by Brian Haig
“And that’s why he was here?”
“According to Bob Barrows, his editor, it’s one of the things he was checking on. Remember that string of church arsons about a year back? Berkowitz thought the man behind it might be here.”
I said, “You’re kidding.”
She said, “No, really.”
I almost blurted out,“You’re not going to believe this. I think I know exactly who he was looking for.”
I didn’t, though. Partly because my mind suddenly got very busy. It would be an incredible coincidence, but fate owed me a break. Sergeant Major Williams was an expert with a garrote, since all of us in the outfit were taught how to use that ghoulish thing. He’d been thrown out of the outfit for mucking around with a bunch of backwoods, redneck racists. And he had a brutally short fuse and a bent toward cruelty. I could testify to that in excruciating detail. But murder? Yes, I could see that son of a bitch murdering somebody.With a garrote, too. Hell, he’d probably smile as he did it.
Then one more piece of the puzzle suddenly went kaplunk! Maybe this was how Berkowitz knew about the existence of the outfit. Maybe he had a source somewhere who told him about Williams, and maybe that same source put him on to me.
My thoughts were interrupted by a now-curious Miss Warner, who grabbed my arm. “Do you know something about this?”
I summoned every ounce of innocence I could. “No, not really. I mean, bigots sometimes slip through our net, but I think you’re right. Probably just some crazy idea he had that didn’t pan out. I’d be willing to do some checking around, though.”
She looked disappointed. The edges of her lips sagged a little, and she said, “I have to admit that the first time you called, I thought this was what it was about. Hufnagel’s a good German name, and you said you were a sergeant. I mean, I thought it fit, and—”
As much as I didn’t want to arouse her suspicions, I glanced down at my watch and said,“Geez, look what time it is! Listen, I’ve got to take another interrogatory. Why don’t I give you a call, if I find something?”
She was no dummy. Her eyes got even narrower, almost squinty.“Yeah, why don’t you do that,” she said as I dashed away.
It is an old Army axiom that you should never defecate in your own mess kit, but I really couldn’t tell her about my old buddy Sergeant Major Williams. For one thing, she was a reporter, and all I had was a suspicion based on an odd coincidence. A suspicion with pretty strong legs, but still. Besides, I had other plans for my newest revelation.
The neat box Tretorne and Murphy had built around me had suddenly developed a fatal flaw. They’d lose all their leverage over me if I could prove Williams murdered Berkowitz. I rather looked forward to that. I still owed Williams for two false teeth and about a month of pissing blood out of my pummeled kidneys anyway. As for Tretorne and crew, I owed them something special, too. I’d rewrite my investigation summary and blow them all to pieces. I’d say I had great difficulty getting at the truth because of Tretorne’s plotting and Murphy’s conspiracy. I’d write about the director of the National Security Agency, who was in the cover-up so deep he’d even fabricated false evidence. I still wasn’t positive whether Clapper was in or out. His calls had been strategically timed, and that was suspicious, but not iron-clad. Anyway, I’d find some way to take a whack at him, too.
Chapter 26
Lisa Morrow was still in a sulky funk when I got back to the office. She was seated at the desk outside my office and gave me a sulfurous look when I walked by. Give the girl credit. She was very tenacious.
I drafted a brief note to Sergeant Major Williams, then asked Imelda to please have one of her aides deliver it to him in the ops center. Then I left and went back to the MP station. Martie and David had been given a conference room in the rear, right next to Captain Wolkowitz’s office.
I knocked and someone called for me to come in. All three of them, Martie, David, and Wolky, were seated around a conference table. A large easel had been erected on a flimsy metal stand. On the easel was their own Chinese puzzle, with lots of little boxes filled with scribbled-in names, and lots of intersecting lines that connected this suspect with that suspect and this motive with that motive. It looked to me like a hopeless montage.
About two dozen empty white foam coffee cups were strewn around, and both Martie and David had loosened their ties and rolled up their shirtsleeves. The room reeked from the acrid smell of body odor. And my ever-acute nose also detected a fragrance of desperation. I’d smelled enough of it on my own body these past few days to recognize it.
I said, “Hi guys,” and gave them my cheeriest smile. At least somebody around here was getting less sleep than me.
Then I fell into a chair that allowed me to face them. “Any new suspects?” I asked.
Of course, they were not about to answer this question to a man who, only that morning, had been a suspect himself. And maybe still was in their fevered minds; General Murphy’s alibi notwithstanding. Martie stared back at me with clouded indifference.
“We’re making headway,” he said. He didn’t sound real convincing, though.
I said, “Oh good. Then I won’t waste your time by telling you who the killer is.”
Wolky was the first to recover and open his mouth. “Is this some kind of a joke, Major?”
“Actually, no. Did you ever get around to asking the Herald what stories Berkowitz was working on?”
“Of course,” Martie said. “All they said, though, was that he was writing about the Kosovo operation. They were too worried about disclosing sources and stories in progress to offer specifics. The only reason we knew your investigation was one of his subjects was because of the article he wrote about it. And, of course, you admitted it.”
“Well, turns out he was working on a third story, too. He was trying to uncover some neo-Nazi, white supremacist ring.”
