The General's Daughter

RESOUNDING ACCLAIM FOR

BESTSELLING AUTHOR

NELSON DEMILLE AND

THE GENERAL’S

DAUGHTER

“A PAGE-TURNER THAT DISTURBS, PROVOKES, AND MAKES YOU THINK LONG AFTER YOU’VE PUT IT DOWN… sophisticated and compassionate…. Pointed dialogue and gritty humor make THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER a fast read.”

—Washington Post Book World

“A FURIOUSLY FAST READ, GENUINELY PERPLEXING, INVOLVING MYSTERY AND AN IMMENSELY LIKABLE ANTIHERO. THANK YOU, MR. DEMILLE.”

—New York Daily News

“DEMILLE IS A MASTER OF THE UNEXPECTED…. With THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER, DeMille continues to prove himself an accomplished and incredibly versatile storyteller.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“DEMILLE’S NARRATIVE ENERGY IS UNFLAGGING.”

—Boston Globe

“HIS NOVELS ARE TIMELY, AUTHENTIC, AND FILLED WITH CONVINCING CHARACTERS. Nelson DeMille is one of the few writers who consistently takes chances and consistently succeeds. Each thriller is different in scope and texture.”

—Baltimore Sun

“COMPELLING… INTENSE… it’s a pleasure to read a novel that speaks about important issues while holding us in thrall. Nelson DeMille is an intelligent and accomplished storyteller who’s written a good book.”

—Miami Herald

“A KNOCKOUT. DeMille’s done it again… immensely skilled… a deductive novel of unwavering excellence.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A SPELLBINDING STORY… a superlative murder mystery that combines the plotting brilliance of a P. D. James whodunit with the disturbing overtones of a Ruth Rendell psychological thriller… The characterizations are splendid.”

—Buffalo News

“A FAST-PACED PROCEDURAL MYSTERY…. DeMille is a great storyteller, and this one is filled with intrigue. He also creates very believable characters and has thought up a convincing—and very strange—plot.”

—The Veteran

“TERRIFIC… this book is a real page-turner but the style and language elevate it to literature.”

—Los Angeles Features Syndicate

“WRITTEN WITH AUTHORITYAND ASSURANCE.”

—Chattanooga News-Free Press

“A PAGE-TURNER…. Once again, DeMille jolts readers with a story of murder…. He also creates a fascinating set of characters.”

—Ocala Star-Banner

“DEMILLE’S PLOTTING IS SOPHISTICATED, BUT THE PARTICULAR JOY OF THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER IS ITS DIALOGUE. Brenner is a man of honor as well as a cynic’s delight and a reader’s joy. DeMille, who found his fans with The Gold Coast, will keep them happy with this one.”

—New York Daily News

“RAISES THE READER’S ADRENALINE LEVEL…. DeMille is a very gifted author who keeps his readers fascinated and guessing until the very end. Even then the conclusion is a shocker.”

—Riverside Press-Enterprise (CA)

“GRIPPING… will have you biting your nails down to the quick… you won’t be able to put it down.”

—The Magazine, Baton Rouge

“A CAREFULLY CRAFTED NOVEL OF SUSPENSE…. Full of characters with depth and imagination, and the story is a great one.”

—Wisconsin State-Journal

“A SUPER OUTSTANDING BOOK… a convincing and impressive novel…. You’re in for a suspense shock.”

—Macon Beacon

“HITS THE MARK…. DeMille sustains our interest as he deviously weaves a web of suspicion around the many characters before revealing the killer in the smashing climax.”

—Florida Times-Union

Books by Nelson DeMille

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON

CATHEDRAL

THE TALBOT ODYSSEY

WORD OF HONOR

THE CHARM SCHOOL

THE GOLD COAST

THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER

SPENCERVILLE

PLUM ISLAND

Published by

WARNER BOOKS

THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER. Copyright © 1992 by Nelson DeMille. Foreword copyright © 1999 by Nelson DeMille.

For Mom and Dad, Dennis

and Lillian, Lance and Joanie

Many thanks to my consiglieri,

Dave Westermann, Mike Tryon,

Len Ridini, Tom Eschmann,

Steve Astor, John Betz,

and Nick Ellison.

Mille grazie.

What the dead had no speech for, when living,

They can tell you, being dead: the communication

Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.T.S. Eliot

Four Quartets. “Little Gidding”

Author’s Foreword

THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER

The Book & The Movie

The Book

This book, on its most basic level, is a murder mystery that happens to be set on an Army post.

But on another level, it is a story about the unique subculture of the military, about military law, and about women in the military, and how all of these elements come together on a hot, steamy Georgia military base.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice is the law under which all the branches of the military—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard—operate. The UCMJ, as it is called, is based on American Constitutional law, but it is tailored to take into account the ironic fact that men and women in uniform, who are sworn to defend the Constitution, do not enjoy all the rights and safeguards they are defending. Military law also addresses military virtues, such as duty, honor, and loyalty—concepts which are rarely or never addressed in civilian law.

Thus, as we see in this novel, military law is more than law—it is the whole legal, social, professional, and even psychological matrix into which all members of the armed forces fit, or don’t fit, as the case may be.

The General’s Daughter begins with a murder and apparent rape, and from the beginning, we see that this is not only a crime against an individual or against society; it is also a crime against the institution of the United States Army, a crime against good order and discipline, an affront to the concepts of honor and loyalty, and to the military maxim that “All the brothers are brave and all the sisters are virtuous.” In fact, the murder of a female officer is the trip wire that causes an explosion that rocks the Army to its foundations.

I wrote this novel partly as a result of the Persian Gulf War of January and February 1991. Specifically, I was impressed by the role that women played in the war, and in the military in general. Like most Vietnam veterans, however, I was a little surprised and a lot annoyed at how the news media reported this war, as opposed to my war. Needless to say, the military came off looking a lot better in the Persian Gulf than they did in Vietnam. The reasons for this are too numerous to go into here, but one reason for this was the visible presence of women in the armed forces.

The military, consciously or unconsciously, put the media in a quandary; journalists look for dirt, for government bungling, for military incompetence. But here you had a situation where the military was at the forefront of a politically correct movement—equality of women.

The media personalized the Gulf War with endless interviews of women doing men’s jobs. This hype, I think, helped set the tone for the positive reporting of the war in general.

Of course, many male soldiers, sailors, and airmen felt a little left out, and certainly veterans of my generation felt totally disenfranchised and retroactively snubbed and unfairly portrayed.

Be that as it may, the net result was a “good war,” as opposed to a “bad war.”

Regarding the “bad war,” I served in the United States Army from April 1966 to April 1969. During that time, I took my basic combat training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, my advanced infantry training and leadership school training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and attended Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. After training troops at Fort Benning, I went to the Jungle Operations Come at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone, then shipped out to Vietnam and served as an infantry platoon leader with the First Air Cavalry Division.

My three years in the Army were very much a male/macho experience, as you can imagine, and I did not interact with too many female soldiers. In fact, the number of females serving in the military during the Vietnam conflict was fewer than the number who served in World War II.

In Vietnam, aside from military nurses, there were virtually no women serving in the war zone, except civilian Red Cross volunteers, known in the sexist jargon of the day as “Donut Dollies.” In any case, the American women in Vietnam were in the traditional roles of caregivers, and they were no threat to the men.

In 1969, my last year of service back in the States, I began to see female officers assigned to staff jobs that were traditionally male-only postings. This was an experiment that had mixed results. The feminist movement in America was in its early stages, and there was little pressure on the military from any source for gender equality or gender integration.

But the military was actually in advance of the social and political movements of the day in regard to gender integration, just as it was years ahead of the nation in racial integration when, in 1949, the armed forces ended racial segregation, albeit by presidential order.

The point is, the armed forces has a mixed, but mostly positive record in all areas of equality. This is partly a result of the nature of the organization. By that I mean, if you’re going to ask a black man to fight and perhaps die, then you can’t treat him as a second-class citizen. If you’re going to ask a woman to serve in a close-combat support group (but not in combat itself), then, again, you have to extend to her all the rights, privileges, and opportunities that accrue to the man serving beside her.

Some men, of course, would say, “We don’t need women in the military at all.” Others might say, “Women in the military are okay, but only in traditionally female jobs.”

But I believe we’re past those attitudes, and only two questions remain: Should women serve in direct combat roles? And, Should women be subject to the draft as men are?

Those are difficult questions, and they are not directly addressed in The General’s Daughter, though there is a sub-text in the book that raises these questions of full equality.

When I set out to write this post–Gulf War novel, the first thing I decided was that this novel was not going to be a polemic. It was going to be as fair as possible to the men and women who serve in our military, it was going to be fair to the Army, and fair to the concept of a gender-mixed military. But it was not going to be a politically correct paean where all the sisters are terrific and all the brothers are male chauvinist pigs.

At about the time this novel appeared in the fall of 1992, the Tailhook scandal was rocking the nation. This was good for the book, but it wasn’t good for a sane, impartial dialogue on the complex subject of a gender-integrated military. Most of the news and entertainment media who interviewed me for this book wanted me to make some connection between The General’s Daughter, a novel, and the ongoing Tailhook scandal, which was turning into an hysterical witch-hunt.

The incident in question—a party that got out of hand—was all of a sudden offered as proof that the entire military culture was corrupt and sexist. The fact that some men acted badly was never in doubt. But lost in the uproar was the fact that some men acted honorably, and some women acted badly. The same military that was idolized by the media in the Gulf War was now being pilloried.

The Tailhook incident was not typical, and the Navy brass should have made that clear and should have stood up for the Navy and prevented the good name and reputation of its entire corps of fighter pilots from being dragged through the mud because of one bad night that involved a relatively small number of individuals.

But the political climate in Washington, and the social climate in America, precluded any thought of fairness or truth or rational discourse. Instead, heads rolled, careers were ruined, and the male-female divide got about ten miles wider.

But long before Tailhook, I set out to write a novel that addressed the questions and problems of men and women serving together in the new Army. It was my hope not to pander to or exploit these headline issues; I wanted a novel that would deal with the more universal and timeless issues of men and women: jealousy, sex, honor, truth, and the human capability to love and hate, often at the same time. I’ve set all of this on an Army post, just to make things more complex and interesting.

This story could happen anywhere, anytime—in fact, you may find some similarities in this story to a Greek tragedy. But what happens in The General’s Daughter couldn’t happen quite like this, except on a modern American military base.

The Movie

The movie rights for The General’s Daughter were bought by Paramount Motion Pictures before the book was published in 1992. Sherry Lansing, the studio head, liked the novel and saw it as a story that dealt with important issues in modern American society. At the same time, the story line, plot, and characters in the novel were easily adaptable to the screen.

The screenplay went through several rewrites, as seems to be the case in Hollywood, and eventually morphed into a highly competent draft by Christopher Bertolini, with some smart doctoring by the always brilliant William Goldman, and a final excellent polish by Scott Rosenberg.

I’m often asked if I have any input into movie scripts adapted from my novels. The answer is, no. Screenwriting is not at all like novel writing, and a screenwriter has to work with a novel that takes ten to sixteen hours to read, and turn it into a screenplay for a movie of about two hours’ length. Obviously, something will be lost in the adaptation, and it’s difficult for a novelist to cut this much from his or her own magnum opus.

I do, however, read the screenplays that have been written of all my novels, in their many drafts, and I offer suggestions. In the case of The General’s Daughter, the final drafts stayed true and close to the substance and intent of my novel.

The first part of the movie was shot in and around Savannah, Georgia, which acted as the setting for the fictional Midland, Georgia, in the novel. My fictional Fort Hadley somehow became Fort McCallum, and Ann Campbell, who is the general’s daughter in the novel, became Elisabeth (Lizzie) Campbell in the movie. It’s not worth wondering about these small changes, and the author is grateful that the movie didn’t become a musical comedy titled Lizzie!

When a film adaptation of a novel gets off to a bad start, it usually stays on that path and ends up as an instant video rental or a video-club giveaway. The General’s Daughter, however, started strong with good support and good ideas from Sherry Lansing, and from Karen Rosenfelt who is an executive vice president of production at Paramount. Next, a producer was chosen—Mace Neufeld. Mace, with his partner, Bob Rehme, have adapted Tom Clancy’s novels to the screen, and Mace himself has many successful films to his credit.

Ironically, Mace Neufeld had read The General’s Daughter when it first came out and made a bid to option it, but was outbid by Paramount. But now Mace and The General’s Daughter have been reunited, so to speak, through Paramount.

The next step was the screenplay, which I’ve mentioned, then came casting, and finding a director. The director chosen, Simon West, made the hit movie, Con Air. He was not considered a natural choice for this kind of movie, but like most creative people, he wanted to do something different. He said, “I really wanted to find a project that was a bit more serious. When The General’s Daughter popped up, I read the book, loved it, and jumped on board.” Simon shared everyone’s enthusiasm for the project, and the results show.

Often, a movie sinks or soars on the choice of the leading man. The character of Paul Brenner in the novel is a wisecracking and slightly smart-assed Irish-American from South Boston. I pictured Bruce Willis for the part and so did a lot of people at Paramount, but Bruce Willis wasn’t available. Then one day, my agent, Nick Ellison, called me and announced that John Travolta had signed for the part. John Travolta? as Paul Brenner? John Travolta is incredibly talented, but I couldn’t see him as the character that I’d created, or even as the character that the scriptwriters had created. But I soon learned what it means when they say that an actor or actress has range and depth.

I recall many years ago that when I heard that Marlon Brando had been picked to play the title role in The Godfather, I thought it was a bad choice. So did a lot of other people who’d read the book. But now, for all time and for all people, Marlon Brando is The Godfather.

The role shapes the actor, and the actor shapes the role. So it is with John Travolta as Paul Brenner. Travolta is Brenner.

John Travolta brought with him his longtime manager, Jonathan Krane, who became the executive producer. Travolta and Krane became involved with the script and also in the casting of the movie.

The leading lady presented a problem of scheduling, and the entire movie had been cast before Paramount was fortunate in signing Madeleine Stowe who starred in The Last of the Mohicans. As with Travolta, I did not picture Stowe as Cynthia Sunhill (now Sara Sunhill) or Sunhill as Stowe. But once again I was pleasantly surprised at how a talented star can mold a part so that it seems a natural choice.

The supporting cast is nothing short of spectacular. James Woods was born to play the part of quirky psychiatrist Colonel Charles Moore, Timothy Hutton is the uptight provost marshall Colonel Bill Kent, James Cromwell, who plays the general, “Fighting Joe” Campbell, told me he was an antiwar activist during the Vietnam War, but he acts like he had been an Army general once, and Clarence Williams III as the general’s aide, Colonel Fowler, is so convincing that you believe he and James Cromwell served together in the military. The alchemy among all these people is every director’s dream.

Last but not least, Leslie Stefanson, who plays the title role of the general’s daughter, is a newcomer to feature films, but the performance she turns in makes her look like a seasoned actress. This is a young woman who has a great film career ahead of her.

I don’t often picture any specific actor or actress playing a part I’ve created in a novel, but I had an eerie feeling when I saw Woods, Hutton, Cromwell, Williams, and Stefanson on the screen. These were the people I’d created, right down to their physical appearances and mannerisms. This is not to say that they didn’t define and expand on the characters and the roles—they did. But they also seemed as if they’d stepped out of the pages of the novel.

The movie was shot during the summer and fall of 1998, and I chose not to visit the set in Savannah during the hot and difficult summer shoot, but I did, with my agent, Nick Ellison, visit the set in October, when the shooting had moved to Los Angeles.

I should point out here that the Department of Defense was not involved with this movie. Mace Neufeld has a good relationship with the DOD from his past films, but he felt that he should not seek government cooperation for this film. He said, “Over the years, I’ve worked with many wonderful people from the DOD who’ve played an invaluable role in certain projects, but I also know when the project is inappropriate and when to back off. It’s a relationship of mutual respect.”

My book was not antimilitary, and neither was the screenplay. But both book and movie raised controversial and sensitive issues that perhaps would make the military uneasy. In any case, shooting a movie about the military without military cooperation can be a little more difficult, and a little more costly. But it also has a liberating effect, both creatively and practically.

This is not to say that there are any glaring lapses of verisimilitude in the movie. In fact, Paramount hired a number of military advisors to ensure military accuracy. I met several of these advisors on the set, and they seemed pleased that their suggestions were acted upon by Mace Neufeld and Simon West.

The chief military advisor was Jared Chandler, a longtime associate of Mace Neufeld’s and a career reserve Army officer. Jared worked on Mace’s Flight of the Intruder and Clear and Present Danger, and was always available on the set of The General’s Daughter when questions of verisimilitude arose. Veterans, like me, who like to pick apart Hollywood’s version of the military, should find little to complain about in The General’s Daughter.

Regarding my visit to the set, these visits can be unhappy occasions. There are legendary tales of East Coast novelists visiting Hollywood—tales that go back, probably, to the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s. Some novelists, like Fitzgerald, are seduced by Tinsel Town and stay on long enough to ruin their careers. Most novelists come, look, and run back to their relatively normal existences.

The movie business is like no other business on this planet, and Los Angeles is like no other city in America. Having said that, I will say that no novelist should miss the opportunity to see his or her novel made into a film.

If fish and houseguests stink after three days, then novelists on a movie set stink after two. I spent two full days on the set, and I was warmly welcomed and just as warmly sent on my way. It was a great visit.

One afternoon, Nick Ellison and I sat with Mace Neufeld and watched about a half hour of cut and edited scenes of The General’s Daughter. As the first scene came up on the video screen, I was anxious, skeptical, and New York cynical. I was prepared to wince. Perhaps even have a cardiac episode. But from the first few minutes, I realized I was watching an exceptional production. The performances from all the members of the cast were enthralling, and the interaction between the actors and actresses was pure magic. When the lights went on in the small viewing room, Mace, Nick, the engineer, and I were all smiling. We had a winner.

The movie, The General’s Daughter, is not the novel, The General’s Daughter. It is an adaptation. It’s easy for a novelist to complain or get angry at how his or her book was treated or mistreated. In too many cases, these feelings are justified. The egos in Hollywood are big, and the story conferences are many. Studio heads, producers, directors, and screenwriters engage in a collaborate effort that the novelist neither comprehends nor desires. The result of collaborative efforts and compromises often lead to the proverbial committee-designed racehorse becoming a giraffe. This process is inherent in the motion-picture business and will never change.

Sometimes, however, the moons, the planets, and the stars all line up, and many visions become a thing of magic. As I write this, I have not seen the fully cut and edited movie, nor have I heard the musical score or the sound effects, or seen the ending of the story. But I liked what I did see, on the screen and on the set.

The most common and frequent complaint of moviegoers who see a movie based on a book is this: The book was better than the movie. One rarely if ever hears that the movie was better than the book, or that the novelist’s story and characters were changed for the better. And you’re not going to hear that now. But what I can say is that the essence of my novel was captured and conveyed on the screen through excellent acting, sharp and funny dialogue, and through the use of visual settings that even the best novelist can’t convey on paper.

