High Crimes (17 page)

“I assume the most senior guy in rank automatically becomes the jury foreman.”

“You’re catching on. Everything is rank.”

“And how do we know these guys haven’t all been selected for their willingness to convict?”

“We don’t. Officially it’s unlawful command influence to try to stack the court, but good luck proving it. You can’t.”

The doorbell rang. “Shit,” Claire said. “That’s going to wake Annie up. She was just drifting off to sleep.”

“Expecting someone?”

“Ray Devereaux. My PI. Excuse me for a minute.”

Ray stood at the door like an immense statue with an improbably small head. He wore one of his good suits.

“Good evening,” he said with exaggerated courtliness.

“Hey, Ray,” Claire said. She went to hug him and ended up squeezing his stomach. He entered and looked around.

“I like this,” Devereaux said. “You’re living in the goddamned Taj Mahal and I’m staying in a roach motel.”

“It’s not a roach motel, Ray, it’s—”

“Fuggedaboudit, I’m making a joke. What happened to your sense of humor?”

In the library he was introduced to Grimes and refused to sit down. “I wanna know why you guys don’t drop a dime to the
Post
or the
Washington Times
,” Devereaux said. “Only thing that’ll derail this express train. Open the door and let in the light of day.”

“No,” Claire said urgently, shaking her head. “Then Tom becomes William Calley. No matter if we get him off or not. For the rest of his life, he’s a mass murderer, and my daughter has to live with that.”

“But if you change your mind,” Grimes said, “just don’t use your phone. Don’t even talk about it on your phone.”

“You think they’ve got an illegal tap on my phones?”

Devereaux laughed the laugh of the man who’s seen it all.

“Lady,” Grimes said, “I put nothing past ’em.”

“Okay. Field report,” Devereaux announced. “Of the men in Detachment 27 I’ve been able to locate, there’s Hernandez, who probably salutes General Marks’s bowel movements. Two are in the private sector. Two I can’t find. That’s all of them.”

“Including Tom, that’s six,” Grimes said. “There were twelve in the unit. Where’s the other six?”

“Dead.”

“That’s what Tom told me,” Claire said.

“There seems to be a high mortality rate in that unit, wouldn’t you say? Six of the men have died since 1985.”

“How?” Claire asked.

“Two in combat, but there’s nothing available about the circumstances of their deaths. Three dead in car accidents. One, who lived in New York City and never owned a car or had a driver’s license, died of a heart attack.”

“Because they couldn’t plausibly engineer a car accident for the guy,” Grimes said, nodding. “But heart attacks can be faked, with the right chemicals.”

“Tom was right,” Claire said. “He said they were going to go after him, too.”

“They didn’t figure on losing him the way they did,” Devereaux said.

Claire heard a small noise at the doorway and saw Annie standing there, thumb in her mouth, dragging her blanket behind her. Another regression. “What are you doing up?”

“The doorbell woke me up,” Annie said in a small voice. She looked around the library, blinking.

“Annie!” Devereaux sang out. He strode over to her and put his arms out. “Want an elevator ride?”

“Yeah!” Annie said, reaching up.

Devereaux lifted her up almost to the ceiling. “Tenth floor! Going down.” Lowering her in stages, he said, “Eighth floor! Sixth floor! Third floor! Lobby!” She screamed with delight. Then, catapulting her upward, he said, “Whoops! Going up! Tenth floor!” And, plunging her to the floor: “Going down! Express! Basement!”

“Ray!” Claire scolded. “This little girl has to go to sleep, and you’re getting her all riled up.”

Annie giggled. “More!”

“No more,” Devereaux said. “Your mommy says it’s sleepytime.”

“Can I play in here for a little while?”

“It’s bedtime, babe,” Claire said.

“But I don’t have school.”

Claire hesitated but a moment. “All right, for a little while. Do you guys mind? She never sees me these days.”

“Is she bound by attorney-client confidentiality?” Grimes asked.

“You’ve got to be real quiet, okay?” Claire said.

“Okay.”

Annie began walking around the library, inspecting the objects, playing with a paperweight.

“We’re going to have to replace Embry,” Grimes said. “Or they’ll replace him, more likely. But we definitely need someone inside the system.”

“You really think he leaked our plans about the polygraph?” Claire asked.

“You got any other candidates?”

“No. But, just judging by his character—I find it hard to accept.”

Annie had both of her hands around the porcelain urn.

“Be careful,” Claire said to Annie. “This isn’t our house.” But Annie didn’t remove her hands. She stared at her mother with defiance.

“You’re such a good judge of character?” Devereaux gibed.

“It’s a different world, the military,” Grimes said. “Different rules. Different loyalties. Different values. Different morality. He may be a moral guy, but his loyalty is to the system, to protecting the military. Not to us.”

“If you really believe that,” Claire said, “why not try to get him disbarred? Annie, honey, I mean it. I want you to go to bed now.”

“Ah, I was just talking trash. How am I going to prove it? Never happen.”

