“I don’t care what the general said. No one else said anything like that—not Kent, not Fowler, not Moore, not Yardley, and not even General Campbell himself, if you think about it. So now we should find out what General and Captain Campbell thought of each other.”
Again she nodded, and said, “I have this feeling that there’s not much more left in the clue bag, and we’d better start putting it all together before we get booted or pushed aside by the FBI.”
“You got that right. I give this case two or three more days. After that we start running into well-entrenched defenses. As it says in the tank commander’s manual, our immediate advantage is shock, mobility, and firepower. We’ve got to hit them hardest where they’re softest, and fastest where they’re slowest.”
“And get there firstest with the mostest.”
“Precisely.”
We pulled up to the MP booth at Jordan Field, showed our ID, and were waved through.
Cynthia parked her car among the vans and trucks of the forensic lab, and I took the plastic bag of clothing out of the trunk, using a handkerchief, while Cynthia carried the hairbrush. Cynthia said, “If she took her own clothes off, he held the bag, so there may not be any of the other person’s prints on her holster, boots, belt buckle, or anywhere. Except perhaps the bag itself.”
“We’ll soon find out.”
We walked toward the hangar, and she said, “You’re pretty sharp, Brenner. I’m starting to admire you.”
“But do you like me?”
“No.”
“Do you love me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said you did in Brussels.”
“I did, in Brussels. We’ll talk about it next week, or maybe later tonight.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Hangar three was bathed in bright overhead lighting and busy with the activities of Fort Gillem’s transplanted forensic units. Colonel Kent had not yet arrived, which was fine for the moment.
I presented the plastic trash bag and the hairbrush to Cal Seiver, who needed no explanation. He gave the bag and the brush to a fingerprint technician and instructed him to pass it on to the trace evidence section after the prints had been lifted.
With that bag of clothing, hangar three now contained all the known artifacts of Captain Ann Campbell, excluding the mortal remains of the victim herself, but including her automobile, her office, and home. In addition, I saw that we also had in the hangar the humvee she had used that night. As we got toward the rear of the hangar, I saw the recently developed photos of the crime scene, all of which were pinned to rolling bulletin boards, plus sketch maps and diagrams of the crime scene, a rising stack of laboratory reports, the protocol complete with color photos of the cadaver, which I did not look at, plaster casts of footprints, cellophane bags of evidence, forensic laboratory equipment, and about thirty personnel, male and female.
In one corner of the hangar were about two dozen cots, and in another corner was a coffee bar. The Army, of course, has almost unlimited resources and personnel, and there’s no overtime pay to worry about, and probably no other major crime at the moment that would divert any resources. Sometimes even I am in awe of the force that is assembled and set in motion with a few words, sort of like when Roosevelt said to Eisenhower, “Assemble a force for the invasion of Europe.” Simple, direct, and to the point. This is the Army at its best. It’s at its worst when politicians try to play soldier and soldiers start to play politics. That can happen in criminal investigations, as well as in war, which is why I knew my time to act freely could be counted in days and hours.
Cal Seiver showed me a copy of the Midland Dispatch, the local daily, whose headline announced, GENERAL’S DAUGHTER FOUND DEAD AT FORT.
Cynthia and I read the article, the thrust of which was that Captain Ann Campbell had been found naked, bound, strangled, and possibly raped, out on a rifle range. The story was about half accurate, and the only direct quote from Fort Hadley came from a Captain Hillary Barnes, a public information officer, who stated that she had no official comment except that the apparent homicide was being investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Division.
There was, however, a quote from the Midland chief of police, Burt Yardley, who said, “I’ve offered my assistance to Colonel Kent, provost marshal at Fort Hadley, and we are in close contact.”
He failed to mention the problem of the purloined house or that he wanted my ass delivered to him on a silver platter, but after our next meeting, he might start whining to the press about me.
Cal asked Cynthia, “Are those the running shoes you wore at the scene?”
“Yes. Do you want just the shoes or my feet in them?”
“Just the shoes, please.”
Cynthia sat on a folding chair, pulled off her running shoes, and handed them to Cal. He said to me, “Where are the boots you were wearing at the scene?”
“In my off-post quarters. I forgot to bring them.”
“Can I have them one of these days?”
“Sure. One of these days. I’m sort of confined to the post for a while.”
“Again? Jesus, Brenner, every time I work on a case with you that involves the civilian police, you piss them off.”
“Not every time. Okay, Cal, I’d like you to send a team out to rifle range five to get casts of some tire marks.” I told him where they would be found, and he started to amble off to take care of it. I said, “One more thing. When they’re finished there, have them go to Victory Gardens on Victory Drive and take casts of a set of tires on a Ford Fairlane, probably gray, 1985 or ’86, with an officers’ bumper sticker. I don’t have a license plate number for you, but look around unit thirty-nine.”
He regarded me a moment and replied, “If the car belongs to a soldier, we can wait until the car shows up on post.”
“I want it tonight.”
