The Night Crew (32 page)

“I got everything I wanted out of him, Margaret. But I’m not happy that you didn’t tell me the truth.”

“Which truth would that be?” she answered, unaware how telling that response was.

“You and your people already put him through the lie detector wringer. You didn’t care if I interrogated him because you were already confident that he didn’t kill Palchaci.”

“So what if we did? What does that change?”

“Army CID just wasted two months trying to find a killer without the benefit of a key witness. You deliberately impeded the conduct of a criminal investigation and, as a result, five soldiers are being prosecuted for an act they did not commit.”

Margaret shifted her feet and tried her best to look unaffected by this charge. “He has no idea who killed Palchaci. You’re right. We interrogated him for weeks. He nearly got strap-burn from being hooked up to the lie detector so many times. And, yes, naturally we delved deeply into that line of query, and you know what? He didn’t know anything.”

“And what if he did know who killed Palchaci? Would you have shared that knowledge with Army CID?”

“I won’t waste my time answering rhetorical questions that have no bearing on reality,”—in other words, no—“but we’re confident that he doesn’t know who killed Palchaci, so . . . no harm, no foul.”

I looked back at her.

“What?” She raised an eyebrow. “Did we miss something?”

“The problem, Margaret, is that you people don’t think like criminal investigators. Ashad does not know he knows, but yes, he does know.”

It took her a second to unravel that verbal puzzle and, when she did, she asked, “Then who did it?”

“Fuck off.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

The same hostess was on duty at the Thayer Hotel dining room and she appeared to recognize me. “Congratulations. You remembered to book a reservation. Your guest has already arrived.”

She led me to the table where Captain Nate Willborn was already seated. I stuck out my hand and we shook.

I told him, “I’m glad you decided to join me.”

“Did I have a choice? That confusing note you sent up with my dinner last night got my interest, Sean.” He looked at me and repeated the words on that message. “
I know you’re the one
. What the hell is that supposed to mean? The
one
what?”

I fell into the chair, and leaned toward him. “It’s no longer Sean, Captain.”

“Oh . . .”

“Tonight is official, not personal.”

He had already ordered a drink and I noted that he either liked lemon in his Scotch, or iced tea was his beverage of choice tonight. He obviously knew he had made a big mistake the night before and he wasn’t in the mood to repeat it.

He told me, “That sounds scary.” He then asked, “Should I get my lawyer?”

“That is certainly your right, Captain Willborn. But in that case I’ll assume you have something to hide and we’ll reconvene this meeting in the MP station after I read you your rights, have you charged, and slapped in cuffs.” I looked at him. “An innocent man has nothing to fear from a simple conversation. We can have this talk relaxing over a good meal, or we can have it with you chained to a table in the MP station. You pick.”

“You wouldn’t.”

I stared back without replying.

“I think you’re bluffing.”

“A lot of people have thought that before and now regret it.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Nonsense, Nate. Everybody has done something wrong. The army has enough regulations that even Mother Teresa was guilty of something. The only question at issue is how wrong.”

“You don’t have enough to charge me with anything.”

“That may or may not be the case. But as an officer of the court, I am legally obliged to inform you at this point that you are not yet a suspect, but neither are you entirely above suspicion. This means you have to talk to me.”

He edged back into his seat and appeared to ponder the meaning of this legal doubletalk. In truth, you either
are not
a suspect, in which case there is no need or obligation to talk, or, you
are
a suspect, in which case the stupidest thing you can do is talk without a lawyer by your side. But most army field officers, who, in fact, are charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice, are not really all that knowledgeable about the nuances and subtleties of the legal code. That’s why the army has lawyers—and that’s why I really did not want Willborn to have his lawyer present.

Despite his background as an interrogator, curiosity got the better of him, and he could not resist asking, “What is it you
think
I did? I didn’t kill anybody.”

“Did I say you did anything, Nate? And I’ll ask you not to put words in my mouth or thoughts into my mind.”

The waitress appeared. I ordered a burger and a beer for me and, without asking his preference, pork chops for Willborn. I never believed in giving a condemned man the choice of his final meal. A drink, however, is a different matter, so I did ask him, “Would you care for a beer or maybe a gin and tonic?”

“No . . . I don’t think I should.”

The waitress left and I asked Willborn, “Have you ever met Melvin Cramer?”

“Who?”

“The reporter who published the pictures and broke the scandal.”