Regarding the visuals, executive producer Jonathan Krane said, “The look of this film is almost supernatural. It’s the most staggeringly spectacular film I’ve ever seen.” A bit of hype, maybe, but the point is made that visuals are what American filmmaking does best. When you couple this with great acting and a great screenplay, you have a real movie.

As important as being true to the book is the often overlooked notion that the movie should be entertaining. The movie version of The General’s Daughter is entertaining. I was entertained, and if I was entertained, everyone else who sees it should be entertained.

My Hollywood experience may be atypical, and I may not be as lucky or fortunate on my next close encounter with Hollywood, but this time, the heavenly bodies did align.

CHAPTER

ONE

Is this seat taken?” I asked the attractive young woman sitting by herself in the lounge.

She looked up from her newspaper but didn’t reply.

I sat opposite her at the cocktail table and put down my beer. She went back to her paper and sipped on her drink, a bourbon and Coke. I inquired, “Come here often?”

“Go away.”

“What’s your sign?”

“No trespassing.”

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“No.”

“Yes. NATO Headquarters in Brussels. We met at a cocktail party.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she conceded. “You got drunk and threw up in the punch bowl.”

“Small world,” I said. And indeed it was. Cynthia Sunhill, the woman sitting across from me now, was more than a casual acquaintance. In fact, we were once involved, as they say. Apparently she chose not to remember much of it. I said, “You threw up. I told you bourbon and Coke wasn’t good for your stomach.”

“You are not good for my stomach.”

You’d think by her attitude that I had walked out on her rather than vice versa.

We were sitting in the cocktail lounge of the Officers’ Club at Fort Hadley, Georgia. It was the Happy Hour, and everyone there seemed happy, save for us two. I was dressed in a blue civilian suit, she in a nice pink knit dress that brought out her tan, her auburn hair, her hazel eyes, and other fondly remembered anatomy. I inquired, “Are you here on assignment?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

“Where are you staying?”

No reply.

“How long will you be here?”

She went back to her newspaper.

I asked, “Did you marry that guy you were seeing on the side?”

She put down the paper and looked at me. “I was seeing you on the side. I was engaged to him.”

“That’s right. Are you still engaged?”

“None of your business.”

“It could be.”

“Not in this lifetime,” she informed me, and hid behind her paper again.

I didn’t see an engagement ring or a wedding ring, but in our business that didn’t mean much, as I’d learned in Brussels.

Cynthia Sunhill, by the way, was in her late twenties, and I’m in my early forties, so ours was not a May–November romance, but more May–September. Maybe August.

It lasted a year while we were both stationed in Europe, and her fiancé, a Special Forces major, was stationed in Panama. Military life is tough on relationships of all kinds, and the defense of Western civilization makes people horny.

Cynthia and I had separated a little over a year before this chance encounter, under circumstances that can best be described as messy. Apparently neither she nor I had gotten over it; I was still hurting and she was still pissed off. The betrayed fiancé looked a little annoyed, too, the last time I saw him in Brussels with a pistol in his hand.

The O Club at Hadley is vaguely Spanish in architecture, perhaps Moorish, which may have been why Casablanca popped into my mind, and I quipped out of the side of my mouth, “Of all the gin joints in the world, she walks into mine.”

Either she didn’t get it or she wasn’t in a smiling mood, because she continued to read her newspaper, the Stars and Stripes, which nobody reads, at least not in public. But Cynthia is a bit of a goody-goody, a dedicated, loyal, and enthusiastic soldier with none of the cynicism and world-weariness that most men display after a few years on this job. “Hearts filled with passion, jealousy, and hate,” I prompted.

Cynthia said, “Go away, Paul.”

“I’m sorry I ruined your life,” I said sincerely.

“You couldn’t even ruin my day.”

“You broke my heart,” I said with more sincerity.

“I’d like to break your neck,” she replied with real enthusiasm.

I could see that I was rekindling something in her, but I don’t think it was passion.

I remembered a poem I used to whisper to her in our more intimate moments, and I leaned toward her and said softly, “ ‘There hath none pleased mine eyes but Cynthia, none delighted mine ears but Cynthia, none possessed my heart but Cynthia. I have forsaken all other fortunes to follow Cynthia, and here I stand, ready to die if it pleases Cynthia.’ ”

“Good. Drop dead.” She stood and left.

“Play it again, Sam.” I finished my beer, stood, and walked back to the bar.

I sidled up to the long bar among men who had seen some of life; men with chests full of medals and Combat Infantry Badges, men with campaign ribbons from Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf. The guy to my right, a full colonel with gray hair, said, “War is hell, son, but hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

“Amen.”

“Saw the whole thing in the bar mirror,” he informed me.

“Bar mirrors are interesting,” I replied.

“Yup.” In fact, he was studying me in the bar mirror now. Apropos of my civilian attire, he asked, “You retired?”

“Yes.” But in fact, I was not.

He gave me his opinion of women in the military—“They squat to piss. Try doing that with sixty pounds of field gear”—then announced, “Gotta go drain the dragon,” and ambled off to the men’s room, where I presume he stood at the urinal.

I made my way out of the club into the hot August night and got into my Chevy Blazer. I drove through the main post, which is sort of like a downtown without zoning, encompassing everything from a PX and commissary to misplaced barracks and a deserted tank maintenance facility.

Fort Hadley is a small post in south Georgia, founded in 1917 to train infantry troops to be sent into the meat grinder on the Western Front. The area of the military reservation, however, is quite large—over 100,000 acres of mostly wooded terrain, suitable for war games, survival courses, guerrilla warfare training, and so on.

The Infantry School is phasing out now, and much of the post looks forlorn. But there is a Special Operations School here, the purpose of which seems somewhat vague, or perhaps, to be charitable, I could say experimental. As far as I can determine, the school is a mixture of psychological warfare, troop morale studies, isolation and deprivation studies, stress management courses, and other head and mind games. It sounds a bit sinister, but knowing the Army, whatever the original bright idea was, it has since become Drill and Ceremonies, and spit-shined boots.

To the north of Fort Hadley lies the medium-sized town of Midland, a typical Army town in some ways, populated with retired military personnel, civilian employees of the base, people who sell things to soldiers, as well as those who have nothing to do with the military and like it fine that way.

Midland was an English trading post as early as 1710, and before that it was an outpost of the Spanish colony of St. Augustine in Florida. Prior to that, it was an Indian town, the center of the Upatoi Nation. The Spanish burned the Indian town, the English burned the Spanish outpost, the French burned the English trading post, the British army burned and abandoned their fort there during the Revolution, and finally, the Yankees burned it in 1864. Looking at the place today, you wonder what all the fuss was about. Anyway, they’ve got a good volunteer fire department now.

I got on the interstate that skirts Fort Hadley and Midland and drove north, out into the open country toward a deserted trailer park. This was where I was temporarily staying, and I found the isolation convenient in terms of my job.

My job. I am an officer in the United States Army. My rank is unimportant, and in my line of work, it’s also a secret. I am in the Criminal Investigation Division, the CID, and in the Army, which is very rank-conscious, the best rank to have is no rank. But, in fact, like most CID personnel, I am a warrant officer, a specialized rank that exists between noncommissioned officers and commissioned officers. This is a pretty good rank because you have most of the privileges of an officer but not much of the command responsibility, or the Mickey Mouse crap that goes along with it. Warrant officers are addressed as “Mister,” and CID investigators often wear civilian clothing as I was that evening. There are times when I even have illusions that I’m a civilian.

There are, however, occasions when I do wear a uniform. On these occasions, the Department of the Army issues me orders with a new name, a rank appropriate to the case, and a uniform to match. I report for duty into a unit where my quarry is working, and I go about my assigned duties while gathering evidence for the judge advocate general.

When you’re undercover, you have to be a jack-of-all-trades. I’ve been everything from a cook to a chemical warfare specialist—though in the Army that’s not such a big difference. It’s sort of difficult to get away with some of these roles, but I get by on my charm. It’s all illusion anyway. So is my charm.

There are four warrant officer grades, and I’m topped out at grade four. All us fours are holding our breaths waiting for Congress to approve a five and six. Some of us have died of asphyxiation waiting.

Anyway, I’m part of a special CID team, a sort of elite unit, though I hesitate to use that word. What makes us special is that we’re all long-time veterans with good arrest and conviction records. What also makes us special is that I have extraordinary powers to cut through Army red tape, which in the military is like having a magic mushroom in a Nintendo game. One of those extraordinary powers is the power to make an arrest of any military person anywhere in the world, regardless of rank. I wouldn’t push this and attempt to arrest one of the Joint Chiefs for speeding, but I always wanted to see how far I could go. I was about to find out.

My permanent duty station is at CID Headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, but my cases take me all over the world. Travel, adventure, free time, mental and physical challenges, and bosses who leave me alone—what more could a man want? Oh, yes, women. There’s some of that, too. Brussels wasn’t the last time I had a woman, but it was the last time it mattered.

Unfortunately, there are some men who get their fun and challenges in other ways. Sexual assault. Murder. That’s what happened on that hot August night at Fort Hadley, Georgia. The victim was Captain Ann Campbell, daughter of Lieutenant General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Campbell. As if that weren’t bad enough, she was young, beautiful, talented, bright, and a West Point graduate. She was the pride of Fort Hadley, the darling of the Army public relations people, a poster girl for Army recruiters, a spokesperson for the new, nonsexist Army, a Gulf War veteran, and so forth and so on. Therefore, I wasn’t particularly surprised when I heard that someone raped and murdered her. She had it coming. Right? Wrong.

But I didn’t know any of that during the Happy Hour at the O Club. In fact, while I had been speaking to Cynthia, and talking man talk with that colonel at the bar, Captain Ann Campbell was still alive and was actually fifty feet away in the O Club dining room finishing a meal of salad, chicken, white wine, and coffee, as I learned during my subsequent investigation.

I arrived at the trailer park, set among the pine trees, and parked my Blazer some distance from my mobile home. I walked in the dark along a path of rotted planking. A few unoccupied trailers were scattered around the clearing, but mostly there were empty lots marked by cement blocks upon which there once sat about a hundred mobile homes.

There was still electric and telephone service available and a well that provided running water, which I made potable by adding Scotch whisky to it.

I unlocked the door of my trailer, stepped inside, and turned on the light, which revealed a kitchen/dining room/living room combination.

I thought of the trailer as a time capsule in which nothing had changed since about 1970. The furniture was sort of an avocado-green plastic, and the kitchen appliances were a kind of mustard color that I think used to be called harvest gold. The walls were paneled in a dark plywood, and the carpeting was a red and black plaid. If one were color-sensitive, this place could induce fits of depression and suicide.

I took off my jacket and tie, turned on the radio, got a beer from the refrigerator, and sat in the armchair that was bolted to the floor. There were three framed prints screwed to the walls, a bullfighter, a seascape, and a reproduction of Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.” I sipped my beer and contemplated Aristotle contemplating Homer’s bust.

This particular trailer park, named Whispering Pines, if anyone cares, was developed by a few enterprising retired sergeants in the late sixties when it appeared that the war in Asia was going to last forever. Fort Hadley, an Infantry Training Center, was bursting with soldiers and their dependents back then, and I remember Whispering Pines when it was full of young married soldiers who were authorized—actually encouraged—to live off post. There was an aboveground pool crammed with kids and young Army wives, and there was too much drinking, and too much boredom, and too little money, and the future was obscured by the fog of war.

The American dream was not supposed to look like this, and when the men went off to the war, too often other men came in the night to the bedroom at the back of the long, narrow trailers. In fact, I had lived here then and had gone off to war, and someone took my place in the bed and took my young wife. But that was a few wars ago, and so much has happened since, that the only lingering bitterness left is that the bastard also took my dog.

I read a few magazines, had a few more beers, thought of Cynthia, and didn’t think of Cynthia.

Normally, I have a little more fun than this, but I had to be at the post armory at 0500 hours, a.k.a. five A.M.

CHAPTER

TWO

The post armory. A cornucopia of American high-tech military goodies—things that go boom in the night.

I was on undercover assignment at the armory in the early morning hours near the time when Ann Campbell was murdered, which is why I caught the squeal, as my civilian counterparts would say. Some weeks earlier, I had assumed the duties and outward appearances of a slightly seedy supply sergeant named Franklin White, and with a real seedy supply sergeant named Dalbert Elkins, we were about to close a deal to sell a few hundred M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, and sundry other dangerous items from the armory to a group of Cuban freedom fighters who wanted to overthrow Mr. Fidel Castro, the Antichrist. In fact, the Hispanic gentlemen were Colombian drug dealers, but they wanted to make us feel better about the transaction. Anyway, I was sitting in the armory at 0600 hours, conversing with my coconspirator, Staff Sergeant Elkins. We were talking about what we were going to do with the $200,000 we would split. Sergeant Elkins was actually going to jail for the rest of his life, but he didn’t know that, and men have to dream. It’s my unpleasant duty to become their worst nightmare.

The phone rang, and I picked up the receiver before my new buddy could grab it. I said, “Post armory, Sergeant White speaking.”

“Ah, there you are,” said Colonel William Kent, the post provost marshal, Fort Hadley’s top cop. “I’m glad I found you.”

“I didn’t know I was lost,” I replied. Prior to my chance encounter with Cynthia, Colonel Kent was the only person on the post who knew who I was, and the only reason I could think of for him to be calling me was to tell me I was in imminent danger of being found out. I kept one eye on Sergeant Elkins and one on the door.

But as luck would have it, it wasn’t as simple as that. Colonel Kent informed me, “There’s been a homicide. A female captain. Maybe raped. Can you talk?”

“No.”

“Can you meet me?”

“Maybe.” Kent was a decent sort of guy, but like most MP types, he wasn’t overly clever, and the CID made him nervous. I said, “I’m working, obviously.”

“This is going to take priority, Mr. Brenner. It’s a big one.”

“So is this.” I glanced at Sergeant Elkins, who was eyeing me carefully.

Kent said, “It was General Campbell’s daughter.”

“My goodness.” I thought a moment. All my instincts said to avoid any cases that involved the rape and murder of a general’s daughter. It was a lose-lose situation. My sense of duty, honor, and justice assured me that some other sucker in the special unit of the CID could handle it. Somebody whose career was down the toilet anyway. I thought of several candidates. But, duty and honor aside, my natural curiosity was aroused. I asked Colonel Kent, “Where can I meet you?”

“I’ll meet you in the provost building parking lot and take you to the scene.”

Being undercover, I shouldn’t be anywhere near the provost marshal’s office, but Kent is annoyingly dense. I said, “Not your place.”

“Oh… how about the infantry barracks? The Third Battalion HQ. It’s on the way.”

Elkins, tense and paranoid already, was getting fidgety. I said to Kent, “Okay, sweetheart. Ten minutes.” I hung up and said to Sergeant Elkins, “My girlfriend. Needs some lovin’.”

Elkins looked at his watch. “Kinda late… or early…”

“Not for this little gal.”

Elkins smiled.

As per armory regulations, I was wearing a sidearm, and, satisfied that Elkins was cooled out, I unhooked the pistol belt and left it there as per post regulations. I didn’t know then that I would need a weapon later. I said to Elkins, “Might be back.”

“Yeah, okay. Give her one for me, boy.”

“Sure thing.”

I had left my Blazer back at the trailer park, and my POV—that’s Army talk for privately owned vehicle, not point of view—was now a Ford pickup truck, issued to me for my current impersonation. It was complete with shotgun rack, dog hair on the upholstery, and a pair of hip waders in the back.

So off I went, through the main post. Within a few minutes I was into the area of the Infantry Training Brigade, long wooden World War II era barracks, mostly deserted now and looking dark and spooky. The cold war is over, and the Army, while not exactly withering away, is definitely downsizing, and the combat arms branches—the infantry, armor, and artillery, the reason for the Army’s existence—are taking the biggest cuts. The CID, however, dealing as it does with crime, is a growth organization.

As a young private, I graduated Advanced Infantry Training School here at Fort Hadley many years ago, then went to Airborne School and Ranger School at Fort Benning, not far from here. So I’m an Airborne Ranger—the ultimate weapon, a killing machine, mean, lean, death from the skies, good to go, and so on. But I’m a little older now and the CID suits me fine.

Ultimately, even government institutions have to justify their existence, and the Army was doing a good job of finding a new role for itself in knocking around pissant countries who get out of line. But I’ve noticed a certain lack of esprit and purpose in the officers and men who had always felt that they were the only thing standing between the Russian hordes and their loved ones. It’s sort of like a boxer, training for years for the title match, then finding out that the other contender just dropped dead. You’re a little relieved, but there’s also a letdown, a hollow place where your adrenaline pump used to be.

Anyway, it was that time of day that the Army calls first light, and the Georgia sky was turning pink, and the air was heavy with humidity, and you could figure out it was going to be a ninety-degree day. I could smell the wet Georgia clay, the pine trees, and the aroma of Army coffee wafting out of a nearby mess hall, or as we call it now, a dining facility.

I pulled off the road and onto the grassy field in front of the old Battalion Headquarters. Colonel Kent got out of his official olive-drab car, and I got out of my pickup truck.

Kent is about fifty, tall, medium build, with a pockmarked face and icy blue eyes. He’s a bit stiff at times, not clever, as I said, but hardworking and efficient. He’s the military equivalent of a chief of police, commanding all the uniformed military police at Fort Hadley. He’s a stickler for rules and regulations, and, while not disliked, he’s not anyone’s best buddy.

Kent was all spiffy in his provost marshal’s uniform with his white helmet, white pistol belt, and spit-shined boots. He said to me, “I have six MPs securing the scene. Nothing has been touched.”

“That’s a start.” Kent and I have known each other about ten years, and we’ve developed a good working relationship, though in fact I only see him about once a year when a case brings me to Fort Hadley. Kent outranks me, but I can be familiar with him, actually give him a hard time, as long as I’m the investigating officer on the case. I’ve seen him testify at courts-martial, and he’s everything a prosecutor could ask for in a cop: believable, logical, unemotional, and organized in his testimony. Yet, there’s something about him that didn’t play right, and I always had the feeling that the prosecutors were happy to get him off the stand. I think, maybe, he comes across as a little too stiff and unfeeling. When the Army has to court-martial one of its own, there is usually some sympathy, or at least concern, for the accused. But Kent is one of those cops who only sees black and white, and anyone who breaks the law at Fort Hadley has personally affronted Colonel Kent. I actually saw him smile once when a young recruit, who burned down a deserted barracks in a drunken stupor, got ten years for arson. But the law is the law, I suppose, and such a brittle personality as William Kent has found his niche in life. That’s why I was a little surprised to discover that he was somewhat shaken by the events of that morning. I asked him, “Have you informed General Campbell?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you’d better go to his house.”

He nodded, not very enthusiastically. He looked awful, actually, and I deduced that he’d been to the scene himself. I informed Colonel Kent, “The general is going to have your ass for delaying notification.”

He explained, “Well, I didn’t have a positive identification until I saw the body myself. I mean, I couldn’t go to his house and tell him that his daughter—”

“Who made the tentative identification?”

“A Sergeant St. John. He found the body.”

“And he knew her?”

“They were on duty together.”

