The Writing on the Wall: A Novel (22 page)

When she got there, he and his fellow sergeants led her to a shower stall at the end of the cell block. A dead Iraqi lay there in a pool of crusted blood. All night he had been subjected to an interrogation that involved not only beatings but a handler holding back a barking, snarling German shepherd inches from his face. He snapped under this. When the interrogators finally left to get breakfast, he began pounding his head against the cement wall of the shower stall and continued doing so until he was dead.

After wrapping him in ice, the sergeants called their friends among the other guards asking if they wanted to pose next to him for a souvenir photo before they carted him off on a waiting gurney. Cassie had been one of three soldiers who posed.

At the judges’ table one of the shivering majors finally had enough—he waved the MP over to adjust the air-conditioning, which she did but only by standing on a chair. In the interval, the lieutenant assigned to explain things to us, Lieutenant Vidic, leaned over our laps and rapidly whispered.

“They’ll be asking for her plea. It’s not dereliction of duty since it wasn’t her prisoner and the incident wasn’t even on her tier. That’s why it’s only a special court martial, not a general. It comes down to whether or not under the Uniform Code of Military Justice she engaged in conduct bringing discredit to the military.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Dan said, reaching across me to shake her hand. That was the fourth time he had done that since we arrived at the courtroom, shake her hand. Dan is stolid, he can do stolid so well, but right then at that moment what I needed was an agonized husband, a trembling husband, a husband on the verge of breaking down at what had happened to his girl.

“Guilty,” Cassie said, the moment the air-conditioning quieted.

She looked tiny as ever, standing by the much taller MP. Doll-sized, barely one hundred pounds, with the bangs she had worn since she was seven exaggerating the effect even more. She was always forgetting to put her contacts in, and the only expression on her face was the vaguest of squints. Other than that? I could see her acne was better. She looked like she had been eating okay. I didn’t like the rigid way she stood at attention.

Between us and the front sat the woman I mentioned, so I had to look past her shoulder in order to see Cassie. She was not much more than twenty-five or twenty-six, dressed in an attractive brown suit that made her look like a businesswoman, crisp and very competent, though her frizzy red hair suggested something wilder. She sat formally, with her hands on her lap the way people do at funerals. Some stirring of the pear trees outside caught the light and she looked sideways toward the window. It was the kind of open face you immediately like, and the openness came mostly from her wide and caring eyes. Again, I wondered where I had seen her, and why, with no one else looking on, she had brought that look of sympathy to Cassie’s trial.

As well as being choreographed down to the slightest detail, the trial moved very fast. The prosecuting officer and the defense counsel approached the judges with papers they dealt across the table like cards.

Lieutenant Vidic cupped her hand over her mouth and whispered:

“The prosecution goes first, now that they’re proceeding to the sentencing phase. She’ll be presenting matters of aggravation, things that tend to worsen the offense.”

It was a photo she had placed in front of each judge, and I didn’t have to be handed one to know what it showed. A young Iraqi man, detainee #143488 according to a sign balanced across his chest, wrapped in ice bags with bright red and green Arabic lettering. The ice bags packed right up to his chin, pressing it backwards like an icy bib, making it look like he was staring up at something stuck on the ceiling well behind him. Unshaven, his beard the same brown color as his skin, his nose and cheeks caked in blood, his mouth rigidly open. Eyes covered in duct tape. A body bag wrinkled beneath him like a sheet he had kicked aside. Black pointy hood like a sorcerer’s flopping sideways toward his ear. Behind him, closer to the cement wall, a white plastic lawn chair, the kind you can buy at any mall. A fuzzy football-shaped something underneath its legs.

Squatting by his head, leaning over to make sure she posed in the same frame, Cassie. Brown t-shirt tucked into baggy camouflage pants, sand-colored with scattered chocolate-chip dabs. Green plastic glove. Big smile on her face, beautiful smile, the smile of someone who had never looked so beautiful, vivacious and incandescent before. The best photo of her ever taken.

The prosecutor, now that all three judges were staring down at it, felt confident enough to step back from the table.

