High Crimes

“Well, some of the guys in my business do, but mostly they practice other kinds of law, too. Like corporate, or big-deal criminal, or whatever. You can’t get rich on military law. Myself, I supplement my military practice with personal-injury and insurance work. No, I’m not a big Harvard Law School celebrity like you-all. But you wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t talked to some other civilian military lawyers and checked out my record, and if you have, you know I like to win cases. I don’t always, but I try... real hard.”

“Why’d you leave the military?”

Grimes hesitated a split second. “Retired.”

“Why?”

“I was tired of it.”

“Something happen?”

“I got tired of it,” he said, a note of irritation entering his voice. “That’s what happened. You mind if I ask you a couple questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“Arthur called me. I got the background. Sounds like you’re in some kind of deep doodoo. He been charged yet?”

She handed Grimes the charge sheet. He looked it over, raised his brows here and there, hummed. By the second page his humming got louder and went up an octave. “Someone’s been a bad boy,” he said.

“You better be joking.”

“Of course he didn’t do it,” Grimes said, a twinkle in his eye. “I like to tell people all my clients are innocent. They’re always innocent — or else they won’t plead guilty.”

Claire suppressed her annoyance. “Is he a deserter? No question about it. But he’s no mass murderer. They tried to set him up to take the fall for this massacre thirteen years ago, and he was smart enough to escape their clutches. General William Marks — that’s right, the four-star General Marks, the chief of staff of the army — commanded the platoon in 1985, when he was a colonel. The Special Forces detachment that was sent down to El Salvador to take revenge for the killing of some American marines. General Marks himself ordered them to kill eighty-seven civilians for one reason alone: cold-blooded revenge. Tom didn’t take part in it — he wasn’t even there.”

Grimes nodded, watching her steadily.

“General Marks initiated and supervised a cover-up thirteen years ago and tried to nail my husband with responsibility for it. So whoever takes this case is going to flush him out and expose his attempted cover-up. Because I’m going to go after the whole corrupt system. The whole goddamned military system—”

“Oh, no, you’re not,” Grimes interrupted. “No fucking way. Bad mistake. Get that out of your head, sister. You’re going to play by the rules. Play hard, play aggressive, but it’s their game — hell, it’s their fucking stadium. Their fucking ball club. Lady, let me tell you something. Every civilian who’s ever gone into a military general court-martial and tried to attack the foundations of the military has lost his case. No exceptions. The military is a tight, closed fraternity. They take it real serious. Military justice is a deadly-serious business. You’d be surprised how much it’s like the civilian justice system — it was made that way. Modeled on the U.S. criminal-justice system. Lot of the same rights. You want to defend your husband, you go after the charges and prove they haven’t made their case, just like you’d do in a regular courtroom. You think there was a cover-up, go ahead and go after General Marks. Go after General Patton, General Douglas fucking MacArthur, General Dwight fucking Eisenhower if you want. But you don’t attack the system. Now, you know I’m hungry for this case, but I’m not going to lie to you. If you hire me, you’re hiring someone who plays by their rules. I play nasty, but I play their game. I just play it better than them.”

Claire nodded, smiled.

“They hook you up with a detailed defense counsel yet?” Grimes asked.

“Yes. Some kid named Terry Embry, fresh out of law school.”

“Hmph. Never heard of him. He any good?”

“He’s totally green. Smart. Well-meaning, I think. Nice kid. But strictly junior-varsity.”

“We all got to start somewhere. Why should the Pentagon give you their best? How about trial counsel? That’s what the military calls the prosecutor. He assigned yet?”

“Lucas Waldron.”

Grimes leaned back in his chair and laughed. He laughed so loud, so hard, that he had a coughing fit. “Lucas Waldron?” he choked out.

“You’ve heard of him, I take it.”

When he finally stopped coughing, Grimes said, “Oh, I heard of him, all right. He’s a totally ruthless son of a bitch.”

“You ever come up against him?”

“A couple times. Got some light jury sentences off him, but never won a case against him. But what I don’t get is why they’re even putting your husband on trial.”

“What else could they have done? Legally, I mean.”

“Oh, man, they could have done much worse if they wanted to. They could have had three army shrinks declare him crazy and lock him up in some government mental institution, some federal facility, and throw away the key. I really don’t get why they want to go the court-martial route.”

“Probably because of me. Do everything by the book.”

He nodded slowly. “Maybe. Still doesn’t make sense.”