Unfortunately, there are some men who get their fun and challenges in other ways. Sexual assault. Murder. That’s what happened on that hot August night at Fort Hadley, Georgia. The victim was Captain Ann Campbell, daughter of Lieutenant General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Campbell. As if that weren’t bad enough, she was young, beautiful, talented, bright, and a West Point graduate. She was the pride of Fort Hadley, the darling of the Army public relations people, a poster girl for Army recruiters, a spokesperson for the new, nonsexist Army, a Gulf War veteran, and so forth and so on. Therefore, I wasn’t particularly surprised when I heard that someone raped and murdered her. She had it coming. Right? Wrong.
But I didn’t know any of that during the Happy Hour at the O Club. In fact, while I had been speaking to Cynthia, and talking man talk with that colonel at the bar, Captain Ann Campbell was still alive and was actually fifty feet away in the O Club dining room finishing a meal of salad, chicken, white wine, and coffee, as I learned during my subsequent investigation.
I arrived at the trailer park, set among the pine trees, and parked my Blazer some distance from my mobile home. I walked in the dark along a path of rotted planking. A few unoccupied trailers were scattered around the clearing, but mostly there were empty lots marked by cement blocks upon which there once sat about a hundred mobile homes.
There was still electric and telephone service available and a well that provided running water, which I made potable by adding Scotch whisky to it.
I unlocked the door of my trailer, stepped inside, and turned on the light, which revealed a kitchen/dining room/living room combination.
I thought of the trailer as a time capsule in which nothing had changed since about 1970. The furniture was sort of an avocado-green plastic, and the kitchen appliances were a kind of mustard color that I think used to be called harvest gold. The walls were paneled in a dark plywood, and the carpeting was a red and black plaid. If one were color-sensitive, this place could induce fits of depression and suicide.
I took off my jacket and tie, turned on the radio, got a beer from the refrigerator, and sat in the armchair that was bolted to the floor. There were three framed prints screwed to the walls, a bullfighter, a seascape, and a reproduction of Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer.” I sipped my beer and contemplated Aristotle contemplating Homer’s bust.
This particular trailer park, named Whispering Pines, if anyone cares, was developed by a few enterprising retired sergeants in the late sixties when it appeared that the war in Asia was going to last forever. Fort Hadley, an Infantry Training Center, was bursting with soldiers and their dependents back then, and I remember Whispering Pines when it was full of young married soldiers who were authorized—actually encouraged—to live off post. There was an aboveground pool crammed with kids and young Army wives, and there was too much drinking, and too much boredom, and too little money, and the future was obscured by the fog of war.
The American dream was not supposed to look like this, and when the men went off to the war, too often other men came in the night to the bedroom at the back of the long, narrow trailers. In fact, I had lived here then and had gone off to war, and someone took my place in the bed and took my young wife. But that was a few wars ago, and so much has happened since, that the only lingering bitterness left is that the bastard also took my dog.
I read a few magazines, had a few more beers, thought of Cynthia, and didn’t think of Cynthia.
Normally, I have a little more fun than this, but I had to be at the post armory at 0500 hours, a.k.a. five A.M.
CHAPTER
TWO
The post armory. A cornucopia of American high-tech military goodies—things that go boom in the night.
I was on undercover assignment at the armory in the early morning hours near the time when Ann Campbell was murdered, which is why I caught the squeal, as my civilian counterparts would say. Some weeks earlier, I had assumed the duties and outward appearances of a slightly seedy supply sergeant named Franklin White, and with a real seedy supply sergeant named Dalbert Elkins, we were about to close a deal to sell a few hundred M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, and sundry other dangerous items from the armory to a group of Cuban freedom fighters who wanted to overthrow Mr. Fidel Castro, the Antichrist. In fact, the Hispanic gentlemen were Colombian drug dealers, but they wanted to make us feel better about the transaction. Anyway, I was sitting in the armory at 0600 hours, conversing with my coconspirator, Staff Sergeant Elkins. We were talking about what we were going to do with the $200,000 we would split. Sergeant Elkins was actually going to jail for the rest of his life, but he didn’t know that, and men have to dream. It’s my unpleasant duty to become their worst nightmare.
