Full Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  And now he stood on the Plain on his first day as the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy in the blast-furnace heat of a September midday sun, and he could feel sweat darkening his dress white uniform, and he could feel the stares of those who surrounded the young woman lying dead upon the ground. Suddenly, even as the crowd around him grew larger and more curious and noisy, Slaight felt very, very alone.

  Since 1802, the job had remained the same. There was only one Supe at a time, and now it was his turn.

  He looked at the body of the young woman at his feet. In the history of West Point, no cadet had ever died at parade, and yet there she lay, on the morning of his first day as Supe. While it was in the nature of the job for an Army officer to live in the presence of death, it was never easy. As a cadet, there had been David Hand. As a young infantry lieutenant, he had lost two men in his stateside platoon, one to a heroin overdose and the other to a shotgun blast in the stomach, received as he attempted a drug buy in downtown Colorado Springs. Later, in Vietnam, his platoon had suffered multiple casualties, three of them deaths. He had classmates who had given their lives in Vietnam. He had classmates who had lost their lives to AIDS. As a battalion and brigade commander, he had consoled the parents of teenage children who had died in automobile accidents and accidental drownings. He had struggled to help his wife Samantha cope when her father, Judge Hand, died in his sleep in his Garden District house in New Orleans. Just two years before, while he was commanding an infantry division on maneuvers, a Blackhawk helicopter carrying twelve troops and two pilots had flown into a hillside in the midst of a sudden thundershower at night, killing everyone on board. In many ways, Slaight was as prepared as any man or woman could be when confronted with a sudden and unexpected death. And yet, as it had every other time someone died, death came as a violent shock to his system. It was as if he were greeting death anew every single time. It seemed that God had intended it to be that way.

  For a fleeting moment, he felt twinned with her. She was lying on the Plain, as alone in death as he was standing there beside her in life. He shook off the feeling, because it was not true. She was gone, and he had just arrived. Her days as a cadet had ended and his as Supe were beginning.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find the round, be-spectacled face of Colonel T. Clifford Bassett, head of the Department of Law. Bassett had been Slaight’s military attorney when he was a cadet who was in a great deal of trouble with the Commandant of Cadets, General Hedges. And now here he was, a professor of law at the place that had confounded the two of them so many years before.

  “Cliff. It’s you,” Slaight said absently.

  “Is there something I can do, General?” asked Bassett.

  Slaight thought quickly and led Bassett away from the crowd that had gathered around the body of the young woman. “Yes, there is,” he said in a low voice. “You can tell me what you know about the Provost Marshal and the Staff Judge Advocate.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Gene Percival’s the Provost Marshal. He’s . . . uh . . . competent. The SJA is Colonel Mike Lombardi. He’s as sharp as they come.”

  “Do they get along?”

  Bassett chuckled. “After a fashion.”

  “Here’s what I’d like you to do. Lombardi’s going to be in overall charge of investigating this tragedy, with Percival reporting to him. I’d appreciate it if you’d quietly ride herd on the two of them, let me know how you think they’re doing. Could you do that?”

  “A little unorthodox, but I’ll certainly do what I can.”

  “Thing is, I don’t know either of these guys, and you do. I want to make sure they dot the i’s and cross the t’s. We’ve got a dead female cadet, Cliff. The flare’s going up on this one.”

  “You’re right about that, I’m sure. I’ll keep an ear to the ground for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  A staff car pulled up next to the ambulance and both rear doors opened.

  “I’m going to slip off. I don’t want to get in the way,” said Bassett, moving through the crowd as two officers got out of the staff car and approached Slaight.

  They saluted. “Colonel Lombardi, sir. SJA.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Percival, sir. I’m the Provost Marshal.”

  Slaight returned salute. “An awkward time to be making your acquaintance, gentlemen. But here we are.”

  “I’ve got the CID Special Agent in Charge on the way, sir,” said Percival. “His name is Chief Warrant Officer Jim Kerry. He’s a good man.”

