Murder at the Pentagon (12 page)

“I don’t know, but they told me to drive you wherever you wanted to go tomorrow.”

“No, you don’t have to pick me up in the morning. If I need you during the day, I’ll let you know. Have a nice evening, Max.”

Once inside, she changed into a pink sweat suit and went to the kitchen, where she did something unusual for her when alone—made a drink. Someone had given her a bottle of pepper vodka as a gift, which she mixed with spicy V-8 juice.

She sat by her window and watched the comings and goings of men and women assigned to the base. There were many people she considered calling: Jeff, Mac Smith, friends around the world she’d made during her air-force career. But the phone stayed in its cradle. Talking about the Joycelen
murder, about Cobol, about any of it, would only further depress her. She needed to forget, at least for this night, about the whole affair, and so she turned to what she usually did to clear her mind. She worked out at the gym to the point of exhaustion, returned to the BOQ, and fell into a deep sleep that she wished could last for a month.

“Mrs. Cobol, this is Major Margit Falk. I’ve been assigned as your son’s defense counsel.”

“Yes, I know who you are. He pleaded Not Guilty this morning. I heard it on the radio.”

“That’s right. I know you’ve been trying to speak with him. I apologize that you haven’t been able to, and I arranged after the arraignment for you to do that.”

There was silence. Not total. A hushed sob?

“Mrs. Cobol, I understand that this is painful for you, but I want you to know that I am committed to presenting the best possible defense for Robert. I would like to meet you. Could we combine that with a visit to him?”

Flo Cobol pulled herself together. “I’ll meet with you at any time. Robert is not guilty. I know he didn’t kill this Dr. Joycelen.”

Margit didn’t commit herself to that view. She simply asked, “When do you think you can come to Washington?”

“I could come this afternoon.”

“I think it would be better to wait until tomorrow. That
will give me time to make sure there’s no hitch in your visit. If I can arrange a meeting at one o’clock, would that be all right with you?”

“That would be fine.”

“If you could arrive in Washington at noon tomorrow, I’ll pick you up, and we’ll go together to visit him.”

Flo Cobol agreed to that, and they established a place to meet at the airport.

Margit sat back in her chair. Jay Kraft was at his desk, and Margit made an immediate decision. She could not effectively conduct Cobol’s defense while sharing an office with Kraft—or anyone else, for that matter. She needed privacy, and decided to seek it through Colonel Bellis, whom she was to debrief at noon about the arraignment.

The arraignment had been a simple legal procedure. Trial counsel assigned to prosecute Cobol by the chief of criminal law, under the command’s staff judge advocate, was an army captain, William Higgins. He introduced himself to Margit. “A pleasure to meet you, Major.”

“Thank you,” she said, surprised at his open pleasantness.

“Looks like we’ll see quite a bit of each other.”

“Looks like it, Captain.”

The charges were read to Cobol, and he was asked to enter a plea. “Not Guilty,” he said in a strong voice. He was immediately led from the spartan room.

“Sir,” Margit said to the trial judge, air-force lieutenant colonel J. K. Washington, a tall, lean, balding black man whose expression was one of almost constant bemusement, “Captain Cobol has been denied the right to receive visits from family members, including his mother. I understand the sensitive nature of this case, as well as its grave seriousness, but I respectfully request that Captain Cobol be given the same visitation rights as any other accused military prisoner.”

Washington looked to Captain Higgins, who said, “I have no objection, sir.”

“And I see no reason for such visitation to be denied. So ordered.”

At noon Margit sat across the desk from Bellis.

“Do you believe Cobol?” Bellis asked.

“That he didn’t do it? To be perfectly honest with you, sir, I don’t know. I do know, however, that if I am to be a successful advocate, I have to put a certain amount of faith in him.”

“Right,” Bellis muttered.

“Colonel, I’ve made a list of needs.”

“Your needs?”

“Yes, sir.” She referred to a note on which she’d listed them. “First, I need a private office. It’s inappropriate, I think, for me to be sharing office space during the course of this procedure.”

“Office space is tight.”

