Hart's War

by John Katzenbach

  “Okay by you, Mr. Prosecutor?”

  “Looks fine,” the Virginian said.

  Tommy Hart gestured back toward the witness chair. “Okay,” he said, as Major Clark resumed his seat. “And after slashing Trader Vic’s throat, Scott pushed him back into the stall, correct? And then he departed the Abort? Is that how you see it?”

  “Yes,” the major said loudly. “Precisely.”

  “Then tell me, how does he get blood on the back of the left-hand side of his jacket?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “How does he get blood on the left-hand back side of his flight jacket?” Tommy walked over to the prosecution’s table, picked up Scott’s leather flight jacket, and held it up, displaying it for the court to see.

  Major Clark hesitated. The redness had returned to his face. “I don’t understand the question,” he said.

  Tommy pounced. “It would seem most simple, major,” he said icily. “There’s blood on the back of his coat. How does it get there? In your entire testimony, describing the crime, and now, in acting it out for this court, at no point do you ever suggest Lieutenant Scott turned his back on Bedford. How does that blood get there?”

  Major Clark shifted about in his seat. “He may have had to lift the body up, before shoving it back in the stall. He would use his shoulder, and that might have put the blood there.”

  “You’re not an expert at these things, right? You’ve never really been taught anything about crime scenes. Or blood patterns, correct?”

  “I’ve already answered that.”

  Walker Townsend rose to his feet. “Your Honor,” he said, “I think the defense is—”

  Colonel MacNamara held up his hand. “If you have some problem, you can bring it out on redirect. For now, let the lieutenant continue.”

  “Thank you, colonel,” Tommy said. He was surprised by MacNamara’s decisiveness. “Okay, Major Clark. Let’s suppose he did have to lift the body, although that’s not what you said the first time through. Is the defendant right-handed or left-handed?”

  Clark hesitated, then replied. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, if he opted to use his left shoulder for this heavy labor, wouldn’t that suggest to you he was left-handed?”

  “Yes.”

  Tommy spun about, suddenly facing Lincoln Scott.

  “Are you left-handed, lieutenant?” he abruptly, loudly, demanded.

  Lincoln Scott, wearing a small smile of his own, reacted swiftly, before Walker Townsend had the opportunity to object. He thrust himself to his feet, and shouted out: “No sir! Right-handed, sir!” And then he made a fist with his right hand and held it up in front of him.

  Tommy pivoted again, abruptly facing Major Clark.

  “So,” he demanded sharply. “Maybe the crime didn’t happen that way. Precisely.” He mocked the major’s own word with sarcasm in his tone of voice.

  “Well,” Clark responded, “perhaps not precisely—”

  Tommy held up his hand, cutting him off.

  “That’s good enough,” he said. “I wonder what else didn’t happen precisely as you suggest. In fact, I wonder if anything happened precisely as you think it did!”

  Tommy fairly shouted these last words. Then he shrugged his shoulders and raised his arms in a great questioning gesture, filling the courtroom with the elusive sense that it would be unfair to convict any man without precision.

  “No further questions,” he said with as much disgust as he could manage. “Not for this witness!”

  He dramatically returned to his seat, making a clattering noise as he sat down. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hauptmann Visser paying rapt attention to the cross-examination. The German wore the same nasty half-smile that Tommy recognized from other moments. Visser whispered something to the stenographer, who quickly scratched down the Hauptmann’s words on his sheet of paper.

  From his seat next to Tommy, Lincoln Scott whispered, “Nicely done.” On the other side, Hugh wrote on his own paper the single name Fenelli, followed by several dark exclamation points. The Canadian policeman knew what was coming, as well, and he wore a similar satisfied smile on his lips.

  Behind them, voices were buzzing, as kriegies leaned together, like spectators at a closely played ball game, discussing the action on the field. Colonel MacNamara allowed the excited muttering to continue for a moment, then he banged his makeshift gavel down hard three times. His own face was rigidly set. Not angry, but clearly upset—although with the prosecution’s flimsiness or Tommy’s theatrics was impossible to tell.

