The Night Crew (6 page)

“Nature of the treatment?”

“That June had disrobed and sexually taunted the prisoner. That he was psychosexually . . .” I thought about my word choice, then stated in language that would be more understandable to Lydia, “That the prisoner was sexually aroused and that this treatment induced his sudden willingness to talk.”

“Oh . . . yes, sir. Danny, he tole ’em all ’bout that.” She nodded at Katherine. “ ‘They was real thankful’n all.”

“They thanked you? In person?”

“Well . . . not . . . I mean, they tole Danny, then Danny let us know how ’preciative they all wuz.” After a brief pause she added as though it were an afterthought, “ ‘Fore you could say boo, we wuz handlin’ all the real hard cases.”

“Why the pictures?”

“Danny said them intel people wanted ’em. They gave him one of them fancy cameras that load into a computer . . . y’know, so’s he could start recordin’ ever’thing. Danny said then they knew who got the treatment, how bad, and how good it worked.”

“And you regarded these instructions as orders?”

Her lips stiffened. “They
wuz
orders, sir.”

“From the intelligence people?”

“Well, yeah.”

“How did that work?”

Long stare. No answer.

“Did they give you these instructions individually?”

The stare turned blanker.

“Did they brief your group collectively? In writing? E-mail?”

“Not like that . . . no, sir.”

“Then like
what
?” I snapped

Lydia instantly recoiled back into her chair with a hurt expression. Katherine quickly intervened, bent forward, and in a soothing tone, informed her client, “Colonel Drummond’s not angry with you.” She paused to look at me. “He sometimes experiences impulse control issues.”

Lydia was looking at her, apparently unsure of the definition of impulse control yet sensing it must be bad. Katherine said to me, “You should apologize.”

In case I wasn’t getting the message, somebody kicked my shin under the table.

Me? Apologize? I had just transcended the urge to strangle our client, but I stated with as little enthusiasm as possible, “I’m sorry.”

Lydia stared at me.

Katherine placed a hand on her arm. “Don’t let him bother you, Lydia. Please continue.”

There is a time and place for good cop/bad cop; I often use it myself, even on my own clients. This, though, was something else; the relationship between Katherine and Lydia seemed to verge on big sister/little sister, or a more fitting expression might be doctor-client.

Anyway, Lydia swallowed a few times, then looked at me. “What wuz yer question agin?”

Well . . . what was my question?

After a moment, I smiled at Lydia and inquired, “Exactly how did you receive your instructions on how to handle the prisoners?”

“Well . . . let me think a minute.” She thought a minute—I mean, an interminably full sixty seconds passed before she said, “Them intel people, they would meet with Danny. It wuz during the day, I guess. They’d name who we wuz supposed to . . . you know . . . who we wuz supposed to soften up. Then Danny and Mike, they’d put their heads together and figure it all out . . . exactly how it’d go down. Then, after Andrea and June and me got there, Danny, he would tell us what we wuz supposed to do.”

“Like a script?”

“Guess you could put it like that,” she said, looking impressed by that description. “Like, Danny would say, you do this, you do that.”

I took a moment and described the photo of Lydia tugging the poor Iraqi around by a string tied to his Mr. Johnson, then asked, “Did Danny order you to perform that exact treatment?”

“Not ’xactly like that, no, sir.” “Then how?”

“He would jus’ say sorta somethin’ like, prisoner two needs a little ST today.”

“ST?”

“Yep. Special treatment—ST, that’s how we started callin’ it, for short. Lotsa times he left it to me or June or Andrea to figure a way to do that.” She smiled. “Danny’s a good leader that way. Real respectful of his subordinates.”

This seemed like a good lead-in to my next question, and I asked, “Was there any alcohol involved? Drugs?”

“Oh no, sir. Drinkin’ ain’t allowed inside the war zone,” she replied, sounding very righteous about that, oblivious to the fact that neither is the torture or sexual humiliation of prisoners. “We wuz all upright soldiers. No boozers, no dopers.”

“Did you ever think it was a little weird?”

“What . . . What was weird?”

I swallowed another urge to strangle her and specified, “The ST, the special treatments, prepping the prisoners for interrogation that way. Danny employing you all to break down the prisoners.” Could I be any clearer?

