could introduce him to some friendly enlisted troops. He had tipped his own hand.
As alibis went, it sucked.
I opened Moran’s interrogation packet. Carl G. Moran was his full name. There was a photograph taken at the MP station clipped to the inside jacket.
It was a black-and-white that showed a large, powerful-looking man – actually, burly might be a better word. Maybe forty years old, with salt-and-pepper hair, a broad face, and a nose that looked like it had been introduced to a few fists in its day. But it was the eyes that really got your attention. Unnaturally large, they made an odd contrast to the rest of his face. They were like doe’s eyes, with long, luxurious lashes, on a face that looked otherwise like a prizefighter’s mug. That Marlon Brando look, at least before Brando ate so much and his face got so bloated you could barely tell he had eyes.
Moran’s expression was maybe confused, maybe irritated, maybe both.
Again, Bales went through the routine of reading him his rights. The strange thing here was that Moran interrupted him to ask if Whitehall had asked for an attorney. Bales said no, so Moran waived his rights as well.
I put down the packet. Why was that important to Moran? Was that some kind of litmus test? So what if Whitehall had declined an attorney? Something was odd about this; like maybe Moran was testing to see if he could trust Whitehall. Anyway, I made a mental note to think more about it later.
“What was your relationship to the victim?” Bales got around to asking after he’d exhausted his repertoire of warm-up questions.
Moran said, “He was a buddy of Captain Whitehall’s. I didn’t know him from shit, but the captain invited him over.”
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“Why did Captain Whitehall invite him over?”
“Got me,” Moran said. “Maybe they were buddies. Maybe he thought we’d like him.”
“Had you ever met the victim before?”
“Nope. I might of seen him about base, but all these friggin’ gooks look alike to me.”
Gooks? I could just imagine the expression that must’ve popped onto Inspector Choi’s face at that moment.
Bales said, “Was there any drinking at the party?”
“Yeah, of course. What do you think, we’re a bunch of choirboys?”
“Any drugs?”
“Come on, Chief. You got a captain and you got a first sergeant there. Think anyone’d be stupid enough to use that shit in front of us?”
“Does that mean no?”
“Friggin’A, it means no.”
“What time did the party end?”
“I don’t know. Wasn’t like I was checking my watch. Late, though.”
“Had you or any of the others had too much to drink?”
“Hell, yeah. I could barely stand up, so the captain told us we could all crash there.”
“And where did everybody sleep?”
“I… uh… shit, I was too drunk to notice.”
“You discovered the corpse, though. How did that happen?”
“I got up at five. I was kind of fuzzy, you know. I mean, I’d put down easily a whole fifth of Jack Walker. I went and pissed. Then I went to the captain’s room to check on ’em. Nobody answered when I knocked, so I opened the door. That gook kid was just laying there, real still. I went over and shook him. Nothing. So I rolled him over and seen this belt around his neck. He looked deader than shit, so I went and called the MPs.”
“The belt was around his neck when you woke him?”
“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”
“What kind of belt?”
“It… uh, it was a standard Army belt. Could’ve been anybody’s, though. I mean, even the gook, ’cause he was a Katusa, he wore an American Army uniform, right? Might of been his own, you know. I mean, maybe the kid hung himself from the ceiling and he fell off.”
“Did you remove the belt?”
“Never touched the damned thing.”
“Do you know who did?”
“Nah. Never saw anyone else take it off, neither.”
“So you don’t know who did remove it?”
Bales was asking all the right questions. Absent autopsy results, he had to assume the belt was the murder weapon. And if he could find out whose belt it was, he might have his killer.
“Ain’t got a clue,” Moran announced.
“Did you wake the others up?”
“Yeah.”
“And where were they sleeping?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?” Bales asked, and I could only imagine the incredulous expression on his face. Of course, he still had no notion at that point exactly how critically important this question would later prove to be.
“That’s what I told you. Like I said, I was still woozy, and the sight of that gook’s corpse left me not thinking too straight.”
I guess because Bales was not yet aware of the nature of the relationships among the four men, he took this response in stride and did not press further.
“So did you hear any sounds that night? Maybe a struggle? Maybe an argument?”
“Nope. A quart of Jack’s better than a sleeping pill. Shit, somebody could’ve shot the kid, instead of strangled him. I wouldn’t of heard it. I ain’t gotta clue what happened to that gook kid. I swear.”
“I, uh, I have only one other question,” Bales said. “Did you invite Private Jackson to the party?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? Isn’t it unusual for a first sergeant to invite a private to a party at an officer’s quarters? Especially when there’s going to be drinking?”
“Hey, Jackson’s my company clerk. A good kid, too. He don’t have many friends, though, and I thought I’d give him a chance to get out of the barracks. I felt kind of sorry for him. It was probably bad judgment, but hey, ain’t no crime in it, is there?”
“No, I suppose not,” Bales replied, underscoring exactly how naive he was at that stage of the game.
I put the transcript back in the folder and thought about it. At this stage, Moran was obviously trying to cover Whitehall’s ass. He knew whose belt was around Lee’s neck, he probably knew who removed it, and he damn well knew who was sleeping in whose beds. He lied, though.
Like Whitehall, he had to know the semen inside Lee’s body would eventually be discovered. So why had he lied to Bales? And what made him stop lying later and turn evidence against Whitehall?
This was all the more perplexing because Whitehall and Moran had stupidly put themselves inside a tightly restricted box. There were no signs of a break-in at the apartment. Whitehall had foolishly admitted he’d made sure the door was locked before they went off to sleep. He’d also admitted that only he and the management company that ran the complex had keys. Not very bright, if you think about it. Why hadn’t Whitehall claimed he’d left the door unlocked? And Moran could’ve reinforced that by saying, yeah, sure he remembered hearing the sounds of a door opening and closing in the middle of the night, but thought it was only Jackson or Whitehall or Lee going to the bathroom. At least that would’ve opened up the possibility that an uninvited guest had slipped in and strangled Lee.
Katherine was going to have a bitch of a time trying to prove Whitehall was framed. The annoying fool had narrowed the spotlight to only himself and two other men, both of whom had already turned state’s evidence. That was yet another flaw in the frame defense. Court-martial boards turn skeptical when an accused man claims he