There was a sudden movement, and the urn toppled to the hardwood floor with a sickening crash.

“Annie!” Claire shouted.

Annie gave Claire a ferocious look and stared at what she’d done. The urn had smashed into tiny pieces, scattered far and wide over the polished floor.

“Oh, God,” Claire said, jumping up. “Annie! All right, you, back to bed.”

“No, I don’t want to go to bed!”

“Bedtime, miss.” Claire lifted her up.

Annie wriggled, swung her body to either side, protesting angrily, “
I’m … not … going … to bed!
”

“Hey,” Devereaux said.

“What?” Claire said as Annie managed to free herself from Claire’s arms and landed neatly on the floor. She ran out of the room. “Annie, come back here, baby!”

“Check this out.” He pointed at the shards of porcelain scattered on the hardwood floor.

Claire and Grimes approached. “What you talking about?” Grimes asked.

“This,” Devereaux said.

“Oh, man,” Grimes said.

“What is it?” Claire asked. She stared at a tiny black object she’d never seen before.

Devereaux picked it up. It was oblong, no more than an inch long, half an inch wide, trailing a long thin wire.

“Transmitter,” Grimes said, his voice hushed.

“Oh my God,” Claire said in a high-pitched whisper.

“Man oh man,” Grimes said.

Claire suddenly grabbed a ceramic foo dog on the cluttered table next to Grimes’s chair and flung it to the ground. It shattered, another small black transmitter among its shards. “Oh my God,” she repeated.

“Claire,” Grimes called warningly.

She lifted the spherical black lamp from the library table she used as a desk and hurled that, too, to the floor. It split jaggedly in half, revealing another black transmitter.

“Cool it, Claire,” Grimes said. “You’re going to have to pay for all this shit.”

“Enough, Claire,” Devereaux said. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll locate the rest of them.”

“This place is loaded with them!” Claire gasped.

“I told you,” Grimes said, grabbing her arms to restrain her, “I put nothing past them. Now you see what I’m talking about.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The house
crawled with FBI agents—crime-scene investigators, fingerprint and forensic people. They’d arrived with astonishing speed after Ray Devereaux, one of their own, had put in the call the following morning. He’d done so after he’d finished his own cursory inspection, which turned up a dozen more miniature transmitters, in the library, in Claire’s bedroom, in the kitchen. And more to come, no doubt. In the ceiling of an empty guest-room closet one floor above the library Devereaux had located a large black box, which he said was used to gather the signals, amplify them, and broadcast them for miles to whoever was listening.

A meeting was scheduled for one o’clock that day with the military judge who’d just been detailed to the Ronald Kubik court-martial. As she drove to Quantico, Grimes said, “Well, your complaint certainly sped things along.” He was referring to the complaint she’d filed with the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who took things like unlawful surveillance devices and interference with attorney-client privilege with the gravest concern. “That’s one way to get the military judge named—they wanted to have a judge named to deal with the bugging complaint. Problem is, now we’re fucked.”

“Why?” she said, and glanced at him to see whether he was being ironic.

“We’re fucked because our judge is Warren Farrell, who happens to be a Nazi.”

“How so?” Claire asked.

“He’s what you call a real iron colonel.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what you call a full-bird colonel who’s at his terminal rank, meaning he’s not far from retirement and can’t be threatened. So he can be as outrageous as he wants and piss all over us, which he likes to do to defense lawyers, particularly civilians. He certainly doesn’t give a shit about a reversal down the line.”

“I take it you’ve tried cases before him.”

“Never had the pleasure. Heard a lot, though. He don’t much like dark-green army boys like me.” Grimes paused to take a sip of his take-out coffee. “Great circumstances to be meeting the judge for the first time.”

“What are you talking about? It’s great. Puts them on the defensive, makes us look good by contrast.”

“You don’t know Judge Farrell.”

“What, he’s going to be prejudiced against us because we had the misfortune to have our workspace illegally bugged by the government?”

“It wasn’t necessarily the prosecution,” Grimes said.

“Oh? You got any other candidates?”

“Hell, it could be the Pentagon. Defense Intelligence. Defense Humint Service, or one of those creepy military-intelligence groups they keep locked up in the basement of the Pentagon. Might even be some private organization of old Special Forces alumni who don’t want shit like this coming out. Or want to make sure we lose.”

“Maybe some friends of the general’s,” Claire said. “But FBI’s not going to find fingerprints on anything, are they? The culprits aren’t going to be that sloppy.”

Grimes nodded slowly in distracted agreement. “This kind of shit happens all the time.”

“In the military?”

“Oh, yeah. When I was with the Judge Advocates Corps, prosecuting, I heard all the time about how they’d plant bugs on civilian lawyers. Military doesn’t like civilian lawyers playing in their sandlot, I told you.”

“Bullshit, Grimes. Don’t tell me the prosecution used information they picked up from bugs.”

