The Night Crew (16 page)

“Ever detect any evidence they’d been sexually molested?”

“Well, to be truthful, I’ve never raped or sexually abused anyone. What might that evidence look like . . . sir?”

It was a small room with only enough room for one obstinate wiseass. This guy was starting to get on my nerves. “Maybe they complained about the night sessions?”

“Oh, inmates complained all the time. It was the Al Basari anthem.”

“What did they complain about?”

“About the food, about the smell, about the heat, about medical care, about the lousy accommodations . . . Hell, we complained right back at them.” He paused to smile at me again. “Let me let you in on a big military secret, Colonel—Al Basari sucked.”

“I asked if they complained about the night sessions.”

“No, never.”

“Maybe they displayed some signs of trauma, physically or psychologically.” I recalled some of the activities from the photos and suggested, “Maybe they had difficulty sitting.”

“Look, I’m embarrassed to admit that I saw nothing. Nothing tangible, nothing visible, nothing suspicious. In retrospect, sure, I wish I had been more attentive . . . more . . . Hell, I still don’t know how I missed it . . . any warning signs . . . whatever.”

“Regulations also mandate that you keep a log of all interrogating sessions annotating your observations. Did you maintain such logs?”

“Yes. As you said, it was required.”

And that’s when Mary erupted again. “Those logs are off-limits.”

“Why, Mary?”

“Because they’re filled with highly classified material. You can’t touch them and you may not ask about any material or observations they contained.”

Katherine, who had not previously known about either the requirement for, or the existence of, such logs, did not take Mary’s injunction well. She replied with a rare show of genuine agitation and indignation, “Give me a break. You’re kidding, right?”

“Didn’t I sound serious?” As if we weren’t getting the message, she answered her own question. “They’re strictly off-limits.”

“Those logs go to the heart of this case, Major. You cannot deprive our clients of possibly exculpatory material.”

“Oh, watch me. I can, and I definitely will.”

And they went back and forth, tossing threats and counterthreats at each other as Nate Willborn and I sat back and watched the badminton match.

Like Katherine, Mary was a very good lawyer, just not as good, though she didn’t have to be; not today, and not later, before seven members of the court martial board. Since 9-11 the courts have sided with the government on a lot of these conflicts where the rights of the accused clash with the government’s claims about the limits of privacy, about prolonged incarceration, and about security classifications.

I don’t know which is right or wrong; I only know that government lawyers now have a big stick, and when you give them a stick it very often ends up inside your butt. I mean, government bureaucrats these days can slap a “Top Secret” label on a grocery list and the courts will usually back them up, which is like giving a kleptomaniac the back door keys to Macy’s.

Katherine knew this, of course, but was using Mary to vent her frustration, which was emotionally gratifying, I’m sure, and was getting us nowhere. Katherine has a thing against the government and usually we’re on opposite sides of the aisle, but in this case I agreed with her—though if I were sitting in Mary’s shoes I would probably agree with her, too. This case was really conflicting.

After about two minutes of this, I became tired of the verbal ping-pong and interrupted to say to Mary, without notable enthusiasm, “We’re going to file a motion for the logs and see where it goes.”

Captain Willborn, he of the usually stoic demeanor, could not restrain another smile. “Well, you could do that . . . but . . . I wouldn’t want you to waste your time.”

I asked him, “What does that mean?”

“It would be pointless.” After a pause, accompanied by a regretful frown, he informed us, “The logs are missing, I’m afraid.”

“Missing is an ambiguous word, Captain.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then be more specific. Missing as in, stuck in a thick safe in the basement, or missing, as in they accidentally fell into a big bonfire?”

Now with a perfectly straight face, he replied, “As I told you earlier, Sergeant Waylon managed the administration for the team. At the end of each day, I gave him our log sheets, and . . . after he died, I went looking for the logs . . . and”—he produced an almost convincing shrug—“well, they were all gone.”

“Just gone?” You can imagine how much I love being jerked off like this.

“Hey, I know how suspicious this might sound to you. Remember, though, that the conditions at the base were primitive and hectic. There was no safe, so Waylon stuffed them in a large, expandable, paper file box. The box had disappeared.”

“How could a box filled with classified material get up and walk away?” I asked, making no effort to mask my anger or my skepticism.

“That’s a good question.”

