The General's Daughter (44 page)

Again I nodded. I asked him, “And while you were trying to untie the ropes, you spoke, of course.”

“Just a few words.”

“But surely you asked her who had done that to her?”

“No…”

“General, surely you said something like, ‘Ann, who did this?’ ”

“Oh… yes, of course. But she didn’t know.”

“Actually,” I informed him, “she wouldn’t say.”

The general looked me in the eye. “That’s correct. She wouldn’t say. Perhaps you know.”

“So you drove back along Rifle Range Road toward Bethany Hill.”

“That’s right. And I called on Colonel Fowler for assistance.”

“Did you know that there was a guard posted at the ammo shed about another kilometer in the opposite direction?”

“I don’t know the location of every guard post at this fort.” He added, “I doubt I would have gone there anyway. I certainly
didn’t need a young man to see my daughter like that.”

“Actually, it was a woman. But that’s irrelevant. What I’m wondering is why you made the U-turn with your headlights off,
sir, and why you proceeded for at least a few hundred meters with them off.”

He must have wondered how I knew this, then he probably realized I’d interviewed the guard. Finally, he replied, “To be honest
with you, I didn’t want to attract attention at that point.”

“Why not?”

“Well, would you? If you just left your daughter tied naked to the ground, would you want anyone else involved? I had it clear
in my mind that I had to go to Colonel and Mrs. Fowler for help. Obviously, I didn’t want this incident to become public.”

“But the incident, sir, was a crime, was it not? I mean, didn’t you think she’d been molested by some madman or several madmen?
Why would you wish to keep that private?”

“I suppose I didn’t want to embarrass her.”

Cynthia spoke up. “Rape should not be embarrassing to the victim.”

General Campbell replied, “But it is.”

Cynthia asked, “Did she indicate to you in any way that she was willing to lie them while you went and got Colonel and Mrs.
Fowler?”

“No, but I thought it was the best thing.”

Cynthia inquired, “Wasn’t she frightened out of her mind that the rapist or rapists would return while you were gone?”

“No… well, yes, she did say to hurry back. Look, Ms. Sunhill, Mr. Brenner, if you’re suggesting that I did not take the best
course of action, then you’re probably correct. Perhaps I should have tried harder to get her loose, perhaps I should have
put my pistol in her hand so she could try to protect herself while I was gone, perhaps I should have fired the pistol to
attract the attention of MPs, perhaps I should have just sat there with her until a vehicle came along. Don’t you think I’ve
thought about this a thousand times? If you’re questioning my judgment, you have a valid point. But do not question my degree
of concern.”

Cynthia replied, “General, I’m not questioning either. I’m questioning what actually went on out there.”

He started to reply, then decided to say nothing.

I said to him, “So you drove to the Fowlers, explained the situation, and they went back to assist Captain Campbell.”

“That’s correct. Mrs. Fowler had a robe and a knife to cut the ropes.”

“And you didn’t see your daughter’s clothes anywhere at the scene?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you think to cover her with your shirt?”

“No… I wasn’t thinking very clearly.”

This was the man who, as a lieutenant colonel, led a mechanized infantry battalion into the besieged city of Quang Tri and
rescued an American rifle company who were trapped in the old French citadel. But he couldn’t figure out how to aid his daughter.
Obviously, he had no intention of offering her aid and comfort. He was royally pissed-off.

I asked him, “Why didn’t you accompany the Fowlers, General?”

“I wasn’t needed, obviously. Only Mrs. Fowler was needed, but Colonel Fowler went along, of course, in case there was trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Well, in case the person who did that was still around.”

“But why would you leave your daughter alone, tied, naked, and exposed if you thought there might be any chance of that?”

“It didn’t occur to me until after I was back on the road. Until I was nearly at the Fowlers’ house. I should point out that
the drive to the Fowlers took under ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir. But the round trip, including your waking them and them getting dressed and driving back, would take close to thirty
minutes. After waking them and asking for their assistance, the natural response of any person—a father, a military commander—would
be to race back to the scene and to secure the situation until the alerted cavalry arrived, to use a military analogy.”

