“Not in this job.”
“True.” In fact, we were a bit out of the mainstream of Army life, and so our colleagues and good buddies are fewer in number. Cops tend to be cliquish all over the world, and when you’re a military cop on continuing TDY— temporary duty—you don’t make many friends, and relationships with the opposite sex tend to be short and strained, somewhat like temporary duty itself.
Midland is officially six miles from Fort Hadley, but as I said, the town has grown southward along Victory Drive, great strips of neon commerce, garden apartments, and car dealers, so that the main gate resembles the Brandenburg Gate, separating chaotic private enterprise and tackiness from spartan sterility. The beer cans stop at the gate.
Cynthia’s Mustang, which I had noted sported a visitor’s parking sticker, was waived through the gate by an MP, and within a few minutes we were in the center of the main post, where traffic and parking are only slightly better than in downtown Midland.
She pulled up to the provost marshal’s office, an older brick building that was one of the first permanent structures built when Fort Hadley was Camp Hadley back around World War I. Military bases, like towns, start with a reason for being, followed by places to live, a jail, a hospital, and a church, not necessarily in that order.
We expected to be expected, but it took us a while, dressed as we were—a male sergeant and a female civilian—to get into his majesty’s office. I was not happy with Kent’s performance and lack of forethought so far. When I went through Leadership School, they taught us that lack of prior planning makes for a piss-poor performance. Now they say don’t be reactive, be proactive. But I have the advantage of having been taught in the old school, so I know what they’re talking about. I said to Kent, in his office, “Do you have a grip on this case, Colonel?”
“Frankly, no.”
Kent is also from the old school, and I respect that. I asked, “Why not?”
“Because you’re running it your way, with my support services and logistics.”
“Then you run it.”
“Don’t try to browbeat me, Paul.”
And so we parried and thrusted for a minute or two in a petty but classical argument between uniformed honest cop and sneaky undercover guy.
Cynthia listened patiently for a minute, then said, “Colonel Kent, Mr. Brenner, there is a dead woman lying out on the rifle range. She was murdered and possibly raped. Her murderer is at large.”
That about summed it up, and Kent and I hung our heads and shook hands, figuratively speaking. Actually, we just grumbled.
Kent said to me, “I’m going to General Campbell’s office in about five minutes with the chaplain and a medical officer. Also, the victim’s off-post phone number is being forwarded to Jordan Field, and the forensic people are still at the scene. Here are Captain Campbell’s medical and personnel files. The dental file is with the coroner, who also wants her medical file, so I need it back.”
“Photocopy it,” I suggested. “You have my authorization.”
We were almost at it again, but Ms. Sunhill, ever the peacemaker, interjected, “I’ll copy the fucking file.”
This sort of stopped the fun, and we got back to business. Kent showed us into an interrogation room—now called the interview room in newspeak—and asked us, “Who do you want to see first?”
“Sergeant St. John,” I replied. Rank has its privileges.
Sergeant Harold St. John was shown into the room, and I indicated a chair across a small table at which Cynthia and I sat. I said to St. John, “This is Ms. Sunhill and I am Mr. Brenner.”
He glanced at my name tag, which said White, and my stripes, which said staff sergeant, and he didn’t get it at first, then he got it and said, “Oh… CID.”
“Whatever.” I continued, “You are not a suspect in the case that we are investigating, so I will not read you your rights under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You are therefore under orders to answer my questions fully and truthfully. Of course, your voluntary cooperation would be preferable to a direct order. If, during the course of this interview, you say something that I or Ms. Sunhill believes would make you a suspect, we will read you your rights, and you have the right to remain silent at that point.” Not fucking likely, Harry. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” We chatted about nothing important for five minutes while I sized him up. St. John was a balding man of about fifty-five, with a brownish complexion that I thought could be explained by caffeine, nicotine, and bourbon. His life and career in the motor pool had probably predisposed him to look at the world as a continuing maintenance problem whose solution lay somewhere in the
Cynthia was jotting a few notes as St. John and I spoke, and in the middle of my small talk, he blurted out, “Look, sir, I know I was the last person to see her alive, and I know that means something, but if I killed her, I wasn’t going to go report I found her dead. Right?”
Sounded reasonable, except for the verb tenses and syntax. I said to him, “The last person to see her alive was the person who murdered her. The person who murdered her was also the first person to see her dead. You were the second person to see her dead. Right?”
“Yeah… yes, sir… What I meant—”
“Sergeant, if you would be good enough not to think ahead of the questions, I would really like that. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ms. Compassion said, “Sergeant, I know this has been very trying for you, and what you discovered must have been fairly traumatic, even for a veteran—have you been in a theater of war?”
“Yes, ma’am. ’Nam. Saw lots of dead, but never nothing like that.”
“Yes, so when you discovered the body, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing. Correct?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “I couldn’t, you know, believe my eyes. I didn’t even think it was her. You know, I didn’t recognize her at first, because… I never… never saw her that way… Jesus Christ, I never saw anybody that way. You know, there was a good moon last night, and I see the humvee, and I get out of my car, and off a ways I see… you know—this thing lying there on the rifle range, and I get a little closer and a little closer, and then I know what it is and go right up to her and see if she’s dead or alive.”
“Did you kneel beside the body?”
“Hell, no, ma’am. I just beat feet the hell out of there, got into my car, and tore ass right over to the provost marshal.”
“Are you certain she was dead?”
“I know dead when I see dead.”
“You’d left headquarters at what time?”
“About 0400 hours.”
“What time did you find the body?” Cynthia asked.
“Well, must have been about twenty, thirty minutes later.”
“And you stopped at the other guard posts?”
“Some of them. Nobody saw her come by. Then I get to thinking she headed off toward the last post first. So I skipped some posts and went right out there.”
“Did you ever think she was malingering somewhere?”
“No.”
“Think again, Sergeant.”
“Well… she wasn’t the type. But maybe I thought about it. I do remember thinking she could have got lost out on the reservation. That ain’t hard to do at night.”
“Did you think she could have had an accident?”
“I thought about it, ma’am.”
“So when you found her, you weren’t actually taken by complete surprise?”
“Maybe not.” He fished around for his cigarettes and asked me, “Okay to smoke?”
“Sure. Don’t exhale.”
