“Give me just a second,” I said. I watched them as they walked. Dylan was smoking a cigarette, and Carrie’s eyes were red-rimmed from crying.
We watched as Dylan and Carrie entered the building.
“I’d do anything to be back with her,” I said.
Then I looked over at him, and he said, “Are you sure we’re not going to die?”
I sighed. “I don’t know for sure, Daniel. But we have to live like it matters. You know what I mean?”
He nodded. I don’t think he understood what I meant. I’m not even sure I knew what I meant.
He laughed, and I laughed, and then I said, “About your parents. Remember this. I heard what you said last night about the seat belt. The thing is, we all make mistakes. Part of being a kid is making lots of them, and learning from them. You got knocked around worse than most, but it wasn’t your fault, okay? It’s not your fault your mom was crying. Don’t do that to yourself, okay? You’re a good kid.”
He nodded, and I said, “This is getting way too serious. Let’s do something fun.”
“Okay. Let’s play army.”
I chuckled. “I get to be the sergeant,” I said.
He grinned.
Almost toxic (Carrie)
I didn’t have the strength to go into the meeting alone, and going with Ray’s parents would be almost worse going alone.
If we’d had more time together it might have been different. If Ray and I hadn’t rushed off and essentially eloped, it might have been different. If it hadn’t been for the court-martial, and the investigation at NIH, it might have been different.
But it wasn’t.
Michael was kind, but impersonal. And Kate seemed to hate me. So when the doctors came and said, “Mrs. Sherman? We’re ready,” I did something that surprised me. I leaned over to my mother and said, “Will you come with me?”
I have no idea why I did that. My mother isn’t the most comforting person in the world. In fact, much of my life she’s been ... almost toxic.
But there are times when you need to have a mom around. And this was one of them.
She walked with me to the conference room. I had my arms wrapped across my stomach, and my mouth was dry, my throat clenched, my stomach in knots.
I recognized Doctor Peterson, who was part of the surgical team from yesterday. The other doctor was a woman, with hair just starting to go grey. “I’m Linda Grey,” she said. “Chief of Neurology. And this is Fred Jennings, with social work.”
I introduced Ray’s parents and my mother.
Grey twisted a little in her seat, then said, “I’m sorry to have to ask you this. Does your husband have an advance directive?”
I flinched, and automatically said, “I’m sorry, what?” even though I knew exactly what she meant.
“Mrs. Sherman, Ray is dying. At this time he has very little brain function.”
Kate, to my left, said in a bitter tone, “How dare you? Are you suggesting we just give up? Well, that’s not going to happen.”
I sank my face into my hands. She wanted to know if Ray had an advance directive. Of course he didn’t. Ray was twenty-six years old, in the prime of his life. Why in God’s name would he have an advance directive? I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I felt my mother put her hand on my shoulder, and all it made me want to do was stand up like Kate and scream at the doctors until they fixed it.
I looked up and whispered, “Are you saying there’s no hope at all?”
Grey looked at me with an empathetic look that didn’t help at all. “I’m not saying that. Your husband is not ... we haven’t diagnosed brain death. We’ll be doing some further testing this afternoon, and then again in twenty-four hours. But, as serious as the damage was, there is little chance of recovery. What we’re suggesting is that you consider signing a do-not-resuscitate order.”
“I’m not ready to do that,” I whispered.
Grey nodded. “I understand. Doctor Jennings here will discuss some of the options with you, and their implications. You don’t have to make any kind of decision right now. In the meantime, we’ll be doing everything we can.”
“You aren’t doing anything,” Kate said, her face twisted up in rage. “And she isn’t signing anything at all. I’m his mother, she’s just some slut he picked up a few months ago.”
Michael temporized, too slowly, “Kate, stop….”
My mother was on her feet before he could say a third word. “You don’t talk about my daughter that way,” she said.
“Stop it!” Doctor Grey said in a sharp, loud voice. “Or I’ll ask both of you to leave. Carrie is his wife. She is the only person with legal authority on this question.”
I stared at her, numb. I was the only person with the authority to decide to stop trying to save my husband. I was the only person who would have to decide if the person who made my life worthwhile was going to live or die. Did this doctor have any clue what she’d just said? Did she have even the slightest understanding of the hell she’d just put me in?
I didn’t think so. She got up and stepped away. Doctor Jennings, the one from social work, said, “Mrs. Sherman—”
I gasped and said, “Just go away. Leave me alone please, for a little while. I’m begging you.”
He nodded and left a card on the table.
Kate was still raving, swinging back and forth between spitting insults and rage at me, and weeping hysterically. Michael just put his arms around her and pulled her out of the room.
“Carrie?” my mom said. I know she wanted to help or do something. But I couldn’t take any more. I just couldn’t take another voice, another person needing anything from me, or suggesting anything to me, or even saying a word to me.
“Can I just be left alone? Please?”
