The General's Daughter (59 page)

I glanced at Kent. “Okay?”

He stared at the screen.

Seiver continued. “Okay, they stop at that pop-up target, and she lies down…” A spread-eagled stick figure, in red, appeared
on the screen at the base of the target. “We see no more of her footprints, of course, but after Moore ties her up, he leaves,
and we can see where he turned and walked back to the road.” Seiver added, “Colonel, your dogs picked up his scent in the
grass between the road and the latrines.”

I commented, “This is the sort of visual display that impresses a court-martial board.”

Kent said nothing.

Seiver continued, “Okay, at about 0217 hours, General Campbell shows up in his wife’s car.”

I looked at Kent, who seemed no more surprised by this revelation than by the revelation that Colonel Moore had met Ann Campbell,
staked her out on the ground, and left her.

Seiver continued, “It’s a problem getting a general to give you his boots or shoes that he wore to the scene of the crime,
but I suspect that he never got more than a few yards from the road and did not approach the body. Okay, they talk, and he
leaves in the car.”

I said to Colonel Kent, “Are you following this?”

He looked at me, but again said nothing.

Cynthia prodded him. “Colonel, what we’re saying is that neither Colonel Moore nor General Campbell killed Ann. This was an
elaborate setup, planned with military precision, sort of a psychological trap for the general. She was not meeting a lover
out there, as some of us suspected, nor was she jumped by a maniac. She was getting back at her father.”

Kent did not ask for an explanation of that, but just stared ahead at the screen.

Cynthia explained, “She had been gang-raped when she was a cadet at West Point, and her father had forced her to remain silent
and had conspired with high-ranking men to cover it up. Did you know any of that?”

He looked at Cynthia, but gave no indication that he understood a word of what she was saying.

Cynthia said, “She was re-creating what had happened to her at West Point to shock and humiliate her father.”

I didn’t think I wanted Kent to know all of that, but in Kent’s present state of mind, perhaps it was just as well that he
did.

I said to Kent, “Did you think she was out there to act out a sexual fantasy?”

He didn’t reply.

I added, “Such as having a series of men come along to rape her?”

Finally, he replied, “Knowing her, a lot of people thought that.”

“Yes. We thought that, too, after we found that room in her basement. I guess you thought that, too, when you first saw her
out there on the ground. It looked to you like an Ann Campbell script, and it was. But you weren’t reading it right.”

No response.

I said to Cal, “Go on.”

“Right. So the general leaves, then here we see this set of prints… these are your prints, Colonel… the blue—”

“No,” Kent said, “mine came later. After St. John and my MP, Casey, got there.”

“No, sir,” Cal replied, “yours came
before
St. John’s. See here, we have your print and St. John’s print superimposed… The plaster cast verifies that St. John stepped
on your footprint. So you got there before he did. No doubt about that.”

I added, “In fact, Bill, when you got there, after the general left, Ann was alive. The general went off and got Colonel and
Mrs. Fowler, and when they returned to the scene, Ann Campbell was dead.”

Kent stood absolutely motionless.

I said, “Your wife’s Jeep Cherokee, with you in it, was spotted by one of your MPs at about 0030 hours, parked in the library
lot across from Post Headquarters. You were again spotted,” I lied, “driving in the direction of Rifle Range Road. We found
where you turned off onto Jordan Field Road and hid the Cherokee in the bush. You left tire marks and hit a tree. We have
matched the paint on the tree to your wife’s Jeep, and have seen the scrape on the Jeep. Also, we found your footprints,”
I lied again, “in the drainage ditch along Rifle Range Road, heading south, toward the scene of the crime.” I added, “Do you
want me to reconstruct the entire thing for you?”

He shook his head.

I said, “Given the amount of evidence—including the evidence for motive, which is the diary entries, the letter to your wife,
and other evidence of your sexual involvement and obsession with the deceased—given all that, plus this forensic evidence
and other evidence, I have to ask you to take a polygraph test, which we are prepared to administer now.”

Actually, we weren’t, but now or later it didn’t really matter. I said to him, “If you refuse to take the test now, I have
no choice but to place you under arrest, and I will get someone in the Pentagon to order you to take the polygraph.”

