The General's Daughter

  “You win some, you lose some.”

  “How about this one?”

  “This one’s a squeaker. Clock ticking, FBI massing, only one suspect.”

  “Who’s that?”

  I stood and took off my jacket, exposing my shoulder holster with the Glock 9mm. Kent did the same, exposing his shoulder holster with a .38 Police Special, sort of like show me yours, and I’ll show you mine. That out of the way, we sat, loosened our ties, and he asked again, “Who’s the suspect?”

  “Well, that’s what I want to speak to you about. We’re waiting for Cynthia.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked around the hangar. The remainder of the forensic team were leaving, and I saw Grace at the PC, printing out.

  I glanced across the hangar toward the personnel door but did not see Cynthia yet. Despite my current mood regarding her, she deserved to be in on the end, whatever the end was to be. I knew that Karl would distance himself from this—not out of a normal instinct to cover his ass if it went badly, but out of a respect for me and my work. Karl never micromanaged, and he never took credit from the investigators in the field. On the other hand, he didn’t deal very well with failure, especially if it was someone else’s failure.

  Kent said, “I’m glad that’s over.”

  “We all are.”

  He asked me, “Why did you want me to meet John Campbell?”

  “I thought you might like to say something comforting to him.”

  Kent did not respond to that.

  I noticed that the refrigerator in Ann Campbell’s kitchen had been plugged into an extension cord, and I walked through the invisible walls, opened the refrigerator, and saw that it was filled with beer and soft drinks. I took three cans of Coors and carried them back into the study, giving one to Kent.

  We popped them and drank. Kent said, “You’re off the case now. Right?”

  “I’ve been handed a few more hours.”

  “Lucky you. Do they pay overtime in the CID?”

  “Yes, they do. Double time after the first twenty-four hours of each day, triple that on Sundays.”

  He smiled, then informed me, “I have a pile of work back in my office.”

  “This won’t take long.”

  He shrugged and finished his beer. I gave him the extra one, and he opened it. He said, “I didn’t know that the Campbells were leaving on the aircraft.”

  “Took me by surprise, too. But it was a smart move.”

  “He’s finished. He could have been the next vice-president, maybe president one day. We were ready for a general again.”

  “I don’t know much about civilian politics.” I saw Grace put the printouts and floppy disk on the table beside her. She got up, waved to me, then headed out. Cal went over to the PC and put his footprint graphic program in and began fooling around with it.

  Kent asked me, “What are they doing?”

  “Trying to figure out who did it.”

  “Where’s the FBI?”

  “Probably crowded around the door outside waiting for my clock to run out.”

  “I don’t enjoy working with the FBI,” Kent commented. “They don’t understand us.”

  “No, they don’t. But none of them slept with the deceased.”

  The door opened, and Cynthia appeared. She came into the study and exchanged greetings with Kent. I got her an RC Cola from the refrigerator and another beer for Kent. We all sat. Kent, at this point, began to look uneasy.

  Cynthia said, “It was very sad. She was young… I felt awful for her parents and her brother.”

  Kent did not respond.

  I said to him, “Bill, Cynthia and I have turned up some things that are disturbing us and that we think need some explaining.”

  He drank more of his beer.

  Cynthia said, “First of all, there’s this letter.” She took the letter from her bag and handed it to Kent.

  He read it, or actually didn’t read it, since he probably knew it by heart, and handed it back to Cynthia.

  She said, “I could see how you’d be disturbed by that. I mean, here was a woman who was giving it out all over post, and the one person who cared for her is the person who she causes trouble for.”

  He seemed a bit more uncomfortable and took a long hit on his beer. Finally he asked, “What makes you think I cared for her?”

  Cynthia replied, “Just intuition. I think you cared for her, but she was too self-absorbed and disturbed to respond to your concern and honest feelings for her.”

  A homicide cop has to speak badly of the dead in front of the suspect, of course. The murderer doesn’t want to hear that he killed a paragon of virtue, a child of God, as Colonel Fowler had described Ann Campbell. You don’t completely remove the moral question of right and wrong, as Karl suggested; you just cast the question in a different light and suggest to the suspect that what he did was understandable.