The phone rang, and I picked up the receiver before my new buddy could grab it. I said, “Post armory, Sergeant White speaking.”
“Ah, there you are,” said Colonel William Kent, the post provost marshal, Fort Hadley’s top cop. “I’m glad I found you.”
“I didn’t know I was lost,” I replied. Prior to my chance encounter with Cynthia, Colonel Kent was the only person on the post who knew who I was, and the only reason I could think of for him to be calling me was to tell me I was in imminent danger of being found out. I kept one eye on Sergeant Elkins and one on the door.
But as luck would have it, it wasn’t as simple as that. Colonel Kent informed me, “There’s been a homicide. A female captain. Maybe raped. Can you talk?”
“No.”
“Can you meet me?”
“Maybe.” Kent was a decent sort of guy, but like most MP types, he wasn’t overly clever, and the CID made him nervous. I said, “I’m working, obviously.”
“This is going to take priority, Mr. Brenner. It’s a big one.”
“So is this.” I glanced at Sergeant Elkins, who was eyeing me carefully.
Kent said, “It was General Campbell’s daughter.”
“My goodness.” I thought a moment. All my instincts said to avoid any cases that involved the rape and murder of a general’s daughter. It was a lose-lose situation. My sense of duty, honor, and justice assured me that some other sucker in the special unit of the CID could handle it. Somebody whose career was down the toilet anyway. I thought of several candidates. But, duty and honor aside, my natural curiosity was aroused. I asked Colonel Kent, “Where can I meet you?”
“I’ll meet you in the provost building parking lot and take you to the scene.”
Being undercover, I shouldn’t be anywhere near the provost marshal’s office, but Kent is annoyingly dense. I said, “Not your place.”
“Oh… how about the infantry barracks? The Third Battalion HQ. It’s on the way.”
Elkins, tense and paranoid already, was getting fidgety. I said to Kent, “Okay, sweetheart. Ten minutes.” I hung up and said to Sergeant Elkins, “My girlfriend. Needs some lovin’.”
Elkins looked at his watch. “Kinda late… or early…”
“Not for this little gal.”
Elkins smiled.
As per armory regulations, I was wearing a sidearm, and, satisfied that Elkins was cooled out, I unhooked the pistol belt and left it there as per post regulations. I didn’t know then that I would need a weapon later. I said to Elkins, “Might be back.”
“Yeah, okay. Give her one for me, boy.”
“Sure thing.”
I had left my Blazer back at the trailer park, and my POV—that’s Army talk for privately owned vehicle, not point of view—was now a Ford pickup truck, issued to me for my current impersonation. It was complete with shotgun rack, dog hair on the upholstery, and a pair of hip waders in the back.
So off I went, through the main post. Within a few minutes I was into the area of the Infantry Training Brigade, long wooden World War II era barracks, mostly deserted now and looking dark and spooky. The cold war is over, and the Army, while not exactly withering away, is definitely downsizing, and the combat arms branches—the infantry, armor, and artillery, the reason for t
he Army’s existence—are taking the biggest cuts. The CID, however, dealing as it does with crime, is a growth organization.
As a young private, I graduated Advanced Infantry Training School here at Fort Hadley many years ago, then went to Airborne School and Ranger School at Fort Benning, not far from here. So I’m an Airborne Ranger—the ultimate weapon, a killing machine, mean, lean, death from the skies, good to go, and so on. But I’m a little older now and the CID suits me fine.
Ultimately, even government institutions have to justify their existence, and the Army was doing a good job of finding a new role for itself in knocking around pissant countries who get out of line. But I’ve noticed a certain lack of esprit and purpose in the officers and men who had always felt that they were the only thing standing between the Russian hordes and their loved ones. It’s sort of like a boxer, training for years for the title match, then finding out that the other contender just dropped dead. You’re a little relieved, but there’s also a letdown, a hollow place where your adrenaline pump used to be.
