I put that one in a pile all by itself. The dessert pile.
Carol got on her knees on the floor beside me. We started going through our stacks. I asked her to read the crime, then what the witnesses said, and what evidence was collected. We eliminated six files right way, because the crime was too insignificant, or because the evidence was so flimsy the case probably fell apart under its own weight. Somebody else could double-check later to see if we underestimated or overlooked anything.
Then we hit the first one that looked suspicious; then after two more eliminations, another. When we were done we had nine that in some way smelled.
I had saved the best for last, of course. I handed Carol Mack Janson’s folder and asked her to read me the pertinent details.
She put a finger to her lips. “Let’s see. Arrested and detained on April 19, 1999, for… Oh my God, you’re not going to believe this.”
“Tell me,” I nearly yelled.
“Pedophilia.”
She flipped through several more pages, reading the details. Then she said, “Apparently there’s an American housing area that’s off base on the outskirts of Itaewon?”
“That’s right. Two big apartment buildings. One for junior officers and one for senior enlisted.”
“There were several reports of American children being fondled by a large Caucasian male. The reports went to the Itaewon station because the children were lured outside the grounds of the housing area before they were molested. In fact, it was Michael Bales who reported this to Choi and handled the American side of the investigation.”
“Then there should’ve been a report in Bales’s file.”
Carol still had her perky little nose tucked inside Choi’s file. “The Itaewon station put up a stakeout around the housing area at the request of American authorities. On April 19, a police officer named Pang saw a large American male wearing jeans and a sweatshirt leading a small boy out of the housing area. He led the child behind an office building and into a vacant courtyard. When Pang moved in, the man had his trousers down and was in the process of taking down the little boy’s underpants.”
I said, “Yuck, I hate child molesters.”
“Don’t we all. Anyway, the American was arrested and brought to the Itaewon precinct house. Choi took a statement from the arresting officer and handled the booking. He called in Bales, and they conducted a joint interrogation.”
“Turn to the interrogation sheet and tell me what it says.”
She flipped through the pages for a moment, then looked up. “There’s no interrogation sheet.”
“Figures. The last page, the disposition, what’s it say?”
She turned to the last page. “Closed due to lack of evidence.”
“Lack of evidence my ass. The son of a bitch had his pants down.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah, I know him. Janson is Spears’s legal adviser. He’s a lawyer. He’s also the guy overseeing the disposition of the Whitehall case. He made sure it was put on a fast track and expeditiously handled. He worked the deal to get Whitehall transferred to the Korean prison. He picked the judge. He picked the prosecuting attorney. He’s probably the guy who selected the potential members of the court-martial board.”
Carol dropped the file. “Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. The son of a bitch has been putting loads in the dice.”
CHAPTER 40
It made no sense to sleep, so we kept working. Carol wrote down English summaries of every relevant point contained in the nine reports we’d culled out. I read through her notes and tacked on recommendations on how to further winnow down the pack.
All nine remaining files appeared in some way suspicious, but three others stuck out like outrageously rotten thumbs. For one thing, like Janson’s, they contained no witness statements.
One concerned an Army major in the intelligence section whose Korean wife was caught running a blackmarket ring. When she was arrested, she was driving a van loaded with over a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of American cosmetics. Korean women are nuts about foreign cosmetics, which have ridiculously heavy duties tacked on by customs in Korea’s staunchly protected economy. As blackmarket goods go, they’re hot sellers. Given that she was caught red-handed driving a truck filled with contraband, it seemed impossible the charges were dropped.
A second case involved an Air Force lieutenant colonel in the strategic plans shop who was arrested on charges of raping a fourteen-year-old Korean girl. You get an instinct for these things, and something smelled wrong. The girl’s photo was in the packet; she didn’t look fourteen. Not to me. But maybe she was just physically precocious. Another thing, though, there was a raw hardness to her face. It was like that hackneyed look an experienced streetwalker acquires after her third or fourth hundredth john. The American officer swore she was a whore, that he’d paid her, while she claimed he’d yanked her into an alleyway and forced himself on her. No medical exam was performed. The girl claimed she had five witnesses, but none of them were ever interviewed. There was no way to tell on such thin evidence, but it smelled like a setup.
The third case involved the Navy captain who was in charge of protocol at the headquarters. Protocol is the office that plans for and oversees all important visitors, making sure they have hotel rooms, cars and drivers, experienced guides, and security if necessary. It even puts together their schedules. In this case, the captain was arrested for a hit-and-run that resulted in a death. He was investigated for DUI and manslaughter, specifically for running over a twenty-year-old pregnant Korean girl, who survived but lost her baby. He’d attempted to flee but was forced to stop by a crowd of irate Koreans who witnessed the accident. Case closed; no grounds for prosecution.
By four-thirty, Carol was napping on the bed, and I decided to slip into the bathroom and take a shower. My body stank and I needed to clean and re-dress some of my stitched-up cuts.
When I came out, Carol was hanging up the phone.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Your co-counsel, Miss Carlson.”
“What did she want?”
“She didn’t say. She hung up.”
This didn’t sound good. “How come?”
“I don’t think she was expecting a woman. I told her you were in the shower.”
I had bigger fish to fry at the moment, so I merely grunted my acknowledgment, then asked Carol to call whomever to pick up these files.
We ordered a room service breakfast – in my case a greasy, cheesy omelet and another pot of coffee; in hers, a fruit bowl and two more Evians. Our eating habits, among many other things, implied we were not a compatible couple.
Then we straightened up the room and put all the files back in the boxes, excepting of course the nine we’d earmarked as suspicious. The food came. We dug in.
While we ate, I asked, “How come you get so coy and withdrawn around Korean men?”
She pondered that a moment, like it was some unconscious thing. “My father’s a very traditional Korean man. He loves America, but he stays with his Korean customs. I suppose I picked it up from him.”
“What? So every Korean male reminds you of your father?”
She chuckled. “I hope not. It makes Korean men more comfortable. Most American women get under their skin. They consider them bossy and pushy, rude even. They’re especially peeved when the woman is racially Korean.”
“Hah! And I thought you were liberated.”
“Misjudgments abound. I once thought you were a brash, sloppy, obnoxious bore.”
“Yeah?”
She looked around. “Your room’s actually fairly tidy. How could I have thought you were a slob?”
I stabbed and shoveled another slice of omelet between my lips. “New subject. Something I’ve been wondering. Why’d you bug my phone and hotel room?”