The Night Crew (5 page)

I smiled. “What we call a clusterfuck.”

She smiled back. “You said it like that, sir. Also there was way too many prisoners to fit inside the prison. So they had this big area that was roped off with high fences and barbed wire where seven or eight thousand more prisoners wuz kept. They wuz livin’ in tents, like us.”

“Then you lived outside the prison?”

“Yes, sir. Most ever’body lived outside—in tents. The older officers, lot of ’em stayed in these air-conditioned trailers. The heat got to ’em somethin’ awful. Even most of the guards lived outside the prison.”

“Then what were you doing
inside
the cellblock?”

“Oh . . .” She stared at me for a long time before she answered, “Well . . . Danny, he invited me.”

“
Invited
you?”

“That’s what I said . . . sir.”

“In a professional capacity? A social capacity? What?”

“No, I . . . See, Danny and the MPs, they worked round the clock, pretty much ever’ day. Only way we could see each other was if I went’n visited with him.”

“I see . . .”
Not
. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled but prison is not my idea of an ideal place for a date. But maybe I was missing something, so I asked, “Did you visit him often?”

“Plenty . . . yes, sir.”

“How often? An approximation will suffice.”

“Near ever’ night, I guess . . . ’less I came down on the duty roster, or felt sick, or was havin’ my monthly,” she informed us, without any evident unease or embarrassment.

I exchanged looks with Katherine. What I could safely read into her admission was that she and Danny were . . . well, fucking.

In any regard, I was surprised and I think my face showed it, though it had nothing to do with the occasional absences caused by her monthly periods—it was her casual confession that she was in the cellblock nearly
every
night.

She looked at Katherine, then back at me. With a loose shrug, she added, “Most days, usually got my job done by four or so. Wusn’t really much to do at nights. Iraq’s pretty boring.”

“Did you have
official
permission to be in the cellblock?”

“Like I tole you—Danny invited me.”

Either she was being deliberately obtuse, or we were talking past each other. So to clarify, I stated, “This cellblock contained male prisoners. Presumably
only
males—is this correct?”

She looked confused. “I guess.”

“Did this cellblock have a designating name or number?”

“Cellblock One. But they wuz all real hard cases in there. The badass wing . . . ever’body called it that.”

I explained, “In military prisons, the policy is that female guards are excluded from duty inside male wings. Nor are female soldiers or guests allowed to enter, and they are certainly not permitted to wander freely. Other physical considerations aside, male prisoners are horny and easily excited. Also, male prisoners regard it as an unwelcome intrusion of their privacy.” I paused, then observed, “I imagine Arab males are even more sensitive to these issues.”

“Well . . . I wouldn’t know nuthin’ ’bout that.”

Maybe she didn’t, but the army officials running the prison certainly knew. “I’m saying that I’m a little surprised that you and two other female soldiers were
ever
present in that cellblock.” She was giving me another of those long, empty stares, and I added, “From the news reports, Lydia, your visits often occurred late at night.”

The disconnected stare continued. She didn’t even blink. Hello, anybody home? I was tempted to shake her head to see if anything rattled or if it was an empty vessel. “If you’re wondering, that was a question.”

“Oh . . . then . . . yes, sir. They always did. Like I tole you, we wuz invited.”

“Look, I just—” This was becoming very annoying. I drew a long breath, then retreated into an amiable smile. “Yes, so you did tell me.” After a moment, I changed tact. “And were the other women invited as well?”

“Sure wuz. Andrea and June had friends in the same unit as Danny.”

“Did your senior officers
know
you were there?”

“Cain’t really speak for Andrea and June.”

“Of course.”

“My sergeant knew, though. Dang sure, she knew.” After a moment, she added, “Often as not, I slept at the cellblock.”

“You
slept
there?”

“Yup. See, one of them cells got turned into a lounge fer the guards. Had bunks, coupla fans, a hotplate fer cookin’. Much better’n the tents outside. Didn’t have to worry about no mortars neither.”

Katherine quickly asked, “Were you ever subjected to mortar fire during your time in Iraq?”

“A few times . . . I guess I heard some goin’ off.”

“Near you?”

“Nope. I mean, sometimes I heard these big thumps and blasts. Like, a ways off . . . y’know, in the distance. But since I wuz sleepin’ in the prison most nights, I wuz pretty safe from that.”