“I . . . well . . . maybe.” She hesitated a moment, then elaborated, “ ‘Specially at first. But Danny, he said them intel guys tole ’em the best way to break an Arab was through sexual stuff. Said them Arabs had real strict . . .” She paused, searching for the right phrase: her search appeared to have no end.

“Taboos,” I eventually suggested.

Blank stare.

“The Moslem faith,” I explained, “enforces very strict rules about physical modesty and separation of the sexes.”

Still blank.

Katherine broke the code, saying, “Arabic men are easily shocked and humiliated by nudity and sex.”

“Yeah . . . guess that’s so. Purty much, that’s how Danny said it.” Looking at me, she blushed slightly, which was interesting. “Way Danny put it wuz, flash ’em a naked pussy or make ’em pull down their drawers, and they jus’ turn into crybabies. Course, them’s his words, not mine.”

“Of course,” I dutifully replied.

“Took a while to git used to. But orders is orders.”

“Who
exactly
was giving these . . . orders?”

“Like I said, Danny.”

“I meant, who was giving Danny his orders?”

She looked a little resentful. “Then you should’a put it like that.”

I resisted the urge to kick
her
under the table. “Yes, I probably should have.”

“That captain and that warrant officer.”

“What captain? What warrant officer?”

“They wuz part of that intel unit stationed at the FOB. They had a bunch’a office trailers, all surrounded by barbed wire and guards. Real standoffish folks. Usually, they only came inside for their sessions . . . you know, when they wuz interrogatin’ prisoners.” She thought about it, then said, “Daylight.”

“What about daylight?”

“That wuz when they did most of their work. They took to callin’ us the night crew.”

“Do you recall their names?”

“That captain, he was named Willborn. The warrant officer was Ashad, maybe Assad . . . something like that. He was an Arab, I guess,” she said, as some southern people will, overelongating their
A
s. “Spoke real good Iraqi.”

“Were Willborn and Ashad present during these . . . these prep sessions?”

“No, sir.”

It was important to establish how many witnesses had direct observations of these sessions and I stressed, “We need to be clear on this, Lydia. Who was? Precision is important.”

“Sometimes Andrea and June, they couldn’t come. Then, it was Danny, Mike’n me, jus’ the three of us. Usually it was all five, though.” She paused briefly to emphasize this next point. “But I always liked it better when the other girls wuz around.” She diverted her eyes toward Katherine again. “Know what I’m sayin’?”

Katherine awarded her a half-nod.

Lydia continued, “But Danny . . . well, he’d always tell us how happy them intel folks wuz. Said we wuz all big heroes.”

I checked my watch and observed that our one hour was nearly up.

I asked, “Do you regret your actions in Al Basari?”

She gave me another of those chronic, disconnected stares. I was pretty sure nobody had yet asked her this, despite its obvious relevance to her present mental state, not to mention how we would approach her courtroom defense.

She eventually replied, “Nope . . . don’t guess I do.”

“Not mistreating the detainees?”

“I never mistreated no one.”

“Not disrobing and sexually humiliating them, not to mention yourself?”

She shook her head.

“Not posing for the pictures, which are now being used as incontrovertible evidence against you?”—and shared with the entire world, including your parents, your high school friends, and your pastor, I could’ve added, but didn’t. “You regret none of this?”

She did not miss my point, or the disapproving undertone that accompanied it, and a pout worked its way onto her lips. “Look, lotsa soldiers are gettin’ killed or blown to bits over there. I wuz helpin’ win the war. Why should I feel bad ’bout that stuff I did? Ain’t like I killed nobody.”

Actually somebody had killed somebody. But before I could venture into that line of query, without a knock, the door suddenly swung open. The good-looking staff sergeant from the desk stuck his head in, and informed me, “I know I’m not supposed to bother you, sir. But this is important.”

I stood and replied—“One more minute”—then started to close the door in his face.

He was quick, however, and got his foot in the path of the door. “There’s a visitor for you and Miss Carlson. Says he needs to talk to you, ASAP, about some kind of emergency.”

Katherine stood also, and placed her notebook back into her briefcase. She asked our client, “Do you need anything?”