“Oh . . . I thought that name sounded vaguely familiar. No, I haven’t. Why?”

“I had a chance meeting with him the other day.”

“You did?”

“In fact, I asked him who sent the pictures.”

He tried his best to appear nonchalant about this revelation and asked, with an attempt at phony indifference, “And what did he say?”

I changed subjects and informed him, “I also read your officer efficiency reports from the time you served at Al Basari.”

“Those evaluations are confidential,” he snapped. “You had no right to see them.”

“To the contrary, Captain, a member of the bar in pursuit of the defense of a client is allowed to see documents that otherwise might be considered private.” I shook my head. “I think your career is in big trouble, Nate. Your bosses did not appear to have high regard for your performance over there.”

He shot back, “Those evaluations were unfair.”

“Really? They looked straightforward enough to me. Your performance as an interrogator sucked.”

“They were holding me to an unreasonable standard. I cannot be expected to get men to talk who have no intention in hell of revealing what they know. As I told you before, I was getting the toughest cases in the system.”

“But that was your
job
as an interrogator, Nate. Other soldiers were out in the streets fighting the insurgents, getting blown up, being shot at. The only thing asked of you was to get the prisoners to squeal.” I noted, “Ashad did not seem to have any difficulty getting his cases to tell what they knew.”

“Don’t try that shit on me. He tortured them.”

“Still, he was effective. You weren’t.”

“I had some successes.”

“Not according to the record I read or the people I spoke with.” I lied and told him, “One officer familiar with your performance suggested that you couldn’t get a canary to sing, that if you turned on a radio no sound came out.”

“Then you’re talking to the wrong people.”

I changed topics on him again. “You once mentioned that, had you known what the members of the night crew were doing, you would have reported their activities to higher authorities, that this was your duty as a commissioned officer, and that it was one you would gladly have performed. Do you stand by that statement?”

“Yes, I recall saying that. I meant it when I said it, and I haven’t changed my mind.”

“I have other witnesses who say you were well aware of the nature of their activities, that you repeatedly asked Ashad to include you in his interrogations, and that you were furious when he said no. You even begged him to let you share in the credit for his successes.”

“That’s a bald-faced lie. But with Ashad dead, I’ll never be able to prove it, will I?”

I placed my elbows on the table and leaned toward him. Interrogatories with a suspect are a mind game, and there generally are two schools of thought about how to proceed. In one, you pick a single incident or strand of testimony and bear down on it, picking at detail after detail, looking for inconsistencies or incongruities, then you flay them with their own mistruths, lies, and exaggerations, until you get to the truths. In the second, you throw charge after charge at them, a continuous broadside, disorganizing their mental defenses, keeping them off-balance, and keeping your eye open for an exposed flank.

Or to put it in the tactical vernacular of the army, it is a choice between concentrating everything at a single point of attack or dispersing your forces to assault on multiple avenues at once, preventing your opponent from amassing his forces in defense; eventually the line begins to crack in one place, and you rush in and exploit it.

I think Willborn knew what I was doing, attacking him on multiple fronts, some of which were nothing more than feints. And he had to know, also, that eventually, I would find that crack.

In that vein, I told Willborn, “Here’s something else I find interesting. I reviewed the files compiled by my predecessor on this case, Captain Bradley Howser.” I asked, “Did you know or ever meet with Captain Howser?”

“I can’t say I had the pleasure.”

I waited a beat, then asked, “Are you sure that’s a truthful statement, Nate?”

“Not that I recall . . . no . . . no, I’m sure I never met him,” he insisted.

“Well . . . that’s odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“Captain Howser was a very exacting attorney. His files were remarkably meticulous and accurate. Reading through them this morning, I found a notation that he met with you. Two days before he was murdered, in fact.”

Willborn stared at me a moment, then forced himself to ask, “Murdered? I . . . but I heard it was a car accident. Was I misinformed?”

“Due to new evidence, army CID has reclassified it from an accident to a homicide. The investigation has been reopened and they’re now throwing everything they have at the pursuit of his killer.”

“Is that so?” He stopped staring at me and looked down at his fork. Because it was the only appropriate thing to say, he murmured, “Well, I certainly hope they get him.”

“They’re just getting it off the ground, beginning, as all murder investigations do, with the issue of motive. This process could take a while, as you never know the motive until you know it. He may have had enemies, either professional or private, or he may have welshed on a gambling debt to the wrong people. There are so many avenues you have to run down, it just takes time.”

