They were gone.
She picked up the phone and dialed Captain Patterson’s number.
“Captain Patterson, it’s Jacey Slaight.”
“I think I saw someone following you when you left my office.”
“It was Rose. He stopped me out on Thayer Road and tried to talk me out of going to the CID.”
“It sounds like he’s getting rather nervous.”
“He’s scared shitless. But you won’t believe this. When I got back to my room, all my drawers were open. Somebody stole the floppies with Dorothy’s E-mail on them.”
“They got them all?”
“Yes.”
“They know you’re on to them, and they’re playing for keeps, Jacey. I’d be careful if I were you.”
“Do you still think I ought to talk to Ash?”
“Why don’t you find out where he was while you were gone? It’s possible he was the one who stole the disks. He would know his way around your room, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah. That’s a good idea. I’ll check on it.”
“You don’t have a copy of the E-mails?”
“No. The last thing I expected was that someone in the Corps of Cadets would steal them.”
“It sounds to me like the time when you could trust your classmates is behind you. If I were you, I would start operating on that assumption.”
“Thanks. I will.”
“Call me after you’ve spoken to Agent Kerry, will you?”
“Okay. I’ve got to go. I’m going to look around for Ash. I need to know if he was a part of this. Thanks again, Captain Patterson.”
She hung up. Out there on Thayer Road only moments before, she had realized Rose was frightened enough to threaten her. Now she knew how far he was willing to take it. She couldn’t prove it yet, but she was certain that the Chairman of the Honor Committee had ordered someone to steal Dorothy’s floppies. Every guy at the party was on the Honor Committee . . .
So that was it. The whole thing was about the Honor Committee. That’s what they ‘re trying to hide.
She grabbed her purse and headed out the door. She took the stairs two at a time and ran into the orderly room. “Where’s Ash?” she asked.
“Up at Building Seven-twenty with the band.”
“How long has he been up there?”
“He came back from supper and I saw him leaving with his harmonica and his amp, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Thanks.” She ran out the door and headed up the steps to Building 720. When she reached the parking lot next to the building she was out of breath, so she stopped for a moment and leaned forward with her hands on her knees, panting. She could hear the band down in the basement. Ash was singing another old Replacements song, shouting the refrain over and over: I’m so . . . I’m so . . . unsatisfied. She pushed open the basement door and stepped inside. Ash saw her and raised his hand, and the band stopped playing.
“Ash. We’ve got to talk.”
He looked at the rest of the guys in the band and checked his watch. “This might take a while. Maybe we ought to knock off for the night.”
“Sure thing,” said the drummer.
“How’s it going, Jace?” called the lead guitarist.
“Okay, Randy. You guys sound good. Been practicing long?”
“Since supper,” said the lead guitarist.
“It shows.” She gave the guys in the band a wave and Ash followed her outside. She closed the basement door and faced him in the dim light from a streetlamp across the parking lot. “Ash, I’ve got to ask you this one question, and you’ve got to tell me the truth. Randy said you guys have been practicing since supper. Is that right? Have you been up here practicing ever since supper?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re telling me the truth, Ash? I’m serious. I can walk back in there and ask them, and I’ll do it, Ash, if I think you’re lying to me.”
“I’m not lying. We’ve been practicing . . .” He checked his watch again. “Over two hours. What’s up, Jace? How come you want to know if I’ve been here with the band?”
“Because somebody went into my room tonight after supper and stole the floppies with Dorothy’s E-mail on them. That’s why.”
The shock on his face told her everything she needed to know. He knew nothing about it.
“Jace, I’ve got to tell you something. Last week, after you got so mad at me for not telling you about the party, I called Rose and I told him and I told the others that you knew, and that you had found her E-mail disks.”
“I knew it. I just knew it.”
“I was mad, Jace. Don’t you understand? I know I screwed up not telling you about the party, but I just didn’t think it was such a big deal. And you treated me like I’d done something terrible. You even accused me of fucking around on you, and Jace, you know I didn’t do that.”
She looked at him, and she knew he was telling the truth. It was like Patterson had said: Sometimes guys just screw up. “Well, it is a big deal, Ash. It’s a big enough deal that your pal Rose, the Chairman of the Honor Committee, had somebody steal Dorothy’s E-mail from my desk drawer.”
“How do you know he’s behind it?”
“Because I was over at Patterson’s office tonight, and Patterson saw him following me. And after I left, Rose caught up with me on Thayer Road and he threatened me. He told me I’ll be sorry if I keep pushing this thing. That’s how he referred to it. This thing.”
“Jesus. I had no idea.”
“What’s going on, Ash? He’s the Chairman of the Honor Committee! And he’s scared to death! What is it that he’s afraid of?”
“Well, there’s Gibson . . .”
“Screw Gibson! This has got nothing to do with Gibson! It’s all about the Honor Committee! I know it is, Ash, because I found another E-mail I haven’t told you about. Early on the morning Dorothy died she sent a message to her mother. She said something happened to her at the party. She wanted to talk to her mother about it. Ash, she was trying to call her mother at four in the morning. She was scared. I’m sure of it.”
“Christ.”
