Full Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  Colonel Lombardi cleared his throat. “Sir, there’s a regulation on the books which precludes such a search. It’s part of the act that was passed which authorized the collection of DNA material for battlefield identification. I can look it up, sir—”

  “You don’t have to, Colonel,” interrupted Slaight. He picked up a sheaf of papers. “I’ve got it right here, and I have studied it. I contend that as the Superintendent, I’ve got latitude. I’m ordering the DNA cross-check because we’ve got a health and safety issue on our hands here. A young woman died out there on the Plain during a parade. It was hot. There were some four thousand other cadets out there with her. Others dropped from the heat. None of them died. In fact, we have never had a death at West Point which resulted from a parade.”

  He waited until the last sentence sunk in. He was looking around the table to see who showed signs of nervousness or concern. They were poker-faced. The subject was the death of a twenty-one-year-old woman, and yet there was no emotion shown by a single person at the table.

  “It is my intention as Superintendent that we never again have a cadet die during a parade. To that end, I am ordering the DNA search. It’s the contention of Major Vernon that anyone who came in contact with Cadet Hamner within twenty-four hours of her death could be of help in the determination of the cause of her death. If we can find out what killed her, then we can prevent it from ever happening again.” Again, he paused for effect, looking around the table. Every face was blank.

  “I have spoken to Cadet Hamner’s mother and father. They live up in Oneonta. Her father owns a gas station. Her mother runs a gift shop and works as a nurse’s aide. They are good people, and when they sent their daughter to West Point, the last thing in the world they expected was that before she graduated to become an Army officer, her body would be shipped home in a goddamned box.”

  He turned to Colonel Lombardi. “I understand your concerns about the regulations, Colonel. As SJA, that’s your job. But let me make clear to you that every year, about one thousand families like Dorothy Hamner’s entrust their sons and daughters to us for four years. We are not going to let down Dorothy’s parents, and we’re not going to let down the parents of the kids who have been entrusted to us. If I have to step on a few toes in order to go about my duty insuring that these young people make their way from the first day of Beast to graduation at Michie Stadium, then so be it.” He paused, giving Lombardi the time to respond. He didn’t.

  “We are going to find out what killed that young woman if it’s the last thing I do as Superintendent, is that clear?”

  Not a word.

  “Now I’m going to caution each of you once again that what I’ve said here is not to leave this room, and I’ll tell you why. There’s always a chance that Dorothy Hamner died of a disease or natural causes. In that case, I don’t want even a whisper of her sexual history to become part of the record of the investigation. There is also a possibility that the three individuals who had sex with Miss Hamner are cadets who had nothing to do with the circumstances of her death, and if that is the case, I do not want either them or Miss Hamner discredited. There is one more reason. If in fact it turns out that Miss Hamner’s sexual partners were cadets, I do not want them forewarned that evidence has been gathered which might implicate them. Is that understood?”

  Heads nodded around the table.

  Slaight grasped the arms of his chair in preparation to stand up, but everyone at the table beat him to it. Some things in the Army never changed. A three-star general still got respect.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  OVER THE years, Samantha Hand Slaight had been many things to many people—a wife and a mother and a daughter and a schoolteacher who still substituted at the high school downtown in Highland Falls—but she had also been something else, something special. She had been an Army wife. She had learned to survive the constant change of stations, usually once every couple of years, but sometimes yearly, and just after they had first married, they had moved twice a year for two years. By the time she supervised the packing and loading of everything they owned into yet another semitrailer for the move to Quarters 100 at West Point, she and Ry had lived in something like twenty-six different apartments or houses in the past twenty-seven years.

  She had learned the myriad alleyways of military politics—how, as the wife of a lieutenant, you deal with the wife of the colonel, and later how, as the wife of the colonel, you deal with the wives of the lieutenants, and how, as the wife of a soldier of any rank, you deal with his commanding officer. She had developed a set of antennae as finely tuned as any. You had to smell trouble before trouble arrived. You had to find your way in the total darkness of an assignment to a new post with new commanders and new commanders’ wives. You had to watch your husband’s back at the same time you watched your own back, because as Ry had gained rank and responsibility, starting back when he was a major, moving on through lieutenant colonel, colonel, brigadier general, major general, and now lieutenant general, the knives were out every step of the way. The Army liked to think of itself as a society of warriors, and at least when it came to their careers, they certainly behaved like the warriors they dreamt themselves to be. Army officers were out for each other’s blood from the moment they woke up to the instant they lost consciousness at night.

  Yet having developed such a finely honed sixth sense about the Army and her place in it, she had discovered her antennae were as much a burden as a boon. Her ability to see into and through situations and people extended right into her own family, where a good deal of the time it got in the way or simply didn’t belong. She found herself longing for the days when her husband went through a few days with a dark mood, or her daughter woke up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed, and well, that was just that. But now she could see his dark moods coming, and her daughter was as transparent to her as a glass of water.

