Full Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “One last question, Buck. How do you think I should play this thing when Thrunstone gets up here?”

  “Thrunstone’s a good old boy, and I wouldn’t trust that good old boys’ club over there in the Capitol Building any further than I could spit. Know why?”

  Slaight just waited, for he knew Buck would answer his own question.

  “The trouble with good old boys’ clubs is they’re old, full of boys, and there ain’t anything good about ‘em at all, least of all that silver-tongued devil, Thrunstone.”

  Slaight lost it. He nearly pulled the laugh muscle in his chest. “You’re saying I should pull some Stick shit,” he said when he had recovered, referring to a classmate of theirs who was so tall and skinny he had been rapidly christened “The Stick” by his classmates.

  “Yeah. Sit back and listen. He’s not gonna give up much, but you’ll know more when he’s gone than you know right now.”

  “Thanks, man,” Slaight said. “I owe you one.”

  “So come on out here in the spring and I’ll put a goddamned shovel in your hands, and you can help me turn some peat moss and manure into my garden.”

  “I will,” said Slaight. “See you, Buck.”

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  CAPTAIN PATTERSON’S office was at the far end of a corridor in Building 606, which had once housed the old cadet hospital building. Jacey had called him that afternoon, told him she had some questions, and asked if she could see him. He suggested she stop by after supper, when he would be finished with the day’s business.

  Captain Patterson had been her professor of law during the previous year. He had cut a handsome figure, standing before fifteen cadets in class, darting brilliantly in and out of arcane corners of military law, questioning them intently on the lesson before handing out written exams. The great thing about the way they taught military law at West Point was that every day, you had to sit down and write out an answer to a complicated question involving a proposition founded in the legal texts you were supposed to have studied the night before. Jacey had excelled at the exams, and she soon found herself in the First Section, at the top of her class in military law, where she encountered Captain Patterson. Everyone who had him for a law “P” considered him one of the smartest, funniest professors they’d ever had, and so did Jacey, which was why she called him when she returned from Dorothy’s mother’s house, carrying the explosive copy of Dorothy’s last E-mail message to her mother.

  The corridor was empty. She found him seated at his desk grading papers.

  “Sir,” she interrupted, standing in his open door.

  He looked up. “Miss Slaight. Come in. Have a seat.”

  Jacey removed a law book from die only chair in the room and sat down. Quickly, Patterson stacked the papers he had been grading to one side, revealing his desk’s burnished mahogany surface. He folded his hands and looked into eyes that, while they had always belonged to Jacey Slaight, now belonged as well to the daughter of the Superintendent of West Point. Something was going on inside her, and whatever it was, it went beyond her father’s assignment to West Point. “What brings you over here to the Department of Law? I thought we were finished with you last year,” he said jokingly.

  “Sir, I need your advice.”

  “What kind of advice?” he asked, gently.

  “Legal advice. It’s a long story, sir.”

  He took a yellow legal pad from his drawer and made a note at the top. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and give me the details as clearly and concisely as you can.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And why don’t you drop the ‘sir’ business. The way things work here at West Point, professors in the Department of Law can serve as attorneys for cadets and other military personnel on the post. The moment you walked into this office and requested legal advice from me, you effectively became my client, and you are protected by attorney-client privilege, so we may as well take advantage of it, don’t you think?”

  She allowed herself a little smile. She’d picked right. Captain Patterson was the guy.

  She started with the shock of Dorothy’s death on the Plain. Then she went through the hours immediately afterward—the company meeting, turning over the statements to Chief Warrant Officer Kerry, the whole thing. She told him about the night Carrie found E-mail disks, that later she had confronted Ash about the party, and that he had told her nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but she still couldn’t understand why he had betrayed her by not telling her Dorothy had been there. Then she told him she had driven up to Oneonta the day before and talked to Dorothy’s mother, and how she found the rest of Dorothy’s E-mail on the laptop in her bedroom.

  Patterson interrupted her. “I’m going to assume that what you found in her E-mail is the reason you came to see me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “So tell me about Miss Hamner’s E-mail.”

  Jacey went through what she had found, right through paraphrasing the content of Dorothy’s last E-mail message to her mother. Patterson was making notes and didn’t look up.

  “Have you told anyone what you’ve discovered?”

  “Not yet. That’s why I wanted to see you. I want to know what I should do.”

  Patterson stopped taking notes and looked at the first-class cadet seated across the desk from him. It wasn’t so long ago that he had been a first-class cadet, although he had never had occasion to visit the office of a law “P” needing legal advice. If truth be told, he had cruised through West Point, and a couple of years after he graduated, he had no problem transferring out of the artillery into the JAG Corps and getting the Army to put him through three years of law school at NYU. When, two years later, they had offered him a slot in the Department of Law at West Point, he had jumped at the chance.

  He knew precisely what had brought him to this exact moment in his life: a long, uninterrupted string of good deals. Now he realized the good deals were over. This young woman, Jacey Slaight, who just happened to be the Supe’s daughter, had come to him for advice, and he knew from listening to what she had to say that his life was about to change.