  But Bill Kent was no idiot, and he saw where this was going, so he said nothing.

  Cynthia continued, “We also have her diary entries regarding each and every sexual encounter she had with you.”

  I added, “They’re over there near the computer.”

  Cynthia went to the computer desk and came back with the printouts. She sat in front of Kent on the coffee table and began reading. The descriptions were, of course, explicit, but not really erotic. They were the sort of thing you’d read in a clinical study; there was no mention of love or emotion, as you’d expect in a diary, just a cataloging of the sex that transpired. Certainly, this was embarrassing to Bill Kent, but it was also an affirmation that Ann Campbell thought no more of him than she did of her vibrator. I could see in his face that he was getting angry, which is the least controllable of human emotions, and the one that invariably leads to self-destruction.

  Kent stood and said, “I don’t have to listen to this.”

  I stood also. “I think you should. Please sit down. We really need you here.”

  He seemed to be deciding whether to stay or go, but it was an act. The most important thing in his life was happening here and now, and, if he left, it would happen without him.

  With feigned reluctance, he sat, and I sat.

  Cynthia continued reading as if nothing had happened. She found a particularly kinky entry and read, “ ‘Bill has really gotten into sexual asphyxia now after resisting it for so long. His favorite is putting a noose around his neck and hanging from a spike on the wall while I give him a blow job. But he also likes to tie me to the bed, which he did tonight, and tightening the rope around my neck while he uses the big vibrator on me. He’s become good at it, and I have intense and multiple orgasms.’ ” Cynthia looked up at Kent for a moment, then flipped through the pages.

  Kent seemed no longer angry, nor embarrassed, nor uncomfortable. He seemed, in fact, sort of far away, as if he were remembering those better days, or looking into a bad future.

  Cynthia read the last entry, the one that Grace had read to us over the phone. “ ‘Bill is becoming possessive again. I thought we solved that problem. He showed up here tonight when Ted Bowes was here. Ted and I hadn’t gone downstairs yet, and Bill and he had a drink in the living room, and Bill was nasty to him and pulled rank on him. Finally, Ted left, and Bill and I had words. He says he’s prepared to leave his wife and resign his commission if I promise to live with him or marry him or something. He knows why I do what I do with him and the other men, but he’s starting to think there’s more to it with us. He’s pressing me, and I tell him to stop. Tonight, he doesn’t even want sex. He just wants to talk. I let him talk, but I don’t like what he’s saying. Why do some men think they have to be knights in shining armor? I don’t need a knight. I am my own knight, I am my own dragon, and I live in my own castle. Everyone else are props and bit players. Bill is not very cognitive. He doesn’t understand, so I don’t try to explain. I did tell him I’d consider his offer, but in the meantime, would he only come here with an appointment? This put him into a rage, and he actua
lly slapped me, then ripped off my clothes and raped me on the living room floor. When he was done, he seemed to feel better, then left in a sulk. I realize he could be dangerous, but I don’t care, and, in fact, of all of them, he’s the only one except for Wes who has actually threatened me or hit me, and it’s the only thing that makes Bill Kent interesting.’ ”

  Cynthia put the papers down, and we all sat there. I asked Kent, “You raped her right over there on the living room floor?” I nodded toward the next room.

  Kent wasn’t answering questions. But he did say, “If your purpose is to humiliate me, you’re doing a fine job of it.”

  I replied, “My purpose, Colonel, is to find out who murdered Ann Campbell, and, not least of all, to find out why.”

  “Do you think I… that I know something I’m not telling?”

  “Yes, we think so.” I picked up the remote control and turned on the TV and the VCR. Ann Campbell’s face came into focus, in the middle of a lecture. I said to Kent, “Do you mind? This woman fascinates me, as I’m sure she fascinated you and others. I need to see her every once in a while. It helps.”