“I know, so answer it.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Look, what we believe is that after Waylon died, as per regulations, a team of soldiers went through and inventoried his personal effects. Then his stuff was packaged and shipped to his family back in the States. The same with Chief Ashad’s personal effects. Everything was shipped to his wife. The logs may have been shipped by accident. Plus there’s always some crap left over, like porn, or dirty magazines, or official papers that are either inappropriate, irrelevant, or of no value to the family. As per procedure, the inventory teams separated those materials and destroyed what was left. It seems quite possible that the team that performed the inventory found the classified material and, not recognizing its military importance, destroyed it as well, or perhaps shipped it by mistake.” He paused for a moment then added, “This was a serious loss of national security material. Naturally, I reported it to my chain of command.”

“Was there any mention of the file box on the inventory forms?”

“You know, that’s another odd thing.”

I remarked, “Odd seems to be the byword of this case.”

“Yes, well . . . there wasn’t.”

“No kidding. How do you account for it?”

“It’s possible that Waylon stored the box somewhere else. Or perhaps Ashad had it. I really don’t know. We searched for it, but it was hopeless.”

He was definitely lying; we knew he was lying, he knew he was lying, and according to Mary’s rule, we all were supposed to pretend he wasn’t. I knew it wouldn’t do any good but I said to Captain Willborn, “You’re not even a good liar.”

He produced a slight shrug and mumbled, “Sorry,” though it wasn’t clear if his apology applied to the missing file box, that he was lying, or that he wasn’t even a good liar.

Chapter Fourteen

It seemed an opportune moment for what I assumed was an impromptu legal conference, and Katherine decided to kick it off the moment we got back in the Prius, away from prying ears, and after I pushed the stupid button that turned on the ignition.

She turned to me and asked, “How are we doing so far?”

“I’m doing great.”

“There are two of us on this case.”

“Good point. Well, I’m not so sure about you.”

“So what’s new?”

“Every question you ask has to do with whether our client was influenced or pressured to behave the way she did.”

“And after all you’ve learned and heard, you still think that’s the wrong track?”

“That depends. Do you want to win this case, or lose it to make some political point and embarrass the administration and the army?”

“You make it sound like an either/or proposition, and it’s not. If Lydia and the others were behaving that way because they were ordered to—if they were even nudged in that direction—their responsibility and personal guilt is alleviated, if not abnegated. The White House and the Pentagon were rewriting the rules on interrogation and torture. If a bunch of junior enlisted took it too far, the administration still bears blame.”

“Listen to yourself, Katherine. You make it sound like they took a tiny, tentative step across a smudgy gray line. But that’s not what happened here, was it? Peeing on a man’s face? Is that a small step too far? Are you going to try to argue some bizarre link between that and waterboarding? Between forcing a prisoner to stand for uncomfortably long periods and stuffing objects up a man’s rectum? How about—”

“I know what they did, Sean. When you light a match, don’t act shocked when it ignites a forest fire. Once you move the restraints on human behavior, don’t be surprised if a bunch of immature junior enlisted forget where the lines are.”

“I hope this isn’t a preview of your court summation. Really, Katherine.”

“Given those damning pictures, do you have a better alternative?”

“No, I don’t. Not yet,” I replied. “But neither LTC Eggers nor Captain Willborn is going to confess they ordered or in any way encouraged the soldiers to behave that way. Chief Ashad and Sergeant Waylon are keeping their mouths shut because they’re dead, which may be suspiciously convenient, but is still a fact. And everything on paper seems to have come in contact with a blowtorch. Whatever’s left after that has been classified—we can’t touch it. And anyway, it’ll never make its way into court.”

“Thanks for pointing out the difficulties I already knew.” She paused to take a deep breath, then turned in her seat, put a hand on my arm, and asked, “What I meant is how are
we
doing? You and me?”

Uh oh. When women ask a question like that, it’s usually a prelude to something men don’t want to talk about. I replied, somewhat evasively, “A few big philosophical differences aside, I think we’re doing fine.”

“So do I, Sean.” She looked me in the eye. “So . . . after Korea . . . why didn’t you call me?”

“Well . . . I was in the hospital for a few months.”

“I know. I visited you, remember? I left my number on your table.”

“Was that you? Say, you weren’t the one who slipped the liquid ex-lax into my IV line, were you?”

“Why didn’t you call me, Sean?”

“Given the severity of the head wound, I was having a lot of memory issues.”