All three of them were now bent forward, their hands poised on their chins, their eyes wide, and their mouths were hanging open a little. It made a lovely picture.
I added,“It seems a source told Berkowitz that a soldier stationed here might have been implicated in the Black church burnings that happened about a year back.”
Martie said, “How do you know this?”
“I have my sources, too.”
He started to say something and I cut him off at the post. “Don’t even think about it, Martie. I’m an attorney, remember? I can play attorney-client privilege games until we’re both toothless old farts.”
“So the killer contacted you and asked you to negotiate with us?” he guessed.
“Wrong. But I’m pretty sure I know who the killer is. Even if he didn’t do it himself, I’d bet anything he was at least implicated.”
Martie turned to Wolky. “You aware of any white supremacist activity here?”
Wolky shrugged his big shoulders and said, “Nope.”
This was no surprise because Tuzla was a temporary operational base. The MPs did not have the kind of grip on their population they would have at a permanent installation. Here, units floated in and out on a rotational basis, and their troublemakers passed in and out with them. Still, I was glad Martie asked. Now they knew they needed me.
I said, “Are you ready to hear my deal?”
“Deal? What do you mean, deal?” David asked. It was nice to see he had a voice too.
I leaned back in my chair, locked my hands behind my neck, and plopped my feet onto the table. “Well, for various reasons, your chief suspect is going to require special handling.”
David asked,“What reasons? What kind of special handling?” “You can make the arrest. You will then lock him up in a quarantined cell, and nobody will be allowed to go near him. Someone will be here within a day to take him into custody. He’ll be whisked out of here, and aside from whatever assistance you may be required to provide to the people who take him, your relationship with this case will be over. You’ll forget all about it.”
All three of them were looking
at me like I was nuts. Martie said, “I never heard anything so weird.”
I said, “Take it or leave it. If you can’t live with it, I’ll get someone else to handle it.”
“What’s so special about this guy?” Wolky asked.
“I’m sorry, Wolky. I can’t tell you.”
“Who’s gonna take him into custody?”
“Guys in dark suits. They’ll have special orders signed by the Secretary of Defense. That’s all you need to know.”
You see, the truth was that the real reason Clapper had once been so agreeable about sending me to law school was because it solved a delicate problem for the Army. The outfit was only one of several “black units” on the Army’s rolls. Altogether there are several thousand secret warriors roaming around out there, and anywhere there are thousands of soldiers, guess what you get: troublemakers.
In fact, as you might imagine, that kind of duty attracts some real rogues. You could screen as hard as you wanted, but a few murderers, rapists, thieves, and sundry other lawbreakers always slipped through.When they did a crime and were apprehended, your standard-fare, open court-martial would have exposed not only them, but also the existence of their units. The Army’s answer to this ticklish conundrum was to convene a permanent “black court,” located at a tiny, secret base in northern Virginia. The military judge who sat over that court had a special clearance. The lawyers all had special clearances. The court was guided by military law, but its existence and its proceedings were every bit as closely guarded as the outfit or any other black unit. There was even a special “black review court,” to handle appeals. This, of course, was my unit, where I worked until I was yanked out to conduct this investigation.
Williams, because of his history with the outfit, was going to have to be tried by us. The trail of his crime reached back to the days when he served in the outfit. In any case, he would no doubt threaten to publicly divulge the existence of the outfit, if he thought that would offer him some leverage. It was one of the first resorts of nearly every “black world” rascal who got caught. I could not allow that to happen.
It did not take Martie and David and Wolky long to realize their hands were tied. They talked and argued and bitched for a while, and I deferred every question they asked. Then I explained that, if necessary, I could always get on a phone, and they’d get a call from a four-star officer back in Washington ordering them to obey my instructions. In the end, they took the only recourse that would allow them to end this case and to get some rest. They caved in.
Only we now had to prove Williams did it. I was sure he was our man. Too many angles fit together. The court systems, however, have all those discommoding rules about evidence, and right at the moment that was the one thing we sorely lacked.
I explained as much about Sergeant Major Williams as they needed to know and nothing more. I asked Martie to call the lab in Heidelberg and have them immediately transmit the largest shoeprint that had been collected at the crime scene. Williams was a big boy, about six foot three, and, oddly enough, I had once spent about two weeks staring at his feet. One of his interrogation techniques was to order me to keep my eyes focused on the floor, like a repentant monk. Every time I made the mistake of lifting my eyes, he hammered me on the back of the head. I remembered that he had very big feet. Big hands, too. Big, hurtful hands.
The shoeprint came across the wire, marked and labeled with the size, shoe type, and manufacturer. The size was thirteen, double E. It was an Adidas running shoe, style name Excelsior. Martie told me there was a reporter from the Los Angeles Times staying at the Visiting Journalists’ Quarters the night of the murder who also wore size thirteen shoes and they had all assumed this was his shoeprint. Since the L.A. reporter was a civilian, they had no jurisdiction to question him or take his shoeprint, and he had returned to L.A. a day later. Martie pointed to where the reporter’s name was written into one of the little possible suspect blocks on their jigsaw puzzle. He told me he’d even wired the LAPD and asked if they had any background on the reporter. He was still awaiting a response.
