The General's Daughter

He ignored me and said to Cynthia, “Could you at least pass that cup of milk here? I’m very dry.”

“Sure.” Cynthia put the milk near his manacled hands, and he took the cup with both hands and drained it in one long gulp. He put the cup down, and we all stayed silent for a minute or so while Moore savored the milk as if it were a glass of that cream sherry he liked.

Cynthia said to him, “Did she ever indicate to you that she thought her father might come alone, might become enraged, and actually kill her?”

Moore answered quickly, “No! If she had, I would never have agreed to her—to the plan.”

I nodded to myself. I didn’t know if that was true or not, and only two people did. One of them was dead, the other, sitting here, was going to lie about it to mitigate what he’d done. The general himself knew, of course, how he’d felt in that moment when his daughter had hurled the challenge at him. But he couldn’t even tell himself what he felt, and he wasn’t going to tell me. In a way, it didn’t matter anymore.

Cynthia asked the prisoner, “Did it occur to you or Ann Campbell that the general did not come prepared to free his daughter—I don’t mean psychologically—I’m referring to a knife or stake puller.”

Moore replied, “Yes, she considered that. In fact, I stuck a bayonet in the ground. . . you found that, didn’t you?”

Cynthia asked, “Where was the bayonet?”

“Well. . . sort of between her legs. . . The men who raped her at West Point took her bayonet and jammed it in the ground, close to her. . . her vagina, then warned her about not reporting what happened, then she was cut loose.”

Cynthia nodded. “I see. . .”

Moore continued, “She was trying to shock him, of course, shock both of them, and they were going to have to retrieve the bayonet and cut her loose. Then she thought he would offer her his shirt or jacket. I’d left her bra there, and her panties were around her neck, as I’m sure you found them. That’s how they had left her in the woods at West Point. They’d thrown her clothes around, and she’d had to retrieve them in the dark. In this case, however, she intended for her parents to help her back to the humvee, then she intended to tell her father where her clothes were—on top of the latrine—and make him go get them. She’d left her handbag in the humvee with her keys, and it was her intention to get dressed and drive off as if nothing had happened, then return to duty at Post Headquarters. Then she was going to show up at the breakfast meeting she had with her parents, and, at that point, they would all confront the issues.”

Again Cynthia nodded. She asked, “Did she have much hope for this breakfast meeting?”

He considered a moment, then replied, “Yes, I think she did. Depending, of course, on how her father and mother had reacted to the rape scene. Well, as it turned out, Mrs. Campbell had not come along. But I think that Ann realized that whatever forces she unleashed that night, no matter how her father reacted, things could not get any worse. There is a high risk with shock therapy, but when you’ve nothing left to lose, when you’ve hit bottom, then you’re ready to gamble everything and hope for the best.”

Cynthia nodded again, the way they tell you to do in the interrogation manual. Be positive, affirming. Don’t appear stone-faced, or judgmental, or skeptical when a suspect is rolling. Just keep nodding, like a shrink during a therapy session. Perhaps Moore recognized the technique, which was ironic, but in his present mental and physical state, all he wanted was a smile, a nod, and the stupid donut. Cynthia asked him, “Did she tell you why she had hope for this meeting? I mean, why this time, after all those years?”

“Well. . . she was finally ready to forgive. She was prepared to say anything that morning, to promise anything that would make things right again. She was tired of the war, and she felt the catharsis even before she’d gone out to the rifle range. She was hopeful, almost giddy, and to tell you the truth, she was happy and close to peace for the first time since I’d known her.” He took a long breath and looked at us, then said, “I know what you think of me, and I don’t blame you, but I had only her best interests at heart. She had seduced me, too, in another way, and I went along with what I knew was. . . unorthodox. But if you could have seen how optimistic she was, how almost girlish she was acting—nervous, frightened, but filled with hope that this was the end of the long nightmare. . . In fact, however, I knew that the damage she had done to herself and others was not going to disappear just like that, just because she was going to say to her parents, ‘I love you, and I forgive you if you forgive me’. . . but she believed this, and she had me believing it too. . . But she miscalculated. . . I miscalculated her father’s rage. . . and the irony is, she thought she was so close to being happy again. . . and she kept rehearsing what she was going to say to them that night. . . and at breakfast. . .”

Then the oddest thing happened. Two tears rolled down Moore’s cheeks, and he put his face in his hands.

Cynthia stood and put her hand on his shoulder and motioned me to come with her. We went out into the corridor, and she said to me, “Let him go, Paul.”

“Hell, no.”

“You got your jailhouse interview. Let him go sleep in his office, attend the funeral tomorrow. We’ll deal with him tomorrow or the next day. He’s not going anywhere.”

I shrugged. “All right. God, I’m getting soft.” I went to the guard office and spoke to the sergeant. I filled out a confinement release form and signed it—I hate confinement release forms—then I walked out to the corridor where Cynthia was waiting for me.

I said, “He’s free, but restricted to post.”

“Good. It was the right thing.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Paul. . . anger is not going to change anything that happened, and vindictiveness is not going to bring justice. That’s the lesson you should learn from this. Ann Campbell never did. But what happened to her should at least be a useful example of that.”

“Thank you.”

We walked to our office, and I sat at the desk, dividing the diary printouts between Cynthia and myself. Before we began to read, I said to her, “What happened to the bayonet?”

She replied, “I don’t know. If General Campbell never approached his daughter, then he never saw it, and never knew that he could have cut her loose. He told us two versions of that story—one was that he tried to get her free by pulling at the stakes, the other that he couldn’t bring himself to get that close.” She added, “He actually never got that close.”

“Right. So the next person on the scene—let’s say it was Kent—saw the bayonet, and Kent had the same choice—if it was Kent. Then came the Fowlers, who had their own knife. . . but she was already dead. Then came Sergeant St. John, then MP Casey. . . I don’t know, but it’s interesting that whoever pulled the bayonet out of the ground kept it. . .” I noodled this awhile, then said, “If we accept the general’s second version, that he never went near her, then it wasn’t him. The killer had no reason to take the bayonet. Neither did St. John or MP Casey.”

“Are you saying the Fowlers took it?”

“I’m saying that when the Fowlers found her dead, and saw that the means of freeing her was right there between her legs, if you will, they realized that the general had lied to them, that the general had not tried to free her, as I’m sure he told them he did. That, in fact, as General Campbell told us truthfully in the second version, he had kept his distance from her, and they had shouted to each other. So when the Fowlers saw the bayonet, they realized that the general could have freed her, but did not, and as a result, she was dead. Not wanting to tell him this, or have him find out through the official report, they took the bayonet and discarded it. This was another favor they were doing for him, but they weren’t doing us any favors.”

Cynthia thought a moment, then said, “Yes, that’s probably what happened.” She looked at me. “And her West Point ring?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“The Fowlers again?”

“Possible. Another favor, though I don’t get it. Maybe the killer took it as a sentimental remembrance. I don’t think MP Casey or St. John would do something so ghoulish, but you just never know what people are going to do in the presence of a dead body. Then again, maybe the general got a little closer to his daughter than he said. He took the bayonet, considered cutting her loose, then changed his mind, took her ring off, and told her she was dishonoring her uniform, or lack of same, and left—then had a change of heart and drove to the Fowlers. Who knows? Who cares at this point?”

“I do. I have to know how people act, what goes on in their hearts. It’s important, Paul, because it’s what