She gave me a punch in the arm. “You were shot in the stomach.”

“Oh.” I rubbed my head and observed, “See, I forgot.”

“Be honest with me, Sean. I won’t get mad. It’s important that you tell me the truth.”

Well, the conversation had just progressed from “uh oh” to “oh shit.” When a woman utters those words, she’s either lying to you, or to herself, because she
definitely
will get mad. But I couldn’t think of a convincing fib at that moment, so I answered, lamely and perhaps truthfully, “I thought about it, Katherine. I wanted to.”

“But you never did.”

“No, I never did. I’m just not sure it would work out.”

“Neither am I. Tell me your reasons.”

“We would kill each other.”

“True.” She shrugged. “But hardly relevant. Any others?”

“Your turn.”

“All right.” She thought about it, then said, “That first year at Georgetown I hated you . . . at least I thought I did. The other girls in the class were all smitten with the handsome war hero, the tragically wounded vet, the cool, confident, brilliant student . . . you should’ve heard the talk behind your back. They really put you on a pedestal.” She laughed.

I didn’t comment.

Katherine continued. “So I decided I would be the contrarian, I wouldn’t flirt or fawn over you as so many others were doing. I would become a burr in your side. Every time you gave an opinion in class, I raised my hand and tried to make you look stupid. I tried to guess the position you would take on case studies, and I would research and take the opposing position. I almost killed myself studying, trying to do better than you.”

“I was hoping you
would
kill yourself.”

She smiled. “It wasn’t until the third year when I had a revelation.”

While she paused to think about her revelation, I tried to get my arms around the fact we were having this discussion in the first place. In all the years I’d known Katherine, we had never really had an intimate conversation about anything but the law, politics, and our opposing views on everything from the creation to the second coming, conversation that normally evoked homicidal imaginings—conversations about everything, that is, except sex and the way we felt
toward
each other, versus how we made each other feel.

She continued, “Well, that truth is, I had a big crush on you. I actually was nuts about you. I used to sit in class and just stare at you . . . when you weren’t looking, of course.”

“Oh, I saw you. I thought you were trying to bore holes through me with your laser eyes.”

“Well, now you know. But, unfortunately, I had already set the pattern of our relationship. Every time you laid eyes on me, your face would turn this funny shade of red, and get tight all the sudden.” She paused and did a quick, really stupid imitation of me, held breath, clenched fists, flexed jaw, snorting nostrils, and all. It didn’t even look like me. Really. She said, “I set out to be a real pain in your ass, and I became very good at it.”

“I had no idea.” Well, I knew she was a pain in my ass but I had no idea she found yours truly attractive.

“So . . . eight years later, I decided to try again.”

“Korea.”

“Yes, Korea. Enough time had passed, I thought. Enough to put it behind us . . . enough to make a fresh start.”

“You should’ve informed me, Katherine.” I decided not to mention that it wasn’t until the end of our case in Korea that I realized she was batting for the right team.

She said, “And maybe I wanted to see if I still felt the same way about you.”

“And what did you decide?”

“You hadn’t changed a bit. You were still incorrigible, stubborn, opinionated, coarse, violent, pushy—”

“I didn’t want to mar perfection.”

She couldn’t let that one go without comment. “The thing is, you’re the last man I would’ve . . . I mean, face it, Sean, you’re not exactly an exemplar of progressive male virtues. You’re such a throwback, the original tough guy, slightly chauvinistic, totally insensitive, mulish . . . and—”

“Katherine, that’s no way to talk to a wounded vet.”

“All right, my feelings hadn’t changed. Maybe I didn’t make that clear when I left you my number. But when you never called, I moved on.”

If I was honest with myself, I had always felt a strong attraction for Katherine, as well. I think there is something about a woman who is cool and professional and unapproachable that makes her more alluring; it’s the sexy librarian thing, or lusting after your first grade teacher. I should grow up and rise above that, but I haven’t yet. I asked her, “Why are you bringing this up now?”

“Well, I don’t want to pressure you . . . but Nel.”

“So you and he are . . . ?”

“We are. In a committed relationship, romantically involved . . . whatever they call it these days.” She added, somewhat coyly, “I think you already figured that out.”

“For how long?”

“Nearly a year. We met in New York City, at a fundraiser for a cause we both believe in.”