“Well, that’s a pretty positive identification. And you knew her?”

“Yes, of course. I made a positive identification.”

“Not to mention dog tags and the name on her uniform.”

“Well, that’s all gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes… whoever did it took her uniform and dog tags…”

You get a sense for these things, or maybe you get a backlog of cases stored in your head, and when you hear the evidence and see the scene, you ask yourself, “What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked Colonel Kent, “Underwear?”

“What? Oh… it’s there…” He added, “Usually they take the underwear. Right? This is weird.”

“Is Sergeant St. John a suspect?”

Colonel Kent shrugged. “That’s your job.”

“Well, with a name like St. John, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment.” I looked around at the deserted barracks, the Battalion Headquarters, the mess hall, and the company assembly areas overgrown with weeds now, and in the gray light of dawn, I could imagine the young troops falling in for roll call. I can still remember being always tired, cold, and hungry before breakfast. I remember, too, being frightened, knowing that ninety percent of us standing there in formation were going to Vietnam, and knowing that the casualty rate among the frontline troops was high enough so that a Midland bookie wouldn’t give you better than two-to-one odds that you’d make it back in the same shape you left. I said to Kent, “That was my company over there. Delta Company.”

“I didn’t know you were infantry.”

“Long time ago. Before I became a copper. You?”

“Always an MP. But I saw some stuff in ’Nam. I was at the American Embassy when the Cong came over the walls that time. January ’68.” He added, “I killed one of them.”

I nodded. “Sometimes I think the infantry was better. The bad guys were never one of your own. This crap is different.”

“Bad guys are bad guys,” Kent informed me. “The Army is the Army. Orders are orders.”

“Yup.” And therein lies the essence of military mentality. Ours is not to reason why, and there is no excuse for failure. This works pretty well in combat and most other military-type situations, but not in the CID. In the CID you must actually disobey orders, think for yourself, ignore the brass, and, above all, discover the truth. This does not always sit well in the military, which thinks of itself as a big family, where people still like to believe that “all the brothers are valiant, and all the sisters virtuous.”

As though reading my thoughts, Colonel Kent said, “I know this could be a real messy case. But maybe not. Maybe it was committed by a civilian. Maybe it can be wrapped up right away.”

“Oh, I’m sure it can, Bill. And you and I will get letters of commendation inserted into our permanent files, and General Campbell will invite us for cocktails.”

Kent looked very troubled. He said, “Well, my ass is on the line here, frankly. This is my post, my beat. You can beg off if you want and they’ll send another homicide guy. But you happen to be here and you happen to be special unit, and we’ve worked together before, and I’d like your name next to mine on the prelim report.”

“And you didn’t even bring me a cup of coffee.”

He smiled grimly. “Coffee? Hell, I need a drink.” He added, “You can get some rank out of this.”

“If you mean a reduction, you’re probably right. If you mean a promotion, I’m topped out.”

“Sorry. I forgot. Bad system.”

I asked him, “Are you up for a star?”

“Maybe.” He looked a bit worried, as if the twinkling general’s star that he’d seen in his dreams just blinked out.

I asked, “Have you notified the local CID yet?”

“No.”

“Why in the world not?”

“Well… this is not going to be handled by them, anyway… I mean, Jesus, this is the post commander’s daughter, and the CID commander here, Major Bowes, knew her, and so did everyone else here, so we need to show the general that we’ve gotten top talent from Falls Church—”

“The word you’re looking for is scapegoat. But, okay, I’ll tell my boss in Falls Church that this is best handled by a special investigator, but I don’t know if I’m the guy who wants to do it.”

“Let’s go see the body, then you can decide.”

As we started to walk to his car, we heard the post cannon boom—actually a recording of some long-scrapped artillery piece—and we stopped and faced the direction of the sound. From the loudspeakers mounted on the empty barracks came the recorded bugle sound of reveille, and we saluted, two solitary men standing in the predawn light, reacting to a lifetime of conditioning and centuries of military custom and ceremony.

The ancient bugle call, going back to the Crusades, echoed through the company streets and the alleyways between the barracks, and over the grassy assembly fields, and somewhere, the flags were being raised.

It’s been years since I’ve been caught outdoors at reveille, but I sort of enjoy the pomp and ceremony once in a while, the communion with the living and the dead, the idea that there is something bigger and more important than I, and that I am part of it.

There is no civilian equivalent of this, unless watching Good Morning America has become a tradition, and though I’m on the periphery of Army life, I don’t know if I’m ready yet to make the transition to civilian life. But that decision might already be in the making. Sometimes you sense when the last act has begun.

The final sounds of the bugle died away, and Kent and I continued toward his car. He remarked to me, “Another day begins at Fort Hadley, but one of its soldiers will not see it.”

CHAPTER

THREE

We headed south in Kent’s car toward the far reaches of the military reservation.

Colonel Kent began: “Captain Ann Campbell and Sergeant Harold St. John were on duty at Post Headquarters. She was duty officer, he was duty sergeant.”

“Did they know each other?”

Kent shrugged. “Maybe in passing. They don’t work together. He’s in the motor pool. She’s an instructor at the Special Operations School. They just came down on orders and wound up together.”

“What does she teach?”

“Psy-ops.” He added, “She’s got—she had a master’s in psychology.”

“Still has.” There’s always a question of tenses when referring to the recently dead. I asked Kent, “Do instructors usually pull that sort of duty?”

“No, not usually. But Ann Campbell put her name on several duty rosters she didn’t have to be on.” He added, “She tried to set an example. General’s daughter.”

“I see.” The Army runs duty rosters for officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted men and women. These are completely random lists, ensuring that as nearly as possible everyone gets his or her chance at some sort of crap duty. There was a time when female personnel were not on all lists, such as guard duty, but times change. What doesn’t change is that young ladies walking around alone at night are at some risk. The hearts of evil men remain the same; the compulsion to stick it in the most available vagina supersedes Army regulations. I asked, “And she was armed?”

“Sure. Had her sidearm.”

“Go on.”

“Well, at about 0100 hours, Campbell says to St. John that she is going to take the jeep and check the guard posts—”

“Why? Isn’t that something the sergeant of the guard or the officer of the guard should do? The duty officer should stay with the phones.”

Kent replied, “St. John said the officer of the guard was some young lieutenant, still pissing water from West Point. And Campbell, as I’ve indicated, is gung ho and she wants to go out there and check things for herself. She knew the sign and countersign, so off she goes.” Kent turned onto Rifle Range Road. He continued, “At about 0300 hours, St. John says he got a little concerned—”

“Why concerned?”

“I don’t know… You know, it’s a woman and—well, maybe he was annoyed because he thought she was goofing off somewhere and maybe he wanted to go to the latrine and didn’t want to leave the phones.”

“How old is this guy?” I asked.

“Fifty something. Married. Good record.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back at the provost building catching some cot time. I told him to stay put.”

We had passed rifle ranges one, two, three, and four, all of which lie to the right of the road, huge expanses of flat, open terrain, backed by a continuous earthen berm. I hadn’t been out here in over twenty years, but I remembered the place.

Colonel Kent continued, “So St. John calls the guardhouse, but Captain Campbell is not there. He asks the sergeant of the guard to call the guard posts and see if Campbell has come by. The sergeant of the guard calls back a while later and reports negative. So St. John asks the sergeant of the guard to send a responsible person to headquarters to watch the phones, and when one of the guards shows up, St. John gets in his POV and heads out. He starts checking the posts in order—NCO Club, Officers’ Club, and so on—but not one of the guards has seen Captain Campbell. So, at about 0400 hours, he goes out toward the last guard post, which is an ammo storage shed, and on the way, at rifle range six, he sees her jeep… in fact, there it is.”

Up ahead, off to the right on the narrow road, was the humvee, which we old guys still refer to as a jeep, in which, presumably, Ann Campbell had driven to her rendezvous with death, if you will. Near the humvee was someone’s POV—a red Mustang. I asked Kent, “Where is the guard post and the guard?”

“The ammo shed is another klick up the road. The guard, a PFC Robbins, heard nothing, but saw headlights.”

“You questioned him?”

“Her. Mary Robbins.” Kent smiled for the first time. “PFC is a gender-neutral term, Paul.”

“Thank you. Where is PFC Robbins now?”

“On a cot in the provost building.”

“Crowded in there. But good thinking.”

Kent stopped the car near the humvee and the red Mustang. It was nearly light now, and I could see the six MPs—four men, two women—standing at various spots around the area. All of the rifle ranges had open bleacher seats off to the left side of the road facing the ranges, where the troops received classroom instruction before proceeding to the firing line. In the nearby bleachers to my left sat a woman in jeans and windbreaker, writing on a pad. Kent and I got out of the car, and he said to me, “That is Ms. Sunhill. She’s a woman.”

I knew that. I asked Kent, “Why is she here?”

“I called her.”

“Why?”

“She’s a rape counselor.”

“The victim doesn’t need counseling. She’s dead.”

“Yes,” Kent agreed, “but Ms. Sunhill is also a rape investigator.”

“Is that a fact? What is she doing at Hadley?”

“That female nurse, Lieutenant Neely. You know about that?”

“Only what I read in the papers. Could there be a connection between these cases?”

“No. An arrest was made yesterday.”

“What time yesterday?”

“About four P.M. Ms. Sunhill made the arrest and by five P.M. we had a confession.”

I nodded. And at six P.M. Ms. Sunhill was having a drink in the O Club, quietly celebrating her success, and Ann Campbell, I was about to discover, was alive and having dinner there, and I was at the bar watching Cynthia and trying to get up the courage to say hello or make a strategic withdrawal.

Kent added, “Sunhill was supposed to go off to another assignment today. But she says she’ll stay for this.”

“How lucky we are.”

“Yes, it’s good to have a woman on these kinds of things. And she’s good. I saw her work.”

“Indeed.” I noticed that the red Mustang, which was probably Cynthia’s car, had Virginia license plates, like my own POV, suggesting that she was working out of Falls Church, as I was. But fate had not caused our paths to cross at the home office but had put us here under these circumstances. It was inevitable, anyway.

I looked out over the rifle range, on which sat a morning mist. In front of the berm stood pop-up targets, at different ranges, dozens of nasty-looking fiberboard men with rifles. These lifelike targets have replaced the old black silhouette targets, the point being, I suppose, that if you’re being trained to kill men, then the targets should look you in the eye. However, from past experience, I can tell you that nothing prepares you for killing men except killing men. In any case, birds were perched on many of the mock men, which sort of ruined the effect, at least until the first platoon of the day fired.

When I went through infantry training, the firing ranges were bare of vegetation, great expanses of sterile soil unlike any battlefield condition you were likely to encounter, except perhaps the desert. Now, many firing ranges, like this one, were planted with various types of vegetation to partially obscure the fields of fire. About fifty meters opposite of where I was standing on the road there was a pop-up silhouette partially hidden by tall grass and evergreen bushes. Standing around this target and vegetation were two MPs, a man and a woman. At the base of the silhouette, I could make out something on the ground that didn’t belong there.

Colonel Kent said, “This guy was a sick puppy.” He added, as if I didn’t get it, “I mean, he did it to her right there on the rifle range, with that pop-up guy sort of looking down at her.”

If only the pop-up guy could talk. I turned and looked around the area. Some distance behind the bleachers and the fire control towers was a tree line in which I could see latrine sheds. I said to Colonel Kent, “Have you searched the area for any other possible victims?”

“No… well… we didn’t want to disturb evidence.”

“But someone else may also be dead, or alive and in need of assistance. Evidence is secondary to aiding victims. Says so in the manual.”

“Right…” He looked around and called to an MP sergeant. “Get on the horn and have Lieutenant Fullham’s platoon get down here with the dogs.”

Before the sergeant could respond, a voice from the top of the bleachers said, “I already did that.”

I looked up at Ms. Sunhill. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

I wanted to ignore her, but I knew this wasn’t going to be possible. I turned and walked onto the rifle range. Kent followed.

As we walked, Kent’s stride got a bit shorter, and he fell behind. The two MPs there were at parade rest, pointedly looking away from the ground upon which lay Captain Ann Campbell.

I stopped a few feet from the body, which was lying on its back. She was naked, as Kent had indicated, except for a sports watch on her left wrist. A few feet from the body lay what we call a commercially purchased undergarment—her bra. As Kent had also said, her uniform was missing from the scene. Also missing were her boots, socks, helmet, pistol belt, holster, and sidearm. More interestingly, perhaps, was the fact that Ann Campbell was spread-eagled on her back, her wrists and ankles bound to tent pegs with cord. The pegs were a green vinyl plastic, and the cord was green nylon, both Army issue.

Ann Campbell was about thirty and well built, the sort of build you see on female aerobic instructors with well-defined leg and arm muscles and not an ounce of flab. Despite her present condition, I recognized her face from Army posters. She was quite attractive in a clean-cut way, and wore her blond hair in a simple shoulder-length style, perhaps a few inches beyond regulations, which was the least of her problems at the moment.

Around her neck was a long length of the same nylon cord that bound her wrists and ankles, and beneath this cord were her panties, which had been pulled over her head, one leg of the panties around her neck, so that the cord did not bite directly into her neck, but was cushioned by the panties. I knew what this meant, but I don’t think anyone else did.

Cynthia came up beside me, but said nothing.

I knelt beside the body and noted that the skin appeared waxy and translucent, causing the powder blush on her cheeks to stand out sharply. Her fingernails and toenails, which had only a clear lacquer on them, had lost their pinkish color. Her face was unbruised, unscratched, and without lacerations or bite marks, and so were the parts of her body that I could see. Aside from the obscene position of her body, there were no outward signs of rape, no semen around the genitals, thighs, or in the pubic hair, no signs of struggle in the surrounding area, no grass or soil marks on her skin, no blood, dirt, or skin under her nails, and her hair was mostly in place.

I leaned over and touched her face and neck, where rigor mortis usually sets in first. There was no rigor, and I felt her underarms, which were still warm. There was some livor mortis, or lividity, that had settled into her thighs and buttocks, and the lividity was a deep purple color, which would be consistent with asphyxia, which in turn was consistent with the rope around her neck. I pressed my finger against the purplish skin above where her buttocks met the ground, and the depressed spot blanched. When I took my finger away, the livid color returned, and I was reasonably certain that death had occurred within the last four hours.

One thing I learned a long time ago was that you never take a witness’s statement as gospel truth. But so far, Sergeant St. John’s chronology seemed to hold up.

I bent over further and looked into Ann Campbell’s large blue eyes, which stared unblinking into the sun. The corneas were not yet cloudy, reinforcing my estimate of a recent death. I pulled at one of her eyelids and saw in the linings around the eye, small spotty hemorrhages, which is presumptive evidence of death by asphyxia. So far, what Kent had told me, and the scene that presented itself, seemed to comport with what I was discovering.

I loosened the rope around Ann Campbell’s neck and examined the panties beneath the rope. The panties were not torn and were not soiled by the body or by any foreign substance. There were no dog tags under the panties, so these, too, were missing. Where the ligature, the rope, had circled the neck there was only a faint line of bruising, barely discernible if you weren’t looking for it. Yet, death had come by strangulation, and the panties lessened the damage the rope would normally have done to the throat and neck.

I stood and walked around the body, noting that the soles of her feet were stained with grass and soil, meaning she had walked barefoot for at least a few steps. I leaned down and examined the bottom of her feet, discovering on her right foot a small tar or blacktop stain on the soft fleshy spot below her big toe. It would appear that she had actually been barefoot back on the road, which might mean she had taken off her clothes, or at least her boots and socks, near the humvee and was made to walk here, fifty meters away, barefoot or perhaps naked, though her bra and panties were near the body. I examined her bra and saw that the front clasp was intact, not bent or broken, and there were no signs of dirt or stress on the fabric.

All this time no one said a word, and you could hear the morning birds in the trees, and the sun had risen above the line of white pines beyond the berm, and long morning shadows spread across the firing ranges.

I addressed Colonel Kent. “Who was the first MP on the scene?”

Kent called over the female MP nearby, a young PFC, and said to her, “Give your report to this man.”

The MP, whose name tag said Casey, looked at me and reported, “I received a radio call at 0452 hours advising me that a female body had been found at rifle range six, approximately fifty meters west of a humvee parked on the road. I was in the vicinity and I proceeded to this location and reached the scene at 0501 hours and saw the humvee. I parked and secured my vehicle, took my M-16, and proceeded onto the rifle range, where I located the body. I felt for a pulse, listened for a heartbeat, tried to detect breathing, and shined my flashlight into the victim’s eyes, but they did not respond to the light. I determined that the victim was dead.”

I asked her, “Then what did you do?”

“I returned to my vehicle and called for assistance.”

“You followed the same path to and from the body?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you touch anything except the body? The ropes, the tent pegs, the undergarments?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you touch the victim’s vehicle?”

“No, sir. I did not touch the evidence beyond determining that the victim was dead.”

“Anything else you want to mention?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank you.”

PFC Casey saluted, turned, and resumed her position.

Kent, Cynthia, and I glanced at one another, as if trying to see what the others were thinking, or feeling. Truly, moments like this try the soul and become indelibly burned into the mind. I have never forgotten a death scene, and never want to.

I looked down at Ann Campbell’s face for a full minute, knowing I would not see it again. This is important, I think, because it establishes a communion between the living and the dead, between the investigator and the victim. Somehow it helps—not her, but me.

We went back to the road and walked around the humvee that Ann Campbell had driven, then looked inside the driver’s side window, which was open. Many military vehicles have no ignition keys, only a starter button switch, and the switch on the humvee was in the off position. On the front passenger seat was a black leather nonmilitary-issue handbag. Cynthia said to me, “I would have gone through the bag, but I didn’t want to do that without your permission.”

“We’re off to a good start. Retrieve the handbag.”

She went around to the passenger side, and, using a handkerchief, opened the door, took out the bag with the handkerchief, then sat on the lower bench of the bleachers and began laying out the contents.

I got down on the road and slid under the humvee, but there was nothing unusual on the blacktop. I touched the exhaust system at various points and found it slightly warm in spots.

I stood, and Colonel Kent said to me, “Any ideas?”

“Well, a few possible scenarios come to mind. But I have to wait until forensic gets finished. I assume you called them.”

“Of course. They’re on their way from Gillem.”

“Good.” Fort Gillem is outside Atlanta, about two hundred miles north of Hadley, and the CID lab there is a state-of-the-art operation that handles all of North America. The people who work there are good, and like me they go where they’re needed. Major crimes are still relatively rare in the Army, so the lab can usually muster the resources it needs when a big one comes down. In this case, they’d probably show up with a caravan. I said to Colonel Kent, “When they get here, tell them to be very curious about a black smudge on the sole of her right foot. I want to know what it is.”

Kent nodded, probably thinking to himself, Typical CID bullshit. And he might well have been right.

“Also, I want you to do a grid search. Let’s say two hundred meters in each direction from the body, excluding an area fifty meters immediately around the body.” This would mess up any footprints, but there were hundreds of bootprints in the area of the rifle range anyway, and the only ones I was interested in were those within fifty meters of the body. I said to Kent, “I want your people to gather up anything that isn’t natural flora—cigarette butts, buttons, paper, bottles, and all that, and record the grid where they found it. All right?”

