High Crimes (10 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“
Boy, it’s
a real honor to meet you, ma’am,” the young man said. His name was Captain Terrence Embry, he was twenty-seven years old, and he was the military defense counsel assigned to Tom. (Claire still could not get herself to call her husband Ronald, to think of him as anyone except Tom.)

She smiled, nodded politely, stirred nondairy creamer into her coffee. It was early in the morning and they were meeting for breakfast at the McDonald’s on the base. His invitation: he’d called the Quality Inn the night before, told her he’d just been detailed to the case, and would she like to get together?

“I mean, we studied your book
Crime and the Law
in my criminal-law class,” he went on. “I’m just sorry about the circumstances and all.…” His voice trailed off, and he looked down at his Egg McMuffin. His face reddened.

Terry Embry had reddish hair, cut short in what she was beginning to recognize as an army regulation haircut, large prominent ears, nervous watery blue eyes. He blushed easily. He had long slender fingers and a dry, firm handshake. On his left hand was a large, perfectly shiny gold wedding band, obviously brand-new. On his right hand was a heavy West Point ring, on top of which was mounted a synthetic black star sapphire. He was a West Point graduate, he said, sent by the army to the University of Virginia Law School and then the Judge Advocate General School there, in Charlottesville. He was a smart young man, Claire saw at once, and almost totally inexperienced.

Her appetite still hadn’t returned. She took a sip of her coffee. “Do you mind if I smoke, Captain Embry?” she asked.

Embry’s eyes widened and he looked around anxiously. “No, ma’am, I…”

“Don’t worry, we’re in the smoking section,” she said, as she unwrapped a pack of Camel Lights, pulled one out, and lighted it with a plastic Bic lighter. She despised herself for smoking again—actually buying a pack, and not just bumming from Jackie, was serious—but she couldn’t help it.

She exhaled. There were few things more disgusting than smoking a cigarette at breakfast. “Tell me something, Captain—”

“Terry.”

“Okay, then. Terry. Tell me something. Have you ever tried a case?”

His face reddened. She had her answer. “Well, ma’am, I’ve done a number of plea bargains, mostly for drugs, unauthorized absences, that sort of stuff—”

“But you’ve never actually done a trial.”

“No, ma’am,” he said quietly.

“I see. And have they assigned a prosecutor yet? Or is it still too early for that?”

“Well, it’s really early, but they’ve already detailed someone, which tells me they’re probably planning on a court-martial.”

She smiled grimly. “What a surprise. And who have they assigned?”

“Major Waldron, ma’am. Major Lucas Waldron.” He took a healthy bite of his Egg McMuffin.

“Is he any good, do you know?”

His eyes widened. He accelerated his chewing, then tried to speak through a mouthful of food, but settled for vigorous nodding. Then he said, “Pardon me, ma’am. Major Waldron—yes, ma’am, he’s good. He’s real good. He’s probably the best they’ve got.”

“Is that right?” she said, unsurprised.

“Well, he’s a bit of a hardass, ma’am, if you don’t mind my saying. He’s the most experienced trial counsel in the JAG Corps. Really aggressive. And he has a perfect win-loss record. No one’s ever been acquitted at a trial he’s prosecuted.”

“I don’t suppose that means he only takes the easy cases, in order to maintain his perfect record, does it?”

“Not that I’ve heard, ma’am. He’s just really good.”

“My husband is being scapegoated.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said politely.

“When you read whatever files they give you, you’ll see that. It’s a conspiracy. Can you deal with that?”

“If it’s true, yes, ma’am, I can.”

“It won’t be good for your career, Terry, going after a cover-up within the military, will it?”

“Ma’am, I don’t know what’s best for my career.”

“Enough with the ‘ma’am,’ okay?”

“Sorry.”

“Terry, you should know I’ll be hiring civilian counsel.”

He examined his Egg McMuffin. “That’s certainly your right, uh, Claire. Would you like me to excuse myself from the case?”