Anyway, it was that time of day that the Army calls first light, and the Georgia sky was turning pink, and the air was heavy with humidity, and you could figure out it was going to be a ninety-degree day. I could smell the wet Georgia clay, the pine trees, and the aroma of Army coffee wafting out of a nearby mess hall, or as we call it now, a dining facility.
I pulled off the road and onto the grassy field in front of the old Battalion Headquarters. Colonel Kent got out of his official olive-drab car, and I got out of my pickup truck.
Kent is about fifty, tall, medium build, with a pockmarked face and icy blue eyes. He’s a bit stiff at times, not clever, as I said, but hardworking and efficient. He’s the military equivalent of a chief of police, commanding all the uniformed military police at Fort Hadley. He’s a stickler for rules and regulations, and, while not disliked, he’s not anyone’s best buddy.
Kent was all spiffy in his provost marshal’s uniform with his white helmet, white pistol belt, and spit-shined boots. He said to me, “I have six MPs securing the scene. Nothing has been touched.”
“That’s a start.” Kent and I have known each other about ten years, and we’ve developed a good working relationship, though in fact I only see him about once a year when a case brings me to Fort Hadley. Kent outranks me, but I can be familiar with him, actually give him a hard time, as long as I’m the investigating officer on the case. I’ve seen him testify at courts-martial, and he’s everything a prosecutor could ask for in a cop: believable, logical, unemotional, and organized in his testimony. Yet, there’s something about him that didn’t play right, and I always had the feeling that the prosecutors were happy to get him off the stand. I think, maybe, he comes across as a little too stiff and unfeeling. When the Army has to court-martial one of its own, there is usually some sympathy, or at least concern, for the accused. But Kent is one of those cops who only sees black and white, and anyone who breaks the law at Fort Hadley has personally affronted Colonel Kent. I actually saw him smile once when a young recruit, who burned down a deserted barracks in a drunken stupor, got ten years for arson. But the law is the law, I suppose, and such a brittle personality as William Kent has found his niche in life. That’s why I was a little surprised to discover that he was somewhat shaken by the events of that morning. I asked him, “Have you informed General Campbell?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you’d better go to his house.”
He nodded, not very enthusiastically. He looked awful, actually, and I deduced that he’d been to the scene himself. I informed Colonel Kent, “The general is going to have your ass for delaying notification.”
He explained, “Well, I didn’t have a positive identification until I saw the body myself. I mean, I couldn’t go to his house and tell him that his daughter—”
“Who made the tentative identification?”
“A Sergeant St. John. He found the body.”
“And he knew her?”
“They were on duty together.”
“Well, that’s a pretty positive identification. And you knew her?”
“Yes, of course. I made a positive identification.”
“Not to mention dog tags and the name on her uniform.”
“Well, that’s all gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yes… whoever did it took her uniform and dog tags…”
You get a sense for these things, or maybe you get a backlog of cases stored in your head, and when you hear the evidence and see the scene, you ask yourself, “What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked Colonel Kent, “Underwear?”
“What? Oh… it’s there…” He added, “Usually they take the underwear. Right? This is weird.”
“Is Sergeant St. John a suspect?”
Colonel Kent shrugged. “That’s your job.”
“Well, with a name like St. John, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment.” I looked around at the deserted barracks, the Battalion Headquarters, the mess hall, and the company assembly areas overgrown with weeds now, and in the gray light of dawn, I could imagine the young troops falling in for roll call. I can still remember being always tired, cold, and hungry before breakfast. I remember, too, being frightened, knowing that ninety percent of us standing there in formation were going to Vietnam, and knowing that the casualty rate among the frontline troops was high enough so that a Midland bookie wouldn’t give you better than two-to-one odds that you’d make it back in the same shape you left. I said to Kent, “That was my company over there. Delta Company.”
