The General's Daughter

Cynthia and I stood, as was customary. I might shove it up his butt in private, but in public I gave him the respect he was supposed to deserve.

  He sat and we sat. A waitress came over and Kent ordered drinks for us and a gin and tonic for himself. “On me,” he said.

  We chatted awhile, everyone agreeing what a strain this had been and how tempers were getting short, sleepless nights, hot days, and all that crap. As casual and chatty as Cynthia and I were, Kent was a pro and he smelled the rat, or perhaps felt like the rat being maneuvered into the corner.

  He said to us, “Will you stay on awhile after the funeral, and brief the FBI?”

  “I think that’s what we’re supposed to do,” I replied. “But I’d like to be gone by nightfall tomorrow.”

  He nodded, then smiled at us. “You two getting along? Or is that a leading question?”

  Cynthia returned the smile. “We’re renewing our friendship.”

  “Right. Where’d you meet?”

  “Brussels.”

  “Great city.”

  And so on. But every once in a while, he would nonchalantly ask something like, “So Moore’s definitely not the murderer?”

  “Nothing is definite,” Cynthia replied, “but we don’t think so.” She added, “It’s scary how close we came to accusing the wrong man.”

  “If he is the wrong man. You’re saying he tied her up and left?”

  “Right,” I replied. “I can’t reveal why, but we know why.”

  “Then he’s an accessory to murder.”

  “Not legally,” I said. “It was something completely different.”

  “Weird. Did your computer lady get what she needed?”

  “I think so. Unfortunately for some guys, Ann Campbell left a sort of sexual diary in the computer.”

  “Oh, Jesus. . . am I in there?”

  “I think so, Bill.” I added, “With about thirty other officers.”

  “My God. . . I knew she had lots of. . . but not that many. . . God, I feel like a fool. Hey, can we get the diary classified?”

  I smiled. “You mean like top secret? Come up with a national security angle and I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile, the decision rests with the judge advocate general, or the attorney general, or both. I think you have enough company not to be too concerned with being singled out.”

  “Well, but I’m a cop.”

  “There were guys in that diary with more power and prestige than you.”

  “That’s good. How about Fowler?”

  “Can’t say. Hey, did you know that Burt Yardley was also in the honey?”

  “No kidding. . .? Jesus. . .”

  “You see, you had more in common with Burt than you realized.” But seriously, Bill. “Do you know him well?”

  “Only professionally. We attend the monthly G-5 meetings.”

  That’s civilian affairs, and if I’d thought about it, I’d have realized that they were thrown together often enough, chief and provost, top cop and top cop, to work out a mutual ass-covering arrangement.

  Kent asked, “Have either of you gone over to the chapel yet?”

  “No,” Cynthia replied. “I think we’ll wait until the service tomorrow. Are you going to the chapel tonight?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Yes, of course. I was a lover.”

  I asked, “How big is that chapel?”

  We both shared a little laugh, but it was definitely a crude remark, and Cynthia gave me a really mean look.

  I asked him, “Is Mrs. Kent still in Ohio?”

  “Yes.”

  “Until when?”

  “Oh. . . another few days.”

  “That’s a long drive. Or did she fly?”

  He glanced at me, then replied, “Flew.” He forced a smile. “On her broom.”

  I returned the phony smile and said, “Can I ask if her departure is related to ugly rumors about you and Captain Campbell?”

  “Well. . . there was a little of that, I guess. We’re trying to work it out. But she really doesn’t know. She just thinks. You’re not married, but maybe you understand.”

  “I was married. Cynthia is married.”

  He looked at her. “Are you? Military?”

  “Yes. He’s at Benning.”

  “Tough life.”

  And so forth. Perfectly pleasant. Two warrant officers, CID types, and a senior commissioned officer, the MP commander, drinking and talking about life, love, the job, and, every once in a while, sandwiching in the subject of murder. This is an interesting interrogation technique, and it’s quite effective in appropriate situations, like this one. In fact, I call it the murder sandwich—a little bread, meat, lettuce, blood, cheese, tomato, blood, and so forth.

