High Crimes

“As military music is to music,” Claire finished. “I know, I know. But I thought they’d gotten a lot better since Vietnam.”

“Since the Calley court-martial, actually. When I was in the army everyone used to tell me the military system is far superior to our civilian one because at least they take it seriously. But I never believed it. Still don’t. I think, if the military wants to lock someone away and throw away the key, they can do it. And I have no doubt they want to lock your husband away.”

“Probably true,” Claire conceded.

“And if you tell me he’s innocent, he’s innocent.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course, that’s easy for me to say. After lunch I go back to my office and my stack of briefs. Your life will never be the same.”

“Right.” She nibbled on a bite of salad. Since the arrest she’d had no appetite.

“The first decision you’ll have to make, and it’s a big one, is whether to make this public. Tom’s story itself is a headline maker. If the Pentagon goes ahead and prosecutes, that makes it front-page stuff.”

“Why wouldn’t I publicize it?”

“Because that’s your ace in the hole. The Pentagon is terrified of public scrutiny these days. Going public is a potent threat. Use it when you have to. For now, I’d keep all this absolutely secret.”

She nodded.

“Tell you something else. If you leak it, even if he’s acquitted, he’ll always be known as a mass murderer. Your family will be destroyed. I wouldn’t do it, given the choice.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“Sounds like you’ve already decided not to get involved as an attorney of record.”

She shrugged.

“I’d reconsider. You’re the last one they want trying this case. To the military, civilian lawyers are wild cards. Get them involved, next thing you know you got what the military calls a CONGRINT, a congressional inquiry. And you most of all — Claire Heller Chapman, big scary Harvard Law School celeb — you’ll scare ’em to death. They’ll piss their pants. You really should do it.” He looked at her, assessed her dour expression, then chomped down blithely on a biscuit. “Failing that, there’s this.” He slid a typed sheet of paper across the table.

“Your list of civilian lawyers who do military law.”

“Correct. You’ll notice it’s not a very long list. Good civilian criminal lawyers who don’t just practice military law but actually specialize in it, there’s maybe a handful of them around the country. You’ll want someone who lives and works in the Virginia area, ideally, so that narrows it down even further. Every one of these was once a JAG officer in one of the service branches of the military. Judge Advocate General Corps.”

“I know what ‘JAG’ is.”

“This is good. You’ll see, the military speaks a different language, and the sooner you learn it the better. Not that many decent civilian military lawyers in the area. Slim pickings.”

She looked the list over with dismay.

“It’s a tough way to earn a living,” Iselin went on. “In the old days when we had a draft, there were rich kids whose daddies were willing to pay the big bucks for a civilian attorney. In the new military, not too many can scrape the money together. If it were me, I’d pick this guy Grimes. In solo practice in Manassas.”

“Why?”

“He’s smart as hell, and he knows the ins and outs of military justice as well as anyone. But most of all he hates the military with a vengeance. You want someone like that, someone with fire in the belly. Because you’ve got a really tough case, and you need a fighter.”

She looked at Grimes’s entry. “He’s a former army JAG and he hates the military? Why?”

“Oh, they forced him into retirement five or six years ago.”

“Over what?”

“I don’t know. Some scandal or something. He’s black, and I think it was racism. Ask him. Thing is, he’s a scrapper and a street fighter, and he’s obsessed with beating them at their own game.”

“But there must be some hotshot partner in a Washington firm who was an army JAG.”

“Sure. There’s a partner in one of the big firms, but you don’t want him.”

“I don’t?”

“Nah. He’s like me — full plate, stretched way too thin, hands everything off to his associate. You want Bernie the Attorney, you want someone who knows the system inside and out and still has lots of time available for this case, because it’s going to be a huge time-consumer. They’ll have him up on murder charges, count on it. Mass murder, whatever the military calls it.” He peered at her over his coffee cup. “Though I thought they were in the mass-murder business.”

“You know anyone who has a house to rent?”

“A house?”

“Preferably furnished. This is going to be a long haul.”

When she returned to her room at the Quality Inn, across from the Quantico gates, she was surprised to find her bed unmade. When she called down to Housekeeping to ask about it, she was told that a DO NOT DISTURB sign had been hung from her doorknob for most of the afternoon. She knew she hadn’t put the sign up. This prompted her to check her suitcase; sure enough, the zipper was aligned differently from the way she had left it.