“Randy. Get up.”
“What’s the use? They’re going to kill me, or send me away to Leavenworth for the rest of my life. I don’t even know what’s worse at this point.”
Kara yanked him upright on the bunk by the arm. “We’ve got to talk about your apartment.”
“What about it?”
“Let’s go over the list of people who had access to the apartment.”
“We’ve been over that before.”
“Yeah, and we’re going to go over it again. What about the maid? You’re positive about her?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about Mrs. Beckwith?”
“Oh, come on, Kara. You don’t believe she—”
She interrupted, “I need to go over every single person who was in your apartment, Randy.”
“Okay, it was a Saturday. She called me in the morning, said they had painters all over the house. Could we use my place to do the invitations? I said yes, of course. We’d done invitations together before, always at the General’s quarters. I showed up, and sure enough, the place was crawling with painters, so we went to my apartment.”
“Did you take your car?”
He thought for a moment. “No. She couldn’t stand getting in and out of my little car. We took her Lexus. She wanted to run some errands. We picked up laundry, stopped and got a quick lunch, and dropped off her spare tire to get fixed.”
“So then at your apartment, did you ever leave her alone?”
“No. I was there the whole time.”
“I see.”
“She couldn’t have done it, Kara. I’m closer to her than I am to the General. We’re friends.”
“What about the phone guy? The one who installed your fax line.”
“He was only there maybe fifteen minutes.”
“And you were there the whole time?”
“Yes.”
Kara thought for a moment. “I’m going at this case from one angle and one angle only, Randy. Someone planted evidence in your apartment. That person had a motive for doing it. They wanted to frame you, and the evidence in your apartment would be enough to hang you.”
“You still think General Beckwith did it, don’t you?”
“He’s the only one who fits the profile. He was involved with both women. He had a date to meet Sheila the night she was killed. He was in the hotel the night Lannie was killed.”
“But you thought he killed the girl in Fort Polk, and he didn’t do that.”
“No, he didn’t. But maybe Sheila and Lannie were getting in his way. Maybe he wants to be chief of staff so bad he would do anything. Anything.”
“But he has an alibi for the night Sheila died.”
“Yes. Mrs. Beckwith is his alibi. And if I asked him where he was the night Lannie was killed, he would say he was in his hotel with his wife.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No. I’ve got no probable cause to question him about the murder. Not with you under indictment.” She paused, consulting her notes. “You told me Mrs. Beckwith knew about Sheila, but you said you were certain she didn’t know about Lannie. Why?”
“Because Beckwith had been so careful. You remember the reception for the Sec Def ?”
“Yeah.”
“She went off with that civilian from the base closure commission. I know Beckwith didn’t see her that night because I went home with him in the staff car. They played it like that since she got down here.”
“I forgot to ask you something. The cell phone in Beckwith’s staff car, it’s an Army phone?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the bill doesn’t go to General Beckwith.”
“No, Third Army pays.”
She made a note. “Randy, I’ve got some work to do. I’ll come and see you before the court-martial starts.”
“We’ve only got a few days.”
“I know.”
“Kara, how does it look?”
“I’m going to be honest with you. On a scale of one to ten, we’re about a five.”
“That’s not good.”
“It’s not great. But we’ve still got some time. It’s going to be okay, Randy.”
“Do you think he did it? General Beckwith?”
“He’s the only suspect I’ve got, besides you. And I know you didn’t do it.”
“That’s something, anyway.”
“Yeah. It’s something.”
She spent the rest of the afternoon canvassing surplus and sporting-goods stores around Columbus, the kind of places where they sell custom knives to collectors. The clerks were uniformly short-haired, clean-shaven, stupid, and paranoid. They all seemed to think that Kara represented a new anti-knife lobby that was going to take away the God-given right of every good upstanding Georgian to buy and own a custom knife. She got nowhere.
On her way home she passed the AirTone cell phone building and, on a whim, stopped in. They were less than cooperative. They couldn’t release a cell phone bill without the permission of the billed party. She told them she could get a subpoena for the record she was looking for, but that didn’t faze them. Go ahead. Get your subpoena.
She was leaving the office, considering that phone companies were all the same, when it hit her.
The so-called “billed party” for Beckwith’s staff car was the United States of America. If the taxpayers didn’t have a right to know how the commanding general was spending their dollars, who did?
Chapter Thirty-eight
Seven officers were empaneled, all of them senior to Randy, serving on the Army’s version of a jury: Two colonels, three lieutenant colonels, and two majors. In the military, they were not referred to as jurors but as “members of the panel,” and the jury itself was referred to as a “panel,” or more commonly but less accurately as the “venire,” which many military attorneys mispronounced as “veneer,” as if the seven grave officers sitting on seven mahogany chairs behind a mahogany banister were nothing more than paneling, and perhaps in some cases—perhaps even in this one—that is all they would be, a facade obscuring the rot of a corrupt system.