“No.”

“Well, one of us will have to be associate counsel,” he said. When Claire didn’t answer, he said, “I suppose it’ll be me. That’s certainly fine.”

“Tell me something, Terry. Why do you suppose you, a complete rookie, were assigned to this case, against Major Waldron, the best the army has? Any idea, Terry?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted with a candor she found disarming, “but it doesn’t look good for us, does it?”

She gave a soft snort. “You didn’t choose this assignment, did you?”

“That’s not the way it works in the military. You go where they tell you.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be prosecuting it?”

“This case?” He reddened. “Just from the way it looks, this is a slow soft pitch right across the plate, just hanging there, waiting to be hit out of the ballpark.”

“By the prosecution.”

“Just from what I’ve heard, but I haven’t dug into it yet.”

“Did you choose to go into defense, Terry, or did they just put you there?”

“I was assigned. I mean, everyone in JAG school wants to prosecute, not defend, you know? Defending bad guys is not exactly a career-enhancing billet.”

Claire’s eyes flashed. “I want you to know something, Terry,” she said coolly. She exhaled a plume of smoke like some kind of dragon, or perhaps a femme fatale. “My husband is not a bad guy.”

“Well, so, anyway, I think you should look at this.” He withdrew some papers from a folder and, without even looking at them, handed her a stapled sheaf.

“What’s this?” Claire asked.

“The charge sheet. They work fast. Article 85, desertion. Article 90, assaulting or willfully disobeying superior commissioned officer. Article 118, murder in the first degree.
Eighty-seven specifications.
” He looked up at Claire, shook his head.

For the first time, the seriousness, the finality of it all struck her. They were really going after Tom. He could in fact be executed. The military still had the death penalty.

She had to do it.

“I think I’ve just changed my mind,” she said, steely. “How the hell do I sign up to help represent my husband?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Twenty minutes
from Quantico, along the two-lane Dumfries Road in Manassas, Virginia, Claire pulled the sleek rented Oldsmobile over onto the shoulder and once again inspected the street number. This was the correct number, it had to be. It was precisely the same address that appeared on the short list Arthur Iselin had given her, and neither Arthur nor his secretary made mistakes. And she had talked to the lawyer on the phone and had taken down the street number he told her. So it was impossible that she’d gotten the address wrong.

But this could not be the office.

This was a tiny yellow clapboard house, almost a dollhouse. It was a house, not an office building, and it was a house out of
Tobacco Road
; all that was missing was a turnip truck and maybe a car chassis up on cinderblocks. This could not be the office of Charles O. Grimes III.

After she’d driven past the house three or four times, she finally pulled into the driveway and got out and rang the doorbell.

After a few long minutes the door opened. A handsome black man in his late forties, with graying hair, a gray-flecked mustache, and large amused eyes, stared at her for a disconcertingly long time. “You get lost, Professor? I saw you pass by here, must have been four times.”

“Thought I might have had the wrong address.”

“Come on in. I’m Charles.” He extended a hand.

“Claire.”

“Let me guess,” he said, guiding her through a tiny cluttered living room dominated by an immense TV, “you’re asking yourself, why does this guy work out of the same little shitbox he lives in, right?” Claire, following him through a doorway into a fake-wood-paneled study, didn’t answer. “Well, you see, Professor, I had a wife who wasn’t too happy when I started boinking my secretary, who was never much of a secretary anyway, and isn’t my secretary anymore. In fact, I don’t even know where she is. So the wife dumps me, holds me up for child support, takes all my money, and now look at me. I used to have a Jag. JAG with a Jag. Now I’ve got a third-hand rustbucket Mercedes.” He sank down into a cheap orange vinyl-cushioned desk chair and interlaced his hands behind his head. “Have a seat. Welcome to Grimes & Associates.”

