind Rich, said, "Why don't I take those? You won't need them while you're testifying."
Rich nodded, holding out the little baskets to her and for a moment she saw far down into his eyes. She felt the drag of those depths despite her shield: the attraction of two small, almost microscopic pips of red.
There you are.
"You keep them; I made them for you," Rich asserted. He smiled, and the two of them were joined by some arc of the sinister, brighter than the day around them. But of the others in the courtroom, only Father James Merlo was aware of it.
Edith looked into one of the linked baskets. It appeared to contain, in fine miniature, the writhing form of the juror named Ivan Mandelko. He was naked and cruelly blemished. His eyes had been put out; their sockets steamed as if the white-tipped irons had only that instant been withdrawn. In places his skin and flesh hung in strips and tatters from his bones. His genitals had been turned to charred stubs by those same hot irons.
She was just able to suppress an outcry. She looked up and into the eyes of Ivan Mandelko in the jury box. He was dropsical from shock. She couldn't make contact with him.
Edith felt all the baskets sagging slightly in her hand, as if from added weight. She realized what she would see if she looked into any more of them. She did not look. She carried the baskets to the defense table and placed a heavy lawbook on top of them. Then she walked slowly back to the witness stand, a matter of a few steps but a road of infinite hardship to travel against the red fury that was streaming at her from the pupils of the defendant's eyes, an assault against her own light, the strength of her resolve.
And as quickly as it had begun, the onslaught ended. The possessor, confident of his gamesmanship, dealt Rich back to her like a dog-eared trump and withdrew a little distance from the proceedings. Rich sat twisting his hands, his head bowed. He mumbled at the swearing-in, and had to be asked repeatedly to sit closer to the microphone.
Then it was Edith's turn.
"Mr. Devon, will you please tell us when you first met Polly Windross?"
Silence. Rich held his throat and breathed harshly, and Edith wondered, bleakly, if he was going to be allowed to speak at all.
"Mr. Devon, are you all right?" Judge Winford asked from the bench.
Rich continued to massage his throat. He nodded slightly.
Edith said calmly, "Allow me to repeat the question. When did you first meet Polly Windross?"
"It— it was— August— a year ago."
"Are you finding it difficult to speak to me, Mr. Devon?"
"Yes."
"I'm only here to help you. And you will be helped. But as I told you in the beginning, you must help yourself too."
Tommie Harkrider slapped a hand on the prosecutor's table and said, "Objection, Your Honor. What is this all about? Can the witness testify, or can't he?"
"I c-c-can testify," Rich got out, twisting and turning his head as if to dislodge an obstruction from his throat. Whatever it was, he swallowed it and was momentarily still.
"Was Karyn Vale with you when you met Polly Windross last year?"
"Yes ... she was."
"Just take your time," Edith advised. "We have all the time you need, Richard."
With halting slowness, guided by her questions, Rich established the relationship he'd had with Polly. Edith brought him forward in time then, to January, the message left on his answering machine. This tape was introduced as evidence, and the jurors heard the voice of Polly Windross.
"Could call you if I ever needed ..."
"... hurting me, I'm afraid ..."
"... somebody doesn't stop ..."
". . . you're the only one . . ."
". . . can trust you . . ."
". . . can trust you . . ."
". . . please come . . ."
Rich's expression, at her first words, underwent many rapid shadings, changes flashing one through another like tinted glass balls in a juggler's deceptively lazy hands: anxiety, fear, anger, pity, mourning. Finally overcome, he listened, unbreathing, with a lowered face that slowly darkened as if he were suffocating. Only the end of the tape relieved him.
"Mr. Devon," Edith said, "is there any doubt that the voice you've just heard is the voice of Polly Windross?"
"No. That's— that was Polly."
"When you arrived with Karyn at the Post Road Inn on the evening of January the eighteenth, were you able to get in touch with Polly right away?"
"I— uh— touched her— so she was real." He began to nod, brows knitted, concentrating on the perplexing matter of Polly until Edith said quickly, "Did you understand my question? Can you— "
"What's real, and what isn't real. That's the crucial question, right? The sad news is, what's real one minute isn't real the next. It depends on the degree of apprehension. Synchronicity is involved, and— and— the light has to be right, among other things— "
"Richard— "
"Well! To answer your question, Polly . . . was . . . real, that's as true as I can tell you." He looked up at his counsel, waiting for her to acknowledge his sincerity.
Edith smiled comfortingly. "All right, Richard. Now let's go back. Will you please tell us what happened when upon your arrival you inquired after Polly?"
She was expecting almost anything, but after Rich thought for a few moments, he answered the question in a straightforward manner, with no hint of ellipsis or a gimcracked mind. Prompted by Edith, his voice growing stronger, more confident in his memory, Rich explained all his difficulties in discovering the girl's whereabouts. He told of his climb over the icy roof, his shock at discovering that Polly had been physically abused. Then came the most profound shock of all: when he returned with the police, there was no trace of her in room 331.