They had started with twelve officers, and Kara had challenged two of them off the panel for cause. Sheila had served under one of them, if only tangentially, and Lannie had served under the other. Their prejudice in favor of the dead women was probable, so Kara turfed them, put them on the street. Then there were ten. The prosecutor, Major Sanders, successfully challenged one officer because he had served over Randy and had been a “reviewer” of Randy’s Officer Efficiency Report, even though he hadn’t written it. That made nine.
Kara challenged one preemptorily, because she didn’t like his looks. He was a pug-ugly little colonel who had been pissed off since nursery school, and he had a runt complex to boot, and probably hated Randy for being taller and better-looking than him. The rules enabled her to make the challenge without giving a reason. As the Colonel left the panel, he gave her a nasty look, confirming her suspicions about him. Sanders preempted a female major, Kara figured, because she was black and a woman. Sanders was able to make his challenge unchallenged, as it were.
There was a short recess after the seating of the final panel. They put Randy in a locked interview room, where Kara tried to reassure him that everything was going to work out okay, but not even she believed it by then. Back in the court, she looked at the gallery. It was packed with media types and soldiers from the post. What’s-her-name from CBS had stuck a microphone in Kara’s face that morning as she was trying to enter the courthouse, and asked something completely obvious like, “How do you feel?” Kara stopped and looked at her and shook her head and moved on. Probably not a good media move. She would have to work on that. Maybe Randy had some suggestions. He did.
“Smile,” he said. “They can’t argue with a smile.”
He was right, but it sickened her. The media was feeding on Randy like vultures. He was road kill to their carrion lenses and microphones and satellite trucks and uplink
s and downlinks and cables and cell phones and makeup persons and hair persons and sign-offs to the anchors back home. The stupid reporter types would grin and spin and ever so subtly trash her client and then pass it off to the smiling anchor back home, wherever that was: “Barry?” “Gary?” “Terry?” “Jerry?” “Sherry?” “Larry?” “Carry?” “Mary?”
She concluded there was nary a brain among them, and wondered if to become a news anchor in the nineties meant first and foremost that your name had to end in a chirpy little y. Probably not, but it sure as hell sounded that way.
An MP stepped to the front of the court and snapped to attention.
“All rise!”
Colonel Freeman appeared in court wearing the black robes that obscured his rank. “Be seated, please. Major Guidry, Major Sanders. We meet again. Good morning.”
In unison: “Good morning, Your Honor.”
He turned to Sanders. “Major, read the charges.”
Sanders stood at the podium and read from his notes. “In the case of United States versus Captain Randolph Taylor, Regular Army, the charges are as follows:
“Charge One. Violation of Article 118 of the United States Code of Military Justice, sub-paragraph D, felony murder. Specification one: that the defendant did kill or cause to be killed Lieutenant Sheila Worthy.
“Charge Two. Violation of Article 118 of the United States Code of Military Justice, sub-paragraph one, premeditated murder. Specification one: that the defendant did with premeditation and malice aforethought kill or cause to be killed Captain Lannie Fulton Love.”
Sanders returned to the prosecution table and sat down.
“Very well. How do you plead?” asked Colonel Freeman.
Kara stood, with Randy at attention next to her. “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
Colonel Freeman put on his half glasses and read from a page in front of him. “Major Sanders, having read the charges and accepted the plea, are you prepared to proceed?”
“We are, Your Honor.”
“Major Guidry?”
“We are, Your Honor.”
“Very well. Proceed with opening statements.”
Kara stood. “Your Honor, the defense would like to exercise its right to give an opening statement when we begin our case.”
“That’s an unusual request, Major.”
“I understand, sir. But it’s within the law.”
“Indeed it is. Major Sanders? You may begin.”
Sanders took the podium and faced the panel. “Gentlemen, you have been empaneled to hear the evidence and render judgment in a case that is as straightforward as it is brutal and disgusting.”
Kara stood. “Your Honor, really—”
Freeman held up his hand. “Sit down, Major Guidry. Both sides have great latitude in opening remarks. You will get the same chance the prosecution has when it’s your turn. Proceed, Major Sanders.”
Sanders looked over at Kara with a “gotcha” expression, and turned again to the panel. “As I was saying, this case is brutal and disgusting but simple. We will show that this man"—he pointed at Randy—"Captain Randolph Taylor, was obsessed with these two women, Lieutenant Sheila Worthy and Captain Lannie Fulton Love. He dated both of them, and when he learned that his affections for them were not reciprocated and that indeed both women shunned his advances, his obsession grew and he became enraged and he murdered them, one after the other. We will show that he had the opportunity to commit both murders, and in fact, in the case of Captain Love, he was caught in the act. In the case of Lieutenant Worthy, we will show that the defendant made a mistake in the commission of his crime. He left evidence at the scene. We will connect that evidence directly to the defendant and show that his method of murder, the usage of a knife to stab both women in the neck, is connected to an obsession with knives on the part of the defendant. Both murders were brutal and ugly, and prematurely ended the lives of beautiful, talented young women with a fine future as officers in the United States Army. We will ask you to find the accused"—he pointed at Randy and looked at him sternly—"guilty of premeditated murder in both cases, and it is my duty to inform you at this time that we will be asking for the death penalty. Thank you.”