  “Redirect?” he coldly demanded of Walker Townsend.

  The captain from Virginia rose slowly. There was something in the steady, patient way he moved that made Tommy suddenly nervous. He thought the captain should be flying erratically, trying to keep high and level even with one engine out.

  Shaking his head, smiling wryly, Captain Townsend stepped forward. “No sir, we will have no further questions for the major. Thank you, sir.”

  This got Tommy’s attention. The one thing he’d been certain of as he sat down was that Townsend would need to rehabilitate Major Clark’s testimony. And he counted on the belief that every effort to make Clark look like he knew what he was talking about would only serve to make his inadequacies as a criminal investigator more obvious. Tommy felt an unexpected fear, not unlike a moment many months earlier inside the Lovely Lydia, making their way home to base one evening when the bomber had been jumped by an unseen fighter and the Focke-Wulf’s tracer rounds creased the blue sky beside them. It had taken all the skill his old captain from West Texas possessed to climb into the nearby clouds and elude the threatening fighter.

  Then Townsend turned, looking briefly at the defense, then out at the body of airmen crammed into the theater.

  “Do you have another witness?” Colonel MacNamara asked.

  “Yes, we do, colonel,” Captain Townsend said carefully. “One last witness, and then we will be completed with our case, sir.” Townsend’s voice rose quickly, gaining momentum and strength with each word, so that when he finally spoke, it was close to a bellow. “At this point, sir, the prosecution would call Second Lieutenant Nicholas Fenelli to the witness stand!”

  Hugh Renaday blurted out, “What the bloody hell?” Lincoln Scott dropped the pencil to the table, and Tommy Hart’s head suddenly reeled, as if he’d stood up too quickly. He could feel the color drain from his cheeks.

  “Lieutenant Nicholas Fenelli!” Colonel MacNamara called out.

  There was commotion from the crowd of airmen in the audience, as they parted to allow the erstwhile physician to make his way forward. Tommy spun about in his seat, and saw Fenelli moving steadily down the center aisle of the theater, his eyes directly on the witness chair, scrupulously avoiding contact with Tommy’s.

  “What the hell’s this?” Renaday whispered nearby. “A damn ambush!”

  Tommy watched as Fenelli approached. He had obviously spiffed up his uniform as much as possible, shaved with a precious new blade, combed his stringy black hair, and trimmed his pencil-thin mustache. At the front of the theater, Fenelli saluted briskly, then reached out for the Bible, on which to swear to tell the whole truth. Tommy felt momentarily mesmerized by the medic’s appearance, almost as if the scene in front of him were playing out in slow motion. But as Fenelli raised his hand to swear, Tommy managed to shake the surprise from his body, and he leapt up, slamming a fist down onto the table in front of him as he did so.

  “Objection! Objection! Objection!”

  The man being sworn in paused, still not looking in Tommy’s direction. Walker Townsend moved to the front of the tribunal, and Colonel MacNamara leaned forward in his seat.

  “State the basis for your objection, lieutenant,” MacNamara said coldly.

  Tommy took a deep breath. “This individual’s name appears nowhere on the prosecution’s list of witnesses, Your Honor! Therefore, he cannot be called to the stand without the defense having ample opportunity to di
scuss his testimony—”

  Walker Townsend half-turned toward Tommy, as he interrupted. “But Lieutenant Hart, you are disingenuous! Why, you are completely familiar with Mr. Fenelli’s connection to the case, and you have interviewed him at length! In fact, it is my belief you intended to call him to the stand yourself.”

  “Is that true, Mr. Hart?” Colonel MacNamara demanded.

  Tommy scrambled inwardly. He felt adrift. He had no idea why the prosecution would call Fenelli, especially knowing what the medic would say about the nature of the wounds suffered by Trader Vic and the type of weapon that inflicted them. But something was deadly and wrong, and Tommy fought against the unknown.

  “It is true that I interviewed Lieutenant Fenelli. It is true that I considered calling him . . .”

  “Then I fail to see how you can object, lieutenant,” MacNamara said stiffly.

