High Crimes

“You weren’t forced out?”

“You don’t stop, do you?” Grimes looked up at her with a hostility that seemed tinged with desperation.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “But I need to know your background.”

He set his beer down, tented his fingers. “Look. I joined the Army as an enlisted man, went to Vietnam, and lived. Okay? I came back, did night school for years, got my bachelor’s and my law degree, got my commission. I’m a lawyer by the time I’m thirty-one. Army’s always telling you they’re the only real equal-opportunity employer, blacks get treated same as whites, and for a while I begin to believe that. I never get beyond major, but that’s ’cause I started late. Fine.” Grimes hunched forward. “Okay, so there’s this brother down in South Carolina. Fort Jackson. Black guy, PFC — that’s private first class — accused of armed robbery on a white guy at the base. I get the case probably for no other reason than I’m black. I fly down there, talk to the kid. Kid never done anything wrong in his life, okay? I mean, National Honor Society in high school, athlete, never been in trouble, army’s gonna send him to college, which is why he enlisted, ’cause his family’s poor. Okay, so what does the prosecution have? This totally weak ID — the victim couldn’t tell one black from another. Meanwhile, I’ve got this case sewed up. So happens that, at the time the robbery went down, this kid’s at home, two hundred miles away, on a weekend pass. Not only that, but I got every fucking second of his time that weekend accounted for. Seven different alibi witnesses, none of them with criminal records or anything. I had neighbors testifying to his good character. When I say ‘altar boy,’ I’m not bullshitting. But the prosecution brings the kid into the courtroom in manacles, which you’re not supposed to do, and they didn’t even need to do that, ’cause the all-white military jury was in and out in five minutes. They didn’t even have time to do a secret written ballot. Gave him ten years in Leavenworth.” Grimes finally looked up. His eyes, blazing, glistened with tears. His expression was fierce. “They gave this fucking altar boy, who joined the army so he could go to college, ten years in Leavenworth for armed robbery. Well, I knew this couldn’t stand up, but I’m a lawyer, see? I was gonna fight this thing up to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, his whole unit knows he’s innocent, and after the sentencing, they give him fifteen days deferment of confinement so he can go home and say goodbye to his mamma and his brothers and sisters.” Grimes clenched a fist and gently pounded it on the table. “I wish to hell they’d put him in the brig.” He shook his head.

Claire, moved to tears, said, “Why?”

“They put you in the brig, they take away your gun, put you on suicide watch. He never could have done it. This kid killed himself. Blew his brains out with his pistol. And the next day, I put in my letter.”

“Jesus, Grimes.”

Very quietly he said: “So you see, kid, you don’t need to convince me what shit a military jury’s capable of, okay?” There was a long, uncomfortable silence, and then Grimes’s voice became louder, his tone belligerent. “So let me ask you a personal question. Do you really think your husband is innocent? Not that it matters to our case, of course.”

“Of course I do,” she said. “I wouldn’t take this on if I didn’t.”

“Well, you are married to him.”

“Grimes, if I thought he was guilty, I’d hire someone else. I wouldn’t do it myself, not if I thought he was really the sort of monster they’re trying to make him out to be.”

He gazed at her levelly. His eyes were bloodshot. “’Course, you represented Gary Lambert, didn’t you?”

“This is different, Grimes,” she said, exasperated. “He’s my husband.”

“You think this whole thing is a frame-up.”

“Of course it is. Colonel Bill Marks comes back to the States after the massacre that he ordered, and realizes he’d better cover his ass, and so he blames it on the one guy in the unit who refused to lie, to cover up. The one who could destroy his career. Here he is, thirteen years later, chief of staff of the army, soon to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he figures he got away with it. Well, the fucker’s wrong. He didn’t count on me.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Grimes said.

“Nah, you’re pâté. Hey,” she exclaimed suddenly, “why not polygraph him? And introduce the results at the 32 hearing? That’ll get the court-martial thrown out faster than anything.”

“No way. Don’t go there. Get that nasty idea out your head. Anyway, polygraphs aren’t admissible.”

“Oh, they’re admissible, all right. You don’t keep up on this?”

“Rule 707 of the Military Rules of Evidence says no. In the annotated cases. Based on a 1989 decision of the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Flat-out no.”