“No problem. But I think this guy got in and got out clean. Probably by vehicle, just like the victim.”

“I think you’re right, but we’re creating files.”

“We’re covering our asses.”

“Right. We go by the book.” Which was safe and sometimes even effective. Bottom line on this one, though, I was going to have to get real creative, and I was going to piss off a lot of important people. That’s the fun part.

I said to Kent, “I need Captain Campbell’s personnel and medical files sealed and in your office before noon.”

“Okay.”

“And I need an office at your place, and a clerk.”

“One desk or two?”

I glanced at Cynthia. “I guess two desks. But I’m not committing to this yet.”

“Don’t blow smoke up my ass, Paul. You in or not?”

“I’ll see what they say at Falls Church. Okay, delay notifying the public information officer until about ten hundred hours. Send two guys to Captain Campbell’s office and physically remove her desk, furniture, and all her personal possessions, and have everything locked up in your evidence room. And have Sergeant St. John and PFC Robbins remain in the provost marshal’s office until I can see them. I don’t want anyone speaking a word of this until they’ve spoken to me. And it is your unpleasant duty, Colonel, to pay an official call on General and Mrs. Campbell at their home. Go unannounced and with an appropriate chaplain and a medical officer in case anyone needs a sedative or something. They may not view the body at the scene. Okay?”

Kent nodded and let out a long breath. “Jesus Christ…”

“Amen. Meanwhile, instruct your people not to say a word about what we found here, and give forensic a set of disqualifying fingerprints from PFC Casey, and disqualifying bootprints from everyone here at the scene, including yourself, of course.”

“Right.”

“Also, tape off the latrine sheds and don’t let anyone use them. Also, the latrines are off limits to forensic until I have a chance to check them out.”

“Okay.”

I walked over to Cynthia, who was now putting everything back in the handbag, still using a handkerchief. “Anything interesting?”

“No. Basic stuff. Wallet, money, keys, and everything appears intact. Here’s a chit from the O Club. She had dinner last night. Salad, chicken, white wine, and coffee.” She added, “She was probably there in the dining room about the same time we were having a drink.”

Kent had joined us and he asked, “You two had drinks together? You know each other?”

I replied, “We had drinks separately. We are nodding acquaintances.” I asked Cynthia, “Campbell’s address?”

“Off post, unfortunately. Victory Gardens on Victory Drive in Midland. Unit forty-five.” She added, “I think I know the place—a town-house complex.”

Kent said, “I’ll call Chief Yardley—that’s the Midland police chief, and he’ll get a court order and he can meet us there.”

“No. We’ll keep this in the family, Bill.”

“You can’t go search her off-post house without a civilian search warrant—”

Cynthia handed me the keys from Ann Campbell’s bag and said, “I’ll drive.”

Kent protested, “You can’t go off post without civilian authority.”

I detached Ann Campbell’s car keys from the key chain and gave them to Kent, along with the victim’s handbag. “Find out where her car is and impound it.”

As we walked toward Cynthia’s Mustang, I said to Kent, “You should stay here to direct things. When you write your report, you can write that I said I was going to the Midland police. I’ll take responsibility for my change of mind.”

“Yardley is a tough, redneck son-of-a-bitch,” Kent informed me. “He’ll get your ass, Paul.”

“He has to stand in line and wait his turn.” To get Kent squared away so he didn’t do anything stupid, I said, “Look, Bill, I have to have first look at Ann Campbell’s place. I have to remove anything that might embarrass her, her family, the Army, or her military colleagues and friends. Right? Then we’ll let Chief Yardley have his shot at the house. Okay?”

He seemed to process this correctly and nodded.

Cynthia got behind the wheel of her Mustang and I got in the passenger seat. I said to Kent, “I may call you from there. Think positive.”

Cynthia threw the five-liter Mustang into first gear, made a U-turn, and we were off, zero to sixty in about six seconds, along the lonely Rifle Range Road.

I listened to the engine for a while and neither of us spoke, then Cynthia said, “I feel queasy.”

“Pretty awful,” I agreed.

“Disgusting.” She glanced at me. “Are you used to it?”

“God, no.” I added, “I don’t see that many homicides and not many like this.”

She nodded, then took a deep breath. “I think I can help you on this one. But I don’t want it to be awkward.”

“No problem,” I said. “But we’ll always have Brussels.”

“Where?”

“Belgium. The capital.” Bitch.

We sat in silence, then Cynthia asked, “Why?”

“Why is Brussels the capital? Or why will we always have it?”

“No, Paul, why was she murdered?”

“Oh… well, the possible motives in homicide cases,” I replied, “are profit, revenge, jealousy, to conceal a crime, to avoid humiliation or disgrace, and homicidal mania. Says so in the manual.”

“And what do you think?”

“Well, when rape precedes homicide, it usually comes down to revenge or jealousy or possibly to conceal the identity of the rapist. She may have known him, or she could have identified him afterward if he wasn’t wearing a mask or disguise.” I added, “On the other hand, this certainly looks like a lust murder, the work of a homicidal rapist—a person who gets his sexual release from the killing itself, and he may not even have penetrated her with his penis. That’s what it looks like, but we don’t know yet.”

Cynthia nodded, but offered nothing.

I asked her, “What do you think?”

She let a few seconds go by, then replied, “Obviously premeditated. The perpetrator had a rape kit—the tent pegs, rope, and presumably something to drive the pegs into the ground. The perpetrator must have been armed in order to overcome the victim’s own weapon.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the perpetrator got the drop on her, then made her toss away her weapon, then made her strip and walk out on the rifle range.”

“Okay. I’m trying to picture how he managed to stake her out and still keep her under his control. I don’t think she was the submissive type.”

Cynthia replied, “Neither do I. But there may have been two of them. And I wouldn’t make the assumption that the perpetrator or perpetrators was a he until we have some lab evidence.”

“Okay.” I was obviously having trouble with personal pronouns this morning. “Why weren’t there any signs of struggle on her part, or brutalization on his—on the perpetrator’s part?”

She shook her head. “Don’t know. You usually get some brutalization… The ligature isn’t what you’d call friendly, however.”

“No,” I replied, “but the guy didn’t hate her.”

“He didn’t like her much, either.”

“He may have. Look, Cynthia, you do this stuff for a living. Does this resemble any rape you’ve ever seen or heard about?”

She mulled that over, then said, “It has some of the elements of what we call an organized rape. The assailant planned a rape. But I don’t know if the assailant knew her, or if the assailant was just cruising and she was a victim of opportunity.”

“The assailant may have been in uniform,” I suggested, “which was why she was not on her guard.”

“Possible.”

I looked out the open window, smelled the morning dews and damps among the thick pines, and felt the rising sun on my face. I rolled up the window and sat back, trying to picture what preceded what I had just seen, like running the film backward; Ann Campbell staked out on the ground, then standing naked, then walking from the jeep, and so on. A lot of it didn’t compute.

Cynthia broke into my thoughts. “Paul, the uniform had her name tag on it, and so did her dog tags, obviously, and probably her helmet and boots had her name stenciled inside. So what do the missing items have in common? Her name. Correct?”

“Correct.” Women bring different things to the party. And that’s okay. Really.

She said, “So this guy is into… what? Trophies? Proof?

Mementos and souvenirs? That’s consistent with the personality and profile of an organized sex offender.”

“But he left her underwear and handbag.” I added, “Actually, what all the missing items have in common is that they are all her military issue, including her holster and sidearm, and they would not have her name on them. He left the civilian stuff behind, including her watch and her handbag, which has all sorts of things with her name on them. Correct?”

“Is this a contest?”

“No, Cynthia. It’s a homicide investigation. We’re brainstorming.”

“Okay. Sorry. That’s what partners are supposed to do in a homicide investigation.”

“Right.” Partner?

Cynthia stayed silent a moment, then said, “You know this stuff.”

“I hope so.”

“Okay, why did he take only her military issue?”

“Ancient warriors stripped the arms and armor from their dead enemies. They left the loincloths.”

“That’s why he took her military issue?”

“Maybe. Just a thought. Could be a red herring. Could be some other mental derangement that I’m not familiar with.”

She glanced at me as she drove.

I added, “He may not have raped her. But he staked her out like that to draw attention to the sexual nature of his act, or possibly to dishonor her body, to reveal her nakedness to the world.”

“Why?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Maybe you do.”

“I have to think about it. I’m starting to think he knew her.” Actually, I knew he knew her. We rode in silence a while longer, then I said to Cynthia, “I don’t know why it happened, but how does this sound for how it happened: Ann Campbell leaves Post Headquarters and goes directly to the rifle range, stopping a good distance from PFC Robbins’s guard post. She has a preplanned rendezvous with a lover. They do this often. He plays the armed bandito and gets the drop on her, makes her strip, and they get into some kinky S&;M and bondage thing.” I glanced at Cynthia. “You know what I mean?”

“I know nothing about sexual perversions. That’s your department.”

“Well said.”

She added, “Your scenario sounds like male fantasy. I mean, what woman would go through all that trouble to be staked out on the cold ground and call that fun?”

I could see this was going to be a long day, and I hadn’t even had my breakfast yet. I said, “Do you know why her panties were under the rope around her neck?”

“No, why?”

“Check the homicide manual under sexual asphyxia.”

“Okay.”

“Also, did you notice that there seemed to be a blacktop stain on the sole of her right foot?”

“I didn’t.”

“If it came from the road, why was she barefoot on the road?”

“He made her strip in, or near, the jeep.”

“Then why was her underwear on the rifle range?”

Cynthia replied, “She may have been forced to take off her clothes at, or in, the jeep, then she or the perpetrator carried them to where she was staked out.”

“Why?”

“Part of the script, Paul. Sex offenders have incredibly involved fantasies that they perfect in their minds, things that have a strong sexual meaning for them but for no one else. Making a woman strip, then walk naked carrying her own clothes to a place where he intends to rape her may be his unique fantasy.”

“So you know this stuff? I’m not in sole charge of perversions.”

“I’m familiar with pathological sex acts and criminal deviations. I don’t know much about consenting sexual perversions.”

I let that one alone and pointed out, “The line between the two is a bit thin and indistinct on occasion.”

“I don’t believe that Ann Campbell was a consenting partner. Certainly, she didn’t consent to being strangled to death.”

“There are many possibilities,” I mused, “and it’s a good idea not to get married to any of them.”

“We need forensic, we need the autopsy, and we need to question people.”

We? I looked out at the landscape as we drove in silence. I tried to recall what I knew about Cynthia. She was originally from rural Iowa, a graduate of the state university, with a master’s in criminology, which she received at some civilian university through the Army’s Technological Enhancement Program. Like a lot of women, as well as minorities that I’ve known in the Army, the military offered more money, education, prestige, and career possibilities than they would have hoped for back on the farm, in the ghetto, or whatever disadvantaged background they came from. Cynthia, I seemed to recall, expressed positive views toward the Army—travel, excitement, security, recognition, and so on. Not bad for a farm girl. I said to her, “I’ve thought about

you.”

No reply.

“How are your parents?” I inquired, though I never met them.

“Fine. Yours?”

“Fine. Still waiting for me to get out, grow up, get hitched, and make them grandparents.”

“Work on growing up first.”

“Good advice.” Cynthia can be sarcastic at times, but it’s just a defense mechanism when she’s nervous. People who’ve had a prior sexual relationship, if they’re at all sensitive and human, respect the relationship that existed, and perhaps even feel some tenderness toward the ex-partner. But there’s also that awkwardness, sitting side by side as we were, and neither of us, I think, knew the words or the tone of voice we should adopt. I said again, “I’ve thought about you. I want you to respond to that.”

She responded, “I’ve thought about you, too,” and we fell into a long silence as she drove, head and eyes straight ahead.

A word about Paul Brenner in the passenger seat. South Boston, Irish Catholic, still don’t recognize a cow when I see one, high school graduate, working-class family. I didn’t join the Army to get out of South Boston; the Army came looking for me because they’d gotten involved in a large ground war in Asia, and someone told them that the sons of working-class stiffs made good infantrymen.

Well, I must have been a good infantryman, because I survived a year over there. Since that time, I’ve taken college courses, compliments of the Army, as well as criminology courses and career courses. I’m sufficiently transformed so that I don’t feel comfortable back in South Boston any longer, but neither do I feel comfortable at the colonel’s house, watching how much I drink and making small talk with officers’ wives who are either too ugly to talk to or too good-looking to stick to small talk.

So there we were, Cynthia Sunhill and Paul Brenner, from opposite ends of the North American continent, different worlds, lovers in Brussels, reuniting in the Deep South, having just had the common experience of looking at the naked body of a general’s daughter. Can love and friendship flourish under those circumstances? I wasn’t putting money on it.

She said, “I was sort of startled to see you last night. I’m sorry if I was rude.”

“No ifs about it.”

“Well, then, I apologize unequivocally. But I still don’t like you.”

I smiled. “But you’d like to have this case.”

“Yes, so I’ll be nice to you.”

“You’ll he nice to me because I’m your superior officer. If you’re not nice, I’ll send you packing.”

“Cut the posturing, Paul. You’re not sending me anywhere, and I’m not going anywhere.” She added, “We’ve got a case to solve, and a personal relationship to straighten out.”

“In that order.”

“Yes, in that order.”

CHAPTER

FOUR

Victory Drive, formerly Pine Hollow Road, had been renamed during World War II in a frenzy of Orwellian name changing. It was once a two-lane country road heading south out of Midland, but by the time I saw it first in 1971, it was becoming a mixture of garden apartments and commercial garishness. Now, almost a quarter century later, there wasn’t even a hint of Pine Hollow Road.

There is something uniquely ugly and depressing about commercial strips in the old South, great expanses of parking lots, motels, fast-food places, discount stores, car dealers, and what passes for nightclubs hereabouts. The old South, as I remember it, was perhaps not so prosperous, but it was picturesque with its tiny gas stations with the Coke cooler next to the fish-bait cooler, the sagging pine houses, the country stores, and the baled cotton bursting from sheds along the railroad sidings. These were the things that grew organically out of the soil, the lumber from the forests, the gravel roads from nearby quarries, and the people themselves a product of their environment. These new things seem artificial, transplanted. Convenience stores and shopping strips with mammoth plastic signs and no relationship to the land or the people, to history, or to local custom.

But, of course, the new South had embraced all of this, not quickly, as we had done up North, but embraced it nonetheless. And in some strange way, the garish commercial strip was now more associated with the South than with anywhere else in the country. The carpetbaggers have finally taken over.

Within fifteen minutes of leaving the post, we arrived at Victory Gardens and parked the Mustang near unit forty-five.

Victory Gardens was actually a pleasant sort of place, comprised of about fifty attached town houses around a central courtyard, with landscaping and ample parking. There were no signs that said, “Officers Only,” but the place had that air about it, and the rents probably approximated the offpost quarters’ allowance for lieutenants and captains. Money aside, there are unwritten rules about where officers may live off post, and thus, Ann Campbell, daughter of a general and good soldier that she was, had not gone to the funky side of town, nor had she opted for the anonymity of a newer high-rise building, which, in this town, is somewhat synonymous with swinging singles. Yet, neither did she live in her parents’ huge, government-issue house on post, which suggested that she had a life of her own, and I was about to discover something about that life.

Cynthia and I looked around. Though the Army workday starts early, there were still a few cars parked in front of the units. Most of them had the blue post bumper stickers signifying an officer’s car, and some had the green bumper sticker of a civilian post employee. But mostly, the place looked as deserted as a barracks after morning mess call.

I was still wearing the battle dress uniform I’d had on in the armory, and Cynthia was, as I said, in jeans and windbreaker. As we approached the front door of unit forty-five along the row of red brick façades, I said to her, “Are you armed?”

She nodded.

“All right. You wait here. I’ll go in through the back. If I flush somebody out the front, you stop them right here.”

“Okay.”

I made my way around the row of units and came to the back. The rear yard was a common stretch of grass, but each unit had a patio separated from the next by a wooden fence for privacy. On Ann Campbell’s patio was the standard barbecue grill and lawn furniture, including a lounge chair on which lay suntan oil and a travel magazine.

There were sliding glass doors facing onto the patio, and I was able to see through the vertical blinds into the dining area and part of the living room. There didn’t appear to be anyone home. Certainly, Ann Campbell was not home, and I couldn’t imagine a general’s daughter having a live-in male lover, or even a female roommate, who would compromise her privacy. On the other hand, you never know who’s inside a house, and when the subject is murder, you proceed with caution.

Where the patio met the back wall of the house was a basement window well, which meant these units had basements, which also meant a tricky descent down an exposed staircase. Maybe I’d send Ms. Gung Ho down there first. In any case, the window well was covered with a Plexiglas bubble that was bolted to the outside wall, so that no one could get out that way.

To the right of the sliding doors was a door that opened into the kitchen. There was a buzzer there, and I pushed it. I waited and rang again, then tried the doorknob, which is a good idea before breaking and entering.

I should have gone straight to the Midland city police, of course, as Colonel Kent suggested, and the police would have been happy to get a search warrant, and happier still to be included in the search of the victim’s house. But I didn’t want to bother them with this, so I found the house key on Ann Campbell’s key chain and unlocked the door. I entered the kitchen, then closed the door behind me and relocked it.

On the far side of the kitchen was a solid-looking door that probably led to the basement. The door had a bolt, which I slid closed, so if someone was down there, he or she was locked in.

Having secured my rear, or perhaps having cut off my line of retreat, I moved unarmed and cautiously went through the house to the front door and opened it, letting Cynthia in. We stood there in the cool, air-conditioned foyer a moment, looked around, and listened. I motioned for Cynthia to draw her pistol, which she did, a .38 Smith &; Wesson. That done, I shouted, “Police! Stay where you are and call out!” But there was no reply. I said to Cynthia, “Stay here and he prepared to use that.”

“Why do you think I’m carrying the fucking thing?”

“Good point.” Bitch. I walked first to the coat closet and pulled the door open, but no one was standing there with a tent peg in his hand. I moved from room to room on the ground floor, feeling a little silly, ninety-nine percent sure the house was empty, but remembering a case when it wasn’t.

A staircase led from the foyer to the second floor, and staircases, as I indicated, are dangerous, especially if they squeak. Cynthia positioned herself at the base of the stairs, and I bounded up three steps at a time and flattened myself against the upstairs hallway wall. There were three doors coming off the upstairs hallway, one open, two closed. I repeated my order to stay put and call out, but again no answer.

Cynthia called up to me, and I looked down the stairs. She was halfway up and pitched the Smith &; Wesson underhand. I caught it and motioned her to stay where she was. I flung open one of the closed doors, dropped into a firing stance, and shouted, “Freeze!” But my aggressiveness did not provoke a response. I peered into the unlit room and saw what appeared to be a spare bedroom, sparsely furnished. I closed the door, then repeated the procedure with the second closed door, which turned out to be a large linen closet. Despite all the acrobatics, I knew that if there was anyone up there with a gun who wanted to use it, I’d be dead by now. But you have to go through the drill. So I spun back against the hallway wall and glanced inside the door that had been open. I could see a large bedroom and another door that led to a bathroom. I motioned Cynthia to come up the stairs and handed her the Smith &; Wesson. “Cover me,” I said, and entered the large master bedroom, keeping an eye on the sliding doors of the closet, and the open bathroom. I picked up a bottle of perfume from the dressing table and threw it in the bathroom, where it shattered. Recon by fire, as we used to say in the infantry, but again I did not provoke a response.

