Chapter 28 #3
“The research was valid,” he said. “The methodology was sound. The data exists. You haven't found it because you don't know how to look for it.” He straightened in the witness chair. “I was conducting necessary work. Work that no one else had the discipline to conduct. The subjects—”
“The victims,” Voss said.
“—presented themselves within the parameters of the study, and the data collected was—The evidence against me isn't real,” Adrian said.
The room went very still.
“You killed them.”
“I conducted research.”
“You strangled them until they died and noted their responses according to this notebook. Did you do that?”
“For research, yes.”
“Then you admit you killed them?”
“No. It isn’t murder. I conducted research. Research! They are trying to discredit me. They are trying to void my research so they can take credit.”
“Who? The police?” Voss asked.
“Yes. Yes, they will publish it, and they will get the accolades. Accolades I deserve. I was meticulous! My research is invaluable.”
It had come out of nowhere. Not from the line of questioning.
From somewhere else. From the place that Wheeler had described in his email, the place where the framework had been and wasn't anymore, the place where the control had lived for eleven years and was gone now, and what was underneath it was this.
“The evidence isn't real,” he said. His voice was still even. Still clinical. But the clinical register was performing now in a way it hadn't been at the start. “My service logs were manipulated. The corridor analysis was constructed to fit a predetermined conclusion. The notebook—” He stopped.
Voss waited.
“The notebook is documentation of legitimate research,” he said. “The subjects were willing. They understood the parameters. They—” He stopped again.
Haven watched from the prosecution table.
She watched Adrian Hale on the witness stand with his precise suit, and she watched the man come apart the way Wheeler had said he would. What she felt wasn’t triumph, and it wasn't satisfaction or relief.
It was just the end of something.
The end of eleven years and twelve dead women.
It was the end of a field notebook and a man who believed he was operating on a different level entirely and had been in the most specific and terrible way that men who caused this kind of damage always did.
The level in which other people were data points and nothing more.
“The facts are, there is no legitimate research. No ethics, no morality. There is no such thing as sanctioned murder for research purposes. In fact, there is no experiment, no research, no answers for the questions that you have come up with. You can’t answer the questions you seek answers to because they are not answerable.
You told yourself you were doing research because you believe yourself better than the common criminal.
You are not. You are not special or set apart.
You are nothing more than a common, run-of-the-mill murderer. No further questions,” Voss said.
She sat down.
Adrian sat in the witness chair for a moment. His face was red, and the coolness he used to have was gone. The emotion that showed in his eyes was hatred. Complete and total hatred. He looked at the jury. At the gallery. At Haven at the prosecution table.
“My research is impeccable.”
“Mr. Garrett, get your client off my witness stand,” the judge said quietly. Haven glanced back at Marcus. He was staring at her. They exchanged a look. They knew what had just happened and knew the jury had witnessed everything they needed for a conviction.
* * *
The jury deliberated for four hours and twenty-three minutes.
Marcus sat in the corridor outside the courtroom.
Haven was beside him. They'd been there for two hours. Carver had come and gone twice. Reyes was at the end of the corridor with his arms crossed and the look of a man who’d given weeks to this case and was now in purgatory, waiting for twelve strangers to confirm what everyone in the building already knew.
Haven had her coffee. She wasn't drinking it.
“Four hours,” she said.
“There are a lot of charges,” Marcus said.
“It's twelve murder victims,” she said. “And a notebook with nails glued to the pages. And a service log that puts him in the right city every single time. Plus, he admitted to killing them for his research.” She looked at the courtroom door.
“What are they deliberating?” She picked up her coffee.
Put it back down. Marcus looked at her, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“I know, I know … There are a lot of charges.” She nudged him with her elbow.
“Stop making sense when I want to vent.”
“Yes, dear,” Marcus drawled and made her smile, even when she didn’t want to.
The bailiff appeared in the doorway at 4:17 p.m. “They're back,” he said.
* * *
The gallery was completely silent when the jury filed in.
She watched the jurors' faces. She'd been doing that all week, reading them the way she read everything, cataloging, cross-referencing. The foreman was a woman in her fifties named Carol, who had sat in the jury box for eight days. She carried the verdict form with both hands.
Haven looked at the gallery.
Sofia Moreno was sitting very straight. Her hands were in her lap, and her eyes were on Carol. Robert Lane was looking at the floor.
The families of the other victims were arranged in the gallery. Haven looked at them. All of them one by one.
“Has the jury reached a verdict?” Judge Whitmore said.
“We have, Your Honor,” Carol said.