She lifted a stack of papers off the only other chair and sat down. This was the tackiest office she’d ever seen. The floor was covered in hideous wall-to-wall orange shag carpeting. Piles of papers were everywhere, some in cardboard boxes, some in precarious towers on the floor or heaped on top of the flimsy-looking tan four-drawer filing cabinets. In one corner of the room a portable fan stood on the floor next to a red-and-black shoe polisher. There were a few diplomas on the wall she couldn’t make out. Atop one of the file cabinets was a cluster of bowling trophies. A fake antique wooden sign hung on one wall announcing, in olde lettering, “D
ULY
Q
UALIFIED
H
ONEST
C
OUNTRY
L
AWYER
at your service
—Wills—Deeds filed—Disputes settled—Bondsman—Patents review’d—Consultations from 25¢—
Your lawyer is your friend.
” Hanging from the bottom of the sign was another sign, a wooden rectangle: “C. O. G
RIMES
III, E
SQ
.”

“Grimes & Associates?” Claire asked. “You have associates?”

“Planning on it. A man can dream, can’t he?” A powerful mothball odor wafted from his seventies-style polyester pullover sweater, a psychedelic riot of brown, orange, and yellow.

“Look,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way. You come highly recommended. By, of all people, Arthur Iselin.”

“How is Artie?”

“He’s fine. He says you’re a star of the civilian military-law field. I assume that means you win a lot of cases. You’re successful. Now, in my world, if you’re a big star—”

“—a big swinging dick, you have a corner office in a skyscraper, am I reading you right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, some of the guys in my business do, but mostly they practice other kinds of law, too. Like corporate, or big-deal criminal, or whatever. You can’t get rich on military law. Myself, I supplement my military practice with personal-injury and insurance work. No, I’m not a big Harvard Law School celebrity like you-all. But you wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t talked to some other civilian military lawyers and checked out my record, and if you have, you know I like to win cases. I don’t always, but I try …
real hard.
”

“Why’d you leave the military?”

Grimes hesitated a split second. “Retired.”

“Why?”

“I was tired of it.”

“Something happen?”

“I got tired of it,” he said, a note of irritation entering his voice. “That’s what happened. You mind if I ask
you
a couple questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“Arthur called me. I got the background. Sounds like you’re in some kind of deep doodoo. He been charged yet?”

She handed Grimes the charge sheet. He looked it over, raised his brows here and there, hummed. By the second page his humming got louder and went up an octave. “Someone’s been a bad boy,” he said.

“You better be joking.”

“Of course he didn’t do it,” Grimes said, a twinkle in his eye. “I like to tell people all my clients are innocent. They’re always innocent—or else they won’t plead guilty.”

Claire suppressed her annoyance. “Is he a deserter? No question about it. But he’s no mass murderer. They tried to set him up to take the fall for this massacre thirteen years ago, and he was smart enough to escape their clutches. General William Marks—that’s right,
the
four-star General Marks, the chief of staff of the army—commanded the platoon in 1985, when he was a colonel. The Special Forces detachment that was sent down to El Salvador to take revenge for the killing of some American marines. General Marks himself ordered them to kill eighty-seven civilians for one reason alone: cold-blooded revenge. Tom didn’t take part in it—he wasn’t even there.”

Grimes nodded, watching her steadily.

“General Marks initiated and supervised a cover-up thirteen years ago and tried to nail my husband with responsibility for it. So whoever takes this case is going to flush him out and expose his attempted cover-up. Because I’m going to go after the whole corrupt system. The whole goddamned military system—”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” Grimes interrupted. “No fucking way. Bad mistake. Get that out of your head, sister. You’re going to play by the rules. Play hard, play aggressive, but it’s their game—hell, it’s their fucking
stadium
. Their fucking ball club. Lady, let me tell you something. Every civilian who’s ever gone into a military general court-martial and tried to attack the foundations of the military has lost his case. No exceptions. The military is a tight, closed fraternity. They take it real serious. Military justice is a deadly-serious business. You’d be surprised how much it’s like the civilian justice system—it was made that way. Modeled on the U.S. criminal-justice system. Lot of the same rights. You want to defend your husband, you go after the charges and prove they haven’t made their case, just like you’d do in a regular courtroom. You think there was a cover-up, go ahead and go after General Marks. Go after General Patton, General Douglas fucking MacArthur, General Dwight fucking
Eisenhower
if you want. But you don’t attack the system. Now, you know I’m hungry for this case, but I’m not going to lie to you. If you hire me, you’re hiring someone who plays by their rules. I play nasty, but I play their game. I just play it better than them.”