“Please notice the defendant is not just passively posing, but makes a thumbs-up gesture to the camera while Sergeant Mendoza takes the picture with—” She glanced down at her pad. “Sony Cyber Shot Three camera. The prosecution contends that this gratuitous and vindictive gesture brings even more discredit upon the military than alleged in the original charge.”

The defense counsel, who until now had seemed content to let the women run the show, cleared his throat.

“This can not be considered an aggravating factor, since it was merely the defendant’s habitual nervous gesture. Specialist Savino is often very shy and never knows what to do with her hands in a photo, and this is where the thumbs-up gesture originates from.”

Dan leaned over to our lieutenant. “That’s true,” he whispered. He straightened back up, whispered now to me. “You know that’s true.” The major in the center pointed the prosecutor back to her seat. “Matters of mitigation?” she said, waving the defense counsel up in her place.

“Thank you, Major Adams. The guard dog involved in the incident became very agitated in the course of the night, to the point he was impossible to soothe, even by his handler. It was the defendant, Specialist Savino, who calmed him down and returned him to the kennel, thereby removing a potential threat from the tier. She stayed with the dogs all morning, talking to them and stroking them to make sure they remained passive. Every officer in camp marveled at her influence with dogs.”

The sergeant judge now spoke for the first time.

“This is mitigation?”

“We believe that it is.”

The major stood up. “Ten minutes before sentencing.”

There was no reason to leave our seats. The judges disappeared out a side door which no one bothered closing. Cassie stood at ease, but still didn’t look at us. Dan got up to flex his bad back. The clock on the wall ticked. The woman in front of us sat staring down at her hands, then turned suddenly around, like she was going to say something. Too late. Cassie, the prosecutor, the defense counsel, the stenographer and MP guard. They all stood to attention as the judges filed back in.

The sergeant had been chosen to read out the sentence. It was her big moment and she milked it for all it was worth—her voice wouldn’t have been so deep and stern if Cassie had committed genocide.

“Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Specialist Cassie Savino, for conduct bringing discredit to the military, is sentenced to thirty days in the stockade, reduction in rank to private, and the forfeiture of half a month’s pay.”

Cassie saluted, turned ninety degrees and saluted her defense counsel, swiveled and saluted the prosecutor, then followed the MP out the door.

“That’s that,” Dan said, slapping his hands together.

Out in the lobby our lieutenant stood explaining what would happen next—Cassie’s sentence would be served right here in Fort Sill, she said—when the MP came over and pulled her aside.

“Let’s go,” I said, but Dan wouldn’t budge.

“Thirty days seems fair,” he said. “Those Abu Ghraib guards got much more.”

“Thirty days for smiling?”

“Someone told her to smile. You pose for a picture, the one who’s taking it says ‘Smile!’ Anyway, it doesn’t have anything to do with smiling, you know that as well as I do.”

Dan closed his eyes, made a half-pucker with his lips, as if he were trying to squeeze something from his mouth that didn’t come naturally.

“It’s thirty days for defending her country. Thirty days for standing up for what’s right. You think those detainees are Boy Scouts? They’re killing our boys and it’s a lucky thing they didn’t kill her. She’s over there on a mission and the mission sometimes involves things you and I can’t stomach, but so what? You remember 9/11, how we didn’t take our eyes off the TV for a solid week. That’s two thousand reasons right there. If some raghead terrorist takes it into his head to kill himself I don’t see why anyone over here should care.”

I remember 9/11, I felt like saying. I remember how before that you were so funny and skeptical when it came to politics or world events, how you would always be on the side of the underdog, the army and generals and president could all fuck themselves as far as you were concerned—and how, that September night when we finally tore ourselves away from the television and went up to bed, you stopped by the window, looked out across the lawn and said “God bless America,” not ironically, not as a joke, but with all the sincerity and passion your soul was capable of.

“Mrs. Savino?”

Our lieutenant was back. She came over and hesitated—it was obvious she wanted to talk to me alone.

“Cassie would like you to come see her tomorrow morning before you leave for home. She’s allowed half an hour, but I think we can extend this some. It would have to be early. Is eight okay? The stockade abuts the south gate.”

