He smiled and lit up, puffed away, and apologized to Ms. Sunhill for fouling the air. Maybe what I don’t miss about the old Army is twenty-five-cent-a-pack cigarettes, and the blue haze that hung over everything except the ammo dumps and fuel storage areas.
I let him get his fix, then asked, “Did the word ‘rape’ ever cross your mind as you were driving around looking for her?”
He nodded.
“I didn’t know her,” I said. “Was she good-looking?”
He glanced at Cynthia, then looked at me. “Real good-looking.”
“What we call rape bait?”
He didn’t want to touch that one, but he replied, “She never flaunted it. Real cool customer. If a guy had anything on his mind, he’d get it out of there real quick. Everything I heard about her said she was a fine woman. General’s daughter.”
Harry was going to learn otherwise in the coming days and weeks, but it was interesting that the conventional wisdom seemed to be that Ann Campbell was a lady.
St. John added gratuitously, “Some of these women, like the nurses, you know, they should be a little more… you know?”
I could actually feel Cynthia heating up beside me. If I had any real balls, I would have told him that the CID women were worse. But I survived ’Nam, and I wasn’t going to push my luck. Back to business. I asked, “After you discovered the body, why didn’t you go on to the next guard post, where PFC Robbins was, and use her telephone?”
“Never thought to do that.”
“And never thought to post Robbins at the scene of the crime?”
“No, sir. I was really shook.”
“What made you go out and look for Captain Campbell in the first place?”
“She was gone a long time, and I didn’t know where she was at.”
She was supposed to be behind the preposition, but I let that slide and asked, “Do you make it a habit to check up on superior officers?”
“No, sir. But I had the feeling something was wrong.”
Ah-ha. “Why?”
“Well… she was… kind of… like jumpy all night…”
Cynthia’s turn. “Will you describe her behavior for me?”
“Yeah… well, like I said—jumpy. Kind of like out of it. Worried, maybe.”
“Did you know her prior to that night?”
“Yeah… not real well. But like everybody knew her. General’s daughter. She did that recruiting commercial on TV.”
I asked him, “Did you ever speak to her before that night?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you ever see her on post?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Off post?”
“No, sir.”
“So you really can’t compare her normal behavior with the behavior of that evening?”
“No, sir, but I know what worried looks like.” He added, in probably a rare moment of insight, “I could tell she was a cool customer, like the way she did her job that night, real cool and efficient, but every once in a while, she’d get quiet and I could see she had something on her mind.”
“Did you comment to her about that?”
“Hell, no. She woulda snapped my fucking head off.” He smiled sheepishly at Cynthia, revealing two decades of victimization by Army dentists. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“Speak freely,” said Ms. Sunhill with a winning smile that indicated good dental hygiene and civilian dentists.
And, actually, Cynthia was right. Half these old Army types couldn’t express themselves without swearing, jargon, foreign words from some duty station or another, and a little regional southern dialect, even if they weren’t from around here.
Cynthia asked him, “Did she make or receive any phone calls during the night?”
Good question, but I already knew the answer before St. John said, “She never made one while I was in the room. But maybe the times I was out. She got a call, though, and asked me to leave the room.”
“What time was that?”
“Oh, about… about ten minutes before she left to check the guard.”
I asked, “Did you eavesdrop?”
He shook his head emphatically. “No, sir!”
“Okay, tell me, Sergeant, how close did you get to the body?”
“Well… a few feet.”
“I don’t understand how you could determine she was dead.”
“Well… I just figured she was dead… Her eyes were open… I called out to her…”
“Were you armed?”
“No, sir.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be armed for duty?”
“I guess I forgot to bring it along.”
“So you saw the body, figured she was dead, and hightailed it.”
“Yes, sir… I guess I shoulda checked closer.”
“Sergeant, a naked woman is lying at your feet, a superior officer at that, someone you knew, and you didn’t even bend over to see if she was alive or dead.”
Cynthia gave me a tap under the table.
Having become the bad cop, it was time for me to leave the witness with the good cop. I stood and said, “You two continue. I may be back.” I left the room and went to the holding cells, where PFC Robbins was lying on a cot, dressed in BDUs, barefoot. She was reading the post newspaper, a weekly effort of the Public Information Office, dealing mostly with manufacturing good news. I wondered how they were going to sanitize the rape and murder of the post commander’s daughter:
I opened the unlocked cell and entered. PFC Robbins eyed me a moment, then put the newspaper down and sat up against the wall.
I said, “Good morning. My name is Mr. Brenner from the CID. I’d like to ask you some questions about last night.”
She looked me over and informed me, “Your name tag says White.”
“My aunt’s uniform.” I sat on a plastic chair. “You are not a suspect in this case,” I began, and went through my rap. She seemed unimpressed.
I began my inconsequential chatter, and I received one-word replies. I took stock of PFC Robbins. She was about twenty, short blond hair, neat appearance, and alert eyes considering her long night and day, and all in all not badlooking. Her accent was Deep South, not very far from here, I guessed, and her socioeconomic status prior to taking the oath was way down there. Now she was equal to every PFC in the Army, superior to the new recruits, and probably on the way up.
I asked the first question of consequence. “Did you see Captain Campbell that evening?”
“She came around the guardhouse about 2200 hours. Spoke to the officer of the guard.”
“You recognized her as Captain Campbell?”
“Everyone knows Captain Campbell.”
“Did you see her at any time after that?”
“No.”
“She never came to your post?”
“No.”
