The General's Daughter

Daddy’s second betrayal. General’s daughter found naked by twenty guards.”

Cynthia nodded. She said, “But she knows that her father will eventually realize the same thing, and will have to come back in order to avoid that disgraceful occurrence. So in either case, she wants Kent gone.”

“Probably. He’s interfering with her script. He sees the bayonet stuck in the ground—assuming the general didn’t take it—and offers to cut her loose. Or he figures that she can’t walk away from a conversation with him under the circumstances, and he asks her what’s going on, or asks her to marry him, or whatever, and the dialogue develops, and Ann, who’s been tied to the bedposts many times in her basement, is not so much frightened or embarrassed as she is annoyed and impatient. We just don’t know what was said, what went on.”

“No, we don’t, but we know how the conversation ended.”

“Right. He may have twisted the rope to get her undivided attention, he may even have sexually stimulated her while he was causing sexual asphyxia, a trick he may have learned from her… but at some point, he twisted the rope and didn’t stop twisting.”

We sat there a full minute, playing it over again in our minds, then Cynthia stood and said, “That’s about what happened. Then he walked back to the road, realized what he’d done, and ran all the way back to his Jeep. He may have reached the Jeep before the Fowlers even started out, and he sped out of there and reached Bethany Hill as the Fowlers were leaving their house. He may even have passed them on one of the streets. He went home, parked his wife’s Jeep in the garage, went inside, probably cleaned up, and waited for the phone call from his MPs.” She added, “I wonder if he slept.”

“I don’t know, but when I saw him a few hours later, he looked composed, though now that I think about it, he was a little distracted.” I added, “He disassociated himself from the crime, as criminals usually do after the first few hours, but it’s coming back to him now.”

“Can we prove any of this?”

“No.”

“So what do we do?”

“Confront him. The time has come.”

“He’ll deny it all, and we’ll be looking for work in the civilian sector.”

“Probably. And you know what? We may be wrong.”

Cynthia was pacing now, having a debate with herself. She stopped and said, “How about finding the place where he pulled the Jeep off the road?”

“Yes, first light is at 0536. Should I call you or nudge you?”

She ignored this and said, “The tire tracks will be washed out. But if he broke brush, we can see where the vehicle left the road.”

“Right. This will remove some of our doubts. But it still leaves reasonable doubt, and we need beyond a reasonable doubt.”

She said, “There might be brush or pine needles stuck on his vehicle that can be matched to the vegetation that was broken.”

“There might be if the guy was an idiot, but he’s not. That Jeep is as clean as a humvee waiting for an IG inspection.”

“Damn it.”

“We have to confront him, and we have to do it at the right psychological moment… tomorrow, after the funeral service. That’s our first, last, and only chance to get a confession.”

Cynthia nodded. “If he’s going to talk, he’ll do it then. If he wants to get it off his chest, he’ll do it with us, not the FBI.”

“Correct.”

“Time for bed.” She picked up the phone and asked the CQ to ring us at 0400 hours, which would give me three hours sleep if I passed out in the next ten seconds. But I had another idea. I said, “Let’s shower now and save time.”

“Well…”

Bad response. As my father once said, “Women control seventy percent of the wealth in this country, and a hundred percent of the pussy.” Cynthia and I were a little shy, I think, the way ex-lovers are when they try it again. And all the rape talk didn’t help set the mood. I mean, there was no music here, no candles, no champagne. The only thing here was the ghost of Ann Campbell, the thought of her murderer sleeping in his bed on Bethany Hill, and two exhausted people far from home. I said, “Maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“No, it wouldn’t be. Let’s wait until we can make it special. This weekend at your place. We’ll be glad we waited.”

Right, I’m absolutely fucking thrilled to wait. But I wasn’t in the mood to argue, and not clever enough to seduce. So I yawned and threw back the covers of my bed. “Bon soir, as we say in Brussels.”

“Good night…” She moved toward the bathroom door, then, as she did last time, she turned back. She said, “Something to look forward to.”

“Right.” I turned off the lamp, shucked my robe, and crawled, naked, into bed.

I heard the shower running in the bathroom, heard the rain outside, heard a couple giggling in the hallway.

I never heard the phone ring at 0400.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

Cynthia was dressed, the sun was coming in the window, and I smelled coffee.

She sat on the side of my bed, I sat up, and she handed me a plastic mug. “They have a coffee bar downstairs.”

I asked, “What time is it?”

“A little after seven.”

“Seven?” I started to get out of bed, but remembered I was buck naked. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

“How many people does it take to look at broken bush?”

“You were out there? Did you find anything?”

“Yes. A vehicle definitely went off Jordan Field Road, fifty meters from Rifle Range Road. Left ruts, though the tread marks are washed out, but there’s broken bush, including a freshly skinned pine tree.” I sipped on the coffee as I tried to clear my head. Cynthia was dressed in blue jeans and a white tennis shirt, and looked good. I asked, “Skinned a tree?”

“Yes. So I went over to Jordan Field and woke up poor Cal. He and another guy went back with me to the place, and cut off the damaged section of the tree.”

“And?”

“Well, we went back to the hangar, and under magnification we could see flecks of paint. Cal is sending the wood sample to Fort Gillem. I told him we suspected a black Jeep Cherokee, and he says that they can confirm that with the manufacturer, or through their on-file samples of car paint.”

“Right. And we’ll find the scrape on Mrs. Kent’s Jeep.”

“I hope so. Then we’ll have the evidence we need to support your reconstruction of Kent’s movements.”

“Right.” I yawned and cleared my throat. “Unfortunately, if the paint is from a black Jeep Cherokee, it only proves that a black Jeep Cherokee scraped that tree. Still, it settles it in my mind.”

“Me, too.”

I finished the coffee and put the mug on the nightstand. “I wanted to be woken. Did you try to wake me?”

“No. You looked dead.”

“Well… okay. Good job.”

“Thanks. I also took your boots to Cal Seiver, and he matched your prints to unidentified plaster casts and