  A brace of MPs poured out of another staff car and began moving the crowd from the area. Slaight and the two colonels walked through the MP perimeter. Captain Miles had put away the defibrillator and was standing next to the body.

  He saluted. “What do you want my people to do with the body, sir?”

  Lieutenant Colonel Percival spoke first: “I’ve got the CID on the way, Major. Is this the position she fell in?”

  Captain Miles turned to the medic with the mustache. “Specialist Thompson, is this the way you found her?”

  “No sir. She was facedown.”

  “You turned her over to administer aid, am I correct?” asked Percival.

  “Yes sir.”

  “All right then. Let’s not disturb the body further until the CID has had a look.”

  “Do you want me to stand by, sir?” asked Captain Miles.

  “Yes. Please keep your ambulance on hand. We’re going to transport her up to the hospital for an autopsy before long.”

  “Yes sir,” Miles replied.

  Slaight signaled the colonels and stepped away from the body. “I want an interim written report on my desk by close of business today. Can you see to that, Colonel Lombardi?”

  “Yes sir. Will do.”

  “I don’t mind pointing out to you gentlemen that this incident is going to attract more than what is perhaps its fair share of attention. I’m going to personally notify the Chief of Staff, and I’m certain that the Pentagon will be hanging over your shoulders every step of the way. That’s not to mention the press.”

  Lombardi’s brow furrowed. “How do you want to handle them, sir? The press, I mean.”

  “We’ll send them through the PAO as usual. There isn’t any sign of foul play here. I think what we have on our hands here is a tragic accident, and we’ll handle it the way we’d handle a training accident or a traffic fatality or any other kind of accidental death. Is that clear?”

  “Yes sir,” they chorused.

  “I’ll look for you at eighteen hundred hours, Colonel Lombardi.”

  “Yes sir. I’ll be there.”

  Across the Plain, Slaight could see Samantha standing on the front porch of Quarters 100. When she saw him start across the Plain toward his office, she went inside.

  Time has a way of slowing almost to a standstill in the midst of a crisis; this is especially true the older you get and the more rank you achieve. Sometimes Slaight thought that waiting was 90 percent of a general’s job. It was one of his great frustrations. Once they put the stars on your shoulder, protocol dictated that you couldn’t do it yourself anymore. He knew he’d spend the coming days and weeks waiting: waiting for the autopsy results. Waiting for the report from the CID Agent in Charge. Waiting for the recommendations of the Provost Marshal and the Staff Judge Advocate. He wished there was some way he could jump right on this thing and get it resolved and out of the way, but he knew there wasn’t. And so he began the process of waiting for the others to do their jobs. His job would be to make sure they did them well.

  CHAPTER 3

  * * *

  JACEY SLAIGHT looked up as the door to her room opened, and her roommate, Belle Carruthers, walked in wearing her bathrobe. She was a black woman with skin the color of polished mahogany, and she had an infectious smile that when she turned it on threw light into dark corners. She unwrapped the towel around her head and sat down on her bed.

  “You should get out of that uniform and get yourself a sh
ower, Jace. You look like you’re gonna melt.”

  “Dorothy’s dead, Belle,” she said flatly.

  “What?”

  “I just got a call from the Tac. She died a few minutes ago.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Get the plebes and have them run the rooms. I want you to call a meeting down in the sinks. As company commander, I’m going to have to make the announcement to the entire company.”