Dan nodded. “We’ll be there.”

“Cassie asked for her mother to come alone.”

That’s why the lieutenant looked so agonized, but her distress was nothing compared to the look that came across Dan’s face. Crushed is too mild a word—his face jerked sideways like he’d been slapped.

“No problem,” he said, smiling, and I know what that cost him. “We want to thank you again for all your help, Lieutenant. If you rotate back there, give them hell.”

When we were alone again he took my arm.

“Let’s go back to the hotel.”

“I’d like to walk.”

“In this heat? We have the car.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

His face reddened. A little thing, but coming after the tension of the trial, his disappointment, it was exactly what could set him off.

“Okay,” he said softly.

“It must be a woman thing,” I said. Stupid of me, but I couldn’t think of how else to lessen his hurt.

“That’s fine. The two of you can have a good talk. Did you notice she didn’t turn around and look at us, not once?”

I told him to be careful with the traffic and he told me to be careful walking in that sun. A marble staircase led down to the first floor, just like in a real courthouse. Once through the revolving door he turned left toward the parking lot, and I was still standing there trying to get my bearings when someone stepped out from the shadows along the wall.

“Mrs. Savino? My name is Pam Cord.”

“I know who you are,” I said.

In the courtroom, I’d gotten the impression of someone tall, which must have been from the formal way she sat, because I saw now she was shorter than me, maybe even shorter than Cassie. The sun brought the red out in her hair, and, seeing me stare, she patted it like someone putting out a fire.

“I saw you on TV last week outside the other court martials,” I said, which was true enough. “It seemed strange to think you were at Cassie’s, and I didn’t really recognize you, not until the very end.”

“Then you saw our demonstrations. The way the networks edited it made it seem like there were only a dozen of us, where there were hundreds. We still have lots of tricks left to learn.” She tilted her head to the side and smiled. “Feel like coffee?”

She was parked in a handicapped spot—a small rental car yellow with dust. On our way out we had to pass the gatehouse and the sentry there snapped to attention and saluted. Pam gave him the finger, though with the windows being tinted, I don’t think he saw. She drove fast, even recklessly—stop signs didn’t seem to interest her.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” I said. I thought that was important, to say that right away.

“Thanks.”

She gave a lot of thought to where we should have coffee. There was a diner and then a drugstore with a lunch counter but she drove on past and turned left into a seedier part of town. The bars were here, the beer joints for soldiers, and she parked in front of the one that looked roughest.

It was early afternoon, there was hardly anyone inside, and, as in the courtroom, they were mostly female. The bartender. The soldiers playing pool. They were all dressed in desert camouflage, and when we walked through the door they looked us over with suspicion and hostility, which didn’t seem to bother Pam Cord at all.

“Back here in the dark okay?” she asked.

The bartender took her time coming over. I ordered coffee. Pam ordered a beer, then waved toward the bar and changed that to vodka.

On television she always looked angry, so I wasn’t prepared for how young she was, how friendly. She had become famous very fast, but I could tell that meant nothing to her. She had a trick of pointing off to where her words had gone, and she did this now, gesturing out the window toward what she had told me before.

“The media are already tired of us. Tired of me. I’m surprised they even gave us thirty seconds. Everyone went home afterwards, but I thought I’d stay on for your daughter’s trial. I knew it was impossible, seeing her picture, that she could hurt anyone. At the first court martials all you had to do was look at their mouths to know they were capable of anything. Weak mouths, too gullible and frightened. The upper lip especially. If you want to search for cruelty, that’s where you should look.”

“Did you study my Cassie’s lips?”

She shot me a look.

“Strong. Even. It wasn’t her fault.”

The bartender came over with my coffee and her vodka, stood with her hands on her hips until Pam paid. More women swaggered in now, sergeants, and over by the pool table things were getting pretty loud.

“You’re wondering how the notorious Pam Cord got into the courtroom. We have friends—you’d be surprised. Lots of military think this is all wrong. Did you see that arrogant major staring down at me? She knew who I was. It made her nervous and that made me glad.”