“Are you questioning my judgment or my motives, Mr. Brenner?”

“Not your judgment, sir. Your judgment would have been excellent if your motives were pure. So I guess I’m questioning your
motives.” Normally, you don’t question a general about anything. But this was different.

He nodded and said, “I suppose you both know more than you’re letting on. You’re very clever. I could see that from the beginning.
So why don’t you tell me what my motives were?”

Cynthia responded to that and said, “You wanted to make her squirm a little.”

The fortifications had been breached, to continue the military metaphor, and Cynthia charged right through. She said, “In
fact, General, you knew that your daughter was not the victim of some rapist, that she hadn’t been attacked while waiting
out there for you. But, in fact, she and an accomplice called you, played her message, and got you out there for the sole
purpose of you and Mrs. Campbell finding her in that position. That, sir, is the only logical explanation for that sequence
of events, for you leaving her there alone, for you going to the Fowlers and telling them to take care of it, for you staying
behind in their house and waiting for them to return with your daughter and with her humvee, and for you not reporting a word
of this until this moment. You were very angry with her for what she did.”

General Campbell sat there, deep in thought, contemplating, perhaps, his options, his life, his mistake a few nights ago,
his mistake ten years ago. Finally, he said, “My career is ended, and I’ve drafted a resignation that I will submit tomorrow
after my daughter’s funeral. I suppose what I’m thinking about now is how much you have to know to find the murderer, how
much I want to confess to you and to the world, and what good it would do anyone to further dishonor my daughter’s memory.
This is all self-serving, I know, but I do have to consider my wife and my son, and also the Army.” He added, “I’m not a private
citizen, and my conduct is a reflection on my profession, and my disgrace can only serve to lower the morale of the officer
corps.”

I wanted to tell him that the morale of the senior officers at Fort Hadley was already low as they all waited for the ax to
fall, and that, indeed, he wasn’t a private citizen and had no reasonable expectation to be treated like one, and that, yes,
he sounded a little self-serving and that his daughter’s reputation was not the issue at hand, and to let me worry about how
much I had to know to find the murderer, and, last but not least, his career was, indeed, over. But instead, I told him, “I
understand why you did not notify the MPs that your daughter was staked out naked on the rifle range—indeed, General, it was
a private matter up until that point, and I confess to you I would have done the same thing. I understand, too, why and how
the Fowlers got involved. Again, I confess, I would probably have done the same thing. But when the Fowlers returned and told
you that your daughter was dead, you had no right to involve them in a conspiracy to conceal the true nature of the crime,
and no right to involve your wife in the conspiracy as well. And no right, sir, to make my job and Ms. Sunhill’s job more
difficult by sending us up false trails.”

He nodded. “You’re absolutely correct. I take full responsibility.”

I took a deep breath and informed him, “I must tell you, sir, that your actions are offenses that are punishable under the
Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

He nodded again, slowly. “Yes, I’m aware of that.” He looked at me, then at Cynthia. “I would ask one favor of you.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I would ask that you do everything you can to keep the Fowlers’ name out of this.”

I was prepared for that request, and I’d wrestled with the answer long before General Campbell asked. I looked at Cynthia,
then at the general, and replied, “I can’t compound this crime with a crime of my own.” In fact, I’d already done that by
striking a deal with Burt Yardley. But that was offpost stuff. This was not. I said, “The Fowlers found the body, General.
They did not report it.”

“They did. To me.”

Cynthia said, “General, my position is somewhat different from Mr. Brenner’s, and though detectives are never to disagree
in public, I think we can keep the Fowlers out of this. In fact, Colonel Fowler
did
report the crime to you, and you told him you would call Colonel Kent. But in your shock and grief, and Mrs. Campbell’s grief,
the body was discovered before you could call the provost marshal. There are more details to work out, but I don’t think justice
would be served any better by dragging the Fowlers into this.”