“Not so tight that the defense counsel to an accused murderer should be hampered by it. Surely, there must be some spare office I could use.”

“I’ll check. What else?”

“I need an assistant, and an investigator.”

“What kind of assistant?”

“He or she doesn’t have to be an attorney, but should have some knowledge of military law. A noncommissioned paralegal will do nicely.”

Bellis wrote something on a pad. “Go on.”

“I would like to have an investigator assigned to me.”

“For what purpose?”

“To interview people that I obviously will not have time to interview.”

“I’ll see if Investigative Services can assign someone on a temporary basis.”

“I appreciate that, Colonel. I also would like to be able to bring in civilian co-counsel.”

“Has Cobol requested that?”

“No, sir, he hasn’t but …”

“You know that the accused has to arrange for outside legal counsel.”

“Yes, sir, I do, and I intend to suggest it to Captain Cobol when I see him tomorrow.”

“I’d hold up on that, Major.”

“May I ask why, sir?”

“Because of the sensitive nature of this whole affair. SecDef wants to keep it in the family, so to speak.”

“In the family? Family as in military?”

“Yes. Remember, Cobol was CIA-assigned. He’s enjoyed a top-security clearance until now, and has been exposed to a hell of a lot of sensitive material.”

“But military law clearly states that the accused has the right to bring in civilian counsel.”

“I know what the law says, Major Falk, and what I am suggesting to you is that you not push the idea on Captain Cobol. Why are you meeting with him tomorrow?”

“His mother is flying in from New York. I’ve arranged for her to see him and intend to spend some time with her myself.”

“Anything else?”

“No, sir.” Margit glanced up at the ceiling, then back at Bellis. “You said you were suggesting that I not push the idea of civilian co-counsel on Captain Cobol. Did you mean that? Are you suggesting it, or was that an order?” She knew, of course, that when a superior suggested something, wise and prudent subordinates took it as an order. In this case, however, she wanted clarification.

“No, it’s not an order because I haven’t been given any orders in that regard. May I suggest to you, however, that it is the prevailing thinking upstairs that this should be kept within military channels as much as possible. If you’d like, I’ll check with SecDef to clarify whether what they told me should be considered an order. I’d rather not do that. I’d rather make you aware of the thinking around here and have you exercise your obvious good judgment.”

She’d made him angry. She wished she hadn’t.

Margit left Bellis’s office and tried to sort out the conversation they’d had. His message, as veiled as it might have been, did not come as a surprise. Her years in the military
had taught her many things, including the inescapable observation that there was an unstated but clearly defined animosity between the military and civilian sectors of society. Because much of the media was in the civilian camp, the Pentagon was viewed with considerable and consistent suspicion. Given a choice, the military preferred to keep its operations to itself, good and bad—particularly the bad. In the case of Joycelen’s murder—especially with the rumors that homosexuality might be at the root of it—it was natural that the military command would make every attempt to keep it “within the family.”

Margit respected that, as she had from the beginning of her career in uniform. But there had to be exceptions. As she sat at her desk and pondered the morning’s activities, she became increasingly convinced that this should be one of them.

Bellis acted quickly on her requests. In less than an hour a crew arrived and moved her to a small, private office directly across the hall from him. It was one of three rooms in a small suite; Margit would share with the other two occupants the services of a secretary who sat in an anteroom.

As she was leaving her old office, she said pleasantly to Kraft, “Good news, Jay. Looks like you have your own place now. At least for a while.”

He managed a weak smile and returned to the contracts on his desk. The hell with you, Margit thought as she scooped up the last remaining files and headed off to her new digs.

At three that afternoon she received a call from a civilian, George Brown, who was in charge of the Defense Criminal Investigation Services’ Investigative Support Directorate. After introducing himself, he said, “I understand you need an investigator.”

“Yes, sir, that’s correct.”

“I spoke with Colonel Bellis a short while ago, and he outlined your needs. I can temp-duty one of our people over to you.”

“That would be much appreciated, Mr. Brown. Will it be someone with a background in criminal investigation?”

“Of course. Maybe not in the investigation of murder, but a trained person.”

