The General's Daughter (29 page)

Knowing who had been in her house might eventually lead to her killer in a conventional, plodding type of homicide investigation,
and knowing who was in her basement boudoir would give me a list of men who suddenly had a lot to lose unless they cooperated
fully. But that room remained sealed for now, and that might be a false, though very scenic trail to follow.

Knowing who was at the crime scene was more to the point, and we were close to establishing that Colonel Charles Moore was
there, though when he was there and what he was doing there needed clarification.

Colonel William Kent. Now, there was a man who suddenly had a career problem, not to mention the little chat he’d eventually
have to have with Mrs. Kent. Thank God I don’t have those kinds of problems.

Kent had made what amounted to a confession of sexual misbehavior, dereliction of duty, and actions unbecoming an officer,
to name just three charges that the JAG office could come up with. People often do this in a murder investigation, like making
a small sacrifice on the altar of the goddess of Justice, hoping that the goddess will accept it and go someplace else to
find a human blood sacrifice.

Cynthia’s estimation of Kent was interesting because literally no one would think that William Kent was a passionate, possessive,
or jealous man. But in some instinctive way, she saw or sensed something that I never did. What we knew now was that Kent
had had sexual relations with Ann Campbell. And I don’t believe Kent is into sport-fucking. Ergo, Kent was in love with her
and killed her out of jealousy. But I didn’t know that, and there were too many suppositions on the way to that ergo.

One of the side benefits of having forensic lab people all over the place is that you can lie to suspects about this or that,
though it doesn’t say so in the manual. I had to know, or suspect, of course, that a person was here or there or did this
or that before trying to bully and deceive that person. And sometimes you get your head handed to you, the way Kent did to
me. Still, I think I smoked him out with the accusation.

My mind returned to the television screen and I focused on Ann Campbell. She stood in front of me, speaking directly to me,
and we made good eye contact. She wore the light summer green B uniform with a short-sleeve blouse and a skirt, and now and
then she’d walk away from the lectern and stand at the edge of the stage in the lecture hall, speaking as she moved around,
very much at ease in her gestures, body language, and facial expressions.

For all her reported coolness, she seemed accessible during her lecture. She smiled, looked directly at a questioner in the
audience, and laughed at her own occasional joke and at amusing comments from the hundred or so men in the lecture hall. She
had this sexy habit of throwing back her head and brushing her long blond hair away from her face. Now and then, she’d bite
her lip in thought or look wide-eyed as a combat veteran told an interesting anecdote, then she’d ask intelligent questions
of her own. This was no programmed android droning on behind the lectern like so many Army and academic lecturers, as I’m
sure Colonel Moore was. This was a woman with an inquiring mind, a good sense of when to talk and when to listen, and an exuberance
for her slightly offbeat subject. Now and then, the camera would scan the audience and you could see a lot of alert men out
there who clearly enjoyed what they were hearing as much as what they were seeing.

Ann Campbell was talking about psychological operations directed at specific individuals, and I tuned in to what she was saying.
“We’ve spoken about psy-ops directed toward enemy combat soldiers, toward support personnel, and toward the civilian population
as a whole. Now I’d like to speak about psychological operations directed toward individuals, specifically enemy military
commanders and political leaders.”

Cynthia sat down beside me with a fresh cup of coffee and a plate of donuts. She asked me, “Good movie?”

“Yes.”

“Can we turn this off?”

“No.”

“Paul, why don’t you go get some sleep?”

“Quiet.”

Cynthia stood and walked away. Ann Campbell continued, “And the last time we used this tool effectively was in World War II
against the Nazi political and military leaders. We had the advantage of knowing something about them, about their personal
histories, their superstitions, their sexual preferences, their beliefs in the occult or in omens, and so forth. And what
we didn’t know, we found out through various intelligence-gathering sources. Thus, we had a biographical and psychological
profile of many of these men, and we were able to target them individually, and we were able to exploit their weaknesses,
undermine their strengths, and introduce false and deceptive elements into their decision-making process. In short, the goal
was to weaken their self-confidence, lower their self-esteem, and demoralize them through the process of what is sometimes
called mind-fucking. Excuse me.”

