The General's Daughter (35 page)

“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?”

“Yes. It has to. When the child is young, the child wants to win the father’s approval. The father sees no threat to his dominance
and thinks of the son or daughter as a chip off the old block, to use an expression. But by adolescence, they both begin to
see traits in the other that they don’t like. The irony is that these are their own worst traits, but people cannot be objective
about themselves. Also, they begin to vie for dominance, and begin to voice criticisms of the other person. Since neither
can tolerate criticism, and since both are in fact probably competent and high achievers, the sparks start to fly.”

“Are we speaking in general terms,” I asked, “or specifically about General and Captain Campbell, father and daughter?”

He hesitated a moment, probably out of a deeply ingrained habit against revealing privileged information. He said, “I may
speak in generalities, but you should make your own conclusions.”

“Well,” I replied, “if Ms. Sunhill and I are asking specific questions, and you’re giving general answers, we may be misled.
We’re a little dense.”

“I don’t think so, and you can’t fool me into thinking you are.”

“All right, down to cases.” I said to him, “We were told that Ann felt she was in competition with her father, realized she
could not compete in that world, and rather than opting out, she began a campaign of sabotage against him.”

“Who told you that?”

“I got it from someone who got it from a psychologist.”

“Well, the psychologist is wrong. An obsessive-compulsive personality always believes they
can
compete and will go head-to-head with a domineering figure.”

“So, that wasn’t the actual cause of Ann Campbell’s hate of her father? They didn’t mind the head-butting.”

“Correct. The actual reason for her deep hate of her father was betrayal.”

“Betrayal?”

“Yes. Ann Campbell would not develop an irrational hate of her father because of rivalry, jealousy, or feelings of inadequacy.
Despite their growing competitiveness, which was not necessarily bad, she in fact loved her father very much right up until
the point he betrayed her. And that betrayal was so great, so total, and so traumatic that it nearly destroyed her. The man
she loved, admired, and trusted above all others betrayed her and broke her heart.” He added, “Is that specific enough for
you?”

After a few seconds of silence, Cynthia leaned forward in her seat and asked, “
How
did he betray her?”

Moore did not reply, but just looked at us.

Cynthia asked, “Did he rape her?”

Moore shook his head.

“Then what?”

Moore replied, “It really doesn’t matter
what
specifically it was. It only matters to the subject that the betrayal was total and unforgivable.”

I said, “Colonel, don’t fuck with us. What did he do to her?”

Moore seemed a little taken aback, then recovered and said, “I don’t know.”

Cynthia pointed out, “But you know it wasn’t rape and incest.”

“Yes. I know that because she volunteered that. When we discussed her case, she only referred to this event as the betrayal.”

“So,” I said sarcastically, “it may be that he forgot to buy her a birthday present.”

Colonel Moore looked annoyed, which was my purpose in being sarcastic. He said, “No, Mr. Brenner, it’s not usually something
so trivial. But you can understand, I hope, that when you love and trust someone unconditionally, and that person betrays
you in some fundamental and premeditated way—not a forgetful or thoughtless way, such as you suggested, but in a profoundly
personal and self-serving way—then you can never forgive that person.” He added, “A classic example is a loving wife who idolizes
her husband and discovers he’s having an intense affair with another woman.”

Cynthia and I thought about this a moment, and I suppose a few personal thoughts ran through our minds, and neither of us
spoke.

Finally, Moore said, “Here’s a more relevant example for you: An adolescent or young adult female loves and worships her father.
Then one day she overhears him speaking to one of his friends or professional associates, and the father says of his daughter,
‘Jane is a very weird girl, she’s a stay-at-home, hangs around me too much, fantasizes about boys but is never going to have
a date because she’s awkward and very plain. I wish she’d get out of the house once in a while, or go find her own place to
live.’ ” He looked at us. “Would that devastate a young woman who idolized her father? Would that break her heart?”

No doubt about it. It broke my heart hearing it, and I’m not even sensitive. I said, “Do you think it was something like that?”

“Perhaps.”

“But you don’t know what it was. Why wouldn’t she tell you?”

“Often, the subject can’t bear to discuss it because to tell the therapist invites judgment or evaluation, which is not what
the subject usually wants. The subject knows that the betrayal might not seem so total to an objective listener. Though sometimes
the betrayal
is
enormous by any conventional standards—such as incest. It wasn’t that, but I believe it was terrible by any standards.”

I nodded as though I were following all of this, and I suppose I was. But the question remained, and I asked it. “Can you
take a guess at what it was?”

“No, and I don’t have to know what her father did to her—I had only to know that he did it, and that it was traumatic. A complete
breach of trust after which nothing was ever the same between them.”

I tried to apply my own standards to this statement, but I couldn’t. In my job, you
must
know who, what, where, when, how, and why. Maybe Moore knew at least when, so I asked him, “When? When did this happen?”

He replied, “About ten years ago.”

“She was at West Point about ten years ago.”

