I showed him my ID and said, “Please take us to Colonel Moore’s office.”
“I’ll ring him, Chief,” he replied, using the informal form of address for a warrant officer. I don’t like “Chief,” and I said to him, “I guess you didn’t hear me, Sarge. Take us to his office.”
“Yes, sir. Follow me.”
We walked down a long corridor of concrete-block walls, painted a sort of slime-mold green. The floor wasn’t even tiled, but was poured concrete, painted deck gray. Solid steel doors, all open, were spaced every twelve feet or so, and I could see into the small offices: lieutenants and captains, probably all psychologists, laboring away at gray steel desks. I said to Cynthia, “Forget Nietzsche. This is Kafka territory.”
The sergeant glanced at me, but said nothing.
I asked him, “How long has the colonel been in?”
“Only about ten minutes.”
“Is that his gray Ford Fairlane out front?”
“Yes, sir. Is this about the Campbell murder?”
“It’s not about a parking ticket.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s Captain Campbell’s office?”
“Just to the right of Colonel Moore’s office.” He added, “It’s empty”
We reached the end of the hallway, which dead-ended at a closed door marked “Colonel Moore.”
The sergeant asked us, “Should I announce you?”
“No. That will be all, Sergeant.”
He hesitated, then said, “I…”
‘Yes?’
“I hope to God you find the guy who did it.” He turned and walked back down the long corridor.
The last door on the right was also closed and the sign on it said, “Captain Campbell.” Cynthia opened the door and we went inside.
Indeed, the office was bare, except that on the floor lay a bouquet of flowers. There was no note.
We left the office and walked the few steps to Colonel Moore’s door. I knocked, and Moore called out, “Come in, come in.”
Cynthia and I entered. Colonel Moore was hunched over his desk and did not look up. The office was big, but as drab as the others we’d passed. There were file cabinets against the right-hand wall, a small conference table near the lefthand wall, and an open steel locker in the corner, where Colonel Moore had hung his jacket. A floor fan swept the room, rustling papers taped to the block wall. Beside Moore’s desk was the ultimate government status symbol: a paper shredder.
Colonel Moore glanced up. “What is it—? Oh…” He sort of looked around, as if he were trying to figure out how we got there.
I said, “We’re sorry to drop in like this, Colonel, but we were in the neighborhood. May we sit?”
“Yes, all right.” He motioned to the two chairs opposite his desk. “I’d really appreciate it if you make an appointment next time.”
“Yes, sir. The next time we’ll make an appointment for you to come to the provost marshal’s building.”
“Just let me know.”
Like many scientific and academic types, Colonel Moore seemed to miss the subtleties of the organizational world around him. I don’t think he would have gotten it even if I’d said, “The next time we talk, it will be at police headquarters.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Well,” I said, “I’d like you to assure me again that you were home on the evening of the tragedy.”
“All right. I was home from about 1900 hours until I left for work at about 0730 hours.”
Which was about the time Cynthia and I had gotten to Victory Gardens. I asked him, “You live alone?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Can anyone verify that you were home?”
“No.”
“You placed a call to Post Headquarters at 2300 hours and spoke to Captain Campbell. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“The conversation had to do with work?”
“That’s right.”
“You called her again at about noon at home and left a message on her answering machine.”
“Yes.”
“But you’d been trying to call her earlier, and her phone was out of order.”
“That’s right.”
“What were you calling her about?”
“Just what I said on the message—the MPs came and completely emptied her office. I argued with them because there was classified material in her files, but they wouldn’t listen.” He added, “The Army is run like a police state. Do you realize they don’t even need a search warrant to do that?”
“Colonel, if this was IBM corporate headquarters, the security guards could do the same thing on orders from a ranking officer of the company. Everything and everyone here belongs to Uncle Sam. You have certain constitutional rights regarding a criminal investigation, but I don’t suggest you try to exercise any of them unless I put the cuffs on you right now and take you to jail. Then everyone, myself included, will see that your rights are protected. So are you in a cooperative frame of mind this morning, Colonel?”
“No. But I’ll cooperate with you under duress and protest.”
“Good.” I looked around the office again. On the top shelf of the open steel locker was a toilet kit from which, I assumed, the hairbrush had been taken, and I wondered if Moore had noticed.
I looked in the receptacle of his paper shredder, but it was empty, which was good. Moore was not stupid and neither was he the benign absentminded professor type; he was, in fact, as I said, somewhat sinister-looking and cunning. But he had an arrogant carelessness about him so that, if I had seen a sledgehammer and tent pegs on his desk, I wouldn’t have been too surprised.
“Mr. Brenner? I’m very busy this morning.”
“Right. You said you would assist us in certain psychological insights into Captain Campbell’s personality.”
“What would you like to know?”
“Well, first, why did she hate her father?”
He looked at me for a long moment and observed, “I see you’ve learned a few things since our last conversation.”
“Yes, sir. Ms. Sunhill and I go round and round and talk to people, and each person tells us a little something, then we go back and reinterview people, and, in a few days, we know what to ask and who to ask, and by and by we know the good guys from the bad guys, and we arrest the bad guys. It’s kind of simple compared to psychological warfare.”
“You’re too modest.”
“Why did she hate her father?”
He took a deep breath, sat back, and said, “Let me begin by saying that I believe General Campbell has what is called an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. That is to say, he is full of himself, domineering, can’t tolerate criticism, is a perfectionist, has trouble showing affection, but is totally competent and functional.”
“You’ve described ninety percent of the generals in the Army. So what?”
“Well, but Ann Campbell was not much different, which is not unusual considering they are related. So, two like personalities grow up in the same house, one an older male, the father, the other a younger female, the daughter. The potential for problems was there.”
“So this problem goes back to her unhappy childhood.”
“Not actually. It starts off well. Ann saw herself in her father and liked what she saw, and her father saw himself in his daughter and was equally pleased. In fact, Ann described to me a happy childhood and a close relationship with her father.”
“Then it went bad?”