  But Bill Kent wasn’t your average suspect, and I had the distinct impression that he knew what this was about, and that he knew that we knew that he knew, and so on. So it became a little dance, a charade, and at one point our eyes met, and then he knew for sure, and I knew for sure.

  At this point, when a guy realizes you’re on to him, it’s kind of awkward for everyone, and the suspect goes into an exaggerated nonchalance, trying to show how completely at ease he is. Sometimes, too, a perverse or reverse sort of logic takes over, and the suspect gets ballsy. In fact, Kent said to us, “I’m glad I asked you two to take this case. I was pretty sure Bowes was involved with her, but I didn’t want to say that in case it wasn’t true. He has no special homicide investigators on his team here anyway, and they’d have just sent somebody like you two from Falls Church eventually. Or they’d have called the FBI right away. So I was glad you were here.” He looked at me and said, “We’ve worked together before, and I knew you’d be right for this case.” He added, “You’ve only got until noon tomorrow, right? But you know what? I think you’re going to wrap it up before noon.”

  And so we sat there a minute, playing with cocktail stirrers and napkins, Cynthia and I wondering if there was a murderer at the table, and Bill Kent contemplating the end of his career at the very least, and perhaps wrestling with the notion of telling us something that would get us out of here by noon tomorrow.

  Sometimes people need encouragement, so I said to him in a tone he’d understand, “Bill, do you want to take a walk? Or we can go back to your office. We can talk.”

  He shook his head. “I have to go.” He stood. “Well. . . I hope those butchers at the morgue left enough of her for an open casket. I’d like to see her again. . . I don’t have a photo. . .” He forced another smile. “There aren’t too many souvenirs of an extramarital affair.”

  Actually, there had been a room full of them. Cynthia and I stood also, and I said, “Get one of those recruiting posters before everyone else thinks the same thing. Collector’s item.”

  “Right.”

  “Thanks for the drinks,” I said.

  He turned and left.

  We sat. Cynthia watched him walking away, then said, as if to herself, “He could be upset over the end of his career, his soon-to-be-public disgrace, his troubled marriage, and the death of someone he cared for. Maybe that’s what we’re seeing. Or. . . he did it.”

  I nodded. “Hard to evaluate his behavior given all he’s going through. Yet, there is something about a person’s eyes. . . they speak their own language, from the heart and soul. They speak love, grief, hate, innocence, and guilt. They speak the truth even as the person is lying.”

  Cynthia nodded. “They sure do.”

  We both sat in silence awhile, then Cynthia asked, “So?”

  I looked at her, and she looked back into my eyes, a sort of experiment, I guess, and we both agreed without speaking that Bill Kent was our man.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  We skipped dinner and drove out on Rifle Range Road toward Jordan Field. As Kent had indicated earlier, there was an MP checkpoint on the road, and we had to stop and identify ourselves. When we got to the MP booth at the entrance to Jordan Field, we went through another identification procedure, then yet another at
the door of hangar three. The Army liked to keep reporters in the press conference room, where the Army thought they belonged. Reporters liked to roam. These differences of opinion have been going on for a few hundred years. The Army citing security considerations, the press invoking their traditional and lawful privileges. The Army has gotten the upper hand in recent decades, having learned at least one lesson in Vietnam.

  My own experiences with the press began in Vietnam when a reporter stuck a microphone under my nose while we were both pinned down by machine-gun fire. The news camera rolled, and the reporter asked me, “What’s happening?” I thought the situation spoke for itself, but young idiot that I was, I replied, “An enemy machine gun’s got our range.” The guy asked, “What are you going to do now?” I said to him, “Leave you and the camera guy here.” And I made a hasty withdrawal, hoping the enemy gunner would concentrate his fire on the gentlemen of the press. Somewhere, that news footage was in an archive, preserved for posterity. I never saw the two guys again.

