Chapter 5: The Question

On Wednesday afternoon, the third day, the guard did not leave.

He stood behind my left shoulder with his hands folded, and he stayed there through the whole first hour.

The lawyer sat at the end of the table with her pin and her legal pad.

The red light on the camera stayed on.

Gianna Brancato was watching.

I knew it the way you know a draft in a room.

Leona Tewksbury had said, with her eyes on her pad, that Mrs. Brancato would be following the session by live feed from Buffalo.

I put the first ten questions to the prisoner in sign, and he answered each one for the camera in the same flat, careful hands.

Under the table his knuckles lay against my knee.

I had not opened my palm to him that morning.

I had told myself I wouldn't.

At ten minutes to four, the lawyer cleared her throat.

"Miss Dunphy, the eleventh and twelfth."

"The eleventh," I said.

I put it into sign, and he answered it.

"The twelfth," the lawyer said.

I looked at the paper.

I looked at the line in blue ink that I had not been shown in that room, and I knew that the lawyer had not seen it.

She had the typed sheet.

The twelfth question was typed there too, in the same plain font, and nothing under it.

She did not know what Gianna had written in the margin.

I lifted my hands.

DID YOU ORDER THE BOMBING OF THE FERRY IN PALERMO HARBOR, I signed.