“What do you know about these guys, Ash? Are Rose and the rest of them messing around with the Honor Code? I need to know the truth.”
“I feel like the stupidest idiot in the world right now, because all I can tell you is, I don’t know a thing. And the thing is, I should. I’m the regimental Honor rep. If those guys on the Honor Committee are threatening people with Honor violations, I ought to know about it. But I don’t.”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll tell you something right now. I’m sure as hell going to find out.”
Jacey grabbed his hand. “I need to know that I can trust you, Ash. I mean it. This time, you can’t go off and call Rose and tell him and the rest of your buddies everything I’ve told you. If you do that, the whole thing will be blown, Ash. So tell me. Can I trust you, like we’ve trusted each other for two years?”
He took her other hand in his and he looked directly into her eyes. “Jace, let me tell you something. When you walked away from me last week and you told me good-bye, it was the lowest I’ve ever felt in my life. I mean, I knew I’d blown it, and the years we’ve spent together just went up in smoke, and I was standing there, and I was so angry at you and angry at myself, I didn’t know what to do. I’m going to help you. If they’re fucking around with the Honor Code, Jace, we’ll bring them down. It’s our Honor Code. It’s the whole reason I wanted to come to West Point, because I knew this is the last place on earth where honor comes before everything else. That’s why I worked so hard to become an Honor rep. It’s why I wanted to be regimental rep. It’s the only thing I’ve ever really believed in, Jace.”
“This isn’t going to be easy,” she said.
“I know.”
“If this whole thing is about the Honor Code, they’ve got one hell of a lot to lose. I’m going to need your help.”
“You�
��ve got it. You know they’re going to fight us every step of the way.”
“They’ve already started. The very cadets who are supposed to enforce the code against lying, cheating, and stealing just came into my room and stole those floppy disks. What else have they done? What are they trying to hide? This whole thing is going to come right down on my father’s head.”
“You’re right. It’s his watch. He’s on the spot. Maybe you’d better warn him.”
“I can’t. Captain Patterson said I’ve got to go through channels. If I go to my father, they’ll accuse him of exercising command influence in the investigation.”
“Oh, man. This thing is a nightmare.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So what’s next?”
“I’m going to see Agent Kerry.”
“If you want, I’ll go with you.”
She found his eyes. “That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard in a long time, Ash, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“You’re on the Honor Committee. You’ve got access to committee files and reports. You guys are friends. They trust you. If they find out you’re talking to Agent Kerry, they’re going to shut you out.”
“You’re right.”
She moved close to him and took his hand. “C’mon, let’s get back to the barracks.”
CHAPTER 23
* * *
COLONEL KNIGHT had called Major Vernon the night before with news that the DNA results were in, so the next morning she took the first shuttle out of La Guardia and a cab from the airport and was standing outside the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology when he drove into the parking lot.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said when he got out of his car.
“I didn’t see much sense in wasting any time, sir.”
“Let’s get with it then.” They took the stairs to the third floor. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Hallberg was waiting for them. He was tall and thin and looked as though he had once played basketball, which he had, as a Princeton undergrad. The sleeves of his lab coat were far too short and he had the goofy, aw-shucks body language of an athlete. His shoulders jerked back and forth when he walked, and his eyes searched the room restlessly, as if he was constantly prepared for a fast break.
“Ben, I want you to meet Liz Vernon.” Her hand disappeared in his, and she had to look up to make eye contact.
“Nice to meet you, sir,” she said.
“I recognized your name when we received the sample. Phil has told me about you.”
She glanced at Colonel Knight. “I’m flattered, I guess,” she said.
Colonel Knight grinned. “What have you got for us, Ben?”
Lieutenant Colonel Hallberg opened a file and pulled out a thick computer printout. He looked at Major Vernon. “Well, it took us two weeks, but we finally dislodged the results from the lab at Rockville. This was a twenty-one-year-old female cadet at West Point, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Was she a rape victim?”
“That’s part of our problem. We don’t know, sir,” said Major Vernon.
“We separated three different DNA profiles besides the victim’s from your vaginal sample.”
There was an eerie stillness in the room as this news sank in. Finally Colonel Knight broke the silence. “Liz, you said you found evidence of labial abrasion. Don’t you think this contributes to the conclusion that the young woman was raped?”
She thought for a moment before she spoke. “I’d say it ups that possibility by a factor of three, sir.”
“Can you describe the abrasion for me?” asked Hallberg.
Major Vernon reached into her briefcase and handed each of the men copies of autopsy photographs. “The redness and swelling is on the left side. When I first observed it, the abraded area resembled another labial abrasion I found on another deceased victim which resulted from violent penetration. I’ve done several examinations of violent rape victims since then. There is usually a lot more tissue damage and inflammation is far more pronounced. However, the abrasion I found is consistent with rape, and your DNA analysis proving she had three sexual partners certainly points us in that direction. But there are mitigating factors here. She made no complaint of rape, and according to the senior criminal investigator, her behavior on the morning of her death was described by her roommate and by other cadets as quiet, but otherwise normal.”
