Dog Tags

CHAPTER 41

THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT MUST PAY ITS INVESTIGATORS BY THE PAGE. Hike and I are going over their report on the “incident” in Iraq, which took five months to prepare and an entire forestful of paper to print. It arrived from the office of the court clerk in eight boxes, each filled with documents.

I randomly choose four boxes and Hike takes the other four, and as we go through it we occasionally stop to discuss what we’re reading. The writers of the report were clearly operating under a mandate to conclude nothing, and then use as many words as possible to support that conclusion.

“Shit. Crap. Garbage,” says Hike as he closes his last book. There’s a lot of Winston Churchill in Hike, and this particular pronouncement has to rank up there with the “Blood, sweat and tears” speech. “How do they get away with this stuff?” he asks.

I’ve been waiting for Hike to finish, mainly because by the time I got to my third book I switched to reading-every-fourth-paragraph mode. I don’t think I missed much.

“I take it you didn’t find anything that would be helpful?” I ask.

“Only if we want to put the jury to sleep.”

The problem for us is that the investigators clearly had as a goal the management of political fallout from the incident. To that end, they predetermined that personnel were lax in their implementation of procedures, without criticizing the procedures themselves.

More significantly, the investigators, or at least the authors of the report, never considered intent as a possibility. That is to say that they never looked at whether or not the people in charge of security, or those implementing it, wanted the explosion to happen. And when you’re not at least open to something, it makes it a lot harder to find it.

Pretty much everybody in the Middle East was interviewed for the report, in an obvious effort to be able to claim that no stone was left unturned in pursuit of the truth. It’s not a total loss for us, in that at least we get the names of everybody involved, especially the soldiers assigned to security.

There were seventy-one assigned that day, including Billy. One was killed, and fourteen others besides Billy were injured. While no specific blame has been laid, five soldiers were reprimanded and discharged from the army. Their names are Donovan Chambers, Jason Greer, Tyler Lawson, Jeremy Iverson, and Raymond Santiago.

Erskine was not specifically implicated in the fiasco, but the report refers to a general weakness in the command structure. The report does not speak to his military fate, but we know that he was at least viewed less favorably afterward, and he seems to have chosen resignation. It was a relatively graceful exit, only to end somewhat less gracefully on the street in front of a bar.

“If I ever commit a felony,” Hike says, “I want these guys investigating the case.”

“They found exactly what they wanted to find… nothing.”

“Leaves us in a pretty big hole.”

I nod. “Although we do have the names of the five soldiers who were discharged. We can find them and talk to them; at least it’ll give us something to do.”

“How are you going to find them?”

“I’ll give it to Laurie, and she’ll probably put Sam Willis on the case. Ten minutes at his computer and he’ll be able to tell us where these guys are, what they had for breakfast, who they’ve called in the past three months, and who they’re sleeping with.”

“Is all that legal?” he asks.

“It wasn’t last time I checked, but I haven’t checked in a while.”

He nods. “Makes sense. Checking stuff like that can be a hassle.”

“Maybe I’ll put it on Edna’s list of things to do.”

“What have you got on my list?” he asks.

“Are you knowledgeable about investments, commodities, rich people’s stuff like that?”

He shrugs. “I’ve got an MBA, for what little that’s worth.”

“You’ve got an MBA and a law degree?” Hike is a constant surprise to me. “From where?”

“Harvard and Yale,” he says. “I’m a walking rivalry. So what have you got for me?”

“I want you to find out everything you can about the hedge fund C and F Investments.”

“Because of the two guys that got killed? I thought you went over there and talked to the top guy.”

“I did.” I point to the books. “But I just read in one of those books that Alex Bryant, the younger and lower-ranked of the two victims, was married for a year when he died.”

“So?”

“So Jonathan Chaplin, his boss, told me he didn’t think Bryant was married.”

“At the risk of repeating myself… so? Maybe he didn’t even know the guy. That’s a big company; they’ve got offices all over the country.”

“He said he’s racked with guilt because Bryant took his place on the trip, and that he went to his funeral. I would have to assume his widow would have been hard not to notice there.”

“Maybe he just signed his name at the funeral and left. Or maybe he met the wife and forgot. Or maybe he’s been nailing the wife for two years and doesn’t want anyone to know,” Hike says.

“Or maybe he’s lying because he doesn’t want me to talk to Bryant’s wife.”

“Either way, it’s got nothing to do with our case,” he says.

“Or maybe it does.”

I put in a phone call to Colonel Franklin Prentice, Kevin’s brother-in-law, who has been very helpful to us on a couple of previous cases. He used to be stationed in South Carolina, but I saw him briefly at the wedding, and I think he said he was transferred to Washington, DC.

I have no idea how to reach him, so I call the Pentagon’s main number. “I’m trying to reach Colonel Franklin Prentice,” I say.

“Do you mean General Prentice?”

“That’ll work.”

Within a couple of minutes he gets on the line, which is a surprise to me. I didn’t realize generals were so easy to reach. I identify myself, and he assures me he remembers me quite well.

“You’re the partner of my crazy brother-in-law,” he says.

“Not anymore,” I say. “He’s off saving the world. Have you talked to him?”

“Last week. I heard some kind of jungle music in the background, so I asked him about it. He said that was actual jungle.”

Prentice seems inclined to chat, and we do so for about ten minutes. If there are any longer minutes in the world than “chat minutes,” I don’t know what they are, and these ten seem to take about six months. The pauses are so pregnant they feel like they originated in a fertility clinic.

I hate chatting, and it’s particularly hard to avoid when you’re the “chattee,” needing help from the “chatter.” I’m usually good at cutting it off, and I keep throwing in a “Well, I don’t want to keep you…” and a “So listen, the reason I’m calling…,” but I guess generals are used to making chat-ending decisions.

He seems to have nothing but time. Aren’t there any wars he should be trying to win? Finally I manage to steer the conversation to why I am calling, and I tell him about Billy’s case.

“I’m very familiar with the incident,” he says. “Have you seen the inspector general’s report?”

“Yes… fascinating reading.”

He laughs. “Covered the army’s ass pretty well, huh?”

“I need to know what was known but not written down, off the record if need be.”

“Hmmm,” he says. “That’s a tough one.”

“What if I talked to Erskine’s boss?” I ask, looking through the report for the name as I talk. I find it. “Colonel William Mickelson.”

“That I can do,” he says.

“Where is he stationed?”

“Right down the hall from me. Call him tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Will do.”

“You know, I’d never say this to Kevin, but I think what he and Kelly are doing is pretty amazing.”

“So do I,” I say. “Maybe we should tell him.”

He pauses for a moment, probably considering it. “No, I don’t think so. He might keep doing it.”

“We don’t want to encourage that.”