“Oh, they’d launder it first. Always happens. You find an independent source, attribute it to them. You think I’m kidding?”

“No, I don’t. I just don’t want to think you’re right.”

*   *   *

The meeting with the military judge was held
in camera
, in the high-security subbasement courtroom. Waldron was already seated, fuming, when they arrived. He shuffled papers as Captain Hogan talked to him. A court reporter was placing tapes in the Lanier recording machine and testing her equipment. The jury box was empty. Tom was seated at the end of the defense table in his uniform.

In time the bailiff entered the courtroom from the judge’s chambers and called out, “All rise!”

A large, beefy, big-shouldered man, with a shock of white hair, entered. Under his black robe he wore a dress uniform. He was carrying a leather portfolio in one hand and a Pepsi in the other. He looked dyspeptic. Claire was sure he was scowling. Leisurely, he made his way to the bench and flicked a finger against the microphone. Satisfied by the amplified thump, he spoke in a gruff and gravelly voice: “This Article 39(a) session is called to order. Be seated.”

When the defense and prosecution lawyers had sat down, he said, “I’m Judge Farrell.” He put on a pair of black-rimmed half-glasses and consulted some papers on his podium. He ran through a few minutes of preliminaries.

Claire’s heart sank. She’d heard voices like this in Charlestown, in all-white neighborhoods of Boston—self-assured, bigoted, thuggish, clannish. For all she knew he would turn out to be a fair man of judicial temperament, but her instinct told her he was a schoolyard bully.

He spoke as if he was already fed up with the trial, even before it had begun, even before the arraignment. “Now, as you all know, the purpose of this pretrial session is to address a complaint lodged by defense counsel regarding alleged bugs or transmitters or whatnot allegedly found on her premises, within her office.” Warren Farrell’s luxuriant thatch of white hair contrasted with his ruddy face, which was spiderwebbed with the broken veins of a serious drinker. He was a former Golden Gloves boxer, Grimes had said, which would account for his broken-looking nose. Farrell had attended night law school.

“Defense counsel,” he growled, “you have somethin’ to say?”

Claire rose. “Your Honor, I’m Claire Heller Chapman. I’m the lead defense counsel.” She held up a Ziploc plastic evidence bag, clearly marked “FBI” and “E
VIDENCE
,” containing one of the tiny black transmitters. Very buglike indeed, with its slender black body and long filament tail. The FBI had reluctantly loaned it to her, after great pressure from Ray Devereaux.

“Your Honor,” she went on, “I’ve received technical assistance from the FBI, which is investigating this matter right now, and which confirms that my office has been bugged by parties unknown.” She spoke guardedly for the record, careful not to overstep. “I have reason to believe the government is involved. I would like to move for appropriate relief for disclosure of all intercepted conversations collected from my office. I would respectfully request that you direct the government to disclose any and all information regarding wiretaps, overhears, et cetera, and disclose copies of any and all transcripts or tapes made.”

“Trial counsel?” the judge said wearily.

Waldron vaulted to his feet. “Your Honor, we find these allegations outrageous and clearly intended to prejudice Your Honor against the government. There is no evidence whatsoever that we had anything to do with such an egregious penetration of attorney-client privilege, and, frankly, we resent the accusation.”

Waldron spoke so heatedly, with such righteous indignation, that for a moment Claire actually believed him. Certainly it was possible he knew nothing about the whole sordid business. If Grimes was right that information illegally obtained could be laundered through independent sources, wouldn’t they—whoever “they” were—want to keep Waldron in the dark about where the juicy stuff came from?

“You’re tellin’ me you had nothing to do with this,” Farrell said, fixing Waldron with a beady-eyed glare.

“Your Honor, not only did we have nothing whatsoever to do with this,” Waldron replied in high dudgeon, “but I am personally outraged that—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Farrell said, interrupting Waldron’s tirade as if he were already tired of him, too. “All right, look, I’m going to make this short and sweet. Trial counsel, I’m going to issue an order for the government to show cause that defense counsel’s allegations are untrue, and that the government has had no responsibility for these bugs. Now, in the event that the prosecution has had any involvement in this, I’m requiring you to produce forthwith copies of all transcripts or tapes of conversations intercepted, and to show cause why your conduct is not in violation of the law. And on a personal note, I wanna tell you that, if I find the slightest evidence of any monkey business on
either
side, there’s goin’ to be hell to pay.” He slammed down his gavel. “That’s all.”

Waldron passed by the defense table on his way out of the courtroom, and before he had a chance to say anything, Claire looked up at his thin-lipped face. “You should know I’m going to move to dismiss for outrageous government conduct,” she told him. “You just blew it, Major. Violating attorney-client privilege is a mammoth violation of due process.” She pursed her lips in disgust. “That was really pathetic. Amateur hour.”

Waldron stared back with his lucid blue-gray eyes. “I hope you don’t seriously think we even
need
to bug your offices.” He shook his head and gave one of his feral smiles. “You really have no idea, do you?”