  “Right,” said Belle. She tied her robe and went out the door. Belle was the Executive Officer, and part of her job was running the physical operations and scheduling for the company. She used plebes as messengers, a kind of human intercom. Soon, Jacey could hear plebe “minute callers” in the hallways, announcing the company meeting at the top of their lungs. Jacey unbuttoned her full dress gray coat and peeled off her sweat-soaked T-shirt. She grabbed a fresh one from her drawer and turned on the tap in the sink to wash her face. She looked in the mirror. Her auburn hair was braided into a tight twist and tucked up against the back of her head, the hairstyle that many female cadets chose instead of a short bob. She had prominent eyebrows and dark brown eyes and high cheekbones and a mouth that turned down slightly at the corners. Kids used to tell her she looked mad all the time, and the thing was, they were about half right. She had never been one who suffered fools gladly, and her high school years had been jam-packed with fools. One of the things she had liked about West Point right away was the fact that teenage foolishness wasn’t tolerated, was in fact actively discouraged.

  When she was a kid, she had never thought of herself as beautiful, or even attractive, and moving from one high school to another, she had never stayed in any one place long enough to fit in with the crowd. But by her yearling year at West Point, the soft contours of her childhood had been sharpened into the kind of dark allure that men, especially those a few years older than herself, found irresistible.

  But having just returned from the steaming parade ground, irresistible she was not. She splashed water on her face and quickly ran a brush through her hair and pulled on the fresh T-shirt. Company meetings were informal gatherings, but it seemed only fitting to pay Dorothy Hamner the respect of appearing before her company mates in dress attire to make the announcement that she had died. She quickly zipped up her dress gray coat and headed for the stairs, but stopped herself outside her door. Just down the hall was Dorothy’s room. She walked slowly to the door and knocked. She heard the voice of Dorothy’s roommate, Carrie Tannenbaum: “Come in.”

  Jacey opened the door. “Carrie . . .”

  “How’s Dorothy? Is she okay?” Carrie was standing at the sink, washing her hands. Jacey took a step. Carrie’s face crunched into a grimace of pain as she saw the look on Jacey’s face.

  “I’m sorry, Carrie. She’s gone.” Carrie collapsed to her knees. Jacey gently took her hand and led her to the bed, where they sat down. Carrie was sobbing softly as Jacey tried her best to comfort her. “It’s so awful.”

  Carrie turned her head. Her cheeks were streaked with tears. “What happened?”

  “They don’t know yet.”

  The door opened, and Belle stepped into the room. “Everybody’s ready downstairs, Jace.”

  Jacey squeezed Carrie’s hand. “You don’t have to come, Carrie. Just stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you.”

  “Thanks, Jacey,” said Carrie.

  Jacey followed Belle downstairs, where the hundred-and-some members of Company H-3 had gathered in the empty storage room that was used for company meetings. The plebes were seated stiffly on benches, all of them in proper uniforms of one kind or another. The upperclasses were standing in the back, or lounging against the side walls, and they were attired in everything from jogging clothes to bathrobes to old and tattered jean shorts and ARMY T-shirts. It was the prerogative of the upperclasses to bend and twist the collection of cadet uniforms into what passed for individuality. This was especially true of firsties, or seniors, who in their fourth year as cadets had turned the science of cadet dress into an art form.

  Jacey looked toward the back of the room. Her boyfriend, Ashford Prudhomme, was leaning against a metal locker. He was wearing an Aussie bush hat and a pair of cutoff camouflage pants and a T-shirt with the “Screaming Eagle” of the 101st Airborne Division emblazoned on its front. He might have looked like a refugee from the Willis and Geiger catalog were it not for the crooked grin that crossed his handsome features.

  Belle cleared her throat and announced in a loud voice, “May I have your attention, please? Jacey’s got something to say to the company, and I’m going to ask for your undivided attention.” She turned to Jacey and nodded.

  “It’s my sad duty to tell you that Dorothy Hamner died a few moments ago out on the Plain.”

  The room was completely silent. She heard whispers and one or two agonized moans, then a wail of pain filled the room as one of Dorothy’s best friends, Stella Angelo, fell into the arms of the young woman next to her. Jacey pushed through the cadets gathered around her.

  “I’m so sorry, Stella. We’re all here for you.”

  Stella looked at her, red-faced, tears pouring down her cheeks. “I saw her fall. She was standing right in front of me. But she was moving, Jacey! I saw her! She was alive when we marched off!”

