The Night Crew (29 page)

Chapter Thirty

Lydia was seated at the table in an interrogation room on the second floor of the military police station. Her nose and her mind were stuffed inside a trashy romance novel when I entered, and it took a long moment before she disengaged from the book.

She looked up, then looked around, then it appeared to dawn on her that I was not accompanied by Katherine. When I had called Lydia to set up this meeting, I may have forgotten to mention that Katherine would not be in attendance.

I took the seat across the table, and fixed her with a hard, uncompromising stare, while saying nothing.

She put down the paperback, but avoided my eyes. As I had anticipated, Katherine’s absence was unnerving for Lydia.

Despite her tough professional exterior, basically Katherine is a large-hearted person with an almost magnetic attraction toward the underdog. Her legal career as an advocate for gay service members has imbued in her what I would regard as dangerous levels of warmth and regard toward her clients for any normal criminal defense attorney; but, since nearly all of Katherine’s past clients were accused of nothing more odious than a failure to conceal their sexual identity, it hadn’t been a problem for her, so far.

As for Lydia, she has some serious attachment issues, a lifetime as a victim, and a neediness so neurotically intense that it’s a miracle she didn’t attract flies.

So Katherine had naturally fallen into the role of her protector, legally, as her lawyer, which was right and proper, and on a subconscious level, as the protective big sister Lydia never had, which was not.

I, on the other hand, long ago learned that in a contest between job and heart, the job always comes first. The army is a tough profession and you don’t survive seventeen years of service without growing a few callouses on your heart, and a forgetful conscience. I had absolutely no problem bullying and manipulating Lydia to get at the overdue truth.

Lydia was now kneading her fingers and doing something funny with her lips. Like everything with this girl, even her nervous ticks were weird.

I let a full two minutes pass before I broke the silence. “I visited your parents yesterday. They asked me to send their love.”

In fact, they had not—but they should have.

She made no reply to this.

“I also told them you’re pregnant.”

After a moment, Lydia replied in a peevish, childish voice, “I wuz gonna tell ’em . . . I swear I wuz . . .”

“I thought I would save you the trouble, Lydia.” I further informed her, “I also met your old high school principal, Mr. Henry Livingston.”

She stared back, but I had the sense I had just broached a topic—i.e., her past—that made her uneasy.

Before she could recover, I continued, in a soothing tone, “I must inform you, Lydia, that we had a long talk about you and about your troubles in school. He told me about all the boys you played doctor with in grade school, and about the three teachers you seduced in high school. He also told me that he strongly suspected you were sexually abused in your home, and that abuse compromised your ability to act appropriately in sexual matters.”

“Well . . . he’s a big, fat liar.” That petulant expression popped onto her face. She broke eye contact. “He ain’t got no idea what he’s talkin’ about.”

I leaned across the table and, in a harsher tone, I told her, “But that’s not true, Lydia. We both know you’re the one who has been lying. For instance, why did you lie about Willy Packer?”

“I got no idea what yer talkin’ about.”

“Then let me refresh your memory. It wasn’t a divorce, but a funeral, after Willy drove off a mountain road.”

I studied Lydia’s face; it was hard to tell what was going through her brain, or even if there
was
a brain inside her head. I recalled Henry Livingston’s admonition that Lydia would not recognize the truth if it kicked her in the ass. As with any experienced defense lawyer, I am used to clients who lie. They lie for one reason or another—usually to cover something up, like guilt, or to protect others, or to shield the reputation of their unit or their institution, or in a few cases, to hide an extenuating embarrassment.

I recalled one memorable client, a good-looking, married young captain who was sleeping with the general’s wife when his own wife was murdered in his home. He had the perfect alibi, but regarded it as a matter of personal honor to submit to a life sentence to protect his mistress’s reputation, without recognizing that he and she had already left their reputations stained on the sheets of the general’s bed. Sean Drummond, however, has a far more jaundiced view of honor. Once the general’s enlisted house aide hinted at the relationship to me, I dragged the general’s wife up onto the stand and browbeat her into confessing the truth. She got a divorce, the captain got convicted on the lesser charge of adultery, the wives at the officers’ club got something interesting to talk about, and the MPs pulled their heads out of their asses and found the real killer, who happened to be his wife’s lover.