“That’s correct. It happened to her in her second year at West Point.”

“I see.”

Cynthia asked, “And when did she begin to seek revenge? Not immediately.”

“No, not immediately. She went through the expected stages of shock, denial, then feelings of depression, and finally anger.
It wasn’t until about six years ago that she decided she had to seek revenge rather than try to cope with it. She, in fact,
became somewhat unstable, then obsessed with her theory that only revenge could make things right.”

I asked, “And who put her on that path? You or Friedrich Nietzsche?”

“I refuse to take any responsibility for her campaign against her father, Mr. Brenner. As a professional, I did my job by
listening.”

Cynthia observed, “She might as well have spoken to a canary, then. Didn’t you advise her that this was destructive?”

“Yes, of course. Clinically, she was doing the wrong thing, and I told her that. But I never promoted it, as Mr. Brenner just
suggested.”

I said, “If her campaign of revenge had been directed toward
you,
then you’d have been a little less clinically aloof.”

He stared at me and said, “Understand, please, that sometimes the subject does not want to begin the healing process in a
therapeutic way, but wants to hold the grudge and settle the score in his or her own way, usually in a like manner—you betrayed
me, I’ll betray you. You seduced my wife, I’ll seduce your wife. Usually, to try to exact a revenge that is similar to the
original crime is not realistic or possible. Sometimes it is. Conventional psychology will say that this is not healthy, but
the average layperson knows that revenge can be cathartic and therapeutic. The problem is that revenge takes its own mental
toll, and the avenger becomes the persecutor.”

I said to him, “I understand what you’re saying, Colonel Moore, though I’m wondering why you persist in speaking in clinical
and general terms. Is that your way of distancing yourself from this tragedy? Your way of avoiding any personal responsibility?”

He didn’t like that at all and replied, “I resent the implication that I failed to try to help her, or that I encouraged her
behavior.”

“Resent it or not,” I informed him, “it seems to be a strong suspicion in some quarters.”

“What do you expect from—” He shrugged and said, “Neither I, nor my work here, nor this school, nor my relationship with Ann
Campbell, was very much appreciated or understood on this post.”

I said, “I can relate to that. You know, I’ve seen some of Captain Campbell’s video lectures, and I think you people are performing
some vital functions. But maybe you were straying into areas that made people nervous.”

“Everything we do here is sanctioned by higher command.”

“I’m glad to hear that. But I think Ann Campbell took some of it out of the classroom and tried it on her own battlefield.”

Moore didn’t respond to that.

I asked him, “Do you know why Ann Campbell kept files of therapy sessions with criminals? Sex offenders?”

He thought a moment, then replied, “I don’t know that she did. But if she did, it was a private pursuit. There’s hardly a
psychologist here who doesn’t have an outside project or interest. Most times it has something to do with a Ph.D. program.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

Cynthia asked him, “How did you feel about her having sexual relations with multiple partners?”

He didn’t reply at first, then said, “Well… I… Who told you that?”

Cynthia said, “Everybody but you.”

“You never asked.”

“I’m asking now. How did you personally feel about her having sexual relations with men she didn’t care about just to get
at her father?”

He coughed into his hand, then replied, “Well… I thought it was not wise, especially for the reasons she was doing it—”

“Were you jealous?”

“Of course not. I—”

Cynthia interrupted him again. “Did you feel betrayed?”

“Certainly not. We had a good, platonic, intellectual, and trusting relationship.”

I wanted to ask him if that included staking her out naked on the ground, but I had to know
why
he did it. Actually, I thought I knew why now. And, beyond finding the killer, I could see now, based on what Moore had said
so far about betrayal, that Ann Campbell’s life and unhappiness needed to be understood.

I took a shot in the dark and said to him, “I understand that when you and Captain Campbell were in the Gulf, you proposed
a psy-ops program called Operation Bonkers.”

He replied, “I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

“Captain Campbell had great faith in the power of sex as a means to achieve apparently unrelated goals. Correct?”

“I… Yes, she did.”

“As I said, I’ve seen her psy-ops lecture series on video, and I can see where she was coming from. Now, while I don’t deny
the power of sex, I see it as a force for good, as an expression of love and caring. But somehow, Ann Campbell got it wrong.
Would you agree with that?”

He may have, but he replied, “Sex is neither good nor bad in itself. But it is true that some people—mostly women—use it as
a tool, a weapon, to achieve their goals.”

I turned to Cynthia. “Do you agree with that?”

She seemed a little annoyed, though I don’t know whom she was annoyed at. She replied, however, “I agree that some women use
sex, sometimes, as a weapon, but that is understood to be unacceptable behavior. In the case of Ann Campbell, she may have
seen sex as her
only
weapon against some injustice, or against her feelings of powerlessness. I think, Colonel Moore, if you knew she was doing
that, it was your ethical duty, not to mention your duty as her commanding officer, to try to stop it.”

Moore sort of stared at Cynthia with those beady little eyes and said, “I was not in a position to stop anything.”