  He remembered having drinks one night in a Village bar with one of his NYU law professors, a guy he had really come to admire. “You know what’s really shitty about the practice of law, Harper?” the law professor had asked.

  Unable to think of anything negative about practicing law, since he had yet to practice it, Patterson had answered, “No.”

  “All you do is sit there and listen to other people’s problems.”

  Now Captain Patterson knew intimately what the professor had meant. The thing was, your life was bound to change if you did the job right, because your client’s problem became your problem as well.

  “Well, I can begin by reminding you that under the UCMJ, you are bound by the law to report what you’ve found to the authorities. In this case, that would be the CID agent in charge. My advice to you is, take everything you’ve got to Agent Kerry.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  “If you already knew that was your obligation, why did you think it was necessary to see me?”

  “Because I’m afraid of what’s going to happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think this thing is going to blow into a huge scandal. If that happens, it’s going to hurt my father. He’s only been here a few weeks, and whatever happened with those guys and Dorothy, whatever crap they threatened her with the Honor Code, all of it started last year, and now my father’s going to get loaded down with the consequences.”

  “This is going to sound cold and unfeeling, Jacey, but that’s what happens to you when you’re a general and they give you an important job. You pick up the crap that others left behind. It’s just the way things work in the Army.”

  “But it’s so unfair! Isn’t there some other way we can handle it? I mean, can’t you and I go to see the Commandant and tell him what I’ve found? Maybe he’ll know wh
at to do. He could call everybody in and question them. If Rose or Favro or any of the others did anything wrong, the Commandant would know how to handle it. Can’t we do this without everything blowing up in my father’s face?”

  Patterson understood now that Jacey wasn’t as troubled by what she had found as she was by its potential consequences. He wished there was some way he could tell her he’d handle it, and that everything was going to be okay, but there wasn’t. The gears of the system of military justice had already begun to turn. If she didn’t do the right thing, she would be ground up in the gears along with everyone else guilty of wrongdoing.

  “It doesn’t work that way, Jacey. For one thing, the system here at West Point is fairly unique and specific in dividing authority between the Commandant and the Superintendent. The Com is in charge of cadet discipline under Regulations USCC.”

  “The Blue Book of cadet regs.”

  “Right. And your father is charged with the authority to convene courts-martial, which means that he is in overall charge of the military justice system under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the UCMJ. Those are two very different areas of authority, and what you’re talking about comes under the UCMJ, not under cadet regs. If we went to the Com, he would be bound under the law to report directly to the Superintendent. There’s no way to protect your father. The law puts him directly on the firing line.”

  “It’s still unfair. He’s not responsible for things that happened before he became Supe.”

  “No, but he’s responsible for making sure that those events are investigated, and that the proper persons are brought to justice, if in fact it is found that crimes were committed. From what you’ve told me, I think there is reason to believe that a crime may have been committed. You can’t suborn a felony, Jacey. You’ve got to take your evidence to the CID.”

  “Well, if I can’t go to the Com, why can’t I just take what I’ve found to my father? He deserves to know if things are going to start coming apart around here.”

  “If you do that, he’ll be directly involved in the investigation, and if it comes down to a court-martial, he’ll be accused of having exercised command influence over the investigation. They’ll throw the charges out, and whoever’s charged will go scot-free.”

  “It’s like being caught in a trap. I can’t do anything right.”

  “You can play by the rules and go through the proper channels. You can do what the law requires. And that’s all you can do.”

  “There’s something else, besides my father.” She paused for a moment, twisting a small piece of paper in her hands. “I don’t know what Ash’s involvement is.”

  “From what you just told me, you’re not too happy with him, so I don’t understand why that should be a great concern for you.”

  “It’s not that simple. We were together for two years.”

  “What does your instinct tell you? Do you think he’s involved?”

  She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Why don’t you talk to him about it? Tell him what you’re going to do.”

  “Won’t I be running the risk of him tipping the others?”

  “Yes. But if your gut tells you he just screwed up the way guys sometimes do, then I don’t think you’ve got much to worry about. If you think he’s got something to hide, though, then I’d keep him out of it and go straight to Agent Kerry. That’s a judgment call you’re going to have to make, Jacey. I can’t help you with that one.”

  She stopped twisting the piece of paper and dropped it in the trash can next to his desk. “I was pretty sure of what you were going to tell me, but I had to see if there wasn’t some way my father could be kept out of it. Thanks, Captain Patterson. You really helped me.”

  “I’m not so sure I was that big of a help, but if there’s anything else I can do, just let me know. I could go down to see Agent Kerry with you, if that would help.”

  “That’s okay. I can handle it.”

  Patterson studied her for a moment. Something was missing. “There’s another element here, isn’t there, Jacey?” he asked. “The thing with your father . . . you’re afraid if there’s a big scandal, and it comes out that you’re the one who pulled the trigger, the Corps of Cadets is going to think that you turned on fellow cadets and went running to your father. Isn’t that right?”