  “Sir, it remains true he is not on the prosecution’s list! This fact alone should preclude him from taking the stand.”

  “We just went over this issue with Major Clark, lieutenant! Because of our unusual circumstances here, the court feels it critical to allow both sides some substantial leeway, while still maintaining the important integrity of the process.”

  “This is unfair, sir!”

  “I think not, lieutenant. Mr. Fenelli, please take your seat! Captain Townsend, please continue!”

  For an instant, Tommy swayed dizzily. Then he slumped back into his own chair. He didn’t dare look to the side at Lincoln Scott or Hugh Renaday, though he could hear the Canadian muttering obscenities. Scott, however, sat stock-still, with both of his palms down on the table, the veins in the backs of his hands standing out rigidly.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE SECOND LIE

  Second Lieutenant Nicholas Fenelli sat uncomfortably on the witness chair, shifting once or twice as he searched for a more accommodating position, and finally leaning forward slightly, placing his hands on top of each of his thighs, as if to steady himself. He did not look over at Tommy Hart, Lincoln Scott, or Hugh Renaday, who wore a look on his face of distinctly murderous fury. Instead, he kept his eyes on Captain Townsend, who maneuvered his own body between Fenelli and the defense as best he could.

  “Now, lieutenant,” Townsend began slowly, his voice as soft yet cajoling as a teacher trying to prompt some brilliant but shy student, “please tell all of us assembled here how it is that you came to acquire some special expertise in the handling of murder victims.”

  Fenelli nodded and launched into the story he’d already told Tommy and Hugh, about working in his uncle’s mortuary in Cleveland prior to attending medical school. He spoke without the brashness or the bravado that he’d displayed when Tommy first interviewed him. Now he was direct, modest, but complete, and certainly lacking any of the orneriness he’d shown before.

  “Very good,” Townsend said, calmly absorbing Fenelli’s words. “Now, tell the court how it was that you came to examine the deceased man’s remains.”

  Fenelli nodded. “It was my job to prepare Captain Bedford’s body for burial, sir. I have performed this task on several other unhappy occasions. It was while doing my job that I took note of the wounds on his body.”

  Again, Townsend nodded slowly. Tommy sat quietly in his seat, noting that Townsend didn’t ask anything about the order Clark gave Fenelli not to examine the body. But so far, Fenelli had not departed from anything Tommy had expected. That wasn’t to last.

  “Now, did there come a time when Mr. Hart approached you, with pictures of the crime scene, and questions about the manner in which Captain Bedford died?”

  “Yes sir,” Fenelli answered swiftly.

  “And did you have some opinions about the murder that you expressed to him?”

  “Yes sir. I did.”

  “And are those opinions the same today as they were during that interview?”

  Fenelli paused, swallowing hard, then he smiled wanly.

  “Well, not exactly,” he said with a small hesitation.

  Tommy was on his feet immediately. “Your Honor!” He stared directly at Colonel MacNamara. “I don’t know precisely what’s going on with this witness, but this sudden change of attitude stinks!”

  Colonel MacNamara nodded. “It does, perhaps, lieutenant. But the man is now under oath in front of all of us. He’s sworn to tell the truth. We need to hear what he’s going to say before we can judge it.”

  “Sir, once a cat is out of the bag . . .”

  MacNamara smiled, interrupting. “I see your point, lieutenant. But we’re still going to listen to the man! Continue, please, Captain Townsend.”

  Tommy remained standing, his knuckles pressed hard and white against the defense table.

  “Sit down, Mr. Hart!” MacNamara said sharply. “You may make your arguments at the appropriate time!”

  Tommy slumped down.

  Captain Townsend hesitated, then asked, “Well, let me back up a little, Lieutenant Fenelli. Did there come a time subsequent to your conversation with Mr. Hart that you spoke with myself and Major Clark?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And as part of that conversation, did you have the opportunity to examine the prosecution’s evidence in this case? To wit, the homemade knife fashioned by Lieutenant Scott and the articles of clothing that we have here today?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now, Mr. Hart didn’t show you these things, did he?”

