MCKNIGHT HAD BEEN right about Private Eldon Harker. The young man looked as smooth and unassailable as a shoulder of polished granite. Not a crack in sight. From what Danny had said about him, Tom had imagined some furtive, flickery-eyed kid whose self-serving lies would shine out for all to see. Instead, Harker appeared the kind of man the Marine Corps might use in a recruiting commercial. He was straight backed and handsome and his answers sounded confident without a whiff of cockiness. The guy was a natural-born witness and had clearly been well coached.
Richards lobbed him the routine preliminary questions, designed to portray him as the perfect stalwart soldier, then began to talk him through the events that had led to the killings.
"Was there anyone among the crowd in the courtyard who seemed to you in any way suspicious or dangerous?"
"No, sir. They were all too terrified."
"Were you aware of a man among them who was missing one leg?"
"Yes, sir. I was."
"You saw him?"
"Yes, sir."
"When did you first become aware of him?"
"Right from the start, sir."
"And you noticed then that he had only one leg?"
"No, sir. Not right away. He didn't seem able to keep still, then I realized this was because he had a leg missing and that his crutch was on the ground beside him."
"You saw quite clearly that this was a crutch and not a weapon of any kind?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you point this out to Lance Corporal Bedford?"
"Yes, sir. I tried to tell him but he was shouting so much, he didn't seem to hear me."
"Who was he shouting at?"
"At the people we were guarding, sir. At the women who were screaming."
"And what was he shouting?"
"He was kind of swearing at them, telling them to shut up."
"What precisely did you hear him say?"
"He kept calling them hajji bitches and telling them to shut the fuck up."
It went on and only got more depressing. Everything Harker described, each moment, each word and nuance, matched what the hearing had already been told by Delgado. McKnight did his best, jumping up whenever he could to raise objections. Some were sustained but the young soldier's testimony was relentless and damning and his every answer felt like another shovel-load of earth on Danny's coffin. Worse still, in this shoveled earth were seeds of doubt that, try as he might, Tom found hard to dismiss. Maybe Danny had said those things after all. Maybe he had been blinded by rage and desire for revenge.
Tom stared at the back of his son's head, wondering and hating himself for doing so, his heart growing ever more leaden. By the time Richards had finished, you could almost see the cloud hanging over the defending side of the courtroom. Kelly and Gina sat in silence, staring at the floor.
In his cross-examination, McKnight probed and nagged and tried to find some loose thread to tug on, but with little success. He put to Harker the possibility that he had misheard what Danny said, that there had been too much noise and confusion for him to be so adamant, that he himself had been too agitated and fearful to have such clear recollections. But Harker didn't balk or rise to any bait or taunt, just repeated what he had said, calm and dogged and without a single stumble.
Then they moved on to what happened afterward. It had taken nearly forty-eight hours before the NCIS investigators had first interviewed Harker, and McKnight asked him if, during that time or at any later date, he had conferred with Sergeant Delgado. Harker said no. Apart from what had been said in Danny's presence in the immediate aftermath in the courtyard, he and the sergeant hadn't spoken.
"I was told not to, sir. It was an order, so I obeyed it."
McKnight went to the table and was handed a document by his assistant. He walked slowly back to the stand.
"In your initial statement, Private Harker, you were a lot less specific about what Lance Corporal Bedford said or was shouting before you both opened fire. Why was that?"
"I didn't want to land him in trouble, sir."
"You didn't want to land him in trouble."
"No, sir."
"You said in your statement—and I quote—there was too much noise. Everybody was hollering and screaming. Is that right?"
"There was a lot of hollering, sir, but he was hollering louder and I did hear."
"So in your first statement, you were lying."
"No, sir. I was trying to protect a fellow soldier."
"By not telling the truth."
"By not telling the whole truth, yes, sir."
"So we're not to believe what you said initially but we are to believe what you said later, when the murder charge against you just happened to be dropped—"
Richards was on his feet at once.
"Objection!"
"Sustained."
McKnight rephrased and went on in the same vein. But it was clear, even to Tom, that he wasn't going to get a lot further. Harker was presenting himself as an honorable man forced to choose between protecting a colleague and telling the whole truth. Again and again, without so much as a blink, he denied that he had at any time conferred or conspired with Sergeant Delgado to bring their stories into line. And, at last, the quibbling, sometimes almost hectoring tone of the interrogation seemed to irritate Colonel Scrase. Several times he intervened to ask McKnight where he was going with a particular line of questioning, urging him to move on. Harker left the stand not only unscathed, but with an air of brave credibility that even Tom found hard to doubt.
The mood over dinner that evening at Marco's, the little Italian restaurant two blocks along the street from their motel, was close to somber. It was just the family, the five of them, Dutch and Gina, Danny and Kelly, and Tom. Nobody talked about the hearing but it had a place of its own at the head of the table.
Dutch did his best to lighten things up with a story about a golfing buddy called Doug who had flown out to Bangkok for a thousand-dollar health screening.
"They send these little cameras inside you," he said. "One down your throat and the other up the, you know, the Khyber Pass."
"Dutch, please," said Gina. "We're trying to eat here."
"It's okay, I'll spare you the detail."
"Let's hope."
Kelly asked what the Khyber Pass was and Dutch said it was an English term and invited Tom to explain.
"I believe it's cockney rhyming slang for your backside."
