now?”
“Back at the provost building catching some cot time. I told him to stay put.”
We had passed rifle ranges one, two, three, and four, all of which lie to the right of the road, huge expanses of flat, open
terrain, backed by a continuous earthen berm. I hadn’t been out here in over twenty years, but I remembered the place.
Colonel Kent continued, “So St. John calls the guardhouse, but Captain Campbell is not there. He asks the sergeant of the
guard to call the guard posts and see if Campbell has come by. The sergeant of the guard calls back a while later and reports
negative. So St. John asks the sergeant of the guard to send a responsible person to headquarters to watch the phones, and
when one of the guards shows up, St. John gets in his POV and heads out. He starts checking the posts in order—NCO Club, Officers’
Club, and so on—but not one of the guards has seen Captain Campbell. So, at about 0400 hours, he goes out toward the last
guard post, which is an ammo storage shed, and on the way, at rifle range six, he sees her jeep… in fact, there it is.”
Up ahead, off to the right on the narrow road, was the humvee, which we old guys still refer to as a jeep, in which, presumably,
Ann Campbell had driven to her rendezvous with death, if you will. Near the humvee was someone’s POV—a red Mustang. I asked
Kent, “Where is the guard post and the guard?”
“The ammo shed is another klick up the road. The guard, a PFC Robbins, heard nothing, but saw headlights.”
“You questioned him?”
“Her. Mary Robbins.” Kent smiled for the first time. “PFC is a gender-neutral term, Paul.”
“Thank you. Where is PFC Robbins now?”
“On a cot in the provost building.”
“Crowded in there. But good thinking.”
Kent stopped the car near the humvee and the red Mustang. It was nearly light now, and I could see the six MPs—four men, two
women—standing at various spots around the area. All of the rifle ranges had open bleacher seats off to the left side of the
road facing the ranges, where the troops received classroom instruction before proceeding to the firing line. In the nearby
bleachers to my left sat a woman in jeans and windbreaker, writing on a pad. Kent and I got out of the car, and he said to
me, “That is Ms. Sunhill. She’s a woman.”
I knew that. I asked Kent, “Why is she here?”
“I called her.”
“Why?”
“She’s a rape counselor.”
“The victim doesn’t need counseling. She’s dead.”
“Yes,” Kent agreed, “but Ms. Sunhill is also a rape investigator.”
“Is that a fact? What is she doing at Hadley?”
“That female nurse, Lieutenant Neely. You know about that?”
“Only what I read in the papers. Could there be a connection between these cases?”
“No. An arrest was made yesterday.”
“What time yesterday?”
“About four P.M. Ms. Sunhill made the arrest and by five P.M. we had a confession.”
I nodded. And at six P.M. Ms. Sunhill was having a drink in the O Club, quietly celebrating her success, and Ann Campbell,
I was about to discover, was alive and having dinner there, and I was at the bar watching Cynthia and trying to get up the
courage to say hello or make a strategic withdrawal.
Kent added, “Sunhill was supposed to go off to another assignment today. But she says she’ll stay for this.”
“How lucky we are.”
“Yes, it’s good to have a woman on these kinds of things. And she’s good. I saw her work.”
“Indeed.” I noticed that the red Mustang, which was probably Cynthia’s car, had Virginia license plates, like my own POV,
suggesting that she was working out of Falls Church, as I was. But fate had not caused our paths to cross at the home office
but had put us here under these circumstances. It was inevitable, anyway.
I looked out over the rifle range, on which sat a morning mist. In front of the berm stood pop-up targets, at different ranges,
dozens of nasty-looking