She waited until the laughter and applause died down, then continued, “We’ll call it mind-fudging, because we’re on tape today.
Okay, how do you fudge up someone’s mind who is a thousand miles away, deep in the heart of enemy territory? Well, in much
the same way you do it with your wife, girlfriend, boss, or pain-in-the-neck neighbor. First, you have to be aware that this
is something you want to do, and have to do. Then you have to know the other person’s mind—what worries that person, what
annoys that person, what frightens that person. You can’t manipulate until you know how all the levers, switches, and buttons
work. Finally, you have to be in contact with that person. Contact is made on several levels—personal contact, surrogate contact
through a third party, written contact in the form of documents, newspapers, letters, air-dropped leaflets—don’t do that with
your wife or boss—radio contact in the form of propaganda transmissions, or planted and managed news stories, and so on.”

She expounded on this awhile, then said, “In regard to surrogate or personal contact, this is the most effective and ancient
of all contacts with the enemy leader. This sort of contact is an interactive contact, and, though difficult to achieve, it
pays off handsomely. One type of personal contact with the enemy that we in the United States Army do not officially condone,
or use, is sexual contact—Mata Hari, Delilah, and other famous seductresses, sex sirens, and seducers.”

She continued, “If women ever become field commanders, we’ll need guys like you to sneak into their tents at night.”

A little laughter, and you could hear someone say something about putting a flag over the face of some old battle-ax lady
general and screwing her for Old Glory.

Then someone asked, “If you get that close to an enemy leader, why not kill him?”

Ann Campbell replied, “Why not, indeed? Aside from moral and legal considerations is the fact that a compromised, frightened,
or totally bonkers leader, such as a Hitler or Hussein, is like you having ten more infantry divisions at the front. The damage
that an ineffective leader can do to his own military operation is incalculable. We in the military have to relearn what we
knew in the past—what all armies in the field knew throughout history, which is this: the troops are already filled with doubt
and homesickness and with irrational battlefield superstitions and fear. You have to do the same to the generals.”

Fade to black. I stood and shut off the TV. It all seemed very clever, very logical, and very effective as she presented it
in a classroom situation. Obviously, too, she’d had at least one field experiment in progress, as Kent had suggested. If I
could believe Kent, Ann Campbell was waging a planned, deliberate, and totally vicious campaign against her enemy, her father.
But what if he deserved it? What did Moore say about her killer? That whoever it was thought he was justified. Likewise, perhaps,
Ann Campbell thought that what she was doing to her father was justified. Therefore, he’d done something to her, and whatever
it was, it had set her on a course of revenge and, ultimately, self-destruction. One thing that came to mind that would make
a daughter do that to her father, and to herself, was sexual abuse and incest.

That was what the shrinks would tell me when I asked, and that fit every psychological case history I’d ever heard about.
But if it was true, the only person who would confirm it was dead. The general
could
confirm it, but even Paul Brenner wasn’t going to touch that one. However, I could make discreet inquiries, and maybe, just
maybe, Mrs. Campbell could be delicately questioned on the subject of her daughter’s relationship with her father. What the
hell, I had my twenty years in.

On the other hand, as Kent suggested, why dig up muck that had nothing to do with the homicide at hand? But who’s to know
what muck you needed and what muck you didn’t?

So, did the general kill his daughter to stop her fury, or to shut her up? Or did Mrs. Campbell do it for the same reasons?
And what was Colonel Moore’s role in this? Indeed, the more muck I raked up, the more the ladies and gentlemen of Fort Hadley
got splattered.

Cynthia came up to me and forced a piece of donut in my mouth. Obviously, we were on the verge of something more intimate
than sharing a car, a bathroom, and a donut. But to tell you the truth, at my age, at two in the morning, Private Woody wasn’t
going to stand tall. Cynthia said, “Maybe the JAG Office will give you those videotapes when the case is closed.”