“Will this investigator be military or civilian?”

“Military,” Brown answered.

“When can I expect him?”

“Might be a her.”

“Doesn’t matter. When can I expect him—or her?”

“It will take a few days. Let’s see, today is Thursday. We’ve got Labor Day coming up this weekend. How about next Wednesday?”

Margit had hoped for help sooner, but realized that with the holiday weekend, not much would be accomplished anyway. “Fine,” she said.

She was summoned to Bellis’s office at four.

“Major, what do you think of the marines?” he asked. He now seemed in good humor.

Margit laughed. “I’ve really never thought about it, sir.”

“I’ve sprung a warrant officer from Quantico’s Legal Assistance Office for you. His name is Woosky, Peter Woosky. He does a lot of the routine legal work over there—wills, powers of attorney, that sort of thing. I’m sure he’ll be of help.”

“Everything has moved so fast,” Margit said. “I received a call from Mr. Brown, who’s sending me an investigator on Wednesday.”

“Good. How’s your new office?”

“Fine, sir. Nice to have it to myself.”

“Looks like you’ve got everything you need.”

“Yes, I suppose I do.”

“Good.” He paused. “A word of advice.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t get too involved with Cobol’s mother. I know the tendency is to want to go out and talk to everybody who ever knew Cobol, but that won’t help.”

“I don’t think I understand, sir. If the evidence against him is as compelling as it seems to be, I’m going to have to depend, to a great extent, upon character witnesses, on people
who, although they might not be helpful in the actual defense, could play a role in mitigating his sentence.”

Bellis’s open good humor seemed to sour. He abruptly ended their meeting by standing and going to the door. “If Cobol is convicted of murdering Joycelen, there isn’t going to be much debate about his sentence.”

Margit thanked him again for his help and returned to her office across the hall.

The secretary she’d inherited handed her slips of paper. “You received these calls while you were out.” One was from Annabel Smith, who left the number of her Georgetown art gallery. The others were from offices within the Pentagon, including requests for interviews by reporters that the Information Office had collected.

Margit ignored the interviews, returned the official calls, then reached Annabel.

“Just thought you might like to use up the raincheck from last week,” Annabel said. “Mac and I are going out to dinner and wondered if you and Jeff could join us.”

Margit immediately accepted the invitation for herself, and said she would try to reach Jeff. She’d spent enough time alone at night stewing over this new and problematic assignment. Until this day her energy level had been down. Now, for some reason, her batteries seemed fully charged, and the last thing she wanted to do was to hibernate in her BOQ. “One condition, though,” she told Annabel.

“What’s that?”

“No pizza.”

“Deal. Mac was pushing for one of his favorite macho steak houses, but I convinced him lighter fare was more in keeping with the needs of our waistlines. Japanese okay?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll make a reservation for seven at Sushi-Ko, on Wisconsin. I’ll meet up with you and Mac there. I won’t be leaving the gallery until about that time. Table for four?”

“I can’t promise Jeff will be there. Want me to call you back?”

“No need. See you at seven.”

Foxboro was out of the office when Margit called. She left her number and said she would be at it until six-thirty. He didn’t return the call, and she left the Pentagon disappointed. She was not at all pleased with the direction their relationship was taking, and knew that if she were going to get it back on track, it would take extra effort on her part. She also knew that wouldn’t be easy with the Cobol case facing her, but pledged to herself to find the time.

“Will you at least think about it?” Margit asked Mac Smith as they left the restaurant.

Smith looked at Annabel, who said, “We’d better get home. Rufus probably has his legs crossed.”

“Just think about it. That’s all I ask,” Margit said.

Annabel kissed her cheek. “Nice seeing you, Margit. Sorry Jeff couldn’t make it.”

“It was a great evening. Thanks again.”

As Smith went to the parking lot to bail out their car, Annabel said, “Margit, you aren’t serious, are you?”

“Of course I am.”

“He’s retired. He’s a professor.”

It hadn’t occurred to Margit that Annabel would react negatively, and she wished she’d been more sensitive. “I hope I haven’t done something stupid tonight,” she said.