  Jacey looked around at the other cadets. “Is that right? Did anyone else see her move?”

  One or two cadets nodded. A plebe raised his hand. “Epstein? What do you want to say?” asked Jacey.

  The plebe stood up. He was a skinny, awkward guy with a pimply face and red hair. “I saw her, too, ma’am. She fell straight down, then I saw her lift her head. She tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear what it was.”

  “Anybody else?”

  Another hand went up. Nancy Taylor was a yearling, a pretty girl with freckles and the alert, wide-set eyes of an outdoorswoman. “I heard her breathing real hard before she dropped.”

  “Like what, Nancy?” asked Jacey.

  “It was like desperate panting, like it was hard for her to get a breath.”

  Jacey took Stella’s hand. “Did Dorothy say anything to you in ranks before parade? I mean, like, that she wasn’t feeling well?”

  “She didn’t say much. She was kind of quiet, but that’s nothing new. Dorothy could be that way sometimes.”

  Jacey squeezed her hand. “There’s going to be a CID investigation. Those of you who were close to Dorothy in ranks and saw what happened, I want you to remain in the barracks and make yourselves available to the investigators. Understand?” Heads nodded. “The rest of you, I don’t want to hear any rumors spread around about Dorothy Hamner.”

  A hand went up. “What do you mean, spreading rumors, Jace?” asked a fellow firstie.

  “I mean I don’t want anybody in this company going around the battalion floating bogus theories about how Dorothy died. There’s going to be an autopsy. There will be an investigation. Her parents are being notified. We’ll know for sure what happened to her pretty soon, but until the investigation is finished, I don’t want any speculation polluting the atmosphere. Understood?” Heads nodded. “All right, dismissed.”

  She found Belle waiting for her in the basement hall. Belle whispered, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Jace?”

  Jacey answered, “Something’s wrong. We’ve had parades on days when it was a lot hotter than it was today, Belle. Dorothy shouldn’t have died out there.”

  “I’ll see you back in the room.”

  “Be right with you,” said Jacey. She waited until Belle had disappeared around the corner, then she stepped into one of the basement phone booths, dropped a quarter in, and dialed the office number of her law professor. “Captain Patterson, it’s Jacey Slaight. Sir, we just got the news that the girl on the Plain, she’s dead. She was one of my classmates, sir. In my company. The reason I’m calling is, I want to know what you think I should do.”

  She listened to his advice for several moments, then she tha
nked him, hung up the phone, and headed up the stairs to her room.

  “Belle, round up a couple of plebes. I want everybody who was close to Dorothy in ranks to report to me immediately. We’re going to take their statements and write them up. I want to get them when their recollections are as fresh as possible.”

  “You talked to Captain Patterson, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. Wouldn’t you?”

  “In a Brooklyn minute,” said Belle, heading out the door.

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER Jim Kerry was a weary veteran of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, the outfit on every Army post that served as adjunct professional criminologists to the Military Police. At forty-four, he had twenty-two years service, having entered the Army after two years in the sheriff’s department in Leadville, Colorado. He had been one of those “wanna see the world” recruits who had been promised a tour in Germany when he enlisted, and it was originally his intention to serve out his enlistment, get out, return to Colorado, and run for sheriff, using his military experience in his campaign. But when his boss told him he could attend the Army’s criminology school and emerge as a warrant officer, he jumped at the opportunity.

  As a military assignment, West Point was supposed to be what they called in the Army a “good deal.” It was a small post, populated in large measure by married officers and their families. The enlisted cadre numbered only a few hundred. Most of them had been hand-picked for the assignment, so crime at the Academy was nearly nonexistent. CWO Kerry planned on serving out this last tour at West Point and retiring. There were openings in police departments up and down the Hudson Valley. He’d made a lot of friends, and his wife liked the area, since she came from northwest Connecticut, only an hour away.