“Maybe I’d rather have the tapes in her basement.”

“Don’t be disgusting, Paul.” She continued on the subject, as women will do, “It’s not healthy, you know.”

I refused to respond.

“When I was a teenager, I fell in love with James Dean. I’d watch
Rebel Without a Cause
and
Giant
on late night TV, and cry myself to sleep.”

“What an astonishing admission of necrophilia. What’s the point?”

“Forget it. Here’s the good news. The tire tracks on rifle range five were made by Colonel Moore’s car, or what we’re pretty
sure is his car. The prints on Moore’s hairbrush, which we assume were made by Moore, match two prints on the tent peg, at
least six prints on the humvee, and one in the male latrine; also in the latrine, in the sink trap, was another hair that
matched Moore’s hair. Also, all the fingerprints on the trash bag are Moore’s and Ann Campbell’s, and ditto the prints on
her boots, holster, and helmet, suggesting that they both handled those items. So your reconstruction of the crime, the movements
and actions of Ann Campbell and Colonel Moore, seem to comport with the physical evidence. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“So does this guy hang?”

“I think they shoot officers. I’ll check before I speak to Colonel Moore.”

“Case closed?”

“I’ll check that with Colonel Moore.”

“If he doesn’t confess, will you go to the judge advocate general with what we’ve got?”

“I don’t know. It’s not an airtight case yet.”

“No,” Cynthia agreed, “it’s not. We have your theory of the wrong times of the headlights, for one thing. We can put Moore
at the scene of the crime, but we can’t put the rope in his hands at the time of death. Also, we don’t know his motive.”

“Right. And without motive, you’ve got a tough job with a jury.” I added, “There’s also the possibility it was an accident.”

“Yes, that’s what he’s going to say if he says anything.”

“Right. He’ll have a dozen of his shrink buddies explain to the court-martial board about sexual asphyxia, and how it was
a consensual act, and how he misjudged her physical state while she was having an orgasm and he was stimulating her. And the
officers on the court-martial board will be completely grossed-out and fascinated. Eventually, they’ll have reasonable doubt,
and they’ll have to agree that the physical evidence does not support an act of violent and forcible rape. They’ll believe
it was a good time gone bad. And I don’t think they can even find for manslaughter. You have two consenting adults engaging
in kinky sex, and one of them inadvertently causes the death of the other. The charge is reckless endangerment, if even that.”

Cynthia commented, “Sex crimes are tough. There’re all sorts of other things involved.”

I nodded, recalling a CID case, not my own, where a guy was into high-colonic enemas, and the woman administering them gave
him one too many, and the guy’s intestine burst, leading to death by hemorrhaging and infection. The crew at Falls Church
and the boys in the JAG Office had a good time with that one, but in the end decided not to prosecute. The woman, a young
lieutenant, was asked to resign, and the man, an older sergeant major with a chest full of medals, was given a military funeral
with honors. All for the good of the service.

Sex. Ninety percent of the human sex drive comes from the mind, and when the mind is wrong, the sex is wrong. But if you have
consent, you don’t have rape, and if it was or could have been an accident, you don’t have murder. You have someone in need
of serious counseling.

Cynthia asked me, “So? Do we make an arrest?”

I shook my head.

She said, “I think that’s the right decision at this point.”

I picked up the telephone and dialed Colonel Fowler’s number. A sleepy woman answered. I identified myself, and Fowler got
on the line. “Yes, Mr. Brenner?” He sounded a little annoyed.

I said, “Colonel, I’ve decided I don’t want Colonel Moore’s office padlocked or the contents confiscated at this time. I wanted
you to know.”

“Now I know.”

“You asked me to let you know about arrests, and I’ve had second thoughts about placing him under arrest.”

“I didn’t know you intended to arrest him, Mr. Brenner, but if you rethink it again, will you please wake me up later so I
can keep score?”

“Of course.” This was fun. I liked a man with a dry sense of humor. I said to him, “I called to ask you not to mention this
to anyone. It could jeopardize the case.”

“I understand. But I will report this to the general.”