“Don’t you think it’s likely that she was raped and chose to conceal that fact from her friends?” asked Colonel Knight. “She may have been suffering from posttraumatic shock.”
“There’s also the possibility that she had been drugged and had no memory of the experience,” Hallberg interjected. “Some of the so-called date rape drugs like Rohypnol can have that effect. Did Rohypnol show up in her blood tests?”
“No,” said Major Vernon. “But there are other drugs out there that have the same effect as Rohypnol, and most of them wouldn’t show up because the illegal labs keep one or two steps ahead of law enforcement by changing the chemical makeup of the drugs, and they’re successful in keeping pathologists in the dark as well, because we can’t keep up with their chemical formulations. Therefore we can’t test for them.”
“You’re talking about designer drugs?” asked Knight.
“Right, sir.”
“So where do you stand with the rest of your examination?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Hallberg.
“She suffered a massive respiratory failure,” interjected Colonel Knight. “And one of the things Liz is looking into is the young woman’s behavior in the days previous to her death. Your results certainly open a rather large door.” He turned to Major Vernon. “You can cross-check Ben’s DNA profiles against the DNA profiles of cadets. If the three men she had sex with were cadets, you’ll come up with three matches.”
“I wasn’t aware West Point had a DNA database,” said Major Vernon.
“It doesn’t,” said Lieutenant Colonel Hallberg. “All the DNA profiles are kept down here at Rockville. The profiles are intended for battlefield identification of body parts when a physical ID can’t be done.”
“Have military DNA records ever been used for this purpose before?” asked Major Vernon.
“You mean in the investigation of the death of a third party? I don’t think so.”
She tapped one of her fingers on the clasp of her briefcase. “Well, I guess there’s got to be a first time for everything.”
AS SHE flew back to La Guardia on the shuttle, Major Vernon knew one thing for sure: DNA was dynamite. A convicted rapist-murderer on death row in Texas had just been pardoned and released by a reluctant governor of Texas after DNA evidence proved without even the tiniest sliver of doubt that he could not have raped, much less murdered the victim of the crime. A leading expert in the field had recently announced advances in the accuracy of DNA analysis. It could now be established that the chances were up to ten billion to one that a sample’s DNA did or did not come from one particular individual. There weren’t even ten billion people on the planet. The science of DNA was fast approaching the apogee of the absolute.
That’s why she knew she was going to have problems at West Point. They wanted a simple cause of death that was easy to understand—a slide they could lay on an overhead projector and put up on a screen showing a squiggly little thing blown up huge and hideous. They wanted a germ. What they did not want were names, and names were what they would get from the genetic profiles she was bringing back with her from Washington.
It was true that the names would have to be associated with the rest of the medical evidence in her briefcase. Cadet Dorothy Hamner had been loaded with corticosteroids, and this had contributed to her death. But something else had complicated her condition. The thing about the genetic profiles in her briefcase was that they belonged to young men who might hold a secret that Major Vernon had not been able to uncover. They might know what had been introduced into her system that caused her lungs to become i
nflamed and simply shut down and stop working.
She knew that Percival wouldn’t know what to do, because DNA was a ticklish area, especially DNA that had been taken from individuals under governmental orders. He would turn right around and go to his superior, Colonel Lombardi, the SJA. But the problem was, nobody in the Army liked to be the bringer of bad tidings, least of all Percival.
LATER THAT afternoon, as she unsnapped the clasp on her briefcase, Percival lived up to her expectations. “Don’t tell me you ran more tests.”
“Yes sir.” Major Vernon pulled the thick DNA file from the briefcase and rested the closed case on her knees. “As a routine part of the autopsy, I did a pelvic exam on Miss Hamner. She showed signs of vaginal trauma, so I took vaginal samples. Miss Hamner had had sex with multiple partners within twelve to eighteen hours of her death, sir.”
Lieutenant Colonel Percival leaned back against his desk chair and ran a palm roughly across his crew cut. “Just what we need,” he muttered.
Major Vernon shot him a sideways glance and turned her attention to the file. “We know she had multiple sex partners, because a DNA analysis of the seminal fluid drawn from Miss Hamner’s vagina produced three separate profiles. We can ID the profiles, sir. We can put names on them.”
“How in the hell are you going to do that?”
“By cross-checking the seminal DNA pofiles against the DNA profiles we’ve taken from male cadets here at West Point.”
“What’s the purpose behind such a massive search of privileged information, Major? You’re going to need a serious justification to make that fly.”
“There are two strong reasons to order the search, sir. The first is that the vaginal trauma to Miss Hamner indicates that she may have been raped. She was a very conservative young woman from a small town in upstate New York. According to her roommate and other friends in her company, she had never shown any interest in the kind of sexual experimentation which would be indicated by three sex partners in a single night. Her vaginal area showed signs of abrasion and swelling, and these are consistent with forced sex. With evidence that no less than three men had sex with her, it’s a reasonable assumption that she was raped. The second reason is, there’s a very strong likelihood that one or more of the men who had sex with her may have knowledge about what she ingested that interacted with the corticosteroid in her bloodstream, causing her lungs to fail, sir. There is a strong reason to believe these men may be able to testify as to her cause of death.”
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