In a troubled silence, my mother left me alone in that room. I leaned forward, resting my head on my arms, hiding my face from the world. This couldn’t be happening. Maybe I should go pray like my mother so often did? Prostrate in the chapel, and promise God that I’d be good or give half my money to charity, or that I’d somehow change my life for the better, if only He’d let Ray live. If only we hadn’t gone to the zoo yesterday morning, he would be fine. I couldn’t even remember whose idea it was. Who wants to go to the zoo anyway? That was for children.
I lay there, alternately crying, or bargaining in my head, for what seemed the longest time. But then I heard the door open, and a voice said, “Carrie?”
I squeezed my eyes tighter for just a second and then looked up.
It was Major Dick Elmore.
He gave me a heartfelt look of sympathy and said, “I’d never bother you at a time like this. Dylan told me ... where things stand. But Ray, I think he’d want you to know.”
“Know what?” I said.
“The court-martial board is ready to come back with a verdict.”
I felt a chill. Swallowing, I looked away from him for a few seconds, then back.
“When?” I asked.
“Now. I explained the circumstances to Colonel Martinez, and they intend to go forward now, in Ray’s absence.”
I shook my head, knowing I wasn’t making any sense. “They can’t do that. Why can’t they just let it go?”
He shook his head. “That’s not the way it works, Carrie. I thought ... you should come with me.”
I looked up at the ceiling. What would Ray want, if he were awake to tell me?
There was no question there. He would want to be exonerated.
I sniffed then said, “All right. Let me tell my family, and we’ll go.”
We ready? (Carrie)
“No,” I said to Julia on my phone, as Ray turned into the entrance to Walter Reed. “It’s all over. I go back to work in two weeks.”
“I’m so relieved,” she said. “And what about Ray?”
“We’ll know soon,” I said. “The trial starts today.”
I heard her suck in a breath. She said, “Good luck. If you need anything— anything at all—just say the word. Crank a
nd I will be there in a heartbeat.”
“Thanks, Julia. I might. Mother is insisting on sending the twins here on Friday. And ... I don’t know if I’m going to be able to deal with that.”
Julia sighed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Carrie? But I think it’s Mom’s way of making sure you aren’t alone. In case, you know. In case he’s convicted.”
“I know. I just ... I don’t know how to deal with who she’s becoming.”
“Trust me, I know,” she replied.
We hung up, and I smiled at Ray. He’d overheard the conversation, of course, and knew how grossly I’d oversimplified the situation with work. It was true that the investigation was over. In the end, ORI and Rice University had pulled three years worth of emails and research notes and likely spent upwards of fifty thousand dollars on an investigation that turned up exactly nothing.
Ironically, the rules that were designed to protect whistleblowers also protected Nikki. When the investigating committee at Rice called her to speak, she made it clear: the reason my grades were better and my research went further, the reason I’d received my doctorate and the NIH fellowship, was all because she believed I’d slept with Bill Ayers. Doctor Moore never called to tell me I was clear: that was ORI, and later Lori Beckley.
I didn’t care. Moore was a pig, an opportunist. But I’d drawn a clear line, and I didn’t expect to have any more trouble with him. And for now, I had much bigger things to think about.
Ray parked the car in front of a building set far away from the main hospital, next to a beat up Ford Taurus with vanity plates reading “ARMY WIFE.” I snorted when I saw the plates, thinking that I’d never have to think about having plates like those. With any luck, in another couple weeks Ray would be clear of all of this.
The parking lot was packed, and multiple news vans were lined up near the back of the lot. I didn’t see any reporters out front. Probably because what looked to be fifty or maybe a hundred military police were throughout the lot and in front of the building. A lot of people were streaming toward the door.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “You can just drop me off. It’s gonna be a lot of ... a lot of crap. And lies, some of it.”
I grabbed his arm. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Ray.”
He smiled, and kissed me, and then we walked toward the building. Of course we were both nervous as hell, both scared, and both of us were trying to be strong for the other one. Sometimes it just worked that way with us.
Dick Elmore met us at the door. “Come on,” he said, waving us down a hallway and into the office, which had been turned over to him for the duration of the trial. Dick had explained it to me already. The Army had no permanent standing court, and everyone involved, from the judge to the court-martial board members, had been seconded from whatever their normal duties were. The trial itself was being held in the lobby of a building undergoing renovations. The work had been halted for the trial, but stacks of drywall and other building materials were scattered throughout the hallways and offices.
“Any changes?” Ray asked.
Elmore shook his head. “No.”
Technically the trial had begun on Monday. The first two days, however, had been purely procedural: questioning and selection of potential board members. As Elmore had explained to me, the court-martial board essentially acted as a jury. And, as Elmore said, because this was a capitol case, the board had twelve members, seven officers and five enlisted men. Ray and Elmore had both fretted the fact that few of the board members were infantry.
“Bunch of desk jockeys don’t know shit about war,” Elmore had muttered when the selection was finished, but then he recovered his composure and kept charging forward. Today he was all smiles and confidence.
“Okay. So the media is in force today. But they’ve been given strict instructions by the judge to keep quiet, or he’ll close the trial. But be prepared, there are going to be a lot of cameras on you.”
“Will Ray be testifying today?”
Elmore shook his head. “No. Trial counsel goes first and presents everything. And they’ve got a weak-ass case. They’re calling four witnesses. No physical evidence. Then we get our chance. We ready?”