With that revelation Rich's spirits sagged, his voice thinned, he lost heart. It was twelve thirty, he'd spent a grueling two hours on the stand with more to come. Judge Winford called a recess for lunch. The defendant was taken away, drank two cups of black coffee but ate nothing, and napped in his cell, breathing through his mouth, the landscape of his upturned face constantly illuminated by bolts and twitches of dream lightning.
The trial resumed at one thirty. By three o'clock the jury had heard every harrowing detail of the dinner party at the Courdewaye house in Ripington Four Corners, and the rite of possession that followed. Rich was laboring by then, his voice nearly gone. Conor, in a sweat bath of sympathy that ruined the shirt he was wearing, chewed his lips raw.
Before her last questions Edith turned and with a glance at the courtroom clock knew that the sun had begun to set in Heraclio, three thousand six hundred miles away, off the coast of Africa. The prayers of the members of the society would be continuing around the sundial.
Nonetheless she felt a need to hurry, to conclude.
"Do you remember leaving the Courdewaye house and driving back to the Davos Chalet Lodge?"
Rich writhed slowly, his gaze wandering. "No, I don't remember."
"Do you remember taking a tire iron from the boot of your car and going in search of Karyn?"
He cried out unintelligibly, but shook his head.
"And do you remember striking her with the tire iron?"
"It wasn't me! I know everybody says I killed her, but it wasn't me!"
Edith asked no more questions. Rich slumped on the witness stand, his head in his hands, groaning almost inaudibly. She looked again at the courtroom clock. It was now three twenty. Tommie Harkrider had risen to begin his cross-examination.
Edith said quickly, "Your Honor, I don't believe the witness is capable of answering many more questions today. I move that we adjourn until the morning, when— "
"Oh, now, wait just a minute!" Tommie protested.
"It is getting late in the afternoon, Mr. Harkrider," Judge Winford reminded him.
"But not that late, Your Honor. Now, I don't intend to be longwinded. In fact I can promise"— Tommie also turned and glanced at the clock— "that we'll all be out of here by four fifteen at the latest."
Winford considered this proposal, then looked down at the witness stand.
"Mr. Devon," he said, "I'll leave this up to you. If you're not feeling well enough to continue at this time, we'll adjourn."
Edith waited, gazing at Rich's bowed head, her agitation well concealed. Then the defendant raised his head slowly and looked right at her, and Edith swallowed a nugget of gall, seeing in his eyes the red of sunset, the coming of Endless Night.
"I'll go on," he said, smiling gamely. "Could I just have a drink of water, please?"
Water was brought to him in a glass. He sipped slowly.
More time passed. Tommie was pacing. Edith fingered the small sundial at her throat, and studied the jurors; she paid particular attention to the forelady, Mary Adelaide Hotchkiss, the emigre Mandelko, and Mr. Aughtman, the car dealer with the awful neckties.
"Mr. Devon," Tommie said, "we have heard you describe the evil spirit which ostensibly has possessed you as being a pretty little girl in white stockings, and as some kind of prehistoric-looking winged creature as big as a Cessna 150. And then again as an inhuman spirit who goes by the name of Zarach' Bal-Tagh, whom you haven't said much about: but given that you have been in rather close association with the spirit for the last several months, you must have a very good idea of what he looks like; so would you mind describing him to us?"
"He looks like me," Rich said.
"Does he!"
"Or you. Or"— he searched the rows of spectators— "Gina. Or anybody he wants to look like. Or nothing and nobody."
"What you are trying to say is, he doesn't have a face of his own?
"I didn't say that."
"Let me tell you, sir, I don't appreciate your playing games with me, and I'm sure I can speak for all of us in this courtroom when I say— "
"Objection, Your Honor!"
"Mr. Harkrider— "
"Oh, all right," Tommie said angrily. "Now, Mr. Devon, does this Zarach', who you say possesses you and controls your every thought and action, who presumably has intended for you to answer as you've been answering, does he talk to you?"
"Talk?"
"Talk, yes, converse, tell you what he wants you to do at a given time?"
"No. He doesn't have to."
"Well, then, what is it, this controlling mechanism, some kind of thought process? Telepathy? I don't understand it at all. Can you possibly enlighten me?"
"I am he and he is me."
"Is that supposed to imply a symbiotic relationship?"
"No."
"So you want it both ways, is that it? When you don't care to be held accountable for your actions, Zarach' is to blame?"
"Zarach' is not blamable. There is no concept of guilt."
"There is no guilt in the murder of an innocent girl?"
"Only Richard feels guilt."
"Only Richard— " Tommie stopped his pacing and stared at the defendant. "Am I talking to Richard now?"
"Yes."
"And who else am I talking to?"
Silence.
"The witness is directed to answer the question."
"Your Honor, objection!"
Tommie went on, as if no one else had spoken, "Is it possible that I'm talking to the almighty Zarach' we've heard so much about?"
"Tommie, stop!" Edith said chillingly.
