The General's Daughter (10 page)

“It was dead.”

It’s hard adjusting to a new partner. I don’t like the young, sycophantic guys who hang on your every word. But I don’t like
smart-asses, either. I’m at that age and rank where I get respect and earn respect, but I’m still open to an occasional piece
of reality.

Cynthia and I contemplated the bolted basement door. I said, not apropos of the door, but of life, “My wife left clues all
over the place.”

She didn’t reply.

“But I never saw the clues.”

“Sure you did.”

“Well… in retrospect I did. But when you’re young, you’re pretty dense. You’re full of yourself, you don’t read other people
well, you haven’t been lied to and cheated too much, and you lack the cynicism and suspicion that makes for a good detective.”

“A good detective, Paul, has to separate his or her professional life from his or her personal life. I wouldn’t want a man
who snooped on me.”

“Obviously not, considering your past.”

“Fuck off.”

Score one for Paul. I threw back the bolt on the door. “Your turn.”

“Okay. I wish you had your pistol.” She handed me her Smith & Wesson and opened the basement door.

“Maybe I should go and get that M-16 upstairs,” I offered.

“Never rely on a weapon you just found and never tested. Says so in the manual. Just call out, then cover me.”

I shouted down the stairs, “Police! Come to the staircase with your hands on your head!” This is the military version of hands-up
and makes a little more sense if you think about it. Well, no one came to the base of the stairs, so Cynthia had to go down.
She said in a quiet voice, “Leave the lights off. I’ll break to the right. Wait five seconds.”

“You wait one second.” I looked around for something to throw down the stairs and spotted a toaster oven, but Cynthia was
off and running, down the cellar stairs in long leaps, barely hitting the steps on her way down. I saw her shoulderroll to
the right and lost sight of her. I followed, breaking to the left, and wound up in a firing crouch, peering into the darkness.
We waited in silence for a full ten seconds, then I shouted, “Ed, John, cover us!” I wished there were an Ed and John around,
but as Captain Campbell might have said, “Create phantom battalions in the minds of the enemy.”

By now, I figured that if anyone was down there, they weren’t lying in ambush, but were cowering. Right?

Anyway, Cynthia, who was obviously impatient with my caution, bounded back up the stairs and hit the light switches. Fluorescent
bulbs flickered all over the large open basement, then burst into that stark white light that I associated with unpleasant
places.

Cynthia came back down the stairs and we surveyed the basement. It was a standard layout of washer and dryer, workbench, storage,
heating, air-conditioning, and so on. The floor and walls were bare concrete, and the ceiling was bare beams, electric, and
plumbing.

We examined the workbench and the dark corners, but it was uninteresting in the extreme except that Ann Campbell possessed
a lot of sporting equipment. In fact, the entire wall to the right of the workbench was pegboard, from floor to ceiling, from
which protruded those wire holders in every size and shape, and hanging from the wire holders were skis, tennis rackets, squash
rackets, a baseball bat, scuba gear, and so forth. Very organized. Also, fixed to the pegboard with screws was a recruiting
poster, about six feet from top to bottom, showing none other than Captain Ann Campbell, a head-to-foot shot of her in battle
dress uniform, wearing full field gear, with an M-16 rifle slung under her right arm, a radiotelephone cradled against her
ear, while she juggled a field map and checked her watch. Her face was smeared with camouflage greasepaint, but only a eunuch
would fail to see the subtle sexuality in this photo. The caption on top of the poster said,
Time to Synchronize Your Life.
On the bottom, it said,
See Your Army Recruiter Today.
What it didn’t say was, “Meet people of the opposite sex in close proximity, sleep with them out in the woods, bathe with
them in streams, and engage in other intimate outdoorsy things where no one has any privacy.”

Well, maybe I was projecting my own sexual reveries into the photo, but I think the civilian advertising types who put the
poster together were a little bit aware of what my dirty mind saw. I nodded toward the poster and said to Cynthia, “What do
you think?”

She shrugged, “Good poster.”

“Do you see the subliminal sexual message?”

“No. Point to it.”

“Well… it’s subliminal. How can I point to it?”

“Tell me about it.”