I gave the bedroom and bathroom a quick look, then rejoined Cynthia, who was in a crouched firing stance off to the side door, covering all the doors. I half expected, half wanted someone to be in this house so I could arrest him—or her—wrap the case, and get the hell back to Virginia. But that was not to be.

Cynthia looked into the large bedroom and commented, “She made her bed.”

“Well, you know how those West Pointers are.”

“I think it’s sad. She was so neat and orderly. Now she’s dead and everything will be a mess.”

I glanced at Cynthia. “Well, let’s begin in the kitchen.”

CHAPTER

FIVE

Indeed, there is something sad and eerie about intruding into a dead person’s house, walking through rooms they will never see again, opening their cabinets, closets, and drawers, handling their possessions, reading their mail, and even listening to the messages on their answering machine. Clothes, books, videotapes, food, liquor, cosmetics, bills, medicine… a whole life suddenly ended away from home, and no one left behind, and a house filled with the things that sustain, define, and hopefully explain a life—room by room with no living guide to point out a favorite picture on the wall, to take you through a photo album, to offer you a drink, or tell you why the plants are dry and dying.

In the kitchen, Cynthia noticed the bolted door, and I informed her, “It leads to the basement. It’s secure, so we’ll check it out last.”

She nodded.

The kitchen yielded very little except for the fact that Ann Campbell was for sure a neat-freak and ate the kind of healthful foods—yogurt, bean sprouts, bran muffins, and such—that make my stomach heave. The refrigerator and pantry also held many bottles of good wine and premium beer.

One cupboard was crammed with hard liquor and cordials, again all high-priced, even at post exchange prices. In fact, by the price tags still stuck on some of the bottles, the liquor did not come from the PX. I asked, “Why would she pay civilian prices for liquor?”

Cynthia, who is sensitive, replied, “Perhaps she didn’t want to be seen in the PX liquor store. You know—single woman, general’s daughter. Men don’t worry about that.”

I said, “But I can relate to that. I was once spotted in the commissary with a quart of milk and three containers of yogurt. I avoided the O Club for weeks.”

No comment from Cynthia, but she did roll her eyes. Clearly, I was getting on her nerves.

It occurred to me that a junior male partner would not be so disrespectful. And neither would a new female partner. This familiarity obviously had something to do with us having once slept together. I had to process this.

“Let’s see the other rooms,” she said.

So we did. The downstairs powder room was immaculate, though the toilet seat was in the up position, and having just learned a thing or two from that colonel at the O Club, I concluded that a man had been here recently. In fact, Cynthia commented on it, adding, “At least he didn’t drip like most of you old guys do.”

We were really into this gender and generation thing now, and I had a few good zingers on the tip of my tongue, but the clock was ticking and the Midland police could show up any minute, which would lead to a more serious difference of opinion than that which was developing between Ms. Sunhill and me.

Anyway, we searched the living room and dining area, which were pristine, as though they were sanitized for public consumption. The decor was contemporary but, as with many career military people, there were mementos from all over the world—Japanese lacquers, Bavarian pewter, Italian glass, and so forth. The paintings on the walls would have been appropriate in a geometry classroom—cubes, circles, lines, ovals, and that type of thing, in mostly primary colors. They conveyed nothing, which was the point, I suppose. So far, I couldn’t get a handle on Ann Campbell. I mean, I remember once searching the home of a murderer, and within ten minutes I had a grip on the guy. Sometimes it’s a small thing like a record album collection, or paintings of cats on the walls, or dirty underwear on the floor. Sometimes it’s the books on the shelves or the lack of them, a photo album, or, eureka, a diary. But here, in this place, so far, I felt I had mistakenly broken into the realtor’s model unit.

The last room on the ground floor was a study lined with books, in which sat a desk, sofa, and armchair. There was also an entertainment console that held a TV and stereo equipment. On the desk was a telephone answering machine with a blinking light, but we left it alone for the moment.

We gave the study a thorough search, shaking out the books, looking in and under the desk drawers, and finally reading book titles and CD titles. Her taste in books ran to military publications, a few cookbooks, health and fitness books, no fiction or literature whatsoever. But there was a complete collection of Friedrich Nietzsche, and a large collection of titles on psychology, which reminded me that we were dealing with a person who not only was a psychologist but worked in a very arcane branch of this field, to wit: psychological warfare. This might develop into one of the most relevant aspects of this case, or the least relevant.

Heart and hormones aside, all crimes and criminal behavior begin in the mind, and the call to action comes from the mind, and the concealment of the crime completely occupies the mind afterward. So we eventually had to get into the minds of a lot of people, and that’s where we would learn about the general’s daughter, and learn why she was murdered. With a case like this, when you knew why, you could usually figure out who.

Cynthia was flipping through CDs and announced, “Elevator music, a few golden oldies, some Beatles and classical stuff, mostly Viennese guys.”

“Like Sigmund Freud playing Strauss on the oboe?”

“Something like that.”

I turned on the TV, expecting that it would be tuned to a fitness or news channel. But instead it was on the VCR channel. I rummaged through the videotape collection, which consisted of a few old black-and-white classics, a few exercise tapes, and some hand-labeled tapes marked “Psy-Ops, Lecture Series.”

I put one of them in the recorder and pushed the play button. “Take a look.”

Cynthia turned around and we both watched as Captain Ann Campbell’s image filled the screen, dressed in battle fatigues and standing at a rostrum. She was, indeed, a very good-looking woman, but beyond that she had bright and alert eyes that stared into the camera for a few seconds before she smiled and began, “Good morning, gentlemen. Today we are going to discuss the several ways in which psychological operations, or psy warfare, if you wish, can be used by the infantry commander in the field to decrease enemy morale and fighting effectiveness. The ultimate objective of these operations is to make your job as infantry commanders somewhat easier. Your mission—to make contact with and destroy the enemy—is a tough one, and you are aided by other branches of the Army, such as artillery, air, armor, and intelligence. However, a little-understood and too-little-used tool is available to you—psychological operations.”

She went on, “The enemy’s will to fight is perhaps the single most important element that you must calculate into your battle plans. His guns, his armor, his artillery, his training, his equipment, and indeed even his numbers are all secondary to his willingness to stand and fight.” She looked out over her offscreen audience and let a moment pass before continuing. “No man wants to die. But many men can be motivated to risk their lives in defense of their countries, their families, and even an abstraction, or a philosophy. Democracy, religion, racial pride, individual honor, unit and interpersonal loyalty, the promise of plunder, and, yes, women… rape. These are among the historical motivators for frontline troops.”

As she spoke, a slide projection screen behind her flashed images of ancient battle scenes taken from old prints and paintings. I recognized “The Rape of the Sabines,” by Da Bologna, which is one of the few classical paintings I can name. Sometimes I wonder about myself.

Captain Campbell continued, “The objective of psychological warfare is to chip away at these motivators, but not to tackle them head-on, as they are often too strong and too ingrained to be changed in any significant way through propaganda or psy-ops. The best we can hope to do is to plant some seeds of doubt. However, this does not crack morale and lead to mass desertions and surrender. It only lays the groundwork for stage two of psy-ops, which is, ultimately, to instill fear and panic into the enemy ranks. Fear and panic. Fear of death, fear of grotesque wounds, fear of fear. Panic—that least understood of all psychological states of mind. Panic—a deep abiding, free-floating anxiety, often without any reason or logical basis. Our ancestors used war drums, war pipes, bloodcurdling shouts, taunts, and even breast beating and primal screams to induce panic in the enemy camps.”

The image on the screen behind her now looked to be a depiction of a Roman army in full flight, being chased by a horde of fierce-looking barbarians.

She continued, “In our pursuit of technical excellence and high-tech solutions to battlefield problems, we have forgotten the primal scream.” Ann Campbell hit a button on the rostrum and a high-decibel, bloodcurdling scream filled the room. She smiled and said, “That will loosen your sphincter.” A few men in the classroom laughed, and the microphone picked up some guy saying, “Sounds like my wife when she climaxes.” More laughter, and Captain Campbell, reacting to the remark, laughed too, an almost bawdy laugh, completely out of character. She looked down a moment, as if at her notes, and when she looked up again, her expression had returned to business and the laughter died down.

I had the impression she was playing the crowd, getting them on her side the way most male Army instructors did with an off-color joke or an occasional personal comment. Clearly, she had reached out and touched the audience, had shared a moment of sexual complicity and revealed what was beneath the neat uniform. But only for a moment. I turned off the VCR. “Interesting lecture.”

Cynthia said, “Who would want to kill a woman like that? I mean, she was so alive. So vital and so self-assured…”

Which may be why someone wanted to kill her. We stood in silence a moment, sort of in respect, I suppose, as if Ann Campbell’s presence and spirit were still in the room. In truth, I was quite taken with Ann Campbell. She was the type of woman you noticed, and once seen, was never forgotten. It wasn’t only her looks that grabbed your attention, but her whole demeanor and bearing. Also, she had a good command voice, deep and distinct, yet feminine and sexy. Her accent was what I call Army brat—a product of ten or twenty duty stations around the world, with an occasional southern pronunciation taking you by surprise. All in all, this was a woman who could command the respect and attention of men, or drive them to distraction.

As for how women related to her, Cynthia seemed impressed, but I suspected that some women might find her threatening, especially if their husbands or boyfriends had any proximity to Ann Campbell. How Ann Campbell related to other women was, as yet, a mystery. Finally, to break the silence, I said, “Let’s finish this business.”

We went back to our search of the study. Cynthia and I both went through a photo album we found on the shelf. The photos appeared to be entirely en famille: General and Mrs. Campbell, a young man who was probably the son, shots of Daddy and Ann in mufti, uncle and aunt types, West Point, picnics, Christmas, Thanksgiving, ad nauseam, and I had the impression her mother put the album together for her daughter. This was documentary proof positive that the Campbells were the happiest, most loving, best adjusted, most socially integrated family this side of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, with Mary taking most of the snapshots. “Pablum,” I said. “But it does tell one something, does it not?”

“What?” asked Cynthia.

“They probably all hate one another.”

“You’re being cynical,” she said. “And jealous,” she added, “because we don’t have families like this.”

I closed the album. “We’ll soon find out what’s behind their cheesy smiles.”

At this point, the enormity of what we were doing seemed to hit Cynthia and she said, “Paul… we have to question General Campbell… Mrs. Campbell…”

I replied, “Murder is unpleasant enough. When it’s rape and murder and it doesn’t appear random, and the victim’s father is a national hero, then the idiots who are going to examine the victim’s life had better know what they’re getting into. Understand?”

She contemplated this a moment and informed me, “I really want this case. I feel… you know… some affinity for her. I didn’t know her, but I know life wasn’t easy for her in this man’s Army.”

“Spare me, Cynthia.”

“Well, really, Paul, how would you know?”

“Try being a white man these days.”

“Give me a break.”

“Now I remember what we used to fight about.”

“Neutral corners.”

We walked to opposite sides of the room, though not the corners, and continued our search. I looked at the framed things on the wall—Ann Campbell’s West Point diploma, her Army commission, training certificates, commendations, and a few other Department of the Army and Department of Defense certificates, including one that recognized her contribution to Operation Desert Storm, though the nature of the contribution was not specified. I cleared my throat and said to Ms. Sunhill, “Did you ever hear about Operation Bonkers during Desert Storm?”

She replied, “Not that I recall.”

“Well, some smart cookie in psy-ops had this idea of dropping hard-core porno photos on the Iraqi positions. Most of those poor bastards had not seen a woman in months or years, so this psy-ops sadist wants to bury them in photos of hot, pink flesh, which will drive them bonkers. The idea goes all the way up to the joint command, and it’s a definite winner, a go, until the Saudis hear about it and go ballistic. You know, they’re a little tight and not as enlightened as we are about bare tits and ass. So the thing was squashed, but the word was that the idea was brilliant and could have shortened the ground war from four days to fifteen minutes.” I smiled.

Cynthia replied frostily, “It’s disgusting.”

“Actually, I agree in theory. But if it saved one life, it might have been justified.”

“The means do not justify the ends. What’s the point?”

“Well, what if the idea of the porno bombardment had come from a woman instead of some male pig?”

“You mean Captain Campbell?”

“Certainly that idea came out of the Special Operations School here. Let’s check it out.”

Cynthia went into one of her contemplative moods, then looked at me. “Did you know her?”

“I knew of her.”

“What did you know of her?”

“What most everyone else knew, Cynthia. She was perfect in every way, made in the USA, pasteurized and homogenized by the Public Information Office, and delivered fresh to your doorstep, creamy white and good for you.”

“And you don’t believe that?”

“No, I don’t. But if we discover that I’m wrong, then I’m in the wrong business and I’ll resign.”

“You may wind up doing that anyway.”

“Most probably.” I added, “Please consider how she died, how bizarre it was, and how unlikely it would be for a stranger to have gotten the drop on a soldier who was alert, bright, armed, and ready to shoot.”

She nodded, then said as if to herself, “I have considered what you are suggesting. It’s not uncommon for a female officer to lead two lives—public rectitude and private… whatever. But I’ve also seen women, rape victims, married and single, who led exemplary private lives and who wound up as victims by pure chance. I’ve also seen women who lived on the jagged edge, but whose rape had not a thing to do with their promiscuity or the crazies they hung out with. Again, it was pure chance.”

“That’s a possibility, and I don’t discount it.”

“And don’t be judgmental, Paul.”

“I’m not. I’m no saint. How about you?”

“You know better than to ask.” She walked over to where I was standing and put her hand on my shoulder, which sort of took me by surprise. She said, “Can we do this? I mean together? Are we going to screw this up?”

“No. We’re going to solve it.”

Cynthia poked her finger in my stomach, sort of like I needed a punctuation mark for that sentence. She turned and walked back to Ann Campbell’s desk.

I turned my attention back to the wall and noticed now a framed commendation from the American Red Cross in appreciation for her work on a blood donor drive, another commendation from a local hospital thanking her for her work with seriously ill children, and a teaching certificate from a literacy volunteer organization. Where did this woman find the time to do all that, plus her regular job, plus volunteering for extra duty, plus the mandatory social side of Army life, plus have a private life? Could it be, I wondered, that this extraordinarily beautiful woman had no private life? Could I be so far off base that I wasn’t even in the ballpark?

Cynthia announced, “Here’s her address book.”

“That reminds me. Did you get my Christmas card? Where are you living these days?”

“Look, Paul, I’m sure your buddies at headquarters have snooped through my file for you and told you everything about me in the past year.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Cynthia. It’s not ethical or professional.”

She glanced at me. “Sorry.” She put the address book in her handbag, went over to the telephone answering machine, and pushed the play button.

A voice said, “Ann, this is Colonel Fowler. You were supposed to stop by the general’s house this morning after you got off duty.” The colonel sounded brusque. He continued, “Mrs. Campbell prepared breakfast for you. Well, you’re probably sleeping now. Please call the general when you get up, or call Mrs. Campbell.” He hung up.

I said, “Maybe she killed herself. I would.”

Cynthia commented, “It certainly couldn’t be easy being a general’s daughter. Who is Colonel Fowler?”

“I think he’s the post adjutant.” I asked Cynthia, “How did that message sound to you?”

“Official. The tone suggested some familiarity, but no particular warmth. As if he was just doing his duty by calling his boss’s forgetful daughter, whom he outranks, but who is nevertheless the boss’s daughter. How did it sound to you?”

I thought a moment and replied, “It sounded made up.”

“Oh… like a cover call?”

I pushed the play button again, and we listened. I said, “Maybe I’m starting to imagine things.”

“Maybe not.”

I picked up the phone and dialed the provost marshal’s office. Colonel Kent was in and I got him on the line. “We are still at the deceased’s house,” I informed him. “Have you spoken to the general yet?”

“No… I haven’t… I’m waiting for the chaplain…”

“Bill, this thing will be all over post in a matter of hours. Inform the deceased’s family. And no form letters or telegrams.”

“Look, Paul, I’m up to my ass in alligators with this thing, and I called the post chaplain and he’s on his way here—”

“Fine. Did you get her office moved?”

“Yes. I put everything in an unused hangar at Jordan Field.”

“Good. Now get a bunch of trucks out here with a platoon of MPs who don’t mind hard work and know how to keep their mouths shut, and empty her house. I mean everything, Colonel—furniture, carpeting, right down to the light bulbs, toilet seats, refrigerator, and food. Take photos here, and put everything in that hangar in some semblance of the order that it’s found. Okay?”

“Are you crazy?”

“Absolutely. And be sure the men wear gloves and get forensic to print everything that they’d normally print.”

“Why do you want to move the whole house?”

“Bill, we have no jurisdiction here, and I’m not trusting the town police to play fair. So when the Midland police get here, the only thing they can impound is the wallpaper. Trust me on this. The scene of the crime was a U.S. military reservation. So this is all perfectly legal.”

“No, it’s not.”

“We do this my way, or I’m out of here, Colonel.”

There was a long pause, followed by a grunt that sounded like “Okay.”

“And send an officer down to Dixie Bell in town and have Ann Campbell’s number forwarded to a number on post. In fact, get it forwarded to a line in that hangar. Plug her answering machine in and put in a new incoming message tape. Hold on to the old tape. It’s got a message on it. Mark it as evidence.”

“Who do you think is going to call after the headlines are splashed all over the state?”

“You never know. Did forensic get there yet?”

“Yes. They’re at the scene. So is the body.”

“And Sergeant St. John and PFC Robbins?”

“They’re still sleeping. I put them in separate cells. Unlocked. Do you want me to read them their rights?”

“No, they’re not suspects. But you can hold them as material witnesses until I get around to them.”

“Soldiers have some rights,” Kent informed me. “And St. John has a wife, and Robbins’s CO probably thinks she went AWOL.”

“Then make some calls on their behalf. Meantime, they’re incommunicado. How about Captain Campbell’s medical and personnel files?”

“Got them right here.”

“What are we forgetting, Bill?”

“The Constitution.”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

“You know, Paul, I have to work with Chief Yardley. You guys are in and out. Yardley and I get along all right, considering the problems—”

“I said I’ll take the rap.”

“You’d damn well better.” He asked, “Did you find anything interesting there?”

“Not yet. Did you?”

“The grid search hasn’t turned up much beyond a few pieces of litter.”

“Did the dogs find anything?”