A picture formed in my head of Nelson calmly dropping a cool million or two to build lovely underwater resorts for humpback whales just to show off and slip into her panties. For some reason, that really pissed me off.

But of course, I was being silly; Katherine would not be impressed by wealth. She was the least materialistic person I had ever known.

Then again, a few billion dollars is enough to make anyone blink.

Anyway, Katherine seemed to hesitate for a long time before she dropped the big bombshell. “Nel asked me to marry him.”

“I see.” After taking a moment to absorb this announcement, I asked her, “And did Katherine say yes?”

“Katherine said, ‘Give me some time.’ ”

“Because of me?”

“Partly, yes.” She then clarified, “Largely, if I was honest with myself.”

“Do you love him?”

“Maybe. I think I do.”

“I believe the appropriate response for a long, happy union is yes, without question or doubt. I’d even leap off a cliff for him.” Actually, getting married
is
jumping off a cliff with no bottom, but this didn’t seem like the right moment to bring that up.

“We’re good together, Sean. Nel and I, we believe in the same things.”

“So do Dallas and New York,” I replied. “That’s what makes the football so interesting.”

“Are you describing Nel and me? Or you and me?”

“Good point.” I looked away for a moment. “He’s much older than you.”

“Check the mirror, Grandpa.”

“I’m old enough to be your big brother. He’s old enough to be your great grandfather.”

“Don’t exaggerate.” She cleared her throat, then said, “I seem to be attracted to older men. Maybe I just find dinosaurs sexy. I find
you
attractive.”

“Plus he’s filthy rich. Your hippie parents will boycott the wedding.”

“Mom and Dad have finally grown up. Dad got his CPA license two years ago.”

“A CPA? He really went over to the dark side.”

“I know. He cried when the license arrived in the mail.” She smiled, then informed me, jokingly, I think, “I can have fun giving it all away. Seriously, we can do a lot of good together.”

“I’m sure the dying whales and endangered snails will be overjoyed. Be sure to invite them to the wedding.”

“That’s not fair, Sean. I like Nel, and I certainly respect him.”

I was opening my lips to address that claim when I looked at Katherine and asked myself an alarming question—what was I saying? Only two minutes before I was ready to wrap my hands around her lovely throat and throttle her till her ears rattled; now I sounded like a jilted lover.

I thought of that old Chinese maxim that if you save a man’s life, you are responsible for the rest of his life. What if you talked a woman out of a wedding? I could already feel the concrete drying around my feet.

I asked Katherine, “Is this why you asked for me as cocounsel?”

“No, I asked because you’re the best choice. This is a tough, very challenging case and I admire your intelligence, your military acumen, your . . . well, your legal ingenuity.” She played with her purse, then added, “Those reasons just happened to coincide with the personal ones.”

I asked Katherine a very good question. “Does Nelson know about me?”

“I haven’t told him . . . no.”

“But he has an idea?”

“He’s not an idiot. Yes, I’m sure he suspects.”

“Do I have to worry about poison in my quarter-pounders?”

“He’s a grown-up, Sean.”

“Good for him. I’m not. Tell him to keep an eye on his brake line.”

“How sweet. I’ve never had two men fight over me.”

“You know this is crazy, Katherine?”

“Believe me, I’m well aware of that.”

“This is the most publicized trial on the planet and we have the most sensationalized client, and she’s possibly a moron, and it’s an uphill case, the government is stacking the evidence—did I mention our client is almost certainly guilty?—and you want me to sort out my feelings for you.”

She looked thoughtful, then said, “I suppose that about sums it up.”

“I want to talk to Lydia again,” I told her, which was my way of saying I didn’t want to talk about
this
anymore.

Katherine looked slightly annoyed and checked her watch. “She should be done with the government psychiatrist by now.” She flipped open her cellphone, punched in a number, and spoke to somebody about making Lydia available. She signed off and looked at me. “The same red brick building where we met with June Johnston.”

I slipped the car into gear and we made the short drive back to the other side of the post. Neither of us spoke during the drive. I mean, you could tell somebody in the car was unhappy with somebody else in the car.

Lydia was awaiting us in the same small conference room where we had met with June, and this time her nose was stuffed inside a magazine called
Celebrity Fashions for Prison
.

Okay, not really; she was actually reading
Time
magazine, and at first, I thought we might be witnessing the dawn of a great intellectual awakening before I noticed her picture on the front cover, and the heading wasn’t “Person of the Year.”