General Campbell looked at Cynthia for a long time, then nodded.

I was not happy, but I was relieved. Colonel Fowler, after all, was perhaps the only officer who’d shown some degree of honor
and integrity throughout, including not screwing the general’s daughter. In truth, I did not possess that kind of willpower
myself, and I was in awe of a man who did. Still, you don’t give something for nothing, and Cynthia understood that, because
she said to the general, “But I would like you, sir, to tell us what actually happened out there, and why it happened.”

General Campbell sat back in his chair and nodded. He said, “All right, then. The story actually begins ten years ago… ten
years ago this month at West Point.”

G
eneral Campbell related to us what had happened at Camp Buckner, West Point’s field training area. In regard to the actual
rape, he knew not much more than we did, or, probably, the authorities did. What he did know was that, when he saw his daughter
at Keller Army Hospital, she was traumatized, hysterical, and humiliated by what had happened to her. He told us that Ann
clung to him, cried, and begged him to take her home.

He offered the information that his daughter told him she was a virgin, and that the men who raped her made fun of this. She
told him that the men had pulled off her clothes and staked her on the ground with tent pegs. One of the men had choked her
with a rope while he was raping her, and told her he’d strangle her to death if she reported the assault.

Neither I nor Cynthia, I’m sure, expected the general to provide these small, intimate details. He knew that this incident
was only related to the murder in a peripheral way, and there was no clue there regarding her murderer. Yet, he wanted to
talk, and we let him talk.

I got the impression, though he didn’t address the issue directly, that his daughter expected him to see to it that justice
was done, that there was no question that she’d been brutally raped, and that the men who’d done it were to be expelled from
the military academy and prosecuted.

These, of course, were reasonable expectations for a young woman who’d been trying her damnedest to live up to Daddy’s expectations,
who had put up with all the hardships that were part of life at West Point, and who had been criminally assaulted.

But there were some problems, it seemed. First, there was the question of Cadet Campbell being alone with five men in the
woods at night. How did she get separated from the forty-person patrol? By accident? On purpose? Second, Cadet Campbell could
not identify the men. They not only wore camouflage paint, but they had mosquito nets over their faces. It was so dark, she
couldn’t even identify the uniforms and could not say for certain if the men were other cadets, West Point cadre, or soldiers
from the 82nd Airborne Division. In all, there were close to a thousand men and women on training exercises that night, and
the chance of her identifying her five attackers was almost nil, according to what General Campbell had been told.

But this was not precisely true, as Cynthia and I knew. By process of elimination, you could begin to narrow the field. And
as you got closer to the perpetrators, it was inevitable that one of them would crack to save himself from long jail time.
And also you had semen tests, saliva tests, hair tests, fingerprints, and all the other magic of forensic science. In fact,
gang rapes were easier to solve than solitary rapes, and I knew that, Cynthia certainly knew it, and I strongly suspected
that General Campbell knew it.

The real problem was not identifying who did it; the problem was that the rapists were either cadets, cadre, or soldiers.
The problem was not in the area of police science, but in the area of public relations.

Basically, it came down to the fact that five erect penises penetrated one vagina, and the entire United States Army Military
Academy at West Point could be torn apart in the same act that had torn Ann Campbell’s hymen imperforatus. These were the
times that we lived in; rape was not an act of sex—consensual sex is easily available. Rape was an act of violence, a breach
of military order and discipline, an affront to the West Point code of honor, a definitive no vote against a co-ed academy,
against women in the Army, against female officers, and against the notion that women could coexist with men in the dark woods
of Camp Buckner, or the hostile environment of the battlefield.

The exclusive male domain of West Point had been infiltrated by people who squatted to piss in the woods, as that colonel
at the O Club bar would put it. During the academic year, in the classroom, it wasn’t intolerable. But out in the woods, in
the hot summer night, in the dark, men will revert to ancient modes of behavior.