“More magazines,” Lydia replied, holding up her copy of
People
, which appeared dog-eared enough to have been read a dozen times. “Some romance books would be okay. But I ’specially like to read ’bout celebrities’n all them movie folk.”

What she needed to be reading were law journals, but I suppressed the urge to tell her so. We followed the sergeant and closed the door behind us, leaving Lydia Eddelston to fantasize about celebrity lifestyles.

Everybody needs to dream. I just hoped she understood the difference between rich and famous, and incarcerated and infamous.

Chapter Five

The gentleman who awaited us by the front desk wore an off-season, off-the-rack, tropical, crap-brown suit, and a pukey green necktie. Poor sartorial hygiene aside, at the moment we entered the room, he was casually looking out the window, pretending to study the night sky. He turned around and said to the sergeant, not all that politely, “This is confidential. How about finding us an empty office?”

The sergeant deferred immediately to these instructions, which I regarded as telling, and promptly led us down a short hallway to an office with a sign on the door that said “Operations Sergeant.”

I took the opportunity during this brief walk to more closely examine our host who had a manners lapse and failed to introduce himself. Middle-aged, with a full head of red hair shot through with silver, and a veiny nose and face, which indicated Irish ancestors swimming around his DNA pool, and a taste for booze, so probably he was an okay guy. Also, he had a slight stomach paunch, with a tight mouth, smart, sneaky blue eyes, and bushy, skeptical eyebrows.

The face screamed cop, and considering our location and his cheap suit, odds were he was CID—Criminal Investigation Division, the army version of a detective. By his age and his comportment, he was a senior investigator, probably a chief warrant officer four or five, which was irrelevant for conversational purposes, since all warrant officers are addressed formally as Mister, or informally, as Chief.

The sergeant showed us into the room, politely asked us not to make a mess, and disappeared.

I turned to the gentleman in the suit and asked, “Okay, Chief . . . ?”

“O’Reilly. Terry O’Reilly.”

“And obviously you know our names.”

“Yes, sir. Obviously I do.” He regarded us a moment. “You two got the pee-chick, right?”

This was the first time I had heard that unflattering, but inevitable nickname. More interesting still, it suggested that Katherine did not possess the sole copy of the photo she had earlier revealed to me. I inquired, “What’s this about?”

Before he answered, he walked over to a chair in the corner of the room. He sat, then spent a moment getting comfortable, tugging his pants out of his crotch, and whatever. As I said, he was a career cop, and he was prolonging this pause to exert control over this conversation and also, I thought, using the moment to get a better handle on us. He looked at Katherine, then at me. “You two should sit. This could take a while.”

I sat on the edge of the desk, whereas Katherine chose to cross her arms and stand. I believe I already mentioned that she has some serious authority issues.

Without further ado, O’Reilly informed us, “This morning, Major Martin Weinstein was found dead in his car.”

I looked at Katherine. She was staring at him with a completely impassive expression.

I said to O’Reilly, “I’m sorry to hear that, but this means what to me?”

“Well . . . by dead, I meant murdered.”

I shrugged. “Once again, what does this mean to me?”

“You don’t know?”

Obviously not.

“Shit . . . I thought all you defense attorneys knew one another. Weinstein was handling the defense for Sergeant Elton.”

This would be Danny, the soldier, director, choreographer, and perhaps photographer of all my client’s naughty deeds. Katherine had now traded her impassive expression for a pensive one, and asked, “How was he murdered?”

He looked at her a moment. Cops don’t like to share information about ongoing murder investigations, especially with a pair of nosy defense attorneys.

Actually, I fully expected Chief O’Reilly to tell Katherine to screw off, though, in fact, he did not. He instead explained, “Okay, here’s what we’ve got. Weinstein left his townhouse—part of a small complex near Quantico—slightly before six this morning. He was dressed for physical training, in sweats. Got into his car, a gray Lincoln LS, was just inserting the key into the ignition when somebody grabbed his hair, yanked his head back, and used a nonserrated blade to slash his throat.”

Without losing a beat, Katherine theorized, “Indicating the killer was hiding in the backseat?”

“It does suggest that, yes. No signs of a break-in though. And the victim was obviously surprised because there are no indications of a struggle. It’s a nice, peaceful community where nobody locks their cars. So probably, he—the killer—just slipped in and waited for his moment.”