I told him to get on the phone and ask the jurisdictional military judge to issue us a search order to get into Sergeant Major Williams’s room so we could get a pair of his shoes. I wasn’t hopeful, though. Williams was no dummy. If he’d worn his running shoes into the latrine that night, there was a good chance they would’ve gotten splattered with blood, and surely he would’ve been clever enough to dispose of them. We’d at least get his shoe size, though. That was a step in the right direction. Figuratively speaking, of course.
This led naturally to trying to figure out how Williams knew that Berkowitz was on to him.
David suggested, “Maybe Berkowitz’s source was doubledealing and put Williams on to it.”
This might’ve happened, but we quickly agreed it didn’t seem likely. Why would a source rat Williams out to Berkowitz, then Berkowitz out to Williams?
Wolky suggested, “Maybe Berkowitz actually met with Williams. Maybe he threatened to expose him.”
This seemed much more likely. I said, “Was there no mention of Sergeant Major Williams in Berkowitz’s notebook?”
Martie said,“None.We’ve been through every page two dozen times. And every little note in his room. Never saw that name.”
I turned to David. “Call the operations officer. Find out if Williams was on duty at the ops center that night.”
He ran out, and we bantered about the weather until he returned. The weather was nice, we all agreed. A little hot, but nice. David returned.
“He was on day shift,” he said a little breathlessly. “He was in the ops center from six in the morning till six at night, except from noon till one for lunch.”
So he was off duty when Berkowitz was murdered. That much fit. There was a knock at the door, then an MP entered carrying a pair of real big running shoes. They looked brand-new, which made it easy to read the shoe size, which was stamped in black letters on the inside of the shoe’s tongue. Thirteen, double E’s. We all nodded sagely. Brand-new shoes. Umhummm, we all murmured. And the same size as the mold. Now we were getting somewhere.
Not far enough, though. If there was one other man on this compound who wore size thirteen, double E’s, then Williams was home free. And we already knew there was a reporter in Los Angeles who wore thirteen, double E’s.
We went back to trying to figure out how Williams discovered Berkowitz was on to him.We decided they either met face-to-face or at least talked to each other on the phone.
We sat and stared at the tabletop for a while. How would Berkowitz have learned where Sergeant Major Williams worked, I wondered. I mean, assume his source gave him Williams’s name and told him he was now with Tenth Group at Tuzla Air Base. Berkowitz still would’ve needed to track him down. Maybe he did what Janice Warner tried with Harry Hufnagel.
I went to the phone and called the information office. That same friendly little sergeant named Jarvis answered again.
I said, “Hey, Sergeant Jarvis, Major Sean Drummond here.” “Good morning, sir. How can I help you?”
“Just answer a few questions. Who handles press inquiries in your office?”
“They come to me first. I sort through them and parcel ’em out.”
“So if a reporter calls or sends a paper request, you would see it?”
“That’s right. But I only handle the easy stuff. If it’s a complicated request, it goes to the information officer, Major Lord. Usually he tasks it out to whoever in Tenth Group has the right expertise to answer the question. Then it comes back to us, and we send the response back to the journalist.”
“Okay,” I said. “Suppose a reporter wanted to track down somebody in Tenth Group. Who would handle that?”
“Me. I mean, it’s no toughie. I just access the group’s manning roster and get the answer.”
“Do you remember if Jeremy Berkowitz asked you to track anyone down?”
“Sure. He asked me to find you, for instance.”
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br /> “Good. That’s right. Anyone else?”
“Just a second, sir. I keep a record of every request. It’s SOP here.”
I heard his fingers tapping his computer keys, accessing some file. Then, “Yeah, I’ve got the list here.”
“Could you read it to me, please?”
“Sure. Uh, let’s see . . . Colonel Thomas Weathers . . . Major Sean Drummond . . . Captain Dean Walters . . . Sergeant Major Luther Williams—”
“Stop there,” I said. “Did you tell him how to get hold of Williams?”
“I did. But he asked me to get hold of him and have Williams call him back.”
“And did you?” I asked.
“Yes, sir. I’ve got it all logged right here. Let’s see ...I called the sergeant major at 1030 hours at the ops center on the morning of the second.”
“Very good. Now, I’d like you to put a copy of that file you’re reading on a disk and bring it down to the MP station. Don’t mention anything to anybody, just do it. Ask for Captain Wolkowitz when you get here.”
Sergeant Jarvis was a smart kid, and no doubt deduced this had something to do with the Berkowitz murder. He sounded almost breathless when he said, “Be right there. Only take ten minutes.”
In a matter of only a few hours we now had a motive, and we had the makings of a very good circumstantial case. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when you know who the killer is and only have to fill in the blanks from there. Especially on an Army base.
What we didn’t have was tangible proof. And what I didn’t have was more time to build a better case.
We could prove Berkowitz was here trying to break a story on white supremacists. We could prove, with the outfit’s wiretaps, that Williams was associated with a backwoods band of bigots. We could prove Berkowitz made contact with Williams. We could prove Williams had the right shoe size to fit a mold from the murder scene. All this was great. Arithmetically speaking.