I now knew where Katherine was going with this. She leaned closer and asked, “Did they
ever
explode near you?”

“Nope.”

“Were you ever subjected to direct enemy fire? Not necessarily at the prison . . . maybe a convoy you traveled with? A bomb going off in the road? At any point during your tour in Iraq, did you experience violence?”

She shook her head. “Since all them Iraqi prisoners wuz mixed into our FOB, them insurgents didn’t really mess with us too bad.”

What Katherine was probing for was the chance that Lydia Eddelston had experienced combat, which might have induced battleshock or some other form of post-combat syndrome that scrambled her ability to tell right from wrong. This has become a very popular and sometimes even effective defense strategy these days.

Had she asked me first, however, I would’ve saved her the trouble. Jurors in a civilian court are sometimes susceptible to that defense; they are naturally predisposed to sympathize with a combat veteran, and they have no term of reference for what the vet experienced. Not so a board of battle-hardened veterans who, accurately or not, believe they came out of it perfectly normal, whatever that means in this day and age. What it does not mean is that combat induces some form of moral bulimia.

More importantly, the chance of persuading them that a clerk—in military jargon, a pogue, a REMF, aka, a Rear Echelon Mother Fucker—was driven by the demons of war to do bad things was about as good as my chance of winning Mr. Collegiality in a beauty pageant. I’m not that beautiful, for one thing.

Besides, a totally different question, or rather contradiction, was still roiling inside my mind. A lounge inside a prison cellblock? “What rank is Danny, and what was his job title?”

“Night shift leader for the block. Sergeant.” She quickly stipulated, “E-5,” meaning a buck sergeant, the lowest of the noncommissioned officer ranks. Typically a buck sergeant is in charge of the smallest-size unit in the army, a fire team, two to three other soldiers. As the army likes to say, buck sergeants float somewhere between whale shit and octopus shit, and typically, as I knew from my own recurring visits to army prisons, a shift leader is usually at least an E-6, staff sergeant, or more often, an E-7, sergeant first class.

So I asked, “Were
his
officers or senior noncommissioned officers aware of your presence in Cellblock One?”

“Cain’t really say.”

“Try.”

“Hardly ever saw any of ’em.”

“Then would it be equally safe to say they never saw you?”

“Guess so.”

“Don’t guess. Yes, or no?”

“I don’t know . . . Don’t think they never did.”

Ignoring that troublesome double negative, I asked her, “And did you spend the night each time?”

“Not always.”

“How often?”

“Often enough. Why?”

“Was there a sign-in procedure?”

“Yes, sir. At the gate. I always did sign in.”

I have been in and out of more military prisons and holding facilities than I care to remember, and getting in is always a hassle, even when, as was my case, you have a tangible legal justification for visitation, supported by the appropriate official documentation. The army thrives on order and control, and a penal environment is like a free-fire zone for its most anal impulses. It did not sound like Al Basari resembled the army I know and love. I asked, “Were you sleeping with Sergeant Elton?”

Blank stare.

“Having sexual relations?” She still looked confused. “Were you doin’ him?” I clarified. As I was picking up, with this young client you had to connect on her level.

“Yes, sir. Sure was.” In response to my raised eyebrows, she added, without any visible embarrassment, “Ain’t nothing wrong ’bout that. We wuz in different units and not married. I’m divorced. So’s he.”

Given her youth this surprised me, and I asked, “You’ve been married?”

“Jus’ once,” she said, sounding quite proud about that. “Guy I went to high school with. Didn’t last longer’n jus’ a few months.”

“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Let’s move to the night the pictures were taken.”

Private Eddelston again turned her eyes toward Katherine, a sort of doesn’t-this-guy-know-anything glance.

“Did I say something wrong?” I asked her.

“Well . . .” After another long pause, she informed me, “Them pictures wusn’t taken in no one night, sir.”

It was now my turn to stare at Katherine, whose attention had become curiously riveted to a spot on the wall.

I cleared my throat again. “Maybe you should tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”

“Ain’t much to tell. Danny was tole by them intel people that we should . . . uh, they said we should soften up the prisoners.”

“Soften up? Were those their exact words?”

“Uh . . . no, sir.” Another of those weird, long pauses, then, “Prep ’em for interrogation. That wuz how they put it.”