Katherine asked, “Do you know who the killer is? Maybe you have a preliminary list of suspects? A promising lead or two?”

“Nope.”

“You said
he
.”

“That is what I said, yes.”

“Then how can you be confident of the gender of the killer?”

“Because the cut . . . all the way through the soft tissue, sheared the throat cavity, and actually nicked the cervical spine. One slice, and”—with his hand, as if we needed a visual, he made a quick slashing motion—“the victim was nearly decapitated. Takes a lot of strength to do that.”

Katherine, thankfully, did not take offense at this unliberated view of female virility.

But since we seemed to be into conjecture and opinions, I stated, “Further suggesting that the killer knew the victim’s personal habits.”

“That’s possible.”

“No, that’s likely.”

Cops love know-it-all lawyers, and he smiled, wearily. “Is it?”

“Did the family have two cars?”

“Yeah, they did. A red Dodge minivan was also parked in the driveway.”

“So even aside from knowing where the victim lived, the killer was aware of which car was for the wife and kids to mess up, and which car the man of the house drove. He knew the victim did physical training in the mornings, and he knew what time he left his home.” O’Reilly did not disagree with any of these points, and I asked, “How was the body discovered?”

“By Mrs. Weinstein. Like many military families, he always got out of bed earlier than her. She got up about seven, woke the kids for school, went outside to get the paper, and saw his car still parked in the driveway. She went over to check, saw the blood splashed all over the windshield . . . drew closer . . . and, well . . . there he was.” He felt the need to add, “Pretty awful, if you think about it.”

If you think about it
. I accepted his invitation, and I did think about it. The Major and his family lived in the kind of modest, quiet, peaceful, suburban townhouse community that are as mundane and commonplace around Washington as low-salaried government workers, who ordinarily are the inhabitants. I pictured twenty or thirty narrow, neat, brick-fronted, two-storied buildings, connected together and cloistered around a small courtyard or garden.

Major Weinstein, earnest officer, never imagined he was a target as he walked out the front door. At a few minutes before six on a cold February morning it was pitch dark, and probably the community had little or no public lighting.

Assuming one killer, his executioner was hunched on the floor of Weinstein’s car, beneath and behind the front seats, waiting, possibly cloaked underneath a dark cloth or blanket. I never even
think
to check the rear of my car before I get in: Who would? Obviously not the good Major.

He was attired in gym gear for physical training, and probably carried an overnight or gym bag packed with toiletries and the daily uniform he would change into after his morning run and exercise. He opened the door, placed the bag on the passenger seat, got into the driver’s seat, was inserting the key into the ignition, then
auggh
—a hand grabbed his forehead, and his throat was cut from ear to ear.

And here, I thought, was where it became interesting. The total absence of struggle indicated there had been no exchange of words or efforts at negotiation between killer and victim. By extrapolation, this was an execution, a cold dispatching which could indicate either a strong emotional motive, such as hatred or betrayal, or the calculated elimination of a problem. Those two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Apparently Katherine had also thought about it, because she remarked, “Yes, I’m sure it was awful.” She then asked him, “So it sounds like you have no idea who killed him?”

“Not a clue.” He bent forward, and quickly amended that statement to, “About the killer’s identity, that is. A few clues were at the scene. A big one, in fact—a note, presumably left by the killer.”

I said, “Please tell us about that note.”

“More a message or an announcement than a note, really. It was cut from an article—by the paper type, most likely scissored from a magazine—then pasted on a three-by-five card. The killer positioned it right on the dashboard, after he was done . . . so you couldn’t miss it. It said, ‘God is great.’

Katherine and I left that one alone for a moment. I was seeing a disturbing pattern here, and noted, “So now you have two dead defense lawyers associated with the Al Basari case.”

He nodded.

“Coincidence?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Probably not, though.”

“No . . .” he agreed, “probably not.”

“And probably Captain Bradley Howser’s death was not the innocent accident everybody assumed it was.”

“Well . . . that case has been reopened and now is under review.”

Which was bureaucrat-speak for, Yes, we fucked up and thanks for mentioning it. I wish I could have a do-over every time I screwed up; so do my clients.

But he was looking at me, and I realized it was my turn to say something. When I finally did speak, it was to query of Katherine, “What have I ever done to you?”