“No more victims.” He added, “The handlers let them sniff inside the jeep, and the dogs beelined right to the body. Then the dogs went back to the humvee, across the road, past the bleachers, and right out to the latrines in the trees. Then they lost the scent and doubled back to the humvee.” He continued, “We can’t know if the dogs picked up this guy’s scent or just her scent. But somebody, maybe the victim and the perpetrator together, or one or the other, did go out to the latrines.” He hesitated, then said, “I have the feeling that the murderer had his own vehicle, and since we see no tire marks in the soil anywhere, the guy never left the road. So he was parked there on the road before or after she stopped. They both dismount, he gets the drop on her and takes her out to the range and does it. He then goes back to the road…”

“Carrying her clothes.”

“Yes. And he puts the clothes in his vehicle, then…”

“Goes to the latrine, washes up, combs his hair, then goes back to his vehicle and drives away.”

Kent said, “That’s the way it could have happened. But that’s just a theory.”

“I have a theory that we’re going to need another hangar to hold the theories. Okay, about six trucks should do it. And send a sensitive female officer to supervise. And send someone from community affairs who can cool out the neighbors while the MPs empty the place. See you later.” I hung up.

Cynthia said, “You have a quick and analytical mind, Paul.”

“Thank you.”

“If you had a little compassion and heart, you’d be a better person.”

“I don’t want to be a better person.” I added, “Hey, wasn’t I a good guy in Brussels? Didn’t I buy you Belgian chocolates?”

She didn’t reply immediately, then said, “Yes, you did. Well, should we go upstairs before upstairs winds up at Jordan Field?”

“Good idea.”

CHAPTER

SIX

The master suite, as I indicated, was neat and clean, except for the shattered perfume bottle on the bathroom floor that now stunk up the place. The furniture was functional modern, sort of Scandinavian, I suppose, with no soft touches, nothing to suggest that it was madam’s boudoir. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t want to make love in this room. The carpet, too, was unsuited for a bedroom, being a tight woven Berber that left no footprints. Something, however, did stand out: twenty bottles of perfume, which Cynthia said were very expensive, and the civilian clothes in the closet, which she said were equally overpriced. A second, smaller closet—what would have been “his” closet if she had a husband or live-in—was filled with neat Army uniforms for the summer season, including greens, battle dress, combat boots, and all the necessary accessories. More interesting, in the far corner of the closet was an M-16 rifle with a full magazine and a round in the chamber, locked and loaded, ready to rock and roll. I said, “This is a military issue—fully automatic.”

“Unauthorized off post,” Cynthia observed.

“My goodness.” We rummaged around a while longer, and I was going through Ann Campbell’s underwear drawer when Cynthia said, “You already looked in there, Paul. Don’t get strange on me.”

“I’m looking for her West Point ring,” I replied with annoyance. “It wasn’t on her finger, and it’s not in her jewelry box.”

“It was taken off her finger. I saw the tan line.”

I pushed the drawer shut. “Keep me informed,” I said.

“You too,” she snapped.

The bathroom was standing tall as they say in the Army: West Point, white-glove immaculate. Even the sink basin had been wiped as per regulations, and there wasn’t a hair on the floor, certainly no pubic hair of a swarthy stranger.

We opened the medicine cabinet, which held the usual assortment of cosmetics, feminine products, and such. There were no prescription medicines, no men’s shaving stuff, only one toothbrush, and nothing stronger than aspirin. “What,” I asked my female partner, “do you deduce from this?”

“Well, she wasn’t a hypochondriac, she didn’t have dry or oily skin, she didn’t dye her hair, and she keeps her method of birth control somewhere else.”

I said, “Maybe she required her men to use a condom.” I added, “You may have heard that condoms are in fashion again because of disease. These days you have to boil people before you sleep with them.”

Cynthia ignored that and said, “Or she was chaste.”

“I never thought of that. Is that possible?”

“You never know, Paul. You just never know.”

“Or could she have been… how do we say it these days? Gay? A lesbian? What’s the politically correct term?”

“Do you care?”

“For my report. I mean, I don’t want to get into trouble with the feminist thought police.”

“Take a break, Paul.”

We exited the bathroom and Cynthia said, “Let’s see the other bedroom.”

We passed through the upstairs hallway into the small room. At this point, I didn’t expect to encounter anyone, but Cynthia drew her pistol and covered me while I peeked under the double bed. Aside from the bed, the room held only a dresser and a night table and lamp. An open door led to a small bathroom, which looked as if it were never used. Clearly, the entire room was never used, but Ann Campbell maintained it as a guest room.

Cynthia pulled back the bedspread, revealing a bare mattress. She said, “No one sleeps here.”

“Apparently not.” I pulled open the dresser drawers. Empty.

Cynthia motioned toward a set of large double doors on the far wall. I stood to the side and flung one of them open. A light inside went on automatically, and it sort of startled me, and Cynthia, too, because she crouched and aimed. After a second or two, she stood and approached what turned out to be a large walk-in cedar closet. We both went inside the closet. It smelled good, like a cheap cologne I once had that kept moths and women away. There were two long poles on either side from which hung bagged civilian clothes for every climate on earth, and more Army uniforms, ranging from her old West Point uniforms, to desert battle dress, to arctic wear, to Army whites, blue mess and evening mess uniforms for social functions, and sundry other rarely worn uniforms, plus her West Point saber. The overhead shelf had matching headgear, and on the floor was matching footwear.

I said, “This was one squared-away soldier. Equally prepared for a military ball or the next war in the jungle.”

“Doesn’t your uniform closet look like this?”

“My uniform closet looks like the third day of a close-out sale.” Actually, it looked worse than that. I have a tidy mind, but that’s as far as it goes. Captain Campbell, on the other hand, seemed clean, tidy, and organized in every external way. Perhaps, then, her mind was pure chaos. Perhaps not. This woman was elusive.

We exited the closet and the guest room.

On the way down the stairs, I said to Cynthia, “Before I was in the CID, I couldn’t see a clue if it bit me in the ass.”

“And now?”

“And now I see everything as a clue. The lack of clues is a clue.”

“Is that so? I haven’t progressed to that level yet. Sounds Zen.”

“I think of it as Sherlockian. You know, the dog that did not bark in the night.” We went into the kitchen. “Why did the dog not bark?”

“It was dead.”

It’s hard adjusting to a new partner. I don’t like the young, sycophantic guys who hang on your every word. But I don’t like smart-asses, either. I’m at that age and rank where I get respect and earn respect, but I’m still open to an occasional piece of reality.

Cynthia and I contemplated the bolted basement door. I said, not apropos of the door, but of life, “My wife left clues all over the place.”

She didn’t reply.

“But I never saw the clues.”

“Sure you did.”

“Well… in retrospect I did. But when you’re young, you’re pretty dense. You’re full of yourself, you don’t read other people well, you haven’t been lied to and cheated too much, and you lack the cynicism and suspicion that makes for a good detective.”

“A good detective, Paul, has to separate his or her professional life from his or her personal life. I wouldn’t want a man who snooped on me.”

“Obviously not, considering your past.”

“Fuck off.”

Score one for Paul. I threw back the bolt on the door. “Your turn.”

“Okay. I wish you had your pistol.” She handed me her Smith & Wesson and opened the basement door.

“Maybe I should go and get that M-16 upstairs,” I offered.

“Never rely on a weapon you just found and never tested. Says so in the manual. Just call out, then cover me.”

I shouted down the stairs, “Police! Come to the staircase with your hands on your head!” This is the military version of hands-up and makes a little more sense if you think about it. Well, no one came to the base of the stairs, so Cynthia had to go down. She said in a quiet voice, “Leave the lights off. I’ll break to the right. Wait five seconds.”

“You wait one second.” I looked around for something to throw down the stairs and spotted a toaster oven, but Cynthia was off and running, down the cellar stairs in long leaps, barely hitting the steps on her way down. I saw her shoulderroll to the right and lost sight of her. I followed, breaking to the left, and wound up in a firing crouch, peering into the darkness. We waited in silence for a full ten seconds, then I shouted, “Ed, John, cover us!” I wished there were an Ed and John around, but as Captain Campbell might have said, “Create phantom battalions in the minds of the enemy.”

By now, I figured that if anyone was down there, they weren’t lying in ambush, but were cowering. Right?

Anyway, Cynthia, who was obviously impatient with my caution, bounded back up the stairs and hit the light switches. Fluorescent bulbs flickered all over the large open basement, then burst into that stark white light that I associated with unpleasant places.

Cynthia came back down the stairs and we surveyed the basement. It was a standard layout of washer and dryer, workbench, storage, heating, air-conditioning, and so on. The floor and walls were bare concrete, and the ceiling was bare beams, electric, and plumbing.

We examined the workbench and the dark corners, but it was uninteresting in the extreme except that Ann Campbell possessed a lot of sporting equipment. In fact, the entire wall to the right of the workbench was pegboard, from floor to ceiling, from which protruded those wire holders in every size and shape, and hanging from the wire holders were skis, tennis rackets, squash rackets, a baseball bat, scuba gear, and so forth. Very organized. Also, fixed to the pegboard with screws was a recruiting poster, about six feet from top to bottom, showing none other than Captain Ann Campbell, a head-to-foot shot of her in battle dress uniform, wearing full field gear, with an M-16 rifle slung under her right arm, a radiotelephone cradled against her ear, while she juggled a field map and checked her watch. Her face was smeared with camouflage greasepaint, but only a eunuch would fail to see the subtle sexuality in this photo. The caption on top of the poster said, Time to Synchronize Your Life. On the bottom, it said, See Your Army Recruiter Today. What it didn’t say was, “Meet people of the opposite sex in close proximity, sleep with them out in the woods, bathe with them in streams, and engage in other intimate outdoorsy things where no one has any privacy.”

Well, maybe I was projecting my own sexual reveries into the photo, but I think the civilian advertising types who put the poster together were a little bit aware of what my dirty mind saw. I nodded toward the poster and said to Cynthia, “What do you think?”

She shrugged, “Good poster.”

“Do you see the subliminal sexual message?”

“No. Point to it.”

“Well… it’s subliminal. How can I point to it?”

“Tell me about it.”

I had the feeling I was being baited, so I said, “Woman with a gun. Gun is penis object, penis substitute. Map and watch represent a subconscious desire to have sex, but on her terms, timewise and locationwise. She’s talking to a man on the radiophone, giving him her grid coordinates and telling him he has fifteen minutes to find her.”

Cynthia glanced at her own watch and informed me, “I think it’s time to go, Paul.”

“Right.”

We started back up the stairs, but then I glanced back into the basement and said, “We’re missing some floor space.”

As if on cue, we both turned and beelined for the pegboard wall, the only wall that did not show the bare concrete foundation wall. I knocked on the pegboard, pushed on the four-by-eight-foot panels, but they seemed solid enough, nailed firmly in place to a stud frame, which I could see through the small peg holes. I found a long, pointed awl on the workbench and slid it through one of the peg holes, and after about two inches it struck a solid object. I pushed farther, and the point of the awl penetrated into something soft, something that was not a concrete foundation wall. I said to Cynthia, “This is a false wall. There’s no foundation behind it.”

She didn’t reply, and I looked to my left where Cynthia was standing facing the recruiting poster. She grasped the wooden frame of the poster with her fingertips, pulled, and the poster swung out on blind hinges, revealing a dark open space. I moved quickly beside her and we stood there, back-lighted by the bright fluorescents of the basement.

After a few seconds, during which time we were not perforated with bullet holes, my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the space before us, and I could begin to make out some objects in the room that appeared to be furniture. I could also make out the glow of a digital clock across the room, and I estimated that the room was fifteen feet deep and probably about forty or fifty feet long, the length of the town house itself from front to rear.

I handed Cynthia her .38 and felt along the inside wall for a light switch, commenting, “This is where the Campbells probably keep their demented, drooling relative.” I found the switch and flipped it, turning on a table lamp, which revealed a completely finished and furnished room. I moved forward cautiously, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cynthia in a firing crouch, her .38 sweeping the room.

I kneeled and peeked under the bed, then stood and moved around, checking the closet, then a small bathroom off to the right, while Cynthia covered me.

Cynthia and I stood across from each other, and I said, “Well, here it is.”

And, indeed, there it was. There was a double bed, a nightstand on which sat the lighted lamp, a chest of drawers, a long table on which sat a stereo system, a television, a VCR, and a camcorder with a tripod for home movies, and everything sat on a deep white plush carpet, which wasn’t as clean as the other carpets. The walls were finished in a light-colored wood paneling. To the far left of the room was a rolling hospital-type gurney, suitable for massages or whatever. I noticed now a mirror mounted on the ceiling over the bed, and the open closet revealed some lacy and transparent numbers that would make a clerk in Victoria’s Secret blush. In addition, there was a nice, neat nurse’s uniform, which I didn’t think she wore down at the hospital, a black leather skirt and vest, a sort of whorish red-sequined dress, and, interestingly, a standard battle dress uniform of the type she would have been wearing on duty when she was killed.

Cynthia, Ms. Goody Two-Shoes, was looking around the room, and she seemed somewhat unhappy, as though Ann Campbell had posthumously disappointed her. “Good Lord…”

I said, “How she died does indeed appear linked to how she lived. But we will not jump to conclusions.”

The bathroom, too, was not so clean as the other two, and the medicine cabinet held a diaphragm, condoms, contraceptive sponges, spermicidal jelly, and so on: enough birth control devices to cause a drop in the population of the Indian subcontinent. I asked, “Aren’t you supposed to just use one method?”

Cynthia replied, “Depends on your mood.”

“I see.” Along with the contraceptive devices were mouthwash, different-colored toothbrushes, toothpaste, and six Fleet enemas. I didn’t think anyone who ate bean sprouts would have a problem with constipation. “My goodness,” I said, picking up a premeasured douche bottle whose flavor was strawberry; not my very favorite.

Cynthia left the bathroom, and I peeked into the shower. That, too, was sort of grungy, and the washcloth was still damp. Interesting.

I rejoined Cynthia in the bedroom, where she was examining the contents of the night table drawer: K-Y Jelly, mineral oil, sex manuals, one regular-sized vibrator, batteries included, and one rubber charlie of heroic proportions.

Fixed high up on the false wall that partitioned this bedroom from the basement workshop was a set of leather manacles, and lying on the floor below was a leather strap, a birch switch, and incongruously, or perhaps not, a long ostrich feather. My mind involuntarily took off into a flight of fancy that I think brought a red blush to my cheeks. “I wonder,” I mused, “what those things are for?”

Cynthia made no comment, but seemed transfixed by the manacles.

I pulled back the bed sheets, and the bottom sheet looked a bit lived in. Here was enough pubic hair, body hair, peter tracks, and undoubtedly other dermatological refuse to keep the lab busy for a week.

I noticed Cynthia staring down at the sheet and wondered what was going through her mind. I resisted the urge to say, “I told you so,” because, in fact, on one level, I almost hoped we would find nothing, for, as I’ve indicated, I had already developed a soft spot in my heart for Ann Campbell. And, while I’m not judgmental in regard to sexual behavior, I could imagine that many people would be. I said, “You know, I’m actually relieved to see she wasn’t the sexless, androgynous poster girl the Army made her out to be.”

Cynthia glanced at me and sort of nodded.

I said, “A shrink would have a field day with this apparent split personality. But you know, we all lead two or more lives.” On the other hand, we don’t usually outfit a whole room for our alter ego. I added, “Actually, she was a shrink, wasn’t she?”

And so we moved to the TV, and I popped a random tape into the VCR and turned it on.

The screen brightened, and there was Ann Campbell, dressed in her red-sequined dress, with high heels and jewelry, standing in this very room. An off-camera tape or disc was playing “The Stripper,” and she began taking it all off. A male voice, presumably the cameraman, joked, “Do you do this at the general’s dinner parties?”

Ann Campbell smiled and wiggled her hips at the camera. She was down to her panties and a rather nice French bra now, and was unclasping it when I reached out and shut off the tape, feeling very self-righteous about that.

I examined the other tapes and saw they were all handlabeled, with rather pithy titles like “Fucking with J.,” “Strip search for B.,” “Gyno Exam—R.,” and “Anal with J.S.”

Cynthia said, “I think we’ve seen enough for now.”

“Almost enough.” I opened the top dresser drawer and discovered a pile of Polaroid photos, and thinking I’d hit pay dirt, I flipped through them, looking for her friends, but every photo was of only her in various poses ranging from nearly artistic and erotic to obscene gynecological shots. “Where’re the guys?”

“Behind the camera.”

“There’s got to be…” Then, in another stack of photos, I found a shot of a well-built naked man holding a belt, but wearing a black leather hood. Then another shot of a guy on top of her, possibly taken with a time delay or by a third person, then a photo of a naked gent, manacled to the wall, his back to the camera. In fact, all the men—and there were at least twelve different bodies—were either turned away from the camera or wearing the leather discipline hood. Obviously, these guys didn’t want any face photos left here, and similarly, they probably had no face shots of Ann Campbell in their possession. Most people are a little careful of photos like these, and when the people have a lot to lose, they are very careful. Love and trust are okay, but I had the feeling this was more lust and “What’s your name again?” I mean, if she had a real boyfriend, a man she liked and admired, she wouldn’t bring him here, obviously.

Cynthia was going through the photos also, but handling them as though they carried a sexually transmittable disease. There were a few more shots of men, close-ups of genitals, ranging from much ado about nothing to as you like it to the taming of the shrew. I observed, “All white guys, all circumcised, mostly brown hair, a few blonds. Can we use these in a lineup?”

“It would be an interesting lineup,” Cynthia conceded. She threw the photos back in the drawer. “Maybe we shouldn’t let the MPs see this room.”

“Indeed not. I hope they don’t find it.”

“Let’s go.”

“Just a minute.” I opened the bottom three drawers, finding more sexual paraphernalia, toys for twats as they’re known in the trade, along with panties, garter belts, a cat-o’-nine tails, a leather jockstrap, and a few things that I confess I couldn’t figure out. I was actually a bit embarrassed rummaging through this stuff in full view of Ms. Sunhill, and she was probably wondering about me by now, because she said, “What else do you have to see?”

“Rope.”

“Rope? Oh…”

And there it was: a length of nylon cord, curled up in the bottom drawer. I took it out and examined it.

Cynthia said, “Is it the same?”

“Possibly. This looks like the rope at the scene—standard Army-green tent cord, but there’s about six million miles of it out there. Still, it is suggestive.” I looked at the bed, which was an old four-poster, suitable for bondage. I don’t know a great deal about sexual deviations except for what I’ve read in the CID manual, but I do know that bondage is a risky thing. I mean, a big healthy woman like Ann Campbell could probably defend herself if something got out of hand. But if you’re spread-eagled on the bed or the ground with your wrists and ankles tied to something, you’d better know the guy real well, or something bad could happen. Actually, it did.

I turned out the lights and we left the bedroom. Cynthia swung the framed recruiting poster closed. I found a tube of wood glue on the workbench, opened the hinged poster a crack, and ran a bead of glue along the wood frame. That would help a little, but once you figured out that some floor space was missing, you’d figure out the rest of it, and if you didn’t realize some space was missing, the poster looked like it belonged there. I said to Cynthia, “Fooled me for a minute. How smart are MPs?”

“It’s more a matter of spatial perception than brains. And if they don’t find it, the police might when they get here.” She added, “Someone might want that poster. I think we either have to let the MPs empty the room for the CID lab, or we cooperate with the civilian police before they padlock this place.”