  The hangar was nearly deserted, most of the forensic people having gone back to Fort Gillem, or on to other assignments, with their equipment. But about half a dozen people had stayed behind to type reports and complete a few more tests.

  Ann Campbell’s home was still there, as well as the humvee and her BMW, but her office was gone. Nevertheless, Grace Dixon sat at a camp desk, yawning, in front of an IBM personal computer.

  She looked up at us as we approached and said, “I requisitioned another PC. I’m sorting files, reading letters and diaries, but not printing out, as you said. You got that stuff on Yardley that I sent you?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Thanks.”

  Grace said, “This is very hot stuff here. I love it.”

  “Take a cold shower tonight, Grace.”

  She laughed and wiggled her ample rear end in the seat. “I’m sticking to the chair.”

  Cynthia asked, “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “Guest house on post. I’ll sleep with the disk. No men. Promise.” She added, “The post chaplain is in this diary. Is nothing sacred?”

  I wanted to point out that sleeping with a goddess was itself a sacrament, but I didn’t think either of the two ladies would appreciate it. I asked Grace, “Can you print out all entries that mention the name of Colonel William Kent?”

  “Sure. I’ve seen him in here. I can scan for that. What’s his job or title in case it’s under that?”

  “He’s the provost marshal. Known to friends as Bill.”

  “Right. I saw him in here. You want printouts every time his name appears, right?”

  “Correct. Also, the FBI may be around tonight or early tomorrow. The MPs outside will not stop them from coming through that door. But if you see the type walking across the hangar, you take the disk out and make believe you’re typing a report. Okay?”

  “Sure. But what if they have a court order or a search warrant or something?”

  It’s easier to deal with military types because they follow orders. Civilians want explanations and ask too many questions. I replied to her, “Grace, you’re just typing reports. Put the disk on your person, and if they want to look under your dress, slap them.”

  She laughed. “What if they’re cute?”

  Obviously, something had fired up this woman’s libido.

  Cynthia said to her, “It’s really important, Grace, that no one but us three sees that stuff.”

  “Okay.”

  I asked her, “Is Cal Seiver still here?”

  “Yes. He’s grabbing some cot time over there.” Grace was playing with the keys again. I don’t know much about computers, and I want to know less. But people like Grace, who are into them, are a little weird. They can’t seem to break away from the screen, and they sit there, talk, type, mumble, curse, squeal with delight, and probably go without sex, sleep, and food for extended periods. Actually, I guess that goes for me, too. Cynthia and I left Grace without bothering her with a farewell.

  I rolled a chalkboard in front of her so that anyone coming in the door wouldn’t see her, then we found Cal Seiver in a deep sleep on a cot, and I woke him. He stood unsteadily and seemed confused by his surroundings.

  I gave him a few seconds, then asked him, “Did you find anything new and interesting?”

  “No, we’re just putting it all in order now.”

  “You have disqualifying footprints and fingerprints from Colonel Kent?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you find any of his prints out at the scene? On the humvee, on her handbag, the latrines?”

  He thought a moment, then said, “No. But his bootprints are all over. I took boot impressions from him to disqualify those.”

  “Did you get Colonel Moore’s shoes?”

  “Sure did. I compared them to unidentified plaster casts. They lead right to the body, then back to the road.”

  “Do you have a diagram yet?”

  “Sure.” He walked over to a rolling bulletin board and snapped on a portable light. Tacked to the board was a four-foot-by-eight-foot diagram of the murder scene. The scene took in a stretch of road, the victim’s parked humvee, the beginning of the bleachers, and, on the other side of the road, a small section of the firing range that included a few pop-up targets and a sketch of a spread-eagled figure that the artist had rendered sexless.