She decided not to address this, and instead said to O’Reilly, “You mentioned clues. Plural.”

“A few hairs were vacuumed from the backseat of the car.” His facial expression did not look optimistic. “Maybe the killer’s, or maybe not.”

I asked, “What about footprints around the car, fingerprints on or inside the car, skin under the Major’s fingernails? Maybe the killer signed the note?”

Cops also love being second-guessed by pushy wiseass attorneys, and his expression turned a little agitated. But obviously the answer was none-of-the-above, because he replied, evasively, “A CID forensics team from Fort Gillem flew up this afternoon.”

I should mention here that CID agents are arguably the best-trained flatfoots in the world. Unlike most civilian detective units where everybody specializes—homicide, burglary, financial crimes, and so forth—the CID initial investigating officer is a jack-of-all-vices, and ordinarily, is expected to work whatever case lands in his lap from start-to-end, from the initial forensics work-up, through tracking leads, through tying the final knots that lead to a conviction. But in those rare instances where a case is particularly complex, politically significant, or socially alarming, the army also maintains a forensics center just outside Atlanta that can dispatch a squad of specialists on short notice to assist the local team.

From what I’d just heard, this case didn’t sound all that complex. The method of killing and MO, for instance, were fairly innocuous and aboveboard: a cutthroat. So by process of elimination, it was probably because this particular case assumed some great significance. I mean, as a potential target I thought the decision was brilliant; this was the most important case in the world.

Anyway, O’Reilly was looking at me. “You’ve worked with them before. Am I right? So you know these people. If we missed something, they’ll find it.”

“Assuming there’s anything to find.”

“They’ll at least be able to tell us the type of knife the killer used.”

He chuckled to show this was a joke. Aside from learning the taste in weaponry of somebody who wanted to kill me, as legal professionals we all three were aware that identifying the brand of knife was nearly always useless.

In any event, from the depth of the cut, we already knew what we were dealing with here: what technical experts call a BFB—a big fucking blade.

He commented, “Maybe we’ll know more tomorrow.” But from his tone it sounded more like maybe not.

I looked at Katherine again. It struck me that at no point in this discussion had Katherine flinched, or seemed upset, or surprised, or even mildly annoyed, by news that was so clearly alarming. As females go, Katherine is fairly unemotional and I certainly wouldn’t expect her to flee from the room, pulling on her hair and screaming her lungs out. But to learn that she might be on a hitlist, or a shitlist, belonging to a cold-blooded killer, and remain so blasé—did I mention that Katherine was now absently studying her fingernails?—was a little cold-blooded, even for her.

And further, it struck me that Major General Fister, Chief of the JAG Corps, had to be high on the initial notification list for army lawyers that had just become corpses. Considering that CID had been notified about the body early that morning, and Katherine had met with Fister regarding my reassignment sometime that afternoon, maybe her surprising lack of surprise wasn’t all that surprising after all.

This was neither the time nor place to have this conversation. But I
needed
to get on the record early, so I turned to her and said, “I owe you.” I then asked O’Reilly, “Are you part of the crime scene investigating team?”

As I suspected he might, he replied, “Nope. I visited the site but only in connection with my actual duties.”

“Go on.”

“I work in the Pentagon. Office of Protective Services.”

“And are you now assigned to protect us?”

He gave me a terse smile. “I’m your designated guardian angel. Effective 2100 hours, all defense attorneys for the Al Basari case will be under constant surveillance and guard. We don’t want another dead attorney on our hands.”

No, we certainly do not—especially not this defense attorney—though if I had the killer’s phone number, I might offer him a helpful tip about which throat to cut next.

The victim of my mortal ruminations asked a very pertinent question. “Exactly what does that mean?”

“It means we’ll do our part to keep you safe, and you’ll have to do yours.” He pulled a pair of devices from his pants pocket—they looked like small amulets—and handed one to Katherine and one to me. “For starters, here are your panic buttons. Keep them on or near you at all times, even when you shower. They’re waterproof. And never hesitate. If you’re wrong you’ll just waste a little of my time. But if you wait till a knife’s already at your throat”—he ran a finger across his neck, as though we needed another graphic—“you’ll be outta time. If you see something remotely suspicious, push the damn panic button.”