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?”
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
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.