I had the feeling I was being baited, so I said, “Woman with a gun. Gun is penis object, penis substitute. Map and watch represent
a subconscious desire to have sex, but on her terms, timewise and locationwise. She’s talking to a man on the radiophone,
giving him her grid coordinates and telling him he has fifteen minutes to find her.”

Cynthia glanced at her own watch and informed me, “I think it’s time to go, Paul.”

“Right.”

We started back up the stairs, but then I glanced back into the basement and said, “We’re missing some floor space.”

As if on cue, we both turned and beelined for the pegboard wall, the only wall that did not show the bare concrete foundation
wall. I knocked on the pegboard, pushed on the four-by-eight-foot panels, but they seemed solid enough, nailed firmly in place
to a stud frame, which I could see through the small peg holes. I found a long, pointed awl on the workbench and slid it through
one of the peg holes, and after about two inches it struck a solid object. I pushed farther, and the point of the awl penetrated
into something soft, something that was not a concrete foundation wall. I said to Cynthia, “This is a false wall. There’s
no foundation behind it.”

She didn’t reply, and I looked to my left where Cynthia was standing facing the recruiting poster. She grasped the wooden
frame of the poster with her fingertips, pulled, and the poster swung out on blind hinges, revealing a dark open space. I
moved quickly beside her and we stood there, back-lighted by the bright fluorescents of the basement.

After a few seconds, during which time we were not perforated with bullet holes, my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the space
before us, and I could begin to make out some objects in the room that appeared to be furniture. I could also make out the
glow of a digital clock across the room, and I estimated that the room was fifteen feet deep and probably about forty or fifty
feet long, the length of the town house itself from front to rear.

I handed Cynthia her .38 and felt along the inside wall for a light switch, commenting, “This is where the Campbells probably
keep their demented, drooling relative.” I found the switch and flipped it, turning on a table lamp, which revealed a completely
finished and furnished room. I moved forward cautiously, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cynthia in a firing crouch,
her .38 sweeping the room.

I kneeled and peeked under the bed, then stood and moved around, checking the closet, then a small bathroom off to the right,
while Cynthia covered me.

Cynthia and I stood across from each other, and I said, “Well, here it is.”

And, indeed, there it was. There was a double bed, a nightstand on which sat the lighted lamp, a chest of drawers, a long
table on which sat a stereo system, a television, a VCR, and a camcorder with a tripod for home movies, and everything sat
on a deep white plush carpet, which wasn’t as clean as the other carpets. The walls were finished in a light-colored wood
paneling. To the far left of the room was a rolling hospital-type gurney, suitable for massages or whatever. I noticed now
a mirror mounted on the ceiling over the bed, and the open closet revealed some lacy and transparent numbers that would make
a clerk in Victoria’s Secret blush. In addition, there was a nice, neat nurse’s uniform, which I didn’t think she wore down
at the hospital, a black leather skirt and vest, a sort of whorish red-sequined dress, and, interestingly, a standard battle
dress uniform of the type she would have been wearing on duty when she was killed.

Cynthia, Ms. Goody Two-Shoes, was looking around the room, and she seemed somewhat unhappy, as though Ann Campbell had posthumously
disappointed her. “Good Lord…”

I said, “How she died does indeed appear linked to how she lived. But we will not jump to conclusions.”

The bathroom, too, was not so clean as the other two, and the medicine cabinet held a diaphragm, condoms, contraceptive sponges,
spermicidal jelly, and so on: enough birth control devices to cause a drop in the population of the Indian subcontinent. I
asked, “Aren’t you supposed to just use one method?”

Cynthia replied, “Depends on your mood.”

“I see.” Along with the contraceptive devices were mouthwash, different-colored toothbrushes, toothpaste, and six Fleet enemas.
I didn’t think anyone who ate bean sprouts would have a problem with constipation. “My goodness,” I said, picking up a premeasured
douche bottle whose flavor was strawberry; not my very favorite.

Cynthia left the bathroom, and I peeked into the shower. That, too, was sort of grungy, and the washcloth was still damp.
Interesting.

I rejoined Cynthia in the bedroom, where she was examining the contents of the night table drawer: K-Y Jelly, mineral oil,
sex manuals, one regular-sized vibrator, batteries included, and one rubber charlie of heroic proportions.