  Captain Ann Campbell was speaking. “The moral question arises concerning the use of psychology, which is usually a healing science, as a weapon of war.” Ann Campbell took the microphone from the lectern and walked toward the camera. She sat on the floor with her legs dangling over the edge of the stage and said, “I can see you guys better now.”

  I glanced at Kent, who was watching closely, and, if I could judge his feelings by my own, I guessed that he wished she were alive and in this very room so that he could speak to her and touch her.

  Ann Campbell continued her talk about the morality of psychological operations, and about the wants, needs, and fears of human beings in general. She said, “Psychology is a soft weapon—it’s not a 155mm artillery round, but you can take out more enemy battalions with leaflets and radio broadcasts than with high explosives. You don’t have to kill people if you can get them to surrender to your will. It’s a lot more satisfying to see an enemy soldier running toward you with his hands on his head, dropping to his knees at your feet, than it is killing him.”

  I turned off the TV and commented, “She had a certain presence, didn’t she, Bill? One of those people who keep your attention visually, verbally, and mentally. I wish I’d known her.”

  Kent replied, “No, you don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He took a deep breath and replied, “She was… evil.”

  “Evil?”

  “Yes… she was… she was one of those women… you don’t see many like that… a woman whom everyone loves, a woman who seems clean and wholesome and sweet… but who has everyone fooled. She really didn’t care about anyone or anything. I mean, she seemed like the girl next door on one level—the kind of girl most men want, but her mind was completely sick.”

  I replied, “We’re starting to find that out. Can you fill us in?”

  And he did, for the next ten minutes, giving us his impressions of Ann Campbell, which sometimes touched on reality, but often did not. Cynthia got him another beer.

  Basically, Bill Kent was drawing up a moral indictment, the way the witch-hunters did three hundred years ago. She was evil, she possessed men’s minds, bodies, and souls, she cast spells, she pretended to worship God and tend to her labors by day, but consorted with dark forces at night. He said, “You can see by those videotapes how charming and nice she could be around men, but just read those diary pages—just read that stuff, and you can see what she was really like. I told you she was into Nietzsche—Man and Superman, the Antichrist, and all that sick crap.” He took a breath and went on. “I mean, she would go into men’s offices at night and perform sexual acts with them, then the next day barely acknowledge they were alive.”

  And on he went.

  Cynthia and I sat and listened and nodded. When a murder suspect speaks badly of the deceased, he’s either not the murderer, or he’s telling you why he did it.

  Kent realized he was going on a bit and toned it down. But I think, sitting there in Ann Campbell’s house, so to speak, he was speaking as much to her as to us. Also, I think her image, reinforced by the videotape, was very much on his mind. Cynthia and I were setting the mood for him, and obviously on some level, he knew it. The four beers helped a bit, which is my answer to the ban on truth drugs. Works almost every time.

  I stood and said, “Take a look at this.”

  We all walked to the far side of the hangar where Cal Seiver sat at the computer. I said to Cal, “Colonel Kent would like to see this display.”

  “Right.” Cal called up a fairly good graphic of the crime scene, including the road, the rifle range, the bleachers, and the pop-up target, but without the spread-eagled body. “Okay,” he said, “it’s about 0130 hours now, and the victim’s humvee pulls up…” A top view of a vehicle entered the screen traveling from left to right. “It stops, the victim dismounts.” Instead of a profile or top view of a woman, the screen showed only two footprints beside the humvee. “Okay, from the latrines comes Colonel Moore…” Yellow footprints appeared on the screen walking from the top, toward the humvee, then stopping. “They talk, she takes off her clothes, including her shoes and socks—we don’t see that, of course, but we see now where they leave the road and begin walking out onto the rifle range… She’s red, he’s still yellow… side by side… We picked up her bare footprints there and there, and we’re extrapolating the rest, which are blinking to show the extrapolation. Same with his. Okay?”

  I glanced at Kent. “Okay?”

  He stared at the screen.