"Anyhow," Dutch went on. "They film your insides and give you the DVD so you can watch it at home afterward. So Doug makes me sit down and watch the darned thing. I tell you, it was amazing. Better than any sci-fi movie you ever saw. Journey to the center of your bowels—"
"Dutch, that's enough already."
"And the climax is when one of the cameras is traveling along this winding, gooey pink tunnel and comes around the corner and bang! It's face-to-face with the other one."
Everybody laughed, even Danny. When they came out of the restaurant the sky was a glowing salmon pink, crisscrossed with vapor trails, and the air was balmy and laced with the scent of jasmine planted along the sidewalk. Dutch walked ahead with his arm around Kelly. Tom and Danny walked either side of Gina and she tucked her arms into theirs and pulled them close and none of them spoke. And Tom wondered how life could manage so to conspire that in adversity, among all their confounding woes, this little band of beings should somehow have found a kind of peace. Perhaps there was some innate and inexorable code of forgiveness that determined such things.
These sentimental musings were soon dispelled however when they gathered in Tom's room, some twenty minutes later, to watch the TV news. It wasn't that the report of the hearing was biased. What it said was simply an accurate reflection of the day's events in the courtroom. Eldon Harker's calm and cogent evidence spoke for itself. The reporter described McKnight's cross-examination as relentlessly aggressive. As the five of them stood silently watching, Tom knew they were all thinking the same thing: that this day had clinched the prosecution's case.
Perhaps because the producers felt the piece needed some sort of balance, it ended with a clip of the interview they had shot the previous week with Troop—or, as the local NBC news billed him, bestselling novelist Truscott Hooper, acclaimed for his military thrillers. Brian McKnight had been keen on getting some positive publicity and they had all been waiting for it to be shown. Karen O'Keefe had done a much longer interview with Troop—and one with Danny—for her Walking Wounded film. And now here he was, dear old Troop, flatteringly lit (he would have made sure of that), sitting like a four-star general behind his gleaming desk.
"Daniel Bedford is a fine young man," he said. "The very best. The kind of young man this country of ours needs and depends on. War's a dirty and confusing business and when armchair snipers pretend otherwise, it does no service to any of us. To turn on our heroes when the going gets rough, to treat them like common criminals, is something we should be ashamed of."
"What does he know?" Danny said. "I've never even met the guy."
"Honey, he's only trying to help," Kelly said.
Danny and Kelly and Gina said goodnight and went off to their rooms but Dutch asked if he could stay for a moment to catch the ball game results and Tom said of course he could. It was the first time the two of them had ever been alone together and it felt more than a little odd.
"Can I get you a drink?" Tom asked. "There's coffee or soda."
Dutch laughed. "No, Tom, thanks. I'm good. Listen, I only stayed because I wanted to say thank you."
Tom frowned.
"For what?"
"For making things so easy—well, that's not the right word. It's not easy for anyone. I mean for being so supportive and all. I can't tell you how much it means to Danny and to Gina. And to me too."
"You guys have done a lot more than me."
"No. I know how hard it must have been on you all these years. You and me, well, I guess we're from different tribes, as you might say. I know you weren't keen on Danny enlisting and how that came between you. It was his decision but I can't pretend that I didn't have some influence on him. Now, of course, I feel what's happened is partly my fault."
Tom didn't know what to say.
"Anyhow. I just wanted to thank you and to tell you that, whatever happened between you and Danny, the boy never stopped loving you."
Tom smiled and nodded and, a little clumsily, reached out and patted the guy on the shoulder.
"Thanks, Dutch."
For a moment neither of them spoke and the room was filled with the lilt and blabber of the TV sport report. Tom cleared his throat.
"So, how do you think it's going?"
Dutch sighed and wearily shook his head.
"After today? Not good. But tomorrow we've got Ricky on the stand and that won't do us any harm."
Tomorrow was the day McKnight would start presenting the case for the defense. Ricky Peters, paralyzed from the waist down, would be wheeled into court to testify. He was their star witness, upon whom everyone's hopes were pinned.
The two men chatted for a while then Dutch said he'd better be going. They shook hands at the door and said goodnight and Dutch went off along the corridor. Tom got undressed and brushed his teeth in the cramped little bathroom, half listening to the TV and trying not to think of what Dutch might be doing now. Climbing into bed with Gina. Lying there with her. The consoling warmth of her body. He hadn't longed for her in such a way for years.
The following day McKnight set to work with a roll call of witnesses who all swore what a great guy and a fine, brave soldier Danny was. Ricky Peters, soft-spoken and frail as a bird with a broken wing, sat hunched in his wheelchair and told the hushed court of two occasions on which his friend had saved his life. He recalled how Danny had held him and comforted him after the bomb exploded and how Marty Delgado's behavior toward the two of them had changed after the incident in the latrines. It was a powerful and moving performance and when they adjourned for lunch, Tom felt more optimistic than he had all week. As they walked to the conference room, he fell into step beside McKnight.
"That seemed to go down pretty well," he said.
"Who with?"
"Well, everyone."
"Tom, you've got to understand what's going on here. Ricky did as good a job as anyone could've hoped. If there were a jury, he'd have had them in tears. But there is no jury. Just one man. Scrase is the only guy who matters and he's seen and heard that kind of stuff a hundred times. I don't mean he doesn't care. I'm sure he does. But it's facts he's after, not emotion. Ricky wasn't there that night in the courtyard and didn't see what happened. As far as Scrase is concerned, that's all that counts."
"You think he'll recommend a court-martial?"
"Right now, short of a miracle, I'd say that's all he can do."