High Crimes

“Did you choose to go into defense, Terry, or did they just put you there?”

“I was assigned. I mean, everyone in JAG school wants to prosecute, not defend, you know? Defending bad guys is not exactly a career-enhancing billet.”

Claire’s eyes flashed. “I want you to know something, Terry,” she said coolly. She exhaled a plume of smoke like some kind of dragon, or perhaps a femme fatale. “My husband is not a bad guy.”

“Well, so, anyway, I think you should look at this.” He withdrew some papers from a folder and, without even looking at them, handed her a stapled sheaf.

“What’s this?” Claire asked.

“The charge sheet. They work fast. Article 85, desertion. Article 90, assaulting or willfully disobeying superior commissioned officer. Article 118, murder in the first degree. Eighty-seven specifications.” He looked up at Claire, shook his head.

For the first time, the seriousness, the finality of it all struck her. They were really going after Tom. He could in fact be executed. The military still had the death penalty.

She had to do it.

“I think I’ve just changed my mind,” she said, steely. “How the hell do I sign up to help represent my husband?”

17

Twenty minutes from Quantico, along the two-lane Dumfries Road in Manassas, Virginia, Claire pulled the sleek rented Oldsmobile over onto the shoulder and once again inspected the street number. This was the correct number, it had to be. It was precisely the same address that appeared on the short list Arthur Iselin had given her, and neither Arthur nor his secretary made mistakes. And she had talked to the lawyer on the phone and had taken down the street number he told her. So it was impossible that she’d gotten the address wrong.

But this could not be the office.

This was a tiny yellow clapboard house, almost a dollhouse. It was a house, not an office building, and it was a house out of Tobacco Road; all that was missing was a turnip truck and maybe a car chassis up on cinderblocks. This could not be the office of Charles O. Grimes III.

After she’d driven past the house three or four times, she finally pulled into the driveway and got out and rang the doorbell.

After a few long minutes the door opened. A handsome black man in his late forties, with graying hair, a gray-flecked mustache, and large amused eyes, stared at her for a disconcertingly long time. “You get lost, Professor? I saw you pass by here, must have been four times.”

“Thought I might have had the wrong address.”

“Come on in. I’m Charles.” He extended a hand.

“Claire.”

“Let me guess,” he said, guiding her through a tiny cluttered living room dominated by an immense TV, “you’re asking yourself, why does this guy work out of the same little shitbox he lives in, right?” Claire, following him through a doorway into a fake-wood-paneled study, didn’t answer. “Well, you see, Professor, I had a wife who wasn’t too happy when I started boinking my secretary, who was never much of a secretary anyway, and isn’t my secretary anymore. In fact, I don’t even know where she is. So the wife dumps me, holds me up for child support, takes all my money, and now look at me. I used to have a Jag. JAG with a Jag. Now I’ve got a third-hand rustbucket Mercedes.” He sank down into a cheap orange vinyl-cushioned desk chair and interlaced his hands behind his head. “Have a seat. Welcome to Grimes & Associates.”

She lifted a stack of papers off the only other chair and sat down. This was the tackiest office she’d ever seen. The floor was covered in hideous wall-to-wall orange shag carpeting. Piles of papers were everywhere, some in cardboard boxes, some in precarious towers on the floor or heaped on top of the flimsy-looking tan four-drawer filing cabinets. In one corner of the room a portable fan stood on the floor next to a red-and-black shoe polisher. There were a few diplomas on the wall she couldn’t make out. Atop one of the file cabinets was a cluster of bowling trophies. A fake antique wooden sign hung on one wall announcing, in olde lettering, “DULY QUALIFIED HONEST COUNTRY LAWYER at your service — Wills — Deeds filed — Disputes settled — Bondsman — Patents review’d — Consultations from 25¢ — Your lawyer is your friend.” Hanging from the bottom of the sign was another sign, a wooden rectangle: “C. O. GRIMES III, ESQ.”

“Grimes & Associates?” Claire asked. “You have associates?”

“Planning on it. A man can dream, can’t he?” A powerful mothball odor wafted from his seventies-style polyester pullover sweater, a psychedelic riot of brown, orange, and yellow.

“Look,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way. You come highly recommended. By, of all people, Arthur Iselin.”

“How is Artie?”

“He’s fine. He says you’re a star of the civilian military-law field. I assume that means you win a lot of cases. You’re successful. Now, in my world, if you’re a big star—”

“—a big swinging dick, you have a corner office in a skyscraper, am I reading you right?”

“Yeah.”