People lie for an infinite number of reasons, sometimes even when it’s detrimental to their own welfare, and sometimes the lies are noble, even admirable—but they all
know
they are lying.

But Lydia Eddelston was different. I suspected that if I hooked her up to a lie detector and asked her to repeat the many lies, mistruths, and distortions she had told Katherine and me, she would pass with flying colors. She wasn’t born, she was trapped; fate, birth, and DNA, had formed an unholy alliance against her. Bred in a broken-down trailer with parents who neglected and perhaps abused her, she had neither the smarts nor the good looks to alter or escape the tragic circumstances of her life. Yet, escape was what she desperately needed and, when reality failed to provide it, she chose fantasy instead.

The truth was right there in front of me, if I had only cared to look—it was in what she chose to read. Those Hollywood publicity rags that extolled a life of beauty and glamour and wealth that was as make-believe as it was seductive to such an unformed young mind. Or the romance novels filled with women who were saved from their wretched circumstances by a lusty, brawny Adonis who promises to love and adore them forever. It is called escapist literature for a reason, and for most, that is all it is—a brief, imaginary interlude that dissipates the instant your fat, unshaven lout of a husband bellows for dinner, or your whiny child howls for you to change his poop-filled diaper. But for Lydia, I thought, it had become something more than that; it had become the sustaining lie of her universe.

In her mind, and in her heart, Danny Elton was that barrel-chested, rock-jawed stud that permeates the modern romance novel—handsome, muscular, a man’s man—a woman’s savior if you’re willing to let your imagination play with the pixels a bit. After all, he was good-looking enough in a coarse way, and manly in that way that some rednecks exude a certain stupid virility. But, I suppose, when you’re drowning, a frayed life vest can be every bit as tempting as a luxury liner.

And when Lydia danced and pranced, naked, in front of Danny, in her head, she was Madonna gyrating her loins to seduce the gaping multitude, or Catherine Zeta-Jones taunting Richard Gere in
Chicago
. And that, it struck me, is what I had observed in those elusive expressions on Lydia’s face in the photographs. It was all a dream, make-believe—but it was real enough for her. She was no longer plain, squatty Lydia Eddelston from Justin transported to a steamy shithole in Iraq; she was in a faraway place where Danny Elton was Robert Redford, and Lydia was the smoking hot enchantress, the answer to his dreams.

Unfortunately, those dreams had turned into a nightmare for her, for the four other accused, for the army, and for the entire nation. It was time to separate the truth from the fantasy, and I knew how to do it.

I looked at Lydia and continued, “I don’t know if you’re repressing your memories, or trying to hide your past out of shame and remorse. But it no longer needs to stay hidden, Lydia. Talk to me. I’m not judgmental, and anyway, you were a victim, a young girl who could not protect herself from a larger predator. There’s no shame in it, Lydia. Talk to me.”

She sat silently, her face perfectly still, her eyes frozen on the tabletop. She appeared either unwilling, or unable to address this charge.

Time to twist the knife a little deeper. “I know what you did at Al Basari. I know you were trying to keep Danny Elton as a lover, and I know he chose June over you, and I understand how much that frustrated and infuriated you. You tormented and humiliated the prisoners the same way Danny was humiliating you.”

Tears were running down her cheeks now. She actually started to sniffle.

I knew what she wanted to hear, and I told her, “Danny Elton is a bad man, Lydia. He’s a bully, a louse, a liar. He used you and he abused you. He abused you sexually, and even worse, he abused you emotionally. You gave him everything a man could want, did everything he asked you to do. That he couldn’t see your beauty, and your love for him . . . Well, he never deserved you in the first place.”

She was nodding now. “He’s an asshole!” she told me. “I did! I gave ’im ever’thing. I only wanted to please ’im . . . make ’im happy . . .” She reached up and wiped a sleeve across her runny nose. “He treated me like shit.”

“Yes, and those you thought were friends, like June Johnston, they were even worse, weren’t they?”

