Chapter 37: The Witness Chair
The chair on Samuel's side of the table was for clients; the one beneath me was for witnesses.
On Monday morning, Dana and I entered KRR's interview room with no Northline file open and no family representative present.
Samuel recorded the date, scope, participants, and my right to consult counsel before asking a substantive question.
The camera captured the table rather than my face alone.
I had spent years arranging rooms so executives knew which chair carried authority.
This chair carried obligations instead.
The change was procedural, but it stripped away the professional distance I had used as protection.
Samuel began with the conflicts that could shape my memory and decisions.
I was Andrew's widow, Northline's owner, WCT's former sponsor, WMG's former consultant, a record custodian, and the author of disputed language.
Each role created a reason to remember selectively even if I meant to be accurate.
I confirmed that Dana represented me and Northline, not WMG, WCT, Jonah, or any employee.
Samuel asked when Andrew first sought Northline's help with Jonah.
I described the public-statement assignment and the limited briefing that came through approved project channels.
Then he asked what arrived outside those channels.
The question exposed the part I preferred to call marriage instead of process.
Andrew sometimes forwarded wording from a private account or summarized a board concern over dinner.
I had treated access to my husband as context rather than an uncontrolled source.
“Did you ask whether the underlying record was in the client system?” Samuel asked.
“Not every time.”
“Could you have?”
The honest answer was yes.
Confidentiality had limited what Andrew could provide, but it had not prevented me from refusing unsupported language.
I explained Northline's approval codes, source-brief fields, and who could release a statement.
Samuel asked which safeguards depended on me personally noticing a missing source.
Too many of them did.
KRR marked that dependence as a control weakness to test against Northline's native records.
My firm's process had looked formal while allowing a trusted client executive to supply facts outside the form.
Dana stopped the interview once to distinguish my recollection from a document conclusion.
KRR marked the distinction in the draft transcript.
I did not use Andrew's natural death to excuse choices made while he was alive.
The review concerned records and statements, not the settled cause of his death.
Samuel asked whether I had intended to harm Jonah.
“No.”
He asked whether intent answered what my work had done.
“No.”
That was the sentence I could not have said from the client chair a month earlier.
We reviewed every contact I remembered with Vivian, Grant, Andrew, WCT staff, and WMG communications personnel about the old statement.
Unknown dates were marked unknown rather than repaired by confidence.
Samuel would compare them with calendars and delivery histories before treating any recollection as verified.
Samuel prepared a witness-statement draft from my answers.
Dana and I corrected titles, dates, and the boundary between recollection and documents.
We did not edit questions out.
I signed the draft as a preliminary witness statement subject to documentary testing.
I also committed Northline to preserve and deliver relevant native files through the independent custodian process.
The commitment denied me advance review of KRR's conclusions.
It did not waive lawful privilege screening or unrelated employee privacy.
Those protections would be applied by an independent screen, not by my memory or preference.
Samuel entered the statement and preservation commitment into KRR's witness register.
My role had changed from the person demanding an investigation to one of the people it had to test.
Before ending, Samuel handed me a source questionnaire for the Northline export.
The final instruction required every brief Andrew had sent privately rather than through a WMG system.
I had to list them even when I could not remember what they contained.