Colonel Freeman looked over at the panel, then turned to Sanders.
“The prosecution will call its first witness.”
“Sir, the Government calls to the stand Captain Charles Evans.”
Sanders led Evans through the autopsies he had done on both victims. Special attention was paid to the use of a knife in both killings. The size of the knife was estimated by the autopsy doctor to have been about the same in each case.
“A knife like this?” asked Sanders, dramatically holding aloft the knife they had recovered in Lannie’s room at the hotel in Washington. Dried blood was visible through the plastic bag containing the knife. He handed it to Captain Evans.
Evans examined the knife and looked up. “Yes. Like this one.”
Sanders entered the knife into evidence and turned the witness over to Kara. She went through the time-of-death window for Sheila, then turned to the autopsy Evans had done on Lannie.
“Let me get this straight, Doctor. What time was it when Captain Love was first approached by paramedics in the hotel?”
“Oh-three-thirty.”
“Right. But that wasn’t the time my client walked into the room and found her—”
“Objection! Reference to facts not in evidence.”
“Sustained.”
“Sorry, Your Honor. Let me go back. Oh-three-thirty was not the time that house detective Reilly came upon the scene, was it?”
“Same objection, Your Honor.”
“Counsel?”
“Reilly’s interview is in the autopsy record, Your Honor. Counsel has either not read it, or he’s being very disingenuous.”
“That will be enough sarcasm, Major Guidry. Objection overruled. Proceed.”
She turned back to Captain Evans. “Well?”
“Reilly came on the scene about 3:17, 3:18. There is a record of his radio call to the hotel security room at 3:19. He must have been there just before that.”
“Captain Love was dead before Reilly arrived, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know this?”
“When the EMT’s arrived at 0330, there were no vital signs and she was not bleeding. She was removed to D.C. General Hospital Emergency, they weighed her, and she had lost, I’m estimating here, enough blood that she had to have been bleeding for at least a half hour before she died, given the size and placement of the wound. That would put her time of death some time between 0230 and 0315, give or take fifteen minutes either way.”
“That’s a pretty specific time of death, Doctor. Why so narrow a time frame, as compared, say, with Lieutenant Worthy’s?”
“Lieutenant Worthy’s blood loss was compromised by the cold water of the river. There was no such compromise here. I can give a much tighter estimate. She died between 0230 and 0315. That’s my testimony. Forty-five minutes’ leeway.”
“Thank you, Captain. Interesting.” Kara turned toward the defense desk, as if she was finished and was going to sit down. Then she returned to the podium and cocked her head, as if confused.
“I’m curious about this finding in your autopsy of Captain Love, Doctor. On page three.” Evans flipped the pages of his autopsy. “Bottom of the page. You report that you found semen in Captain Love’s stomach and esophagus. That would indicate that she had performed fellatio almost immediately before she was killed, correct?”
“Objection! Counsel is casting aspersions on the character of the deceased!”
Freeman turned to Kara. “Counsel?”
“The semen is in the autopsy report, sir. Just because the prosecution is not charging the defendant with rape or sodomy, in addition to murder, does not prevent me from questioning the doctor on each and every aspect of his report.”
“Objection overruled. Proceed.”
“Captain Eva
ns?”
“The presence of semen in both the stomach and the esophagus would indicate recent fellatio, yes.”
“Doctor, in your years as a pathologist, have you ever seen a case in which a victim was forced by an attacker in a forced act of sodomy to swallow the attacker’s sperm?”
“Objection! Captain Evans has no expertise in this area! This is pure speculation on the part of the defense!”
Kara looked over at the judge. “Your Honor, I don’t know why the prosecution is so squeamish on this issue.”
Freeman signaled both attorneys to approach the bench. He whispered: “Where are you going with this line of questions, Counselor?”
“I am seeking to show that the deceased engaged in a sex act with a male individual other than the accused almost immediately before she died, Your Honor. It will be my contention in presenting my case that circumstantial evidence will prove that it was this sexual partner of Captain Love’s who killed her, not my client.”
Freeman dismissed them from the sidebar. “Objection overruled. Proceed.”
Kara turned to Captain Evans.
“I have to say I’ve examined rape victims, including victims who had been forced to perform fellatio, and I never found evidence of semen in their stomachs or esophagus, no.”
“Did you type the semen for DNA, Doctor? Did you run a PSA on it?”
“Yes.”
“Did it match my client’s DNA?”
“No. I can say categorically that the semen found in Captain Love’s digestive tract is not your client’s.”
“So it is a fact that Captain Love performed consensual sodomy, on another male person almost immediately preceding her death. Is it not?”
“I think you could say that is a fact, Major. Yes.”
“Thank you. That’s all I needed to know.”
When she sat down, Randy whispered: “Why did you go after the time of death if we’re not using my alibi?”
“Just laying the groundwork, Randy. You’ll see.”
“Next witness.”
Heart of War Page 33