“She’s a mean bitch!” Lydia yelled. “I trusted her, y’know?”

“Yes, and she stole Danny and rubbed it in your face in front of everyone.”

She was furious now: her fists were clenched and her face was red. “She knew how I felt ’bout Danny. I tole her. She always talked like she understood that.”

I nodded my head. “And all the while, she was plotting to take him away from you.”

“She couldn’t wait to flash her tits’n ass in Danny’s face. And that dumb fool, Danny, he was too stupid to see what a big phony she wuz. She don’t care nuthin’ about him.” The tears had stopped now, replaced by raging anger. “She ain’t nuthin’ but a lyin’
whore
.”

“And now, just like you, she’s carrying his baby.”

Lydia looked at me. “If I had a gun, I’d blow her stupid head off.”

“I can certainly understand why you feel that way,” I told her. “And to make matters worse, now the two of them are blaming everything that happened at Al Basari on you. They’re claiming it was all
your
idea, Lydia. They’re both going to testify that you pushed things much farther than they wanted to go. It’s not the truth, but that doesn’t matter. It’s two against one. It’s what the court will believe.”

“You think?”

“Danny and June have already told me as much.” I awarded her a look of resignation. “It’s sad. You’ll end up in prison, and they’ll probably run off and get married.”

Her response was to look across the table at me with an expression of shock. “Married? You think they’re . . . uh . . . uh . . . ?” She took a number of deep breaths. I could see she was starting to lose it.

Before she had a total meltdown, I leaned back and said, “But you don’t have to let it go down that way, Lydia. You shouldn’t let them win. You need to come clean. I can’t protect you if you withhold the truth from me.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she wailed.

“I know that, and I know what happened, Lydia. I know they pushed
you
to do those things. I know they taunted you, and I know they shamed you into it. I know they gave
you
no choice.”

As I had observed on the tape, this wasn’t strictly the truth. But Lydia Eddelston, as Katherine had inferred, was brittle, and I didn’t want her cascading into an emotional collapse; that meant composing an alternate moral reality to replace the one I was deconstructing, one she could feel, if not content to inhabit, at least not totally uncomfortable in.

“That’s the plain truth,” she told me. “Sometimes I’d tell Danny I didn’t like to do that stuff . . . and he, uh . . . he’d jus’ tell me, ‘Hey, baby, it’s jus’ a thang.’ Said he loved me.”

I quickly asked, “Did Danny kill General Palchaci?”

She stared at me for one of those interminably long pauses, then said, “Uh-huh . . . yeah, he did.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep . . . I know he did it.”

“How? When?”

“It was near the end. He . . . y’know, Danny . . . he never could get that old guy to break. He tried, and he tried . . . it pissed him off somethin’ awful.”

“Why did it piss him off so much? Surely General Palchaci couldn’t have been the only prisoner who refused to talk.”

“Cuz that Captain, he kept tellin’ Danny that that general was the most important guy to git talkin’. Said we wuz wasting our time on all them other prisoners. Said that general knew more’n all ’em. He kept pressurin’ Danny to git that guy to open up.”

“Captain Willborn told him that?”

“Sure did. So Danny, he finally got all fired up, and he gave the old guy a special session. He—”

“Special session?” I interrupted. “Is that different than a special treatment?”

“Yep. That wuz when Danny or the interrogators gave somebody the treatment on their own. Y’know, without us.”

“Us?” I asked, “I presume you’re referring to yourself, June, and Andrea. Right?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “That night, it was jus’ him’n Mike and the prisoner. Danny said he’n Mike were goin’ to the dining facility for a snack . . . but that ain’t what they did. They had this empty cell down near the backside. Sort of off there . . . all by itself.”

“Were you present?”

She nodded. “It was real late, though. After June and Andrea had left.”

“So you were the only one present to witness the murder?”

Again, she nodded. “I could hear what was happenin’ down there, though. Danny, he always used to carry this steel baseball bat . . . like that badass sheriff in that old movie . . . uh . . .”

“
Walking Tall
?” I suggested.

“I guess. Danny even slept with that bat. Anyways, he’n Mike, they wuz takin’ turns whackin’ away at that old man.”