“Come on, Brenner, I can’t collect evidence outside government property without permission from the locals, and you already blew that.”
“Right. Don’t use an Army vehicle. Unit forty-five, the victim’s residence, is probably being secured by the Midland police, but the cop on duty will most likely be inside. Tell your guys to be careful and be quick.”
“It can wait until the car gets on post.”
“Okay.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “I understand. I just hope those tires don’t disappear from that car by morning. Gosh, I hope the whole car doesn’t disappear tonight. But that’s all right. Wait until morning.”
“Okay, Victory Gardens. You’re pushing your luck, hotshot.” He walked off toward a group of people who were labeling plaster footprints and making notations on a sketch map of the crime scene. Cal handed them Cynthia’s running shoes and spoke to them, presumably about their midnight mission, because he kept jerking his thumb toward me, and the techs were glaring at me.
I got a cup of coffee for myself and brought one to Cynthia, who was leafing through lab reports. She took the coffee and said, “Thanks. Look at this.” She showed me a report from the footprint people. “They found a print of a smooth-soled shoe, size seven, possibly a woman’s civilian shoe. That’s not usual on a rifle range, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“What does that suggest?”
I scanned the report, which speculated that the footprint was recent. I said, “Interesting. But it could have been made a few days ago, for all we know. It hasn’t rained here in about a week.”
“Right. But it’s something to think about.”
We flipped through reports from the various forensic units for about fifteen minutes, then Cal called over to us from one of his makeshift lab areas, and we joined him at a table where a female technician was peering through a microscope. Cal said, “You may have hit pay dirt with that hairbrush. Where’d it come from?”
I patted his bald head. “Not from you.”
The technician laughed as she buried her face in the microscope.
Cal was not amus
ed and said to Cynthia, “Since you’re the one with the brains on this team, why don’t you look in that microscope?”
The technician moved aside, and Cynthia sat at the table. The technician, a Specialist Lubbick, said, “The hair on the right was recovered from the sink basin in the male latrine at rifle range six. The hair on the left was taken from the hairbrush.”
Cynthia looked into the microscope as Specialist Lubbick continued, “I actually examined twenty hairs taken from the brush to satisfy myself that the brush hairs all belonged to the same individual. My opinion is that they do, and that statistically and logically, there should be no other individual’s hair on that brush, though I’ll examine every one of them for my report.”
I wanted to say, “Get to the point,” but you have to let technical types do it their way or they get sulky.
Specialist Lubbick continued, “Hairs have what we call class characteristics. That means they can’t be matched absolutely to a given sample. They can be used to exclude a suspect, but not to identify a suspect in a court of law, unless both samples submitted have roots so that we can get the sex of an individual and a genetic marker.”
Cal said to her, “I think they know that.”
“Yes, sir. Anyway, the sample found in the latrine has no roots, but from the shaft, I’ve determined that the individual had blood type O, and that the individual whose hair was on the brush also had blood type O. Also, both samples are Caucasian, are visually similar in texture, color, lack of artificial treatment, and general condition of health.”
Cynthia looked up from the microscope. “Yup. They look similar.”
Specialist Lubbick concluded, “My opinion is that they’re from the same individual, though the sample from the sink basin is too small to perform other tests such as spectro-analysis that might yield more similarities. Any further tests will alter or destroy this single strand taken from the latrine.” She added, “Some of the hairs from the brush do have roots, and in about an hour I can tell you the sex of that individual and get a DNA marker for you.”
I nodded. “Understand.”
Cynthia stood and said to Lubbick, “Please mark and bag this and attach a report.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks.”
Seiver asked me, “Is this enough for an arrest?”
“No, but it’s enough to start looking at a guy real close.”
“What guy?”
I took him off to the side, away from the technicians, and said, “A guy named Colonel Charles Moore whose tire tracks you are going to compare. Moore’s office is also at the Psy-Ops School. He was the victim’s boss. I’m trying to get his office sealed until we can get authorization to bring it here.”
Cynthia joined us and said, “In the meantime, Cal, match the fingerprints found on Colonel Moore’s hairbrush to the fingerprints found on the humvee, and also to any fingerprints found on the trash bag and the articles found inside the bag.”
“Right.” He thought a moment, then said, “But a match doesn’t conclusively place this Colonel Moore at the scene if Moore and the victim knew each other. He has a believable reason why his fingerprints could be on, let’s say, her holster, or on the humvee.”
I replied, “I know, but he would have a harder time explaining why his prints are on the trash bag, or why his tire marks are out on range five.”
Cal nodded. “Still, you need to place him there at the time of the murder.”
“Right. So I want you to compare the fingerprints on the hairbrush to the partial prints you found on the tent pegs. If we have his tire marks and enough fingerprints that match, then the rope around his fucking neck gets much tighter. Okay?”
Cal nodded. “Okay. You’re the detective. I’d vote guilty, but you never know these days.” He turned and walked toward the fingerprint unit.
Cynthia said to me, “If we interrogate Moore and present him with the evidence, there’s a good chance he will tell us he did it.”