Claire nodded, smiled.

“They hook you up with a detailed defense counsel yet?” Grimes asked.

“Yes. Some kid named Terry Embry, fresh out of law school.”

“Hmph. Never heard of him. He any good?”

“He’s totally green. Smart. Well-meaning, I think. Nice kid. But strictly junior-varsity.”

“We all got to start somewhere. Why should the Pentagon give you their best? How about trial counsel? That’s what the military calls the prosecutor. He assigned yet?”

“Lucas Waldron.”

Grimes leaned back in his chair and laughed. He laughed so loud, so hard, that he had a coughing fit. “Lucas Waldron?” he choked out.

“You’ve heard of him, I take it.”

When he finally stopped coughing, Grimes said, “Oh, I heard of him, all right. He’s a totally ruthless son of a bitch.”

“You ever come up against him?”

“A couple times. Got some light jury sentences off him, but never won a case against him. But what I don’t get is why they’re even putting your husband on trial.”

“What else could they have done? Legally, I mean.”

“Oh, man, they could have done much worse if they wanted to. They could have had three army shrinks declare him crazy and lock him up in some government mental institution, some federal facility, and throw away the key. I really don’t get why they want to go the court-martial route.”

“Probably because of me. Do everything by the book.”

He nodded slowly. “Maybe. Still doesn’t make sense.”

“You’d be second chair, you know. If I hire you.”

“Second to the fetus?”

“Second to me. He’d be third chair. If I even keep him on. I don’t know if I can trust someone from the army.”

“Nah, you want to hold on to the assigned co-counsel. He’s got the power to order military witnesses to appear for an interview; we don’t. Plus, you need him around to cut through all the administrative bullshit. I’m telling you, the army has a reg—a regulation—for everything, including how to wipe your ass.”

“Okay.”

“No offense, Professor—you want to be lead counsel on this, go right ahead, it’s your money, your husband, your case. You’re the boss. But I don’t get the feeling you know too much about court-martials.”

“You just said it follows civilian law pretty closely.”

“You want to be gettin’ your training wheels when your husband is facing the death penalty?”

“I’d expect you to do a lot of backseat driving.”

He shrugged. “Hey, you’re Claire Heller Chapman. You want to do it that way, fine with me. You got clearance?”

“Why?”

“I promise you, they’re going to close this courtroom, shut it tight as a drum. Plus most of the statements and evidence will be classified top secret. That’s how they’re going to play this.”

“I’ll get clearance. You think that’ll be a problem?”

“Shouldn’t be. You’ll have to fill out a bunch of paper. Standard form 86. They’ll do an NAC, that’s a national agency check. Background check by FBI and the Defense Investigative Services. Clear you up to ‘secret.’”

“And if they don’t give me clearance?”

“They have to. Now that you’re counsel. They have to give counsel clearance, otherwise your husband doesn’t have to talk.”

“How fast can I get it?”

“They can grant it overnight if they want. Now, we’re going to need a good investigator.”

“I know a really good one.”

“Army background? CID?”

“Boston PD and FBI.”

“Good enough for me.”

“He’s in Boston, but he’s worth the added expense. Really good investigators are rare.”

“Tell me about it. In this case, they’ll be vital. This case is going to be brutal. So what’s the deal here? Am I hired or not?”