Ray swallowed and squeezed my hand lightly. “Yeah,” he said.
Grounds for an appeal (Ray)
The military judge was an older man, probably in his sixties, with white hair crowning dark brown skin and a tightly trimmed mustache. “Colonel Martinez is a stickler,” Elmore told me on the first day of the trial. “I’m pretty sure he’d rather die of torture than have one of his trials sullied by any shenanigans. He’ll be tough, but fair.”
This morning, Colonel Martinez was all business. He opened the trial with a minimum of fuss, gave instructions to the board members, then called Elmore and the trial counsel up to the head of the room.
Everything you’ve ever seen on television about a trial? Forget that. Everything is different.
The trial counsel—or prosecutor—was pissing me off. Captain Frank Cox was a blonde haired, blue eyed former Texas A&M fullback who had gone to law school on the Army’s dime and was now working off his sentence. I didn’t follow all of the legal arguments and mumbo-jumbo during the pre-trial stuff. But when it came time for peremptory challenges to the members of the court-martial board, he’d challenged the one and only real combat veteran on the panel. I didn’t tell Carrie how much that chilled me. But it did. Elmore had said, “Most of these guys have never had to deal with a real infantryman, Sherman, unless he was on an operating table. You scare the crap out of them. But you’ve still got the fact that you’re the one who reported this thing in the first place going for you.”
That just meant I went on trial first. Colton’s trial was scheduled to start in three weeks, followed by the others, who were accused of lesser charges.
The first witness called was Major Janice Smalls. When she was called to the stand, Captain Cox stood in front of her and said, “Raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
“I do.”
I leaned close to Elmore and asked, “Why is the prosecutor swearing her in?”
He whispered back, “That’s how we do it in courts-martial.”
I guess it didn’t matter. Captain Cox asked Smalls a series of questions to establish her identity and expertise as a criminal investigator. That out of the way, he started in on the real questions.
“Major Smalls, can you describe how you first became aware of the subject of your investigation?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Right before Thanksgiving, I was contacted by the Chief of Staff to General Buelles of the Military District of Washington. He reported that the Inspector General’s office had received, via U.S. Mail, a package that reported a crime in Afghanistan. I was asked to conduct a preliminary investigation.”
“What date was this, Major Smalls?”
“November 19, 2012.”
“And what did you do at that time?”
“On the morning of the 20th I drove to the Pentagon to personally take charge of the evidence. I secured the evidence, which consisted of a handwritten report and a thumb drive, then returned to headquarters at Fort Belvoir. At that time I made witnessed copies of the report, and we made a duplicate of the thumb drive. The originals were then secured in an evidence locker.”
Cox walked to a table near the prosecutor’s table. This was all unnecessary—I’d written the damn report, and I’d conceded that. He held up a plastic envelope containing the thumb drive, and another containing the report, and showed them to Smalls.
“To the best of your knowledge, is this the report and thumb drive in question?”
“It is.”
“Please describe the contents of the report, Major.”
“The report was written by someone claiming to be Sergeant Ray Sherman. It described an incident, which took place on March 24th of 2012, accusing Sergeant First Class Ben
jamin Colton of committing murder, then Colton’s platoon conspiring to keep the murder secret. The thumb drive also contained several documents, which appeared to be copies of emails that described the shooting. Finally, it contained six photographs.”
“Thank you, Major. Colonel Martinez, with your permission, I’d like to enter these items in evidence as exhibit 1 and 2, which we will return to several times in the course of the trial.”
“Proceed, Counsel.”
“Major Smalls, please direct your attention to the screen on the south wall. Assistant trial counsel is about to display a series of photographs. Please identify them for the court.”
The stir in the audience was sudden, a loud murmuring as reporters shifted in their seats, realizing they were about to see photos. My stomach twisted. I didn’t want to see this. I saw it every night in my dreams as it was.
A photograph flashed on the screen, huge, eight feet by five feet, at least. It was Speedy. He lay on the ground in the mud. A bullet hole marred his forehead, and the ground around his head was stained nearly black. His eyes were open, in shock and fear, and his face had gone pale.
I closed my eyes and lowered my face in my hands. A second later, I felt Carrie’s hand on my arm.
Elmore, sitting beside me, whispered, “Look up, Ray. The board is going to think exactly the wrong thing if you hide your face right now.”
I groaned just slightly and looked up.
Major Smalls was talking. “That appears to be one of the photographs I found on the flash drive. On examination I concluded it was an Afghan boy, somewhere between ten and fourteen years old, who appeared to have been shot.”
“And this one?”
The view switched to another photo, taken from a different angle. In the photo, I could see a pair of boots and the distinct pixelated camouflage pattern of the lower legs of someone wearing an Army Combat Uniform.
Smalls verified the photo. Cox led her through each one, taking nearly fifteen minutes to go through them all. He was going for maximum emotional effect on the board members, most of whom were doctors or staff at Walter Reed. And based on their expressions, which ranged from nausea to horror, it was working.
The Last Hour Page 37