  Footprints were marked by colored pins, and there was a legend at the bottom of the board identifying the known owners of the boot-and shoeprints, with black pins indicating unknown owners or unclear footprints. Little arrows showed directions, and notes indicated whether the prints were fresh, old, rained on, and so forth. In cases where a print was super-imposed on another print, the most recent print had a longer pin. There were other notes and explanations to try to add some clarity to the chaos. Eventually, this whole board would be fed into a computer, and you would see a more graphic display, including, if you wished, the prints appearing one after another, as if a ghost were walking. Also, you could eliminate or call up any set of prints you wanted. But for now, I had to make do with my own experience, and that of Cynthia and Cal Seiver.

  Seiver said, “We really haven’t analyzed this. That’s sort of your job.”

  “Right. I remember that from the manual.”

  He added, “We’ve got to spiffy this up a little for the FBI. There’s too many variables and unknowns here, including the fact we don’t have the footwear that you wore.”

  “That might he in the VOQ now.”

  “When people hold off on providing footprints, I get suspicious.”

  “Fuck off, Cal.”

  “Right.” He looked at the legend and said, “Colonel Moore is yellow.”

  I replied, “Colonel Kent is who we want.”

  Pause. “Kent?”

  “Kent.” I looked at the legend. Kent was blue.

  We all studied the diagram, and, in the quiet hangar, you could hear the computer printer spewing out paper.

  I said to Cal Seiver, “Talk to me.”

  “Right.” Seiver began, and, from what he was saying, it appeared that Colonel William Kent had visited the body no fewer than three times. Cal explained, “See, here he walks from the road to the body. Stops very near the body, probably kneels or squats because, when he turns, his prints rotate, then he probably stands and goes back to the road. This was probably the first time, when he went out there with his MP who found the body. . . See, here’s her print. . . Casey. She’s green. Then the next time may have been here where he accompanied you and Cynthia with her running shoes. Cynthia is white.” He managed to remind me again, “You’re black. Lots of black. I’ll give you pink pins when I get your boots. But for now, I can’t tell you from—”

  “Okay. I get it. How about the third time he walked out to the body?”

  Cal shrugged. “He walked there when I was there, but we had tarps down by then. I guess he went out to the body more than once before you two got there, because it seems that we’ve got three trails
of his prints from the road to the body. But even that’s hard to say for sure because no trail is complete. We got prints over prints, and we got soft ground and hard ground, and grass.”

  “Right.” We all studied the pins, the arrows, and the notations.

  I said, “There was a man and woman out there also, wearing civilian shoes. I could get you the shoes, but what I’m interested in is Colonel Kent. I think he visited the scene earlier, probably in uniform, with the same boots he wore later, somewhere between, say, 0245 and 0330 hours.”

  Cal Seiver thought a moment, then replied, “But the body wasn’t found until. . . what time?. . . 0400, by the duty sergeant, St. John.”

  I didn’t reply.

  Seiver scratched his bald head and stared at the diagram. “Well. . . could be. . . I mean, here’s something that doesn’t make sense. . . here’s St. John’s bootprint. Orange. That’s a definite. The guy had a wad of gum on his sole and it printed. Okay. . . so here we have St. John’s bootprint, and it seems to be superimposed on a bootprint that we think is Colonel Kent’s. Kent had very new boots with clear tread. So. . . I mean, if St. John was there at 0400 hours, and Colonel Kent didn’t arrive until the MPs called him at what. . . after 0500 hours, then St. John’s bootprint on top of Kent’s bootprint wouldn’t make sense. But you have to understand that while we can ID the impressions of most footwear if the medium is good—snow, mud, soft soil, and such—it’s not as precise as fingerprints. And in this case, where we have two good prints, we can’t say for certain which was superimposed on which.”

  “But you have St. John’s noted as being superimposed on Kent’s.”

  “Well, that’s a judgment call by the tech. Could be a mistake. Probably was, now that I see it. St. John was there first, so he couldn’t have walked over Kent’s. . . but you’re saying you think Kent was there before St. John found the body.”

  “I’m saying it,” I replied, “but you will not say it to anyone.”

  “I only give information to you two and to a court-martial board.”

  “Correct.”

  Cynthia said to Cal, “Let’s see the plaster impression of this spot.”