“Did you remove the belt?”

“Never touched the damned thing.”

“Do you know who did?”

“Nah. Never saw anyone else take it off, neither.”

“So you don’t know who did remove it?”

Bales was asking all the right questions. Absent autopsy results, he had to assume the belt was the murder weapon. And if he could find out whose belt it was, he might have his killer.

“Ain’t got a clue,” Moran announced.

“Did you wake the others up?”

“Yeah.”

“And where were they sleeping?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?” Bales asked, and I could only imagine the incredulous expression on his face. Of course, he still had no notion at that point exactly how critically important this question would later prove to be.

“That’s what I told you. Like I said, I was still woozy, and the sight of that gook’s corpse left me not thinking too straight.”

I guess because Bales was not yet aware of the nature of the relationships among the four men, he took this response in stride and did not press further.

“So did you hear any sounds that night? Maybe a struggle? Maybe an argument?”

“Nope. A quart of Jack’s better than a sleeping pill. Shit, somebody could’ve shot the kid, instead of strangled him. I wouldn’t of heard it. I ain’t gotta clue what happened to that gook kid. I swear.”

“I, uh, I have only one other question,” Bales said. “Did you invite Private Jackson to the party?”

“Yeah.”

“Why? Isn’t it unusual for a first sergeant to invite a private to a party at an officer’s quarters? Especially when there’s going to be drinking?”

“Hey, Jackson’s my company clerk. A good kid, too. He don’t have many friends, though, and I thought I’d give him a chance to get out of the barracks. I felt kind of sorry for him. It was probably bad judgment, but hey, ain’t no crime in it, is there?”

“No, I suppose not,” Bales replied, underscoring exactly how naive he was at that stage of the game.

I put the transcript back in the folder and thought about it. At this stage, Moran was obviously trying to cover Whitehall’s ass. He knew whose belt was around Lee’s neck, he probably knew who removed it, and he damn well knew who was sleeping in whose beds. He lied, though.

Like Whitehall, he had to know the semen inside Lee’s body would eventually be discovered. So why had he lied to Bales? And what made him stop lying later and turn evidence against Whitehall?

This was all the more perplexing because Whitehall and Moran had stupidly put themselves inside a tightly restricted box. There were no signs of a break-in at the apartment. Whitehall had foolishly admitted he’d made sure the door was locked before they went off to sleep. He’d also admitted that only he and the management company that ran the complex had keys. Not very bright, if you think about it. Why hadn’t Whitehall claimed he’d left the door unlocked? And Moran could’ve reinforced that by saying, yeah, sure he remembered hearing the sounds of a door opening and closing in the middle of the night, but thought it was only Jackson or Whitehall or Lee going to the bathroom. At least that would’ve opened up the possibility that an uninvited guest had slipped in and strangled Lee.

Katherine was going to have a bitch of a time trying to prove Whitehall was framed. The annoying fool had narrowed the spotlight to only himself and two other men, both of whom had already turned state’s evidence. That was yet another flaw in the frame defense. Court-martial boards turn skeptical when an accused man claims he was framed by the very witnesses who are testifying against him.

I reached into the box again and pulled out a slip of paper. This was a photocopy of a transferal document for Lee No Tae’s corpse from the Itaewon Hospital to the Eighteenth Military Evacuation Hospital in Yongsan Garrison. I checked the name of the American officer who signed the receipt. I called the Evacuation Hospital.

“Captain Wilson Bridges please,” I said to the cheery receptionist who answered.

“Just a moment, please.”

An even cheerier voice finally said, “Doc Bridges here.”

“Captain Bridges, this is Major Sean Drummond. I’m on the defense team for Captain Whitehall.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You still got Lee No Tae’s corpse in your facility?”

“We do indeed,” he happily replied. “On ice in the basement.”

“Would it be convenient for me to come over and view the corpse? Like right away?”

“For me, sure. I guess he won’t have any problem with it, either.”

He chuckled; I didn’t. As morgue humor goes, that was one of the oldest and rottenest jokes there is.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. And could you please ask your experts on autopsies to be on hand?”

“You just did.”

“You a pathologist?” I asked hopefully.

“A surgeon, actually. But we’re only a small evac outfit, so everybody’s got to carry a few extra loads.”

“You must’ve done well in pathology at med school?”

“Nah. Nearly flunked it, but I never had a corpse complain.”

That was the second badly overused morgue joke in only seconds. Originality did not seem to be the man’s strong suit.

CHAPTER 10

The Evac Hospital was a sprawling, one-floored building that reeked of antiseptic and excessive cleanliness. I asked the receptionist where to find Captain Wilson Bridges and she spat out some quick-fire instructions that sounded like “Take six right turns, then three or four lefts, then two rights, then walk down a long hallway.” It was a small place, so I figured no problem, and set off. Twenty minutes later I found it.

Bridges’s office turned out to be a tiny hovel all the way at the back of the building, like maybe they were trying to hide him back there, out of sight of the observant public. I knocked on the door, it opened, and I immediately saw why.

Wilson Bridges was probably the sorriest excuse for an Army officer I ever saw. His white doctor’s coat was wrinkled, stained, and splotched with things I didn’t even want to imagine. His hair was way too long and wildly disarrayed, almost spiky. There were tiny hair sprouts on his face where his razor had missed, and the combat boots that protruded from the bottom of his medical robe were gray and cracked, so starved were they for polish.

Ever the optimist, however, I perceived these blemishes as fairly hopeful signs. A little-known rule of thumb about Army docs is to never, ever go near the ones with crew cuts, starched BDUs, mirrorlike shoes, and the upright bearing of a drill sergeant. Odds are they want to be Army officers more than they want to be doctors. It’s the guys who look like they just got yanked out of the dryer you want operating on you. Chances are, their passion is for medicine, not marching and saluting. On the other hand, that theory sometimes turns out to be horribly wrong. Sometimes the doctor looks like a careless, disgusting slob because he really is. He’s the guy who’ll end up tying your aorta to your kneecaps.

He stuck out his hand. “Wilson Bridges. MD extraordinaire.”

“I know,” I said. “We just spoke on the phone, remember?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, grinning. “Sorry. It’s just that you don’t look like a lawyer.”

“Really,” I asked. “And what do lawyers look like?”

“Smart.”

I could’ve retorted that he looked more like a field sanitation worker than a doctor, but why waste an insult?

“Listen, Doc, I hate to rush things, but I’m in a hurry. Where’s the corpse?”

He waved a hand for me to follow, then led me to the absolute rear of the hospital and down some stairs that went into the dimly lit basement.

“We’ve only got a tiny storage facility,” he explained. “And be sure you make your reservation well in advance, because there’s only four drawers. Ordinarily, as soon as they expire, we stick ’em on the next plane going stateside.”