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 s
aid, “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?”
“Rope.”
“Rope? Oh…”
And there it was: a length of nylon cord, curled up in the bottom drawer. I took it out and examined it.
Cynthia said, “Is it the same?”
“Possibly. This looks like the rope at the scene—standard Army-green tent cord, but there’s about six million miles of it out there. Still, it is suggestive.” I looked at the bed, which was an old four-poster, suitable for bondage. I don’t know a great deal about sexual deviations except for what I’ve read in the CID manual, but I do know that bondage is a risky thing. I mean, a big healthy woman like Ann Campbell could probably defend herself if something got out of hand. But if you’re spread-eagled on the bed or the ground with your wrists and ankles tied to something, you’d better know the guy real well, or something bad could happen. Actually, it did.
I turned out the lights and we left the bedroom. Cynthia swung the framed recruiting poster closed. I found a tube of wood glue on the workbench, opened the hinged poster a crack, and ran a bead of glue along the wood frame. That would help a little, but once you figured out that some floor space was missing, you’d figure out the rest of it, and if you didn’t realize some space was missing, the poster looked like it belonged there. I said to Cynthia, “Fooled me for a minute. How smart are MPs?”
“It’s more a matter of spatial perception than brains. And if they don’t find it, the police might when they get here.” She added, “Someone might want that poster. I think we either have to let the MPs empty the room for the CID lab, or we cooperate with the civilian police before they padlock this place.”
“I think we do neither. We take a chance. That room is our secret. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay, Paul. Maybe your instincts are good on this.”
We went up the basement stairs, turned off the lights, and closed the door.
In the front foyer, Cynthia said to me, “I guess your instincts were right about Ann Campbell.”
“Well, I thought we’d be lucky if we found a diary and a few steamy love notes. I didn’t expect a secret door that led into a room decorated for Madame Bovary by the Marquis de Sade.” I added, “I guess we all need our space. The world would actually be a better place if we all had a fantasy room in which to act out.”
“Depends on the script, Paul.”
“Indeed.”
We left by the front door, got into Cynthia’s Mustang, and headed back up Victory Drive, passing a convoy of Army trucks heading the other way as we approached the post.
As Cynthia drove, I stared out the side window, deep in thought. Weird, I thought. Weird. Weird things, right on the other side of a gung-ho recruiting poster. And that was to become metaphor for this case: shiny brass, pressed uniforms, military order and honor, a slew of people above reproach, but if you went a little deeper, opened the right door, you would find a profound corruption as rank as Ann Campbell’s bed.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
As Cynthia drove, she divided her attention between the road and Ann Campell’s address book, mostly at the expense of the road. I said, “Give me that.”
She threw it on my lap in a gesture that was definitely meant to be aggressive.
I flipped through the address book, a thick leather-bound and well-worn book of good quality, written in a neat hand. Every space was filled with names and addresses, a good number of them crossed out and reentered with a new address as people changed duty stations, homes, wives, husbands, units, countries, and from alive to dead. In fact, I saw two entries marked KIA. It was a typical address book of a career soldier, spanning the years and the world, and, while I knew it was probably her desktop official address book and not the little black book that we hadn’t yet found, I was still fairly certain that someone in this book knew something. If I had two years, I could question all of them. Clearly, I had to give the book to headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, where my immediate superior, Colonel Karl Gustav Hellmann, would parcel it out all over the world, generating a stack of transcribed interviews taller than the great Teutonic pain-in-the-ass himself. Maybe he’d decide to read them and stay off my case.
A word about my boss. Karl Hellmann was actually born a German citizen close to an American military installation near Frankfurt, and, like many hungry children whose families were devastated by the war, he had made himself a sort of mascot for the American troops and eventually joined the U.S. military to support his family. There were a good
number of these galvanized German Yankees in the U.S. military years ago, and many of them became officers, and some are still around. On the whole, they make excellent officers, and the Army is lucky to have them. The people who have to work for them are not so lucky. But enough whining. Karl is efficient, dedicated, loyal, and correct in both senses of the word. The only mistake I ever knew him to make was when he decided I liked him. Wrong, Karl. But I do respect him, and I would trust him with my life. In fact, I have.
Obviously, this case needed a breakthrough, a shortcut by which we could get to the end quickly, before careers and reputations were flushed down the toilet. Soldiers are encouraged to kill in the proper setting, but killing within the service is definitely a slap in the face to good order and discipline. It raises too many questions about that thin line between the bloodcurdling, screaming bayonet charge—“What’s the spirit of the bayonet? To kill! To kill!”—and peacetime garrison duty. A good soldier will always be respectful of rank, gender, and age. Says so in the Soldier’s Handbook.
The best I could hope for in this case was that the murder was committed by a slimeball civilian with a previous arrest record going back ten years. The worst I could imagine was… well, early indications pointed to it, whatever it was.
Cynthia said, apropos of the address book, “She had lots of friends and acquaintances.”
“Don’t you?”
“Not in this job.”
“True.” In fact, we were a bit out of the mainstream of Army life, and so our colleagues and good buddies are fewer in number. Cops tend to be cliquish all over the world, and when you’re a military cop on continuing TDY—temporary duty—you don’t make many friends, and relationships with the opposite sex tend to be short and strained, somewhat like temporary duty itself.