“I didn’t know you were infantry.”
“Long time ago. Before I became a copper. You?”
“Always an MP. But I saw some stuff in ’Nam. I was at the American Embassy when the Cong came over the walls that time. January ’68.” He added, “I killed one of them.”
I nodded. “Sometimes I think the infantry was better. The bad guys were never one of your own. This crap is different.”
“Bad guys are bad guys,” Kent informed me. “The Army is the Army. Orders are orders.”
“Yup.” And therein lies the essence of military mentality. Ours is not to reason why, and there is no excuse for failure. This works pretty well in combat and most other military-type situations, but not in the CID. In the CID you must actually disobey orders, think for yourself, ignore the brass, and, above all, discover the truth. This does not always sit well in the military, which thinks of itself as a big family, where people still like to believe that “all the brothers are valiant, and all the sisters virtuous.”
As though reading my thoughts, Colonel Kent said, “I know this could be a real messy case. But maybe not. Maybe it was committed by a civilian. Maybe it can be wrapped up right away.”
“Oh, I’m sure it can, Bill. And you and I will get letters of commendation inserted into our permanent files, and General Campbell will invite us for cocktails.”
Kent looked very troubled. He said, “Well, my ass is on the line here, frankly. This is my post, my beat. You can beg off if you want and they’ll send another homicide guy. But you happen to be here and you happen to be special unit, and we’ve worked together before, and I’d like your name next to mine on the prelim report.”
“And you didn’t even bring me a cup of coffee.”
He smiled grimly. “Coffee? Hell, I need a drink.” He added, “You can get some rank out of this.”
“If you mean a reduction, you’re probably right. If you mean a promotion, I’m topped out.”
“Sorry. I forgot. Bad system.”
I asked him, “Are you up for a star?”
“Maybe.” He looked a bit worried, as if the twinkling general’s star that he’d seen in his dreams just blinked out.
I asked, “Have you notified the local CID yet?”
“No.”
“Why in the world not?”
“Well… this is not going to be handled by them, anyway… I mean, Jesus, this is the post commander’s daught
er, and the CID commander here, Major Bowes, knew her, and so did everyone else here, so we need to show the general that we’ve gotten top talent from Falls Church—”
“The word you’re looking for is scapegoat. But, okay, I’ll tell my boss in Falls Church that this is best handled by a special investigator, but I don’t know if I’m the guy who wants to do it.”
“Let’s go see the body, then you can decide.”
As we started to walk to his car, we heard the post cannon boom—actually a recording of some long-scrapped artillery piece—and we stopped and faced the direction of the sound. From the loudspeakers mounted on the empty barracks came the recorded bugle sound of reveille, and we saluted, two solitary men standing in the predawn light, reacting to a lifetime of conditioning and centuries of military custom and ceremony.
The ancient bugle call, going back to the Crusades, echoed through the company streets and the alleyways between the barracks, and over the grassy assembly fields, and somewhere, the flags were being raised.
It’s been years since I’ve been caught outdoors at reveille, but I sort of enjoy the pomp and ceremony once in a while, the communion with the living and the dead, the idea that there is something bigger and more important than I, and that I am part of it.
There is no civilian equivalent of this, unless watching Good Morning America has become a tradition, and though I’m on the periphery of Army life, I don’t know if I’m ready yet to make the transition to civilian life. But that decision might already be in the making. Sometimes you sense when the last act has begun.
The final sounds of the bugle died away, and Kent and I continued toward his car. He remarked to me, “Another day begins at Fort Hadley, but one of its soldiers will not see it.”
CHAPTER
THREE
We headed south in Kent’s car toward the far reaches of the military reservation.
Colonel Kent began: “Captain Ann Campbell and Sergeant Harold St. John were on duty at Post Headquarters. She was duty officer, he was duty sergeant.”