detainees?”
“I never mistreated no one.”
“Not disrobing and sexually humiliating them, not to mention yourself?”
She shook her head.
“Not posing for the pictures, which are now being used as incontrovertible evidence against you?”—and shared with the entire world, including your parents, your high school friends, and your pastor, I could’ve added, but didn’t. “You regret none of this?”
She did not miss my point, or the disapproving undertone that accompanied it, and a pout worked its way onto her lips. “Look, lotsa soldiers are gettin’ killed or blown to bits over there. I wuz helpin’ win the war. Why should I feel bad ’bout that stuff I did? Ain’t like I killed nobody.”
Actually somebody had killed somebody. But before I could venture into that line of query, without a knock, the door suddenly swung open. The good-looking staff sergeant from the desk stuck his head in, and informed me, “I know I’m not supposed to bother you, sir. But this is important.”
I stood and replied—“One more minute”—then started to close the door in his face.
He was quick, however, and got his foot in the path of the door. “There’s a visitor for you and Miss Carlson. Says he needs to talk to you, ASAP, about some kind of emergency.”
Katherine stood also, and placed her notebook back into her briefcase. She asked our client, “Do you need anything?”
“More magazines,” Lydia replied, holding up her copy of People , which appeared dog-eared enough to have been read a dozen times. “Some romance books would be okay. But I ’specially like to read ’bout celebrities’n all them movie folk.”
What she needed to be reading were law journals, but I suppressed the urge to tell her so. We followed the sergeant and closed the door behind us, leaving Lydia Eddelston to fantasize about celebrity lifestyles.
Everybody needs to dream. I just hoped she understood the difference between rich and famous, and incarcerated and infamous.
Chapter Five
The gentleman who awaited us by the front desk wore an off-season, off-the-rack, tropical, crap-brown suit, and a pukey green necktie. Poor sartorial hygiene aside, at the moment we entered the room, he was casually looking out the window, pretending to study the night sky. He turned around and said to the sergeant, not all that politely, “This is confidential. How about finding us an empty office?”
The sergeant deferred immediately to these instructions, which I regarded as telling, and promptly led us down a short hallway to an office with a sign on the door that said “Operations Sergeant.”
I took the opportunity during this brief walk to more closely examine our host who had a manners lapse and failed to introduce himself. Middle-aged, with a full head of red hair shot through with silver, and a veiny nose and face, which indicated Irish ancestors swimming around his DNA pool, and a taste for booze, so probably he was an okay guy. Also, he had a slight stomach paunch, with a tight mouth, smart, sneaky blue eyes, and bushy, skeptical eyebrows.
The face screamed cop, and considering our location and his cheap suit, odds were he was CID—Criminal Investigation Division, the army version of a detective. By his age and his comportment, he was a senior investigator, probably a chief warrant officer four or five, which was irrelevant for conversational purposes, since all warrant officers are addressed formally as Mister, or informally, as Chief.
The sergeant showed us into the room, politely asked us not to make a mess, and disappeared.
I turned to the gentleman in the suit and asked, “Okay, Chief . . . ?”
“O’Reilly. Terry O’Reilly.”
“And obviously you know our names.”
“Yes, sir. Obviously I do.” He regarded us a moment. “You two got the pee-chick, right?”
This was the first time I had heard that unflattering, but inevitable nickname. More interesting still, it suggested that Katherine did not possess the
“I never mistreated no one.”
“Not disrobing and sexually humiliating them, not to mention yourself?”
She shook her head.
“Not posing for the pictures, which are now being used as incontrovertible evidence against you?”—and shared with the entire world, including your parents, your high school friends, and your pastor, I could’ve added, but didn’t. “You regret none of this?”
She did not miss my point, or the disapproving undertone that accompanied it, and a pout worked its way onto her lips. “Look, lotsa soldiers are gettin’ killed or blown to bits over there. I wuz helpin’ win the war. Why should I feel bad ’bout that stuff I did? Ain’t like I killed nobody.”
Actually somebody had killed somebody. But before I could venture into that line of query, without a knock, the door suddenly swung open. The good-looking staff sergeant from the desk stuck his head in, and informed me, “I know I’m not supposed to bother you, sir. But this is important.”
I stood and replied—“One more minute”—then started to close the door in his face.
He was quick, however, and got his foot in the path of the door. “There’s a visitor for you and Miss Carlson. Says he needs to talk to you, ASAP, about some kind of emergency.”
Katherine stood also, and placed her notebook back into her briefcase. She asked our client, “Do you need anything?”
“More magazines,” Lydia replied, holding up her copy of People , which appeared dog-eared enough to have been read a dozen times. “Some romance books would be okay. But I ’specially like to read ’bout celebrities’n all them movie folk.”
What she needed to be reading were law journals, but I suppressed the urge to tell her so. We followed the sergeant and closed the door behind us, leaving Lydia Eddelston to fantasize about celebrity lifestyles.
Everybody needs to dream. I just hoped she understood the difference between rich and famous, and incarcerated and infamous.
Chapter Five
The gentleman who awaited us by the front desk wore an off-season, off-the-rack, tropical, crap-brown suit, and a pukey green necktie. Poor sartorial hygiene aside, at the moment we entered the room, he was casually looking out the window, pretending to study the night sky. He turned around and said to the sergeant, not all that politely, “This is confidential. How about finding us an empty office?”
The sergeant deferred immediately to these instructions, which I regarded as telling, and promptly led us down a short hallway to an office with a sign on the door that said “Operations Sergeant.”
I took the opportunity during this brief walk to more closely examine our host who had a manners lapse and failed to introduce himself. Middle-aged, with a full head of red hair shot through with silver, and a veiny nose and face, which indicated Irish ancestors swimming around his DNA pool, and a taste for booze, so probably he was an okay guy. Also, he had a slight stomach paunch, with a tight mouth, smart, sneaky blue eyes, and bushy, skeptical eyebrows.
The face screamed cop, and considering our location and his cheap suit, odds were he was CID—Criminal Investigation Division, the army version of a detective. By his age and his comportment, he was a senior investigator, probably a chief warrant officer four or five, which was irrelevant for conversational purposes, since all warrant officers are addressed formally as Mister, or informally, as Chief.
The sergeant showed us into the room, politely asked us not to make a mess, and disappeared.
I turned to the gentleman in the suit and asked, “Okay, Chief . . . ?”
“O’Reilly. Terry O’Reilly.”
“And obviously you know our names.”
“Yes, sir. Obviously I do.” He regarded us a moment. “You two got the pee-chick, right?”
This was the first time I had heard that unflattering, but inevitable nickname. More interesting still, it suggested that Katherine did not possess the
Similar Books