Kent turned away and began walking back toward the layout of Ann Campbell’s house. I exchanged glances with Cynthia and Cal,
then Cynthia and I followed.

Kent sat on an arm of an upholstered chair in the living room and looked down at the carpet for a while, staring, I suppose,
at the spot where he’d raped her on the floor.

I stood in front of him and said, “You know your rights as an accused, of course, and I won’t insult you by reading them.
But I’m afraid I have to take your weapon and put the cuffs on you.”

He glanced up at me, but didn’t respond.

I said, “I won’t take you to the provost building lockup, because that would be gratuitously humiliating to you. But I am
going to take you to the post stockade for processing.” I added, “May I have your weapon?”

He knew it was over, of course, but like any trapped animal, he had to have a last growl. He said to me and to Cynthia, “You’ll
never prove any of this. And when I’m vindicated by a court-martial board of my peers, I’ll see to it that you’re both brought
up on charges of misconduct.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. “That is your right. A trial by your peers. And if you are found not guilty, you may well decide to
bring charges against us. But the evidence of your sexual misconduct is fairly conclusive. You may beat the murder charge,
but you should plan on at least fifteen years in Leavenworth for gross dereliction of duty, misconduct, concealing the facts
of a crime, sodomy, rape, and other violations of the punitive articles contained in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

Kent seemed to process this, then said, “You’re not playing very fair, are you?”

“How so?”

“I mean, I voluntarily told you about my involvement with her in order to help find her killer, and here you are charging
me with misconduct and sexual crimes and then twisting the other evidence around to try to show that I killed her. You’re
desperate.”

“Bill, cut the crap.”

“No,
you
cut the crap. For your information, I
was
out there before St. John, and when I got there, she was already dead. If you want to know what I think, I think Fowler and
the general did it.”

“Bill, this is not good. Not at all.” I put my hand on his shoulder and said to him, “Be a man, be an officer and a gentleman—be
a cop, for Christ’s sake. I shouldn’t even be asking you to take a lie-detector test. I should just be asking you to tell
me the truth, without me having to use a lie detector, without me having to show you evidence, without me having to spend
days in an interrogation room with you. Don’t make this embarrassing for any of us.”

He glanced at me, and I could see he was on the verge of crying. He looked at Cynthia to see if she noticed, which was important
to him, I think.

I continued, “Bill, we know you did it, you know you did it, and we all know why. There’s a lot of extenuating and mitigating
circumstances, and we know that. Hell, I can’t even stand here and look you in the eye and say to you, ‘She didn’t deserve
that.’ ” Actually, I could, because she didn’t deserve it, but just as you give a condemned man any last meal he wants, so,
too, you give him anything he wants to hear.

Kent fought back the tears and tried to sound angry. He shouted, “She
did
deserve it! She was a bitch, a fucking whore, she ruined my life and my marriage…”

“I know. But now you have to make it right. Make it right for the Army, for your family, for the Campbells, and for yourself.”

The tears were running down his cheeks now, and I knew he would rather be dead than be crying in front of me, Cynthia, and
Cal Seiver, who was watching from the other side of the hangar. Kent managed to get a few words out and said, “I can’t make
it right. I can’t make it right anymore.”

“Yes, you can. You know you can. You know how you can. Don’t fight this. Don’t disgrace yourself and everyone else. That’s
all that’s left in your power to do. Just do your duty. Do what an officer and a gentleman would do.”

Kent stood slowly and wiped his eyes and nose with his hands.

I said, “Please hand me your weapon.”

He looked me in the eye. “No cuffs, Paul.”

“I’m sorry. I have to. Regulations.”

“I’m an officer, for Christ’s sake! You want me to act like an officer, treat me like one!”

“Start acting like one first.” I called out to Cal, “Get me a pair of handcuffs.”

Kent pulled the .38 Police Special out of his shoulder holster and shouted, “Okay! Okay! Watch this!” He put the revolver
to his right temple and pulled the trigger.