  Seiver continued. “Okay, they stop at that pop-up target, and she lies down…” A spread-eagled stick figure, in red, appeared on the screen at the base of the target. “We see no more of her footprints, of course, but after Moore ties her up, he leaves, and we can see where he turned and walked back to the road.” Seiver added, “Colonel, your dogs picked up his scent in the grass between the road and the latrines.”

  I commented, “This is the sort of visual display that impresses a court-martial board.”

  Kent said nothing.

  Seiver continued, “Okay, at about 0217 hours, General Campbell shows up in his wife’s car.”

  I looked at Kent, who seemed no more surprised by this revelation than by the revelation that Colonel Moore had met Ann Campbell, staked her out on the ground, and left her.

  Seiver continued, “It’s a problem getting a general to give you his boots or shoes that he wore to the scene of the crime, but I suspect that he never got more than a few yards from the road and did not approach the body. Okay, they talk, and he leaves in the car.”

  I said to Colonel Kent, “Are you following this?”

  He looked at me, but again said nothing.

  Cynthia prodded him. “Colonel, what we’re saying is that neither Colonel Moore nor General Campbell killed Ann. This was an elaborate setup, planned with military precision, sort of a psychological trap for the general. She was not meeting a lover out there, as some of us suspected, nor was she jumped by a maniac. She was getting back at her father.”

  Kent did not ask for an explanation of that, but just stared ahead at the screen.

  Cynthia explained, “She had been gang-raped when she was a cadet at West Point, and her father had forced her to remain silent and had conspired with high-ranking men to cover it up. Did you know any of that?”

  He looked at Cynthia, but gave no indication that he understood a word of what she was saying.

  Cynthia said, “She was re-creating what had happened to her at West Point to shock and humiliate her father.”

  I didn’t think I wanted Kent to know all of that, but in Kent’s present state of mind, perhaps it was just as well that he did.

  I said to Kent, “Did you think she was out there to act out a sexual fantasy?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I added, “Such as having a series of men come along to rape her?” br />
  Finally, he replied, “Knowing her, a lot of people thought that.”

  “Yes. We thought that, too, after we found that room in her basement. I guess you thought that, too, when you first saw her out there on the ground. It looked to you like an Ann Campbell script, and it was. But you weren’t reading it right.”

  No response.

  I said to Cal, “Go on.”

  “Right. So the general leaves, then here we see this set of prints… these are your prints, Colonel… the blue—”

  “No,” Kent said, “mine came later. After St. John and my MP, Casey, got there.”

  “No, sir,” Cal replied, “yours came before St. John’s. See here, we have your print and St. John’s print superimposed… The plaster cast verifies that St. John stepped on your footprint. So you got there before he did. No doubt about that.”

  I added, “In fact, Bill, when you got there, after the general left, Ann was alive. The general went off and got Colonel and Mrs. Fowler, and when they returned to the scene, Ann Campbell was dead.”

  Kent stood absolutely motionless.

  I said, “Your wife’s Jeep Cherokee, with you in it, was spotted by one of your MPs at about 0030 hours, parked in the library lot across from Post Headquarters. You were again spotted,” I lied, “driving in the direction of Rifle Range Road. We found where you turned off onto Jordan Field Road and hid the Cherokee in the bush. You left tire marks and hit a tree. We have matched the paint on the tree to your wife’s Jeep, and have seen the scrape on the Jeep. Also, we found your footprints,” I lied again, “in the drainage ditch along Rifle Range Road, heading south, toward the scene of the crime.” I added, “Do you want me to reconstruct the entire thing for you?”

  He shook his head.

  I said, “Given the amount of evidence—including the evidence for motive, which is the diary entries, the letter to your wife, and other evidence of your sexual involvement and obsession with the deceased—given all that, plus this forensic evidence and other evidence, I have to ask you to take a polygraph test, which we are prepared to administer now.”

  Actually, we weren’t, but now or later it didn’t really matter. I said to him, “If you refuse to take the test now, I have no choice but to place you under arrest, and I will get someone in the Pentagon to order you to take the polygraph.”