“I think we do neither. We take a chance. That room is our secret. Okay?”

She nodded. “Okay, Paul. Maybe your instincts are good on this.”

We went up the basement stairs, turned off the lights, and closed the door.

In the front foyer, Cynthia said to me, “I guess your instincts were right about Ann Campbell.”

“Well, I thought we’d be lucky if we found a diary and a few steamy love notes. I didn’t expect a secret door that led into a room decorated for Madame Bovary by the Marquis de Sade.” I added, “I guess we all need our space. The world would actually be a better place if we all had a fantasy room in which to act out.”

“Depends on the script, Paul.”

“Indeed.”

We left by the front door, got into Cynthia’s Mustang, and headed back up Victory Drive, passing a convoy of Army trucks heading the other way as we approached the post.

As Cynthia drove, I stared out the side window, deep in thought. Weird, I thought. Weird. Weird things, right on the other side of a gung-ho recruiting poster. And that was to become metaphor for this case: shiny brass, pressed uniforms, military order and honor, a slew of people above reproach, but if you went a little deeper, opened the right door, you would find a profound corruption as rank as Ann Campbell’s bed.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

As Cynthia drove, she divided her attention between the road and Ann Campell’s address book, mostly at the expense of the road. I said, “Give me that.”

She threw it on my lap in a gesture that was definitely meant to be aggressive.

I flipped through the address book, a thick leather-bound and well-worn book of good quality, written in a neat hand. Every space was filled with names and addresses, a good number of them crossed out and reentered with a new address as people changed duty stations, homes, wives, husbands, units, countries, and from alive to dead. In fact, I saw two entries marked KIA. It was a typical address book of a career soldier, spanning the years and the world, and, while I knew it was probably her desktop official address book and not the little black book that we hadn’t yet found, I was still fairly certain that someone in this book knew something. If I had two years, I could question all of them. Clearly, I had to give the book to headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, where my immediate superior, Colonel Karl Gustav Hellmann, would parcel it out all over the world, generating a stack of transcribed interviews taller than the great Teutonic pain-in-the-ass himself. Maybe he’d decide to read them and stay off my case.

A word about my boss. Karl Hellmann was actually born a German citizen close to an American military installation near Frankfurt, and, like many hungry children whose families were devastated by the war, he had made himself a sort of mascot for the American troops and eventually joined the U.S. military to support his family. There were a good number of these galvanized German Yankees in the U.S. military years ago, and many of them became officers, and some are still around. On the whole, they make excellent officers, and the Army is lucky to have them. The people who have to work for them are not so lucky. But enough whining. Karl is efficient, dedicated, loyal, and correct in both senses of the word. The only mistake I ever knew him to make was when he decided I liked him. Wrong, Karl. But I do respect him, and I would trust him with my life. In fact, I have.

Obviously, this case needed a breakthrough, a shortcut by which we could get to the end quickly, before careers and reputations were flushed down the toilet. Soldiers are encouraged to kill in the proper setting, but killing within the service is definitely a slap in the face to good order and discipline. It raises too many questions about that thin line between the bloodcurdling, screaming bayonet charge—“What’s the spirit of the bayonet? To kill! To kill!”—and peacetime garrison duty. A good soldier will always be respectful of rank, gender, and age. Says so in the Soldier’s Handbook.

The best I could hope for in this case was that the murder was committed by a slimeball civilian with a previous arrest record going back ten years. The worst I could imagine was… well, early indications pointed to it, whatever it was.

Cynthia said, apropos of the address book, “She had lots of friends and acquaintances.”

“Don’t you?”

“Not in this job.”

“True.” In fact, we were a bit out of the mainstream of Army life, and so our colleagues and good buddies are fewer in number. Cops tend to be cliquish all over the world, and when you’re a military cop on continuing TDY—temporary duty—you don’t make many friends, and relationships with the opposite sex tend to be short and strained, somewhat like temporary duty itself.

Midland is officially six miles from Fort Hadley, but as I said, the town has grown southward along Victory Drive, great strips of neon commerce, garden apartments, and car dealers, so that the main gate resembles the Brandenburg Gate, separating chaotic private enterprise and tackiness from spartan sterility. The beer cans stop at the gate.

Cynthia’s Mustang, which I had noted sported a visitor’s parking sticker, was waived through the gate by an MP, and within a few minutes we were in the center of the main post, where traffic and parking are only slightly better than in downtown Midland.

She pulled up to the provost marshal’s office, an older brick building that was one of the first permanent structures built when Fort Hadley was Camp Hadley back around World War I. Military bases, like towns, start with a reason for being, followed by places to live, a jail, a hospital, and a church, not necessarily in that order.

We expected to be expected, but it took us a while, dressed as we were—a male sergeant and a female civilian—to get into his majesty’s office. I was not happy with Kent’s performance and lack of forethought so far. When I went through Leadership School, they taught us that lack of prior planning makes for a piss-poor performance. Now they say don’t be reactive, be proactive. But I have the advantage of having been taught in the old school, so I know what they’re talking about. I said to Kent, in his office, “Do you have a grip on this case, Colonel?”

“Frankly, no.”

Kent is also from the old school, and I respect that. I asked, “Why not?”

“Because you’re running it your way, with my support services and logistics.”

“Then you run it.”

“Don’t try to browbeat me, Paul.”

And so we parried and thrusted for a minute or two in a petty but classical argument between uniformed honest cop and sneaky undercover guy.

Cynthia listened patiently for a minute, then said, “Colonel Kent, Mr. Brenner, there is a dead woman lying out on the rifle range. She was murdered and possibly raped. Her murderer is at large.”

That about summed it up, and Kent and I hung our heads and shook hands, figuratively speaking. Actually, we just grumbled.

Kent said to me, “I’m going to General Campbell’s office in about five minutes with the chaplain and a medical officer. Also, the victim’s off-post phone number is being forwarded to Jordan Field, and the forensic people are still at the scene. Here are Captain Campbell’s medical and personnel files. The dental file is with the coroner, who also wants her medical file, so I need it back.”

“Photocopy it,” I suggested. “You have my authorization.”

We were almost at it again, but Ms. Sunhill, ever the peacemaker, interjected, “I’ll copy the fucking file.”

This sort of stopped the fun, and we got back to business. Kent showed us into an interrogation room—now called the interview room in newspeak—and asked us, “Who do you want to see first?”

“Sergeant St. John,” I replied. Rank has its privileges.

Sergeant Harold St. John was shown into the room, and I indicated a chair across a small table at which Cynthia and I sat. I said to St. John, “This is Ms. Sunhill and I am Mr. Brenner.”

He glanced at my name tag, which said White, and my stripes, which said staff sergeant, and he didn’t get it at first, then he got it and said, “Oh… CID.”

“Whatever.” I continued, “You are not a suspect in the case that we are investigating, so I will not read you your rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You are therefore under orders to answer my questions fully and truthfully. Of course, your voluntary cooperation would be preferable to a direct order. If, during the course of this interview, you say something that I or Ms. Sunhill believes would make you a suspect, we will read you your rights, and you have the right to remain silent at that point.” Not fucking likely, Harry. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” We chatted about nothing important for five minutes while I sized him up. St. John was a balding man of about fifty-five, with a brownish complexion that I thought could be explained by caffeine, nicotine, and bourbon. His life and career in the motor pool had probably predisposed him to look at the world as a continuing maintenance problem whose solution lay somewhere in the Maintenance Handbook. It may not have occurred to him that some people needed more than an oil change and a tune-up to get them right.

Cynthia was jotting a few notes as St. John and I spoke, and in the middle of my small talk, he blurted out, “Look, sir, I know I was the last person to see her alive, and I know that means something, but if I killed her, I wasn’t going to go report I found her dead. Right?”

Sounded reasonable, except for the verb tenses and syntax. I said to him, “The last person to see her alive was the person who murdered her. The person who murdered her was also the first person to see her dead. You were the second person to see her dead. Right?”

“Yeah… yes, sir… What I meant—”

“Sergeant, if you would be good enough not to think ahead of the questions, I would really like that. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ms. Compassion said, “Sergeant, I know this has been very trying for you, and what you discovered must have been fairly traumatic, even for a veteran—have you been in a theater of war?”

“Yes, ma’am. ’Nam. Saw lots of dead, but never nothing like that.”

“Yes, so when you discovered the body, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing. Correct?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “I couldn’t, you know, believe my eyes. I didn’t even think it was her. You know, I didn’t recognize her at first, because… I never… never saw her that way… Jesus Christ, I never saw anybody that way. You know, there was a good moon last night, and I see the humvee, and I get out of my car, and off a ways I see… you know—this thing lying there on the rifle range, and I get a little closer and a little closer, and then I know what it is and go right up to her and see if she’s dead or alive.”

“Did you kneel beside the body?”

“Hell, no, ma’am. I just beat feet the hell out of there, got into my car, and tore ass right over to the provost marshal.”

“Are you certain she was dead?”

“I know dead when I see dead.”

“You’d left headquarters at what time?”

“About 0400 hours.”

“What time did you find the body?” Cynthia asked.

“Well, must have been about twenty, thirty minutes later.”

“And you stopped at the other guard posts?”

“Some of them. Nobody saw her come by. Then I get to thinking she headed off toward the last post first. So I skipped some posts and went right out there.”

“Did you ever think she was malingering somewhere?”

“No.”

“Think again, Sergeant.”

“Well… she wasn’t the type. But maybe I thought about it. I do remember thinking she could have got lost out on the reservation. That ain’t hard to do at night.”

“Did you think she could have had an accident?”

“I thought about it, ma’am.”

“So when you found her, you weren’t actually taken by complete surprise?”

“Maybe not.” He fished around for his cigarettes and asked me, “Okay to smoke?”

“Sure. Don’t exhale.”

He smiled and lit up, puffed away, and apologized to Ms. Sunhill for fouling the air. Maybe what I don’t miss about the old Army is twenty-five-cent-a-pack cigarettes, and the blue haze that hung over everything except the ammo dumps and fuel storage areas.

I let him get his fix, then asked, “Did the word ‘rape’ ever cross your mind as you were driving around looking for her?”

He nodded.

“I didn’t know her,” I said. “Was she good-looking?”

He glanced at Cynthia, then looked at me. “Real good-looking.”

“What we call rape bait?”

He didn’t want to touch that one, but he replied, “She never flaunted it. Real cool customer. If a guy had anything on his mind, he’d get it out of there real quick. Everything I heard about her said she was a fine woman. General’s daughter.”

Harry was going to learn otherwise in the coming days and weeks, but it was interesting that the conventional wisdom seemed to be that Ann Campbell was a lady.

St. John added gratuitously, “Some of these women, like the nurses, you know, they should be a little more… you know?”

I could actually feel Cynthia heating up beside me. If I had any real balls, I would have told him that the CID women were worse. But I survived ’Nam, and I wasn’t going to push my luck. Back to business. I asked, “After you discovered the body, why didn’t you go on to the next guard post, where PFC Robbins was, and use her telephone?”

“Never thought to do that.”

“And never thought to post Robbins at the scene of the crime?”

“No, sir. I was really shook.”

“What made you go out and look for Captain Campbell in the first place?”

“She was gone a long time, and I didn’t know where she was at.”

She was supposed to be behind the preposition, but I let that slide and asked, “Do you make it a habit to check up on superior officers?”

“No, sir. But I had the feeling something was wrong.”

Ah-ha. “Why?”

“Well… she was… kind of… like jumpy all night…”

Cynthia’s turn. “Will you describe her behavior for me?”

“Yeah… well, like I said—jumpy. Kind of like out of it. Worried, maybe.”

“Did you know her prior to that night?”

“Yeah… not real well. But like everybody knew her. General’s daughter. She did that recruiting commercial on TV.”

I asked him, “Did you ever speak to her before that night?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you ever see her on post?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Off post?”

“No, sir.”

“So you really can’t compare her normal behavior with the behavior of that evening?”

“No, sir, but I know what worried looks like.” He added, in probably a rare moment of insight, “I could tell she was a cool customer, like the way she did her job that night, real cool and efficient, but every once in a while, she’d get quiet and I could see she had something on her mind.”

“Did you comment to her about that?”

“Hell, no. She woulda snapped my fucking head off.” He smiled sheepishly at Cynthia, revealing two decades of victimization by Army dentists. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“Speak freely,” said Ms. Sunhill with a winning smile that indicated good dental hygiene and civilian dentists.

And, actually, Cynthia was right. Half these old Army types couldn’t express themselves without swearing, jargon, foreign words from some duty station or another, and a little regional southern dialect, even if they weren’t from around here.

Cynthia asked him, “Did she make or receive any phone calls during the night?”

Good question, but I already knew the answer before St. John said, “She never made one while I was in the room. But maybe the times I was out. She got a call, though, and asked me to leave the room.”

“What time was that?”

“Oh, about… about ten minutes before she left to check the guard.”

I asked, “Did you eavesdrop?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No, sir!”

“Okay, tell me, Sergeant, how close did you get to the body?”

“Well… a few feet.”

“I don’t understand how you could determine she was dead.”

“Well… I just figured she was dead… Her eyes were open… I called out to her…”

“Were you armed?”

“No, sir.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be armed for duty?”

“I guess I forgot to bring it along.”

“So you saw the body, figured she was dead, and hightailed it.”

“Yes, sir… I guess I shoulda checked closer.”

“Sergeant, a naked woman is lying at your feet, a superior officer at that, someone you knew, and you didn’t even bend over to see if she was alive or dead.”

Cynthia gave me a tap under the table.

Having become the bad cop, it was time for me to leave the witness with the good cop. I stood and said, “You two continue. I may be back.” I left the room and went to the holding cells, where PFC Robbins was lying on a cot, dressed in BDUs, barefoot. She was reading the post newspaper, a weekly effort of the Public Information Office, dealing mostly with manufacturing good news. I wondered how they were going to sanitize the rape and murder of the post commander’s daughter: Unidentified Woman Not Communicating on Rifle Range.

I opened the unlocked cell and entered. PFC Robbins eyed me a moment, then put the newspaper down and sat up against the wall.

I said, “Good morning. My name is Mr. Brenner from the CID. I’d like to ask you some questions about last night.”

She looked me over and informed me, “Your name tag says White.”

“My aunt’s uniform.” I sat on a plastic chair. “You are not a suspect in this case,” I began, and went through my rap. She seemed unimpressed.

I began my inconsequential chatter, and I received one-word replies. I took stock of PFC Robbins. She was about twenty, short blond hair, neat appearance, and alert eyes considering her long night and day, and all in all not badlooking. Her accent was Deep South, not very far from here, I guessed, and her socioeconomic status prior to taking the oath was way down there. Now she was equal to every PFC in the Army, superior to the new recruits, and probably on the way up.

I asked the first question of consequence. “Did you see Captain Campbell that evening?”

“She came around the guardhouse about 2200 hours. Spoke to the officer of the guard.”

“You recognized her as Captain Campbell?”

“Everyone knows Captain Campbell.”

“Did you see her at any time after that?”

“No.”

“She never came to your post?”

“No.”

“What time were you posted at the ammunition shed?”

“At 0100 hours. To be relieved at 0530 hours.”

“And between the time you were posted and the time the MPs came for you, did anyone else pass your post?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anything unusual?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Screech owl. Not many around these parts.”

“I see.” Yo, Cynthia. Switch. “Did you see anything unusual?”

“Saw the headlights.”

“What headlights?”

“Probably the humvee she came up in.”

“What time?”

“At 0217 hours.”

“Describe what you saw.”

“Saw the headlights. They stopped about a klick away, went out.”

“Did they go out right after they stopped, or later?”

“Right after. Saw the headlights bouncing, stop, out.”

“What did you think about that?”

“Thought somebody was headin’ my way.”

“But they stopped.”

“Yup. Didn’t know what to think then.”

“Did you think to report it?”

“Sure did. Picked up the phone and called it in.”

“Who did you call?”

“Sergeant Hayes. Sergeant of the guard.”

“What did he say?”

“He said there’s nothing to steal way out there except where I was at the ammo shed. Said to remain at my post.”

“And you replied?”

“Told him it didn’t look right.”

“And he said?”

“Said there was a latrine about there. Somebody might be using it. Said it could be an officer snooping around and to keep alert.” She hesitated, then added, “He said people go out there to fuck on nice summer nights. That’s his words.”

“Goes without saying.”

“I don’t like cussin’.”

“Me neither.” I regarded this young woman a moment. She was artless and ingenuous, to say the least: the best type of witness when coupled with some powers of observation, which she obviously had, by training or by nature. But apparently, I did not fit into her narrow frame of reference, so she wasn’t offering anything free. I said, “Look, Private, you know what happened to Captain Campbell?”

She nodded.

“I have been assigned to find the murderer.”

“Heard she got raped, too.”

“Possibly. So I need you to talk to me, to tell me things I’m not asking. Tell me your… your feelings, your impressions.”

Her face showed a little emotion, she bit her lower lip, and a tear ran from her right eye. She said, “I should’ve gone to see what was going on. I could’ve stopped it. That stupid Sergeant Hayes…” She cried quietly for a minute or two, during which time I sat looking at my boots. Finally, I said, “Your standing orders were to remain at your post until properly relieved. You obeyed your orders.”

She got control of herself and said, “Yeah, but anybody with a lick of common sense and a rifle would’ve gone over to see what was going on. And then, when the headlights never came on again, I just stood there like a fool, and I was afraid to call in again. Then when I saw the other headlights comin’ and they stopped, and then they turned around real quick and whoever it was goes barrelin’ back up the road like a shot, then I knew somethin’ bad happened.”

“What time was that?”

“At 0425 hours.”

Which would tally with the time St. John said he found the body. I asked her, “And you saw no headlights between the ones at 0217 and 0425?”

“No. But I saw some after that. ’Bout 0500. That was the MP who found the body. ’Bout fifteen minutes later, another MP came by and told me what happened.”

“Could you hear any of these vehicles from that distance?”

“No.”

“Hear the doors slam?”

“Could’ve if the wind was with me. I was upwind.”

“Do you hunt?”

“I do.”

“For what?”

“Possum, squirrels, rabbit.”

“Bird?”

“No. I like the looks of them.”

I stood. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Don’t think so.”

“I do.” I went toward the cell door, then turned back. “If I let you go back to your barracks, do I have your word that you won’t say anything about this to anyone?”

“Who’m I givin’ my word to?”

“An officer in the United States Army.”

“You got sergeant stripes, and me and you don’t know your name.”

“Where’s home?”

“Lee County, Alabama.”

“You have a one-week administrative leave. Give your CO a phone number.”

I went back to the interrogation room, where I found Cynthia, alone, her head in her hands, reading her notes or thinking.