  “No sir. He only showed me the drawings he had had prepared.”

  “Those drawings, did they seem accurate enough to you?”

  “Yes sir. They did.”

  “They still seem that way?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Is there anything in those drawings that contradicts what you believe happened to Captain Bedford, based on your examination of the body?”

  “No sir.”

  “Now, tell this court what you came to believe about the crime.”

  “Well, sir, my first impression, when I first laid out the captain’s body, you see, was that Mr. Bedford had been killed by a stab from behind, which is just what I told Mr. Hart. I also believed right then that the murder weapon was something long and narrow. . . .”

  “You told Mr. Hart this? That the murder weapon was thin?”

  “Yes sir. I suggested the killing was performed by a man wielding some sort of narrow stiletto or switchblade-type knife.”

  “But he didn’t show you this knife, did he?”

  “No sir. He did not have it.”

  “In fact, you’ve never seen this weapon, have you?”

  “Well, not here.”

  “Right. So, there is no evidence whatsoever that this second what did you call it . . .”

  “Stiletto. Or switchblade, captain . . .”

  “Right. This assassin’s weapon. You’ve never seen it. There’s no evidence at all that it even exists, is there?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Right.” Townsend paused, took a deep breath, then asked, “So, this killing that you first thought might have been performed with a knife that doesn’t seem to exist . . . is that what you believe today?”

  Tommy rose sharply. “Objection!” he blurted.

  Colonel MacNamara shook his head. “Captain Townsend,” he said stiffly, “try to ask your questions in an acceptable manner. Without all the unnecessary editorializing.”

  “Of course, Your Honor. Sorry,” Townsend said. Then he looked over at Lieutenant Fenelli, and did not rephrase the question, but merely gestured, a small hand wave, as if encouraging his response.

  “No sir. It’s not exactly what I believe today. When I saw the blade in the prosecution’s possession, the one you and the major showed me yesterday, well, then I was able to determine that the wounds inflicted upon Captain Bedford were possibly consistent with that weapon . . .”

  Lincoln Scott muttered, “Possibly consistent . . . that’s great.” Tommy did not reply, instead focusing closely on each word that seemed
to drag itself from Fenelli’s lips.

  “Was there another reason why you first thought the wounds Captain Bedford suffered were delivered with that special sort of knife?” Townsend questioned.

  “Well, sir, yes. Those were the types of wounds that I saw in my mortuary experience back in Cleveland, sir. Because I was most familiar with those sorts of weapons and the damage they cause, that was sort of what I sort of automatically concluded. My fault. Sort of.”

  Townsend smiled at Fenelli’s tortured grammar. “But upon further consideration . . .”

  “Yes sir. Further consideration. A couple of further considerations, sir. I saw that there were also some contusions on the captain’s face. I suspect what might have happened was that he was struck by a fist, hard, which slammed him sideways into the wall of the Abort, and exposing that portion of the neck where the primary wound was discovered. In this maybe semiconscious and vulnerable state, kinda twisted sideways, you know, the blade was used to kill, giving me the impression of a blow from behind. At least, giving me that impression at first. I musta been wrong. Or coulda been, maybe. It might have happened that way. I’m no expert.”

  Walker Townsend nodded. It was impossible for him to hide the look of pleased satisfaction on his face.

  “That’s right. You’re not an expert.”

  “That’s what I said. I’m not an expert,” Fenelli repeated.

  The medic from Cleveland shifted once or twice in his seat, then added, “I feel that I should have maybe gone to Mr. Hart and told him about my change of mind, sir. Shoulda gone, right after talking with you. I apologize for that. But I didn’t have time, because—”

  “Of course.” Townsend sliced off Fenelli’s words sharply. “Now I have just one more question, lieutenant,” Townsend said loudly. “There has been much made of this right-hand, left-hand business. . . .”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Did your examination of the body suggest to you anything in this regard?”

  “Yes sir. Because of the contusions and the knife wound, and after talking with you, I kinda figured that whoever killed Captain Bedford was possibly pretty much ambidextrous, sir. Or real close to it.”