Fixed high up on the false wall that partitioned this bedroom from the basement workshop was a set of leather manacles, and
lying on the floor below was a leather strap, a birch switch, and incongruously, or perhaps not, a long ostrich feather. My
mind involuntarily took off into a flight of fancy that I think brought a red blush to my cheeks. “I wonder,” I mused, “what
those things are for?”

Cynthia made no comment, but seemed transfixed by the manacles.

I pulled back the bed sheets, and the bottom sheet looked a bit lived in. Here was enough pubic hair, body hair, peter tracks,
and undoubtedly other dermatological refuse to keep the lab busy for a week.

I noticed Cynthia staring down at the sheet and wondered what was going through her mind. I resisted the urge to say, “I told
you so,” because, in fact, on one level, I almost hoped we would find nothing, for, as I’ve indicated, I had already developed
a soft spot in my heart for Ann Campbell. And, while I’m not judgmental in regard to sexual behavior, I could imagine that
many people would be. I said, “You know, I’m actually relieved to see she wasn’t the sexless, androgynous poster girl the
Army made her out to be.”

Cynthia glanced at me and sort of nodded.

I said, “A shrink would have a field day with this apparent split personality. But you know, we all lead two or more lives.”
On the other hand, we don’t usually outfit a whole room for our alter ego. I added, “Actually, she was a shrink, wasn’t she?”

And so we moved to the TV, and I popped a random tape into the VCR and turned it on.

The screen brightened, and there was Ann Campbell, dressed in her red-sequined dress, with high heels and jewelry, standing
in this very room. An off-camera tape or disc was playing “The Stripper,” and she began taking it all off. A male voice, presumably
the cameraman, joked, “Do you do this at the general’s dinner parties?”

Ann Campbell smiled and wiggled her hips at the camera. She was down to her panties and a rather nice French bra now, and
was unclasping it when I reached out and shut off the tape, feeling very self-righteous about that.

I examined the other tapes and saw they were all handlabeled, with rather pithy titles like “Fucking with J.,” “Strip search
for B.,” “Gyno Exam—R.,” and “Anal with J.S.”

Cynthia said, “I think we’ve seen enough for now.”

“Almost enough.” I opened the top dresser drawer and discovered a pile of Polaroid photos, and thinking I’d hit pay dirt,
I flipped through them, looking for her friends, but every photo was of only her in various poses ranging from nearly artistic
and erotic to obscene gynecological shots. “Where’re the guys?”

“Behind the camera.”

“There’s got to be…” Then, in another stack of photos, I found a shot of a well-built naked man holding a belt, but wearing
a black leather hood. Then another shot of a guy on top of her, possibly taken with a time delay or by a third person, then
a photo of a naked gent, manacled to the wall, his back to the camera. In fact, all the men—and there were at least twelve
different bodies—were either turned away from the camera or wearing the leather discipline hood. Obviously, these guys didn’t
want any face photos left here, and similarly, they probably had no face shots of Ann Campbell in their possession. Most people
are a little careful of photos like these, and when the people have a lot to lose, they are very careful. Love and trust are
okay, but I had the feeling this was more lust and “What’s your name again?” I mean, if she had a real boyfriend, a man she
liked and admired, she wouldn’t bring him here, obviously.

Cynthia was going through the photos also, but handling them as though they carried a sexually transmittable disease. There
were a few more shots of men, close-ups of genitals, ranging from much ado about nothing to as you like it to the taming of
the shrew. I observed, “All white guys, all circumcised, mostly brown hair, a few blonds. Can we use these in a lineup?”

“It would be an interesting lineup,” Cynthia conceded. She threw the photos back in the drawer. “Maybe we shouldn’t let the
MPs see this room.”

“Indeed not. I hope they don’t find it.”

“Let’s go.”

“Just a minute.” I opened the bottom three drawers, finding more sexual paraphernalia, toys for twats as they’re known in
the trade, along with panties, garter belts, a cat-o’-nine tails, a leather jockstrap, and a few things that I confess I couldn’t
figure out. I was actually a bit embarrassed rummaging through this stuff in full view of Ms. Sunhill, and she was probably
wondering about me by now, because she said, “What else do you have to see?”