I examined the other tapes and saw they were all handlabeled, with rather pithy titles like “Fucking with J.,” “Strip search for B.,” “Gyno Exam—R.,” and “Anal with J.S.”
Cynthia said, “I think we’ve seen enough for now.”
“Almost enough.” I opened the top dresser drawer and discovered a pile of Polaroid photos, and thinking I’d hit pay dirt, I flipped through them, looking for her friends, but every photo was of only her in various poses ranging from nearly artistic and erotic to obscene gynecological shots. “Where’re the guys?”
“Behind the camera.”
“There’s got to be…” Then, in another stack of photos, I found a shot of a well-built naked man holding a belt, but wearing a black leather hood. Then another shot of a guy on top of her, possibly taken with a time delay or by a third person, then a photo of a naked gent, manacled to the wall, his back to the camera. In fact, all the men —and there were at least twelve different bodies—were either turned away from the camera or wearing the leather discipline hood. Obviously, these guys didn’t want any face photos left here, and similarly, they probably had no face shots of Ann Campbell in their possession. Most people are a little careful of photos like these, and when the people have a lot to lose, they are very careful. Love and trust are okay, but I had the feeling this was more lust and “What’s your name again?” I mean, if she had a real boyfriend, a man she liked and admired, she wouldn’t bring him here, obviously.
Cynthia was going through the photos also, but handling them as though they carried a sexually transmittable disease. There were a few more shots of men, close-ups of genitals, ranging from much ado about nothing to as you like it to the taming of the shrew. I observed, “All white guys, all circumcised, mostly brown hair, a few blonds. Can we use these in a lineup?”
“It would be an interesting lineup,” Cynthia conceded. She threw the photos back in the drawer. “Maybe we shouldn’t let the MPs see this room.”
“Indeed not. I hope they don’t find it.”
“Let’s go.”
“Just a minute.” I opened the bottom three drawers, finding more sexual paraphernalia, toys for twats as they’re known in the trade, along with panties, garter belts, a cat-o’-nine tails, a leather jockstrap, and a few things that I confess I couldn’t figure out. I was actually a bit embarrassed rummaging through this stuff in full view of Ms. Sunhill, and she was probably wondering about me by now, because she said, “What else do you have to see?”
“Rope.”
“Rope? Oh…”
And there it was: a length of nylon cord, curled up in the bottom drawer. I took it out and examined it.
Cynthia said, “Is it the same?”
“Possibly. This looks like the rope at the scene—standard Army-green tent cord, but there’s about six million miles of it out there. Still, it is suggestive.” I looked at the bed, which was an old four-poster, suitable for bondage. I don’t know a great deal about sexual deviations except for what I’ve read in the CID manual, but I do know that bondage is a risky thing. I mean, a big healthy woman like Ann Campbell could probably defend herself if something got out of hand. But if you’re spread-eagled on the bed or the ground with your wrists and ankles tied to something, you’d better know the guy real well, or something bad could happen. Actually, it did.
I turned out the lights and we left the bedroom. Cynthia swung the framed recruiting poster closed. I found a tube of wood glue on the workbench, opened the hinged poster a crack, and ran a bead of glue along the wood frame. That would help a little, but once you figured out that some floor space was missing, you’d figure out the rest of it, and if you didn’t realize some space was missing, the poster looked like it belonged there. I said to Cynthia, “Fooled me for a minute. How smart are MPs?”
“It’s more a matter of spatial perception than brains. And if they don’t find it, the police might when they get here.” She added, “Someone might want that poster. I think we either have to let the MPs empty the room for the CID lab, or we cooperate with the civilian police before they padlock this place.”
“I think we do neither. We take a chance. That room is our secret. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay, Paul. Maybe your instincts are good on this.”
We went up the basement stairs, turned off the lights, and closed the door.
In the front foyer, Cynthia said to me, “I guess your instincts were right about Ann Campbell.”
“Well, I thought we’d be lucky if we found a diary and a few steamy love notes. I didn’t expect a secret door that led into a room decorated for Madame Bovary by the Marquis de Sade.” I added, “I guess we all need our space. The world would actually be a better place if we all had a fantasy room in which to act out.”
“Depends on the script, Paul.”
“Indeed.”
We left by the front door, got into Cynthia’s Mustang, and headed back up Victory Drive, passing a convoy of Army trucks heading the other way as we approached the post.
As Cynthia drove, I stared out the side window, deep in thought.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
As Cynthia drove, she divided her attention between the road and Ann Campell’s address book, mostly at the expense of the road. I said, “Give me that.”
She threw it on my lap in a gesture that was definitely meant to be aggressive.
I flipped through the address book, a thick leather-bound and well-worn book of good quality, written in a neat hand. Every space was filled with names and addresses, a good number of them crossed out and reentered with a new address as people changed duty stations, homes, wives, husbands, units, countries, and from alive to dead. In fact, I saw two entries marked KIA. It was a typical address book of a career soldier, spanning the years and the world, and, while I knew it was probably her desktop official address book and not the little black book that we hadn’t yet found, I was still fairly certain that someone in this book knew something. If I had two years, I could question all of them. Clearly, I had to give the book to headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, where my immediate superior, Colonel Karl Gustav Hellmann, would parcel it out all over the world, generating a stack of transcribed interviews taller than the great Teutonic pain-in-the-ass himself. Maybe he’d decide to read them and stay off my case.
A word about my boss. Karl Hellmann was actually born a German citizen close to an American military installation near Frankfurt, and, like many hungry children whose families were devastated by the war, he had made himself a sort of mascot for the American troops and eventually joined the U.S. military to support his family. There were a good number of these galvanized German Yankees in the U.S. military years ago, and many of them became officers, and some are still around. On the whole, they make excellent officers, and the Army is lucky to have them. The people who have to work for them are not so lucky. But enough whining. Karl is efficient, dedicated, loyal, and correct in both senses of the word. The only mistake I ever knew him to make was when he decided I liked him. Wrong, Karl. But I do respect him, and I would trust him with my life. In fact, I have.
Obviously, this case needed a breakthrough, a shortcut by which we could get to the end quickly, before careers and reputations were flushed down the toilet. Soldiers are encouraged to kill in the proper setting, but killing within the service is definitely a slap in the face to good order and discipline. It raises too many questions about that thin line between the bloodcurdling, screaming bayonet charge—“What’s the spirit of the bayonet?
The best I could hope for in this case was that the murder was committed by a slimeball civilian with a previous arrest record going back ten years. The worst I could imagine was… well, early indications pointed to it, whatever it was.
Cynthia said, apropos of the address book, “She had lots of friends and acquaintances.”
“Don’t you?”