  And so when Ry had told her there was a major development in the Dorothy Hamner case, she had sensed that it was one that might not produce good news. And when Jacey had called the next day, she had heard the hollow tone in her voice signaling that her daughter felt very much alone right now. She also knew, because Jacey had told her as much, that her daughter was hesitant to talk to her father. Part of it was the investigation of the death of Jacey’s friend Dorothy. But Sam also knew that a larger part was undoubtedly the fact that Jacey was a cadet and Ry was the Supe, and their respective ranks and stations in life were getting in the way of his being her father and her being his daughter.

  What do you do when you find your antennae tingling with danger signals? Cook dinner. Get everyone around the table and let the forks fall where they may.

  So she called Jacey and invited her over, and she told Ry to clear his schedule for the night and make sure he was home by six o’clock, because their daughter was coming home for dinner. Ry, who had indeed plunged into one of his darker moods, seemed to brighten at the prospect. Jacey sounded excited. The first thing she asked was, “What are we having, Mom?” Sam told her spaghetti and meatballs, one of her favorite meals since she was a little girl. “Count me in!” she yelled into the phone.

  Sam had the meatballs simmering in a nicely thickened red sauce and a pot of water ready for the pasta when Ry came into the kitchen unbuttoning his uniform jacket. He kissed the back of her neck and dipped a finger into the sauce. “Needs salt,” he announced.

  “It does not,” she replied.

  “Does too.”

  “So add salt on your plate. Not everyone in the world thinks food ought to have the salt content of movie-theater popcorn.”

  He laughed. “Okay. You got me.” He looked around. “Where’s Jace?”

  “She called and said she’d be a few minutes late. She had orienteering this afternoon. It always takes them a while to get everyone rounded up and on the trucks to get back.”

  He laughed. “I remember those truck rides back from the deep boonies,” he said.

  “Why d
on’t you open a bottle of wine?”

  “Good idea.” He picked a bottle of Chianti from the wine rack in the corner, opened it, and poured them each a glass. He took a sip. “This is great. Where’d you get it?”

  “That little place over in Cold Spring. I took Helen Messick to lunch over there today. We stopped in the wine shop afterward.”

  “You’re seeing quite a bit of her. How is she?”

  “Same old Helen. We told Leavenworth stories. She can be pretty funny when she wants to be. I had a good time.”

  “I don’t suppose the subject of the Commandant came up.”

  “Nope. I didn’t expect it would.”

  “I think they’re playing it cool since I dressed him down.”

  “I certainly didn’t see any ripples in her pond today.”

  He took another sip of wine. “I’m going to grab a shower before Jace gets here.”

  “Okay.” She smashed a couple of cloves of garlic and tossed them into a plastic container. Then she drizzled olive oil and white wine vinegar over the garlic, added a handful of crumbled blue cheese, a few tablespoons of yogurt, and one of mayonnaise, snapped the lid on the container, and gave it a good shake. She had just opened the container when she heard the back door. Jacey gave her mother a kiss on the cheek and stuck her finger into the dressing.”

  “Needs salt,” she pronounced.

  “You and your father and your salt. I swear.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Upstairs changing. Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “Sure.”

  Jacey poured herself a glass of Chianti. “This is wonderful.”

  “Hand me the lettuce, would you, Jace? It’s in the bottom drawer of the fridge.”

  Jacey handed the lettuce to her mother, who divided it among three salad plates. “So what’s new, Big Ma?”

  “We’re supposed to leave tomorrow for the Washington State game on Saturday. It’s going to be a lo-o-ong weekend, I guess.”

  “I don’t know what West Point’s doing playing teams all the way across the country.”

  “It’s the new league they formed.”

  “Yeah, but it still doesn’t make much sense to me. I mean, hardly anybody but the team and the cheerleaders gets to go.”

  “And the Supe and the Supe’s wife.”

  They heard Ry coming down the back stairs. He saw Jacey and quickly wrapped her up in a big hug. “Good to see you, doll.”

  “You too, Dad. Mom tells me you-all are going to the Washington State game.”

  “Duty calls.”

  “You sound real enthused.”

  “I’m eager to see the cadets whip Washington, but I don’t look forward to the flights. I’m getting too old to be flying coast-to-coast and back in three days.”

  “Why don’t you send me in your place?” Jacey teased.

  “I’d love to.” He took another sip of wine. “You two will never guess who has decided to retire. Don Frank. He told me today. He wanted me to have a jump start on picking a new Dean to replace him.”

  “Don Frank? I thought he’d stay here till they carried him away on a stretcher,” said Sam.

  “He’s been a cool dean,” said Jacey. “He hired some more new female professors last year.”

  “Did he recommend anyone to replace him?” asked Sam.

  “He said I ought to talk to Roberta Graves.”

  “I remember Roberta. She’s at the War College, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, and she just got her first star. She would be one hell of a pick, that’s for sure. She’s smart as hell, she’s well-connected, and she’s written three books on military history.”

  “Do you think you could get her approved?”

  “I know I can sell her to Meuller, and I’m sure he can get the President to make the appointment. I’m pretty sure she would make it through the Senate Armed Services Committee if there isn’t any opposition to her from within the Army.”