  She could feel her cheeks flush. He was the smartest “P” she’d ever had. “It’s crossed my mind, yes.”

  “You’re in an unenviable position, Jacey. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Under usual circumstances, you would have a few years of command under your belt before you found yourself caught up like this. But with your father as Supe, you’re trapped. The only way out is to follow the law. That’s the best advice I can give you. If you follow the law, there may be some cadets who are friendly to those who are implicated, and they’re going to resent you, but the vast majority of the Corps will understand that you did your duty. You’ve got to trust the system at least that much, Jacey.”

  “I know you’re right, but it’s hard.”

  “Doing the right thing can sometimes be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. I’m afraid this is one of those times.”

  “I know it is. I’m not looking forward to what I’ve got to do, I can tell you that much.”

  He walked her to the door. “If you want to talk, just give me a ring.” He grinned. “In fact, as your attorney, I advise you to call me with any questions you have.”

  She smiled back. “Thanks again, Captain Patterson.”

  As she walked down the empty corridor, Patterson stood in the door watching her. She was a remarkable young woman, that was for sure. As she turned down the stairs, a figure wearing a gray jacket stepped out of a darkened door at the end of the hall and followed her. It was a cadet. Patterson wasn’t certain, but it looked an awful lot like the cadet was following her. Patterson turned back to his office, grabbed the Academy phone book, looked up Jacey’s number, and quickly dialed. No answer. Her roommate wasn’t in the room. He flipped the pages of the phone book and found the number for her company orderly room. When a cadet answered, he told him to have Jacey call him the moment she entered the barracks.

  Jacey had just reached Thayer Road when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to find Rose trying to catch up with her. She kept walking, but Rose fell in beside her.

  “Want to stop in Grant Hall for a coffee?” Rose said, nearly out of breath.

  “Not really. I’m busy.”

  “I know you were just in Patterson’s office.”

  Jacey turned to face him. “What were you doing? Following me?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you just happened to be up in Building 606 in the totally empty Department of Law tonight. Is that it?”

  “There’s something I think the two of us had better talk over.”

  “If you’re referring to the fact that Dorothy Hamner was a guest at your party out at the lake, you can save your breath, Rose. I’m turning over everything I’ve got to Chief Warrant Officer Kerry.”

  “I don’t think that would be a very good idea, Jacey.”

  “Why not, Rose?”

  “You know how things work around here. If we get mentioned in the same breath with Dorothy Hamner, careers could be damaged.”

  “That’s your problem. You and the rest of the big shots invited her to the party.”

  “It’s not as simple as that, and you know it, Jacey. If we get questioned by the CID, how is that going to look on our records?”

  “I don’t know, Rose. Depends on what you tell them.”

  “The mere fact that we become involved in the investigation won’t look good, Jacey. I’m telling you, there’s no reason for you to go to the CID, because nothing happened at the party. Why don’t you just leave it alone?”

  “I think I’ll just leave it up to Chief Warrant Officer Kerry. He’s the one in charge of the investigation. He can make
the determination as to whether or not what happened at the party has a bearing on Dorothy’s death.”

  Rose’s jaw hardened, and he stepped closer to her. “You’re going to end up causing more trouble than you know. And most of it’s going to come down on your father.”

  “I don’t see how that could be the case, Rose. I know this much for certain. He wasn’t at the party with Dorothy Hamner. You were.”

  “You’re going to be sorry if you push this thing.”

  “Oh, I’m real scared, Rose,” she taunted. “What’s going to happen to me? A big bad bogeyman is going to come and get me?”

  “You think because you’re the Supe’s daughter you can get away with this kind of shit. You’re going to learn differently. I can promise you that.”

  “What are you afraid of, Rose? What’s got you so scared?” He turned and started walking away from her, and she called after him, “You know what, Rose? I’m going to find out what you’re so scared of, and when I do, you’re going to be the first one to know.”

  He kept walking, and she turned and walked up the ramp to the barracks. As she passed the orderly room, the Cadet in Charge of Quarters called through the open door: “Jacey! Somebody just called for you!”

  She went into the orderly room, a bare space with a desk and a phone behind a counter. A bulletin board on the wall had queries like NEED RIDE TO NYC pinned on it, and there were some intramural awards the company had won mounted on the wall above.

  “Who called?”

  “Captain Patterson. He said you should call him the minute you got back.”

  “Thanks.” She went up the stairs and walked down the hall to her room. The door was ajar. Belle had told her at dinner that she was going to the gym to work out. She called through the open door:

  “Belle?”

  There was no answer. She pushed open the door, turned on the overhead lights, and went inside. She looked around. It didn’t seem as if anyone had been in the room until she reached her desk. All three drawers were open. She searched quickly through her top drawer for the floppy disks containing Dorothy’s E-mail.