We compared interviews and concluded that the time of death was somewhere between 0217 and 0425 hours. We speculated that the killer or killers were either in the humvee with Ann Campbell or already at the scene. If the killer had used his own vehicle, he had not used his headlights or had parked some distance from where PFC Robbins was posted. At that point, I leaned toward the theory that Ann Campbell had picked him or them up and driven him or them to the scene, but I did not discount the possibility of a prearranged rendezvous at the scene of the murder. A random and fateful encounter seemed less likely, considering her headlights went out immediately after the humvee stopped, because if Ann Campbell had been waylaid, there should have been some time lapse between the stopping of the vehicle and the extinguishing of the lights. Cynthia asked, “If this was a secret rendezvous or a tryst, why did she use her headlights at all?”

“Probably so as not to attract undue attention. She had legitimate business out there, but if she’d been spotted by a passing MP patrol without her headlights on, she’d be stopped and questioned.”

“That’s true. But PFC Robbins was alerted by the lights, so why didn’t Campbell check Robbins’s post first, assure her, then go back to her rendezvous?”

“Good question.”

“And why rendezvous within a kilometer of a guard post anyway? There are about a hundred thousand acres of military reservation out there.”

“Right, but there’s that latrine with running water, and, according to Robbins, who got it from her sergeant, people go out there to fuck. Presumably, they might want to wash up afterward.”

“Well, it’s still possible that she was waylaid by a psycho who didn’t realize how close he was to a guard post.”

“Possible, but the visible evidence suggests otherwise.”

“And why would she do it on a night she was on duty?” Cynthia added.

“Part of the kick. The woman was into kicks and kink.”

“She was also into doing her duty while on duty. The other stuff was her other life.”

I nodded. “Good point.” I asked her, “Do you think St. John is hiding anything?”

“Well, he wasn’t hiding his opinions. But basically, he told us all he knew. How about Robbins?”

“She told me more than she knew she knew. Not badlooking, either. Clean country girl from ’Bama.”

“If she’s a PFC, she’s young enough to be your greatgranddaughter.”

“Probably a virgin.”

“Then she can run faster than her uncles and brothers.”

“My, aren’t we in a rare mood.”

She rubbed her temples. “Sorry, but you bug me.”

“Well, why don’t you go get some lunch, and I’ll go call Karl Gustav before he hears about this from someone else and has me shot.”

“Okay.” She stood. “Keep me on this case, Paul.”

“That’s Herr Hellmann’s decision.”

She poked me in the gut again. “It’s your decision. You tell him you want me.”

“What if I don’t?”

“But you do.”

I walked her outside to her car, and she got in. I said, “I enjoyed working with you these last six hours and twenty-two minutes.”

She smiled. “Thank you. I enjoyed about fourteen minutes of it myself. Where should I meet you, and when?”

“Back here at 1400 hours.”

She pulled out of the lot, and I watched the red Mustang blend into midday post traffic.

I went back into the provost marshal’s office and found out where my requisitioned office was. Kent had me in a windowless room with two desks, two chairs, one file cabinet, and enough room left over for a trash can.

I sat at one of the desks and glanced through the leather address book, then threw it aside and tried to think it all out—not the case itself, but the politics of the case, the interpersonal relationships, and my best course of action regarding protecting my ass. Then I thought about the case itself.

Before I called Hellmann, I had to get my facts straight and keep my theories and opinions to myself. Karl deals in facts but will consider personal assessments if they can somehow be used against a suspect. Karl is not a political animal, and the underlying problems with this case would not impress him. In the area of personnel management, he assumes that everyone would work well together if he ordered it. Last year in Brussels, I had asked him not to assign me to any case or any continent on or in which Ms. Cynthia Sunhill worked. I explained that we’d had a personal falling-out. He didn’t know what that meant, but he gave me a firm assurance that he might possibly consider thinking about it.

And so I picked up the phone and called Falls Church, taking some satisfaction in the knowledge that I could ruin Karl’s day.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

The Oberführer was in, and his clerk-typist,Diane, put me through. “Hello, Karl.” “Hello, Paul,” he replied with a hint of a German accent.

The pleasantries aside, I informed him, “There’s been a murder here.”

“Yes?”

“General Campbell’s daughter, Captain Ann Campbell.”

Silence.

I continued, “Possibly raped, definitely sexually abused.”

“On post?”

“Yes. At one of the rifle ranges.”

“When?”

I replied, “This morning between 0217 and 0425 hours,” which completed the who, what, where, and when questions.

He asked the why question. “Motive?”

“Don’t know.”

“Suspects?”

“None.”

“Circumstances?”

“She was duty officer and went out to check the guard posts.” I filled in the details and added my involvement through Colonel Kent, my meeting up with Cynthia Sunhill, and our examination of the scene and of the victim’s offpost residence. I didn’t mention the recreation room in the basement, knowing that this conversation might be recorded and that, strictly speaking, it wasn’t privileged information. Why put Karl in an awkward position?

He stayed silent a moment, then said, “I want you to go back to the scene after the body has been removed and, using the same tent pegs, you will stake Ms. Sunhill to the ground.”

“Excuse me?”

“I see no reason why a healthy woman could not pull the stakes out.”

“Well, I can. The stakes were angled away from the body, Karl, and she wouldn’t have the leverage, and presumably there was someone there with a rope around her neck, and I think—my assumption is that it was a game at first—”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. But at some point she knew it was not a game. We know from past experience what strength a woman can summon when her life is in danger. She may have been drugged or sedated. Be sure toxology looks for sedatives. Meanwhile, you and Ms. Sunhill will attempt to re-create the crime from beginning to end.”

“You’re talking about a simulation, I hope.”

“Of course. Don’t rape or strangle her.”

“You’re getting soft, Karl. Well, I’ll relay your suggestion.”

“It is not a suggestion. It is an order. Now tell me in more detail what you found in Captain Campbell’s house.”

I told him, and he made no comment about my failure to notify the civilian authorities. So I asked him, “For the record, do you have any problems with my entering her house and removing the contents?”

“For the record, you notified her next of kin, who agreed to or even suggested that course of action. Learn to cover your own ass, Paul. I’m not always available for that job. Now you have five seconds for homicidal reverie.”

I took the five seconds, painting a delightful mental image of me with my hands around Karl’s neck, his tongue sticking out, his eyes bulging…

“Are you back?”

“Another second” … his skin turning blue, and finally… “I’m back.”

“Good. Do you want FBI assistance?”

“No.”

“Do you want another investigator from this office, or from our detachment at Hadley?”

“Let’s back up. I don’t even want this case.”

“Why not?”

“I already have an unfinished case here.”

“Finish it.”

“Karl, do you understand that this murder is very sensitive… very…”

“Did you have any personal involvement with the victim?”

“No.”

“Fax me a preliminary report to be on my desk by 1700 hours today. Diane will assign a case number. Anything further?”

“Well, yes. There’s the media, the official statement from the Department of the Army, the Judge Advocate General’s Office, the Justice Department, the general’s own personal statement and that of his wife, the general continuing his duties here, the—”

“Just investigate the murder.”

“That’s what I want to hear.”

“You’ve heard it. Anything further?”

“Yes. I want Ms. Sunhill removed from the case.”

“I didn’t assign her to the case. Why is she on the case?”

“For the same reason I’m on the case. We were here. We’re not connected to the power structure or personalities here. Kent asked us to help him until you officially assign a team.”

“You’re officially assigned. Why don’t you want her on the case?”

“We don’t like each other.”

“You never worked together. So what is the basis of that dislike?”

“We had a personal falling-out. I have no knowledge of her professional abilities.”

“She’s quite competent.”

“She has no homicide experience.”

“You have very little rape experience. Now, here we have a rope homicide, and you two will make an excellent team.”

“Karl, I thought we discussed this once. You promised not to assign us to the same duty station at the same time. Why was she here?”

“I never made such a promise. The needs of the Army come first.”

“Fine. The needs of the Army would best be served if you reassigned her today. Her case here is finished.”

“Yes, I have her report.”

“So?”

“Hold on.”

He put me on hold. Karl was being particularly insensitive and difficult, which I know is his way of telling me he has every confidence in my ability to handle a tough assignment. Still, it would have been nice to hear a word or two acknowledging that I’d caught a bad squeal. Yes, Paul, this will be very sensitive, very difficult, and potentially harmful to your career. But I’m behind you all the way. Maybe even a few words about the victim and her family. Tragic, yes, tragic. Such a young, beautiful, and intelligent woman. Her parents must be devastated. I mean, get human, Karl.

“Paul?”

“Yes?”

“That was Ms. Sunhill on the line.”

I thought it might be. I said, “She has no business going over my head—”

“I reprimanded her, of course.”

“Good. You see why I don’t—”

“I told her you don’t wish to work with her, and she claims that you are discriminating against her because of her sex, her age, and her religion.”

“What? I don’t even know her religion.”

“It’s on her dog tags.”

“Karl, are you jerking me around?”

“This is a serious charge against you.”

“I’m telling you, it’s personal. We don’t get along.”

“You got along very well in Brussels, from what I’ve been told.”

Fuck you, Karl. “Look, do you want me to spell it out?”

“No, I’ve already had it spelled out for me by someone in Brussels last year and by Ms. Sunhill a minute ago. I trust my officers to behave properly in their personal lives, and, while I don’t require that you be celibate, I do require that you be discreet, and that you don’t compromise yourself, the Army, or your assignment.”

“I never did.”

“Well, if Ms. Sunhill’s fiancé had put a bullet through your head, you would have left me with the mess.”

“That would have been my last thought as my brain exploded.”

“Good. So you are a professional, and you will establish a professional relationship with Ms. Sunhill. End of discussion.”

“Yes, sir.” I asked him, “Is she married?”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“There are personal considerations.”

“Neither you nor she has a personal life until you conclude this case. Anything further?”

“Did you tell Ms. Sunhill about your rather odd experiment?”

“That’s your job.” Karl Gustav hung up, and I sat a moment, considering my options, which boiled down to resigning or pushing on. Actually, I had my twenty years in, and I could put in my papers anytime, get out with half pay, and get a life.

There are different ways to end an Army career. Most men and women spend the last year or so in a safe assignment and fade away into oblivion. Some officers stay too long, fail to make the next grade, and are asked to leave quietly. A fortunate few go out in a blaze of glory. And then there are those who go for that last moment of glory and crash in flames. Timing is everything.

Career considerations aside, I knew that if I pulled out, this case would haunt me forever. The hook was in, and, in fact, I don’t know what I would have said or done if Karl had tried to take me off the case. But Karl was a contrary and counter-suggestible son-of-a-bitch, so when I said I didn’t want the case, I had the case, and when I said I didn’t want Cynthia, I had Cynthia. Karl is not as smart as he thinks.

On the desk in my new office were Captain Ann Campbell’s personnel and medical files, and I flipped through the former. These files contain a soldier’s entire Army career, and they can be informative and interesting. Chronologically, Ann Campbell entered West Point some twelve years before, graduated in the top ten percent of her class, was given the traditional thirty-day graduation leave, and was assigned, at her request, to the Military Intelligence Officer Course at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. From there, she went to graduate school at Georgetown and received her master’s in psychology. Her next step was to apply for what we call a functional area, which in this case was psychological operations. She completed the required course at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, then joined the 4th Psychological Operations Group, also at Bragg. From there, she went to Germany, then back to Bragg. Then the Gulf, the Pentagon, and finally Fort Hadley.

Her officer efficiency reports, at first glance, looked exceptional, but I didn’t expect otherwise. I found her Army test battery of scores and noted that her IQ put her into the genius category, the top two percent of the general population. My professional experience has been that an inordinate number of two-percenters wind up on my desk as suspects, usually in homicide cases. Geniuses don’t seem to have much tolerance for people who annoy them, or hinder them, and they tend to think they are not subject to the same rules of behavior as the mass of humanity. They are often unhappy and impatient people, and they can also be sociopaths, and sometimes psychopaths who see themselves as judge and jury and, now and then, as executioner, which is when they come to my attention.

But here I had not a suspect, but a victim who was a two-percenter, which could be a meaningless fact in this case. But my instinct was telling me that Ann Campbell was a perpetrator of something before she became a victim of that something.

I opened the medical file and went directly to the back, where psychological information, if any, is usually placed. And here I found the old psychological evaluation report, which is required for entry into West Point. The reporting psychiatrist wrote: This is a highly motivated, bright, and well-adjusted person. Based on a two-hour interview and the attached testing results, I found no authoritarian traits in her personality, no delusional disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, or sexual disorders.

The report went on to say that there were no apparent psychological problems that would prevent her from fulfilling her duties and obligations at the United States Military Academy. Ann Campbell was a normal eighteen-year-old American girl, whatever that meant in the latter part of the twentieth century. All well and good.

But there were a few more pages in the psychological section, a short report dated in what would have been the fall semester of her third year at West Point. Ann Campbell had been ordered to see a staff psychiatrist, though who had ordered this, and why, was not stated. The psychiatrist, a Dr. Wells, had written: Cadet Campbell has been recommended for therapy and/ or evaluation. Cadet Campbell claims “There is nothing wrong with me.” She is uncooperative, but not to the extent that I can forward a delinquency report on her to her commanding officer. In four interviews, each lasting approximately two hours, she repeatedly stated that she was just fatigued, stressed by the physical and academic program, anxious about her performance and grades, and generally overworked. While this is a common complaint of first-and second-year cadets, I have rarely seen this degree of mental and physical stress and fatigue in third-year students. I suggested that something else was causing her stress and feelings of anxiety, perhaps a love interest or problems at home. She assured me that everything was fine at home and that she had no love interest here at the academy or anywhere. I observed a young woman who was clearly underweight, obviously distracted, and, in general terms, troubled and depressed. She cried several times during the interviews, but always got her emotions under control and apologized for crying. At times, she seemed on the verge of revealing more than common cadet complaints, but always drew back. She did say once, however, “It doesn’t matter if I go to class or not, it doesn’t matter what I do here. They’re going to graduate me anyway.” I asked if she thought that was true because she was General Campbell’s daughter, and she replied, “No, they’re going to graduate me because I did them a favor.” When I asked what she meant by that, and who “they” were, she replied, “The old boys.” Subsequent questions elicited no response.I believe we were on the threshold of a breakthrough, but her subsequent appointments, originally ordered by her commander, were canceled without explanation by a higher authority whose name I never learned. My belief is that Cadet Campbell is in need of further evaluation and therapy, voluntary or involuntary. Lacking that, I recommend a psychiatric board of inquiry to determine if Cadet Campbell should be given a psychiatric separation from the academy. I further recommend a complete medical examination and evaluation.

I digested this brief report, wondering, of course, how a well-adjusted eighteen-year-old had turned into a depressed twenty-year-old. The rigors of West Point could easily explain that, but obviously Dr. Wells wasn’t buying it, and neither was I.

I leafed through the file, intending at some early date to read it from cover to cover. As I was about to close the folder, an errant scrap of paper caught my eye and I read the handwritten words: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.—Nietzsche. What that quote was doing there, I don’t know, but it was appropriate in the file of a psy-ops officer and would have been appropriate in the file of a CID man as well.

CHAPTER

NINE

I did not need to be, nor did I want to be, Sergeant Franklin White any longer, especially since Sergeant White had to salute every snot-nosed lieutenant he passed. So I made the half-mile walk to the Infantry Training Brigade and retrieved my pick-up truck, then headed out to Whispering Pines to change into civvies.

I drove past the post armory, but didn’t see Sergeant Elkin’s POV parked in the lot. I had this unsettling thought that Elkins was going to consummate the deal behind my back and take off for parts unknown, leaving me to explain how I let a few hundred M-16s and grenade launchers get into the hands of Colombian banditos.

But first things first. I left post and got onto the highway. The drive to Whispering Pines took about twenty minutes, during which time I reconstructed the events of the morning from the time the phone rang in the armory. I do this because my employer, the United States Army, is big on chronology and facts. But in a murder investigation, what you see and when you saw it is not the whole game, because by the nature of the act of murder, the crucial things happened before you got there. There is sort of a spirit world that coexists with the world of empirical observation, and you have to get in touch with that world through the detective’s equivalent of the séance. You don’t use a crystal ball, though I’d like one that worked—but you do clear your mind and listen to what isn’t said and see things that aren’t there.

That aside, Karl needed a written report, so I drafted one in my mind: Further to our phone conversation, the general’s daughter was a whore, but what a magnificent whore. I can’t get her out of my mind. If I had been obsessively in love with her and found out she was fucking for everyone, I would have killed her myself. Nevertheless, will find son-of-a-bitch who did it and see that he faces a firing squad. Thanks for the case. (Signed) Brenner.

That might need a little work. But it’s important, I think, to admit to yourself the truth of how you feel about things. Everyone else is going to lie, posture, and dissemble.

Regarding that, I thought about Cynthia. In truth, I couldn’t get the woman out of my mind. I kept seeing her face and hearing her voice, and I was right then missing her. This is presumptive evidence of a strong emotional attachment, perhaps a sexual obsession, and, God forbid, love. This was worrisome, not only because I wasn’t ready for this but because I wasn’t sure how she felt. Also, there was the murder. When you get handed a murder, you have to give it everything you’ve got, and if you don’t have much left to give, you have to draw on psychic energy that you’ve been saving for other things. Eventually, of course, there’s nothing left to borrow, and people like Cynthia, young and filled with a sense of duty and enthusiasm, call you cold, callous, and cynical. I deny this, of course, knowing I’m capable of emotions and feelings, of love and warmth. I was sort of like that in Brussels last year, and look at what it got me. Anyway, murder deserves one’s undivided attention.

I looked out the windshield as I approached Whispering Pines Trailer Park. Up ahead, on the left, I saw a county road crew making a blacktop repair, and I recalled two and a half decades ago when I saw my first Georgia chain gang. I don’t think they use chain gangs on the roads anymore, and I hope they don’t. But I recall the sight vividly, the prisoners, filthy and bowed, their ankles connected by chains, and the guards in sweaty tan uniforms, carrying rifles and shotguns. I couldn’t believe at first what I was seeing. Paul Brenner, late of South Boston, simply could not comprehend that men were chained together, working like slaves in the blistering sun, right here in America. I actually felt my stomach tighten as though someone had punched me.

But that Paul Brenner no longer existed. The world had become softer, and I’d become harder. Somewhere on the time line, the world and I had been harmonious for a year or two, then went our separate ways again. Maybe my problem was that my worlds changed too much: Georgia today, Brussels last year, Pago Pago next week. I needed to stop in one place for a while, I needed to know a woman for more than a night, a week, or a month.

I passed between two stripped pine trees to which had been nailed a hand-painted sign overhead that once read “Whispering Pines.” I parked the pickup truck near the owner’s mobile home and began the trek to my aluminum abode. I think I liked rural southern poverty better when it was housed in wooden shacks with a rocking chair and a jug of corn squeezings on the front porch.

I did a walk around the trailer, checking for open windows, footprints, and other signs that someone had been there. I came around to the entrance and inspected the strand of sticky filament I’d placed across the door and the frame. It’s not that I’d seen too many movies where the detective goes into his house and gets clubbed over the head. But I spent five years in the infantry, one of them in ’Nam, and about ten years in Europe and Asia dealing with everyone from drug traffickers, to arms smugglers, to just plain murderers, and I know why I’m alive, and I know how to stay that way. In other words, if you have your head up your ass, four of your five senses aren’t working.