“So this was like . . . an every night thing?”

“Ever’ night? Oh no, sir. Jus’ some nights. Certain prisoners.”

“How many nights?”

She got that empty, faraway look again, and I specified, “An estimate will suffice.”

She eventually said, “Maybe fifteen. Maybe twenty. Could’a been more . . . probably not less, though. Them days in Iraq, they sorta all melt together.”

“So would it be accurate to state that the pictures reflect
frequent
behavior?”

“Well . . . some nights went longer’n others. Purty much depended on who the prisoners wuz, how tough, how bad the intel guys needed ’em to squeal.”

“I see. Well, who selected which prisoners needed to be . . . prepped?”

“Them . . . the intel folks. But Danny and Mike wuz round them prisoners ever’ day and ever’ night. They knew ’em better’n anybody, so’s sometimes they made suggestions. Like, maybe this guy or that guy was havin’ a real sorry day, or his buddies wuzn’t treatin’ him too good, or he seemed sorta moody or depressed.”

“All right. Who brought you and the other female soldiers into these sessions?”

“Didn’t really go like that.”

“Then how did it go?”

“One night, things jus’ . . . well, jus’ kinda happened.”

This endless rephrasing of simple questions was really starting to annoy me. Usually no sane defense attorney places his own client on the witness stand, particularly if he knows or suspects the client has something to hide—guilt, for instance. But I was beginning to theorize that Lydia Eddelston was an exception. I pictured the frustrated prosecutor blowing his own brains out in front of the court. “What kind of things happened?”

“Well . . . one night Danny wuz bringin’ this prisoner back to his cell from interrogation. I wuz there’n so was June. Anyways, this prisoner, ever’body wuz sure he was some kinda bigwig, hotshot insurgent. Them intel folks had interrogated him like ten times and got nowhere—they was pretty worked-up’n all.”

She paused and turned suddenly thoughtful. This was getting interesting and I leaned across the table toward her. “And what happened?”

“I’m . . . well, I’m tryin’ to recall ’xactly how it went down. I remember, he . . . this pris’ner, he saw me’n June, and he got real uptight. Y’know, all tense-like and squirmy. So June, she’s pretty forward’n all, she moved up real close to this guy and she rubbed up agin him. Y’know, jus’ sorta rubbed her titties agin him. Guess the idea jus’ sprung into her head . . . and he started blabberin’ somethin’ . . . and then, next thing you know, she started unbuttonin’ her shirt, and doin’ this bump’n grind. And this guy . . . well he looked like he just got a cattle prod stuffed up his rump. Got all talky and nervous. Real sudden-like.”

“And what happened next?”

“Well, then June, she took her shirt and drawers off, and started doin’ this dance. She was down to her undies, but Danny ’n Mike started singin’ this song, and like a stripper would do, June took off her bra and started movin’ her hips real slow-like, and pinchin’ her boobs and all. And that prisoner, he kept shuttin’ his eyes. But if you looked real close-like, you could tell he was a’peekin’. So June, she says to Danny, ‘Hey, pull down his drawers. Let’s see what he’s got.’ ”

“And did Danny pull down his drawers?”

“No . . . Danny sorta had to think about that for a bit. Then, well . . . then, he said I should maybe do it . . . and . . .”

“And . . . ?”

“I figured it made sense, you know? And . . . really, it wuzn’t no big deal. So I did, and this guy . . . he was . . . well, much as he acted like he wuzn’t payin’ June no mind, that wuz a lie, cuz he had this real huge boner. And he got real embarrassed, and started wailin’ all this stuff, in Iraqi . . . jus’ losin’ it.”

“And then?”

“June took off her underdrawers, and kept dancin’, only now, she was like . . . totally stripped. That Iraqi guy, he jus’ went to pieces, cryin’ and howlin, throwin’ a real tizzy. So Danny, he took the guy outta there, and brought ’im right back to them interrogators. He tole us later, Danny did, that the guy gave up ever’thing. Names of other Hadjis, where some big arsenal was hid . . . like, whatever they asked, he jus’ couldn’t spill fast enough.”

I looked at Katherine, but she was preoccupied with giving our client a supportive look and ignored me. I turned back to Lydia. “And did the intel people understand the nature of the treatment that made him open up?”