T
he human eye can distinguish fifteen or sixteen shades of gray. A computer image processor, analyzing a fingerprint, can distinguish
two hundred fifty-six shades of gray, which is impressive. More impressive, however, is the human heart, mind, and soul, which
can distinguish an infinite number of emotional, psychological, and moral shadings, from the blackest of black to the whitest
of white. I’ve never seen either end of that spectrum, but I’ve seen a lot in between.

In truth, people are no more constant or absolute in their personalities than a chameleon is in terms of color.

The people here at Fort Hadley were no different from, no better or worse than, people I’d seen at a hundred other posts and
installations around the world. But Ann Campbell was most certainly different, and I try to imagine myself in conversations
with her if I’d met her when she was alive, if, for instance, I’d been assigned to investigate what was going on here at Fort
Hadley. I think I would have recognized that I was not in the presence of a simple seductress, but in the presence of a unique,
forceful, and driven personality. I think, too, that I could have shown her that whatever hurts other people does not make
her stronger, it only increases the misery quotient for everyone.

I don’t think I would have wound up like Bill Kent, but I don’t discount the possibility, and, therefore, I’m not judging
Kent. Kent judged himself, looked at what he had become, was frightened to discover that another personality lurked inside
his neat, orderly mind, and he blew it out.

The hangar was filled with MPs now, and FBI men, medical personnel, plus the forensic people who had remained behind at Fort
Hadley and who had thought they were almost finished with this place.

I said to Cal Seiver, “After you’re done with the body, get the carpet and furniture cleaned up and have all the household
goods packed and shipped to the Campbells in Michigan. They’ll want their daughter’s things.”

“Right.” He added, “I hate to say this, but he saved everybody but me a lot of trouble.”

“He was a good soldier.”

I turned and walked the length of the hangar, past an FBI guy who was trying to get my attention, and out the door into the
hot sun.

Karl and Cynthia were standing beside an ambulance, talking. I walked past them toward my Blazer. Karl came up to me and said,
“I can’t say I’m satisfied with this outcome.”

I didn’t reply.

He said, “Cynthia seems to believe that you knew he was going to do that.”

“Karl, all that goes wrong is not my fault.”

“No one’s blaming you.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Well, you might have anticipated it and gotten his gun—”

“Colonel, to be perfectly honest with you, not only did I anticipate it, but I encouraged it. I did a fucking head number
on him. She knows that and you know that.”

He didn’t acknowledge this because it was not what he wanted to hear or know. It wasn’t in the manual, but, in fact, giving
a disgraced officer the opportunity and encouragement to kill himself was historically a time-honored military tradition in
many armies of the world but never caught on in this Army and has fallen out of favor nearly everywhere. Yet, the idea, the
possibility, permeates the subconscious of every officer corps who are linked by common attitudes and overblown feelings of
honor. Given my choice of a court-martial for rape, murder, and sexual misconduct that I knew I couldn’t beat, or taking the
.38-caliber easy way out, I might just consider the easy way. But I couldn’t picture myself in Bill Kent’s situation. Then
again, neither could Bill Kent a few months ago.

Karl was saying something, but I wasn’t listening. Finally, I heard him say, “Cynthia’s very upset. She’s still shaking.”

“Comes with the job.” In fact, it’s not every day that someone blows his brains out right in front of you. Kent should have
excused himself and gone into the men’s room to do it. Instead, he splattered his brains, skull, and blood all over the place,
and Cynthia caught a little of it on her face. I said to Karl, “I’ve been splattered in ’Nam.” In fact, once I’d gotten hit
in the head by a head. I added, helpfully, “It washes off with soap.”

Karl looked angry. He snapped, “Mister Brenner, you’re not funny.”

“May I go?”

“Please do.”

I turned and opened my car door, then said to Karl, “Please tell Ms. Sunhill that her husband called this morning, and he
wants her to call him back.” I got into the Blazer, started it, and drove off.

Within fifteen minutes, I was back at the VOQ. I got out of my uniform, noticing a spot of gore on my shirt. I undressed,
washed my face and hands, and changed into a sports coat and slacks, then gathered up my things, which Cynthia had laid out.
I gave the room a last look and carried my luggage downstairs.