  “Gibson will go all out against her,” said Sam.

  “He already has,” said Slaight.

  “What? General Gibson has put females in leadership positions all over the Corps. He made me company commander.”

  “He puts up a good front, Jace, but behind the scenes, he’s the worst nightmare Army women could have. General Frank told me Gibson fought every one of the female professors he sought to appoint last year,” said her father.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “The Academic Board doesn’t exactly advertise its disputes to the world outside the oak-paneled room where we meet.”

  “I don’t understand. He’s never said anything against women at West Point.”

  “Not out loud, he hasn’t. But he hasn’t made a secret of his opposition to increasing the number of women in the Army. Down at the Pentagon, they count him among those who are hard-core opponents of women taking combat roles. He even opposed women being allowed into Air Defense Artillery.”

  “That’s strange,” said Jacey, “because he’s really popular among cadets, male and female alike.”

  Sam handed each of them a salad. “Let’s take these to the table.” In the dining room, Sam placed a salt shaker and oak pepper mill next to Ry’s place at the head of the table and lit the candles.

  “You guys still have candlelight dinners all the time?” asked Jacey.

  “Every night. Your mom insists on it,” said Ry.

  “That’s way cool. So retro.”

  “It’s a nice way to end the day,” said Sam, giving her table an admiring glance. It had long been one of her rules. Every night she set a table that she wouldn’t be ashamed to share with anyone who walked through the door. Dinner was the one hour of the day when you could sit down in one place and relax and enjoy the wine and the food and the conversation that flowed therefrom.

  “You guys let me know when dinner’s ready. I’ve got the newspapers to catch up on. I’ve had a long day.” Slaight walked across the hall to the study.

  Sam and Jacey went back into the kitchen and Sam turned on the pasta water. When it came to a boil, she dropped most of a package of spaghetti into the pot and swirled the water until all of the strands of pasta had separated and the water had come back to a full boil. She stayed next to the stove, awaiting the inevitable foam that would rise to the lip of the pan.

  “How many times have you cooked this dish, Mom?”

  Sam thought for a moment. “Maybe a hundred.”

  “I thought you’d say more.”

  “I guess it is more. I started making spaghetti and meatballs before you were born, that’s for sure.”

  “So that’s over twenty-one years ago. If you only cooked it five times a year, you’re already over a hundred, just in my lifetime.”

  “So, two hundred.”

  Jacey laughed and hugged her mother. “ ‘Course, then there were the times Dad cooked it.”

  “Yeah, I forgot about those. I guess that makes probably three hundred, between us.”

  “Almost a year of your life you have spent eating spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.”

  “You could look at it that way. Or you could say, the other damn forty-nine years I was eating something else.”

  Jacey high-fived her mother. “Your father forgot his glass of wine. Would you take it in there to him? And tell him the pasta’s on,” Sam said.

  Jacey carried the wine into a wood-paneled study and put it down next to her father. He was sitting in a large wing-backed chair near the fireplace, reading the papers. She walked along the bookcases, scanning the titles, finally reaching for a book on a high shelf. “The Man Who Kept the Secrets,” she read aloud, opening the book.

  “It’s about the CIA director, Richard Helms,” said her father, looking up from the paper.

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  He chuckled. “He departed the CIA about the time I was departing the Republic of Vietnam for the last time.”

  “Is it a good book?”

  “Excellent.”


  “Can I borrow it, Daddy?”

  “Of course you can. Only one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve got to come over here and have dinner with us on the evening you return it.”

  She grinned. “Mom said to tell you we’re almost ready.”

  He put his papers aside and stood up. “Let’s give her a hand,” he said, placing his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. Together they walked back to the kitchen. Sam was shaking the final drops of water from the pasta in a colander. She used tongs to serve three large bowls of spaghetti. Jacey grabbed a hot pad, took the pot of meatballs and sauce over to the counter, and spooned a healthy serving into each bowl. The three of them carried their bowls of pasta and glasses of wine to the table. Slaight had tucked the Chianti under his arm, and he poured a measure into each of their glasses before he sat down and raised his glass in a toast.

  “Beat Washington State!”

  “All right!” said Jacey.

  Sam grinned. West Point definitely brought out the kid . . . in both of them.

  The customary moments of silence followed, as they dug into the meatballs and pasta, gulping sips of wine between bites. Finally Jacey looked up at her mother. “It’s great! It’s . . . almost sweet. What’d you do different?”

  “Fresh oregano and fresh basil. Dried is much stronger and more bitter. Fresh herbs have a subtle flavor.”

  Slaight looked up. “More wine?” Jacey held out her glass, and he poured another dollop. He looked down the table at his wife. “I’m okay for now,” she said. He speared a few pieces of lettuce on his fork and swirled them in the dressing on his plate. “Great blue-cheese dressing, Sam.”

  “I just copy that stuff we used to get from Trader Joe’s when we lived at Fort Ord in California.”