“Right, or he will tell us he didn’t. Then we wind up in front of a court-martial board, all holding our breaths while they decide if a colonel in the United States Army strangled General Campbell’s daughter, or if Warrant Officers Brenner and Sunhill got the wrong guy, missed the right guy, totally dishonored themselves and the Army, and blew it big-time.”
Cynthia thought a moment and asked me, “If all the forensic evidence points to Moore, do you have any reasonable doubts?”
“Do you?”
“Reasonable doubts, yes. I just can’t see Ann Campbell doing whatever she was doing out there with that guy, and I can’t see him strangling her. He looks like the kind of sicko who’d put poison in your coffee, but he’s not a hands-on killer.”
“That’s what’s bothering me. But you never know… she may have asked him to do it. Pleaded with him to kill her. I had one like that once. And for all we know, Moore could have been flying on mind-altering drugs. Something he got from work.”
“That’s possible.”
I looked over Cynthia’s shoulder. “Meanwhile, here comes the law.”
Colonel Kent was making the long walk across the hangar, and we met him halfway. He asked, “Anything new here?”
I replied, “We’re close to something, Bill. I’m waiting for fingerprints and tire tracks.”
His eyes widened. “No kidding? Who?”
“Colonel Moore.”
He seemed to think about that, then nodded. “It fits.”
“How does it fit, Bill?”
“Well… they had a close relationship, he would have the opportunity, and I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s weird. I just don’t know what his motive would be.”
“Me neither.” I asked Kent, “Tell me about Captain and General Campbell.”
“What about them?”
“Were they close?”
He looked me right in the eye and said, “They were not.”
“Go on.”
“Well… perhaps we can discuss that another time.”
“Perhaps we can discuss it in Falls Church.”
“Hey, don’t threaten me.”
“Look, Colonel, I’m the investigating officer in a homicide case. You may feel that you’re under some social and professional restraints, but you’re not. Your duty is to answer my questions.”
Kent did not seem happy, but at the same time, he seemed relieved to be told in no uncertain terms that he had to unburden himself. He walked off toward the center of the hangar, and we followed him. He said, “Okay. General Campbell disapproved of his daughter’s choice of military occupation specialty, her choice of men, her decision to live off post, her associations with people like Charles Moore, and probably a half dozen other things that I’m not privy to.”
Cynthia asked, “Wasn’t he proud of her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“The Army was proud of her,” Cynthia pointed out.
Kent replied, “The Army had about as much choice in the matter as General Campbell did. Ann Campbell had one hand on her father’s balls and the other on the Army’s balls, to be quite blunt.”
Cynthia asked him, “What does that mean?”
“That means that, as a woman, a general’s daughter, a West Pointer, and a nearly public figure, she got away with a lot. She wangled her way into that recruiting stuff before her father knew what was happening, and all of a sudden she’s got the power of public notoriety, doing radio and TV, and addressing colleges and women’s groups, pushing an Army career for women and all that. Everyone loved her. But she didn’t give a damn about the Army. She just wanted to become untouchable.”
Cynthia asked him, “Why?”
“Well, as much as the general disapproved of her, she hated his guts ten times more. She did everything she could to personally embarrass him, and there wasn’t much he could do to her without screwing up his own career.”
“My goodness,” I said, “that’s interesting information. You must have forgotten to tell us that as you w
ere agonizing over how to break the news to the general.”
Kent glanced around him, then said in a soft voice, “That’s between us. Officially, they loved each other.” He hesitated, then said, “To tell you the truth, General Campbell may have disapproved of this or that, but he didn’t hate her.” He added, “Look, this is all hearsay, but I’m passing it on to you in confidence, so you know what the hell is going on here. You didn’t hear it from me, but you can follow up on it.”
I nodded, “Thanks, Bill. Anything else?”
“No.”
But of course there was. “Who,” I asked, “were these men that the general disapproved of, aside from Colonel Moore?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was Wes Yardley one of them?”
He looked at me a long time, then nodded. “I think so.”
“Was Wes Yardley the man she had an altercation with in Midland?”
“Possibly.”
“Why did she want to embarrass her father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did she hate his guts?”
“If you find out, let me know. But whatever the reason was, it was one hell of a big one.”
“What was her relationship with her mother?”
Kent replied, “Strained. Mrs. Campbell was torn between being the general’s lady and being the mother of a very independent woman.”
“In other words,” I said, “Mrs. Campbell is a doormat, and Ann Campbell tried to raise her consciousness.”
“Something like that. But it was a little more complex.”
“How so?”
“You should speak with Mrs. Campbell.”
“I intend to.” I said to him, “Tell me again that you never went to Ann Campbell’s house, so I can explain in my report why your fingerprints were found on a bottle of her liquor.”
“I told you, Brenner, I touched a few of the things.”
“The liquor was sealed in a box by your MPs and not opened until about an hour ago.”
“You can’t pull that crap with me, Paul. I’m a cop, too. If you have evidence, let’s talk to Seiver and he can show it to me.”