He continued to stare at his fork and avoid my eyes.

So I continued, “Of course, the good news, or the bad news, is that whoever killed Captain Howser in all likelihood also murdered Major Martin Weinstein. This should greatly simplify the task of determining a motive. Do you see where that makes sense, Nate?”

“I wouldn’t know, but . . . I don’t think it necessarily follows. Maybe Weinstein was having an affair with another man’s wife, and maybe Howser was the victim of road rage. You should avoid sloppy reasoning that leads to bad correlations.”

“Yes, you certainly must be careful of that,” I replied with all the insincerity his admonition deserved. “As I said, Nate, I don’t regard you as a suspect, at least not at this time, but . . . well, this is a crazy idea . . . but, I’ve been constructing a sort of scenario in my mind . . . nothing firm, yet . . . in fact, I haven’t even shared it with anyone, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Well . . . I just wondered if you would humor me, if you wouldn’t mind if I ran a few of these ideas past you. As I said, some of them are really out there, but you were at Al Basari, after all, and I hoped you might give my ideas a sanity check.”

He continued to sit and watch me as the waitress arrived with my beer and burger and his pork chops. But he had to know at this point that I was on to him, and further, he had to know that it was foolish to sit here and continue to talk to me without his lawyer present. But if I could read his mind, I think he was convincing himself that he had to know what I knew at this point, and the only way to do that was by remaining a sitting duck.

Then again, maybe he was just hungry.

I have been in this position countless times before, but in truth, you never really know what’s running through the suspect’s mind at the moment when you are closing in. They are like a wolf with his leg caught in the hunter’s steel trap; should he tug and struggle and try to break free; should he cut his losses, gnaw off his own leg, and flee; or, should he stick around and try to eat the hunter when he shows up?

I thought his confidence as an interrogator should argue for the former. Just as a professional quarterback knows he can throw a better spiral than the man on the street, Nate Willborn regarded himself as unequalled in the art of interrogation, at least when compared against a common layman, such as myself.

But an experienced courtroom litigator is not a layman, and a legal interrogatory is not the same thing as an interrogation conducted for intelligence purposes. Willborn’s training and expertise was in how to get men to reveal battlefield secrets, men who already are demoralized and dispirited after being caught. But the fact of their guilt is already settled: the only challenge left is to get them to betray their country or their conscience.

I, on the other hand, make my living getting liars to reveal the truth, to see both that it is in their best interest and, in fact, that there is no other recourse than to admit the truth: to wit, their guilt. A small distinction but, under our present circumstances, an important one.

As I thought he might, Nate made the decision not to gnaw off his own leg and flee. He would stick around and tug and struggle to get out of the trap. They nearly all do, but you can never be sure.

The moment the waitress departed, he told me, “If you want my opinion as to what happened, I already told you I don’t have a fucking clue. But if you want to play this game . . . okay . . . sure, I’ll play along.”

“But that’s not exactly accurate, Nate. You were there. You knew all the main suspects, and you have already expressed to me your opinions about who did the crimes. Remember?”

“Yes, I recall that meeting. But those were just, as you said, my opinions.”

I took a bite out of my burger and he lifted his fork and knife and began cutting into his pork chops. His hand was a little shaky, and he was making an effort to control it by cutting his meat—the result looked like a man trying to saw through his plate.

Still chewing, I suggested to him, “Why don’t we start with the mystery of who released the photographic files to Melvin Cramer?”

He lifted his fork and bit into his first piece of pork chop.

I continued, “We know from the testimonies that Danny and/or Mike took all the pictures. As did everyone else, I made the initial assumption that the night crew had their own computer and they downloaded their pictures into it, then, via e-mail, they forwarded the electronic files to Ashad. Not so, according to their testimonies. There was no computer in the cellblock. Anyway, Danny Elton is that rare American creature who does not know how to use a computer. Do you see where I’m going with this, Nate?”

“No. Explain it.”

“Rather than forward the files to Ashad on the mornings following the special treatments, Sergeant Elton actually gave the cameras he used the night before directly to Ashad. The only computer at Al Basari with those files loaded on its hard drive was the one located in the office trailer shared by you and Ashad. It was located, as you know, in a quarantined area, locked, and under constant guard. I haven’t checked yet, but I imagine that access to your trailer was strictly controlled. Correct?”