Mathers leaned her head to one side, staring at him in what he took to be complete shock. “You’re just giving up?”
“Oh, now, I didn’t say that. I said I’m fully aware that I’m going to be convicted. What I’m hoping is that you’ll do exactly what I mentioned earlier, and get hold of my psychological profile. About the only chance I’ve got to avoid the hangman’s noose is for you to get me declared either insane or incompetent. Let’s face it, as crazy as I am, that shouldn’t be too difficult. With any luck, you’ll be done with me in a couple of weeks. So, go on, find the case you can win and put all your effort into that one. Just do what you can to keep me alive, would you?”
The lieutenant gathered up everything she had to take with her, and nodded once. “Sergeant, I really do wish that I could do more. The trouble is that we’ve got absolutely zero forensic evidence, no physical evidence, and no one to speak up and confirm your story. Maybe, given your psychological history, we can get a directed verdict of not guilty by reason of mental insufficiency. If the members of the court could be convinced that you can’t understand the difference between right and wrong, then maybe we can go for commitment to a mental facility, and get you some real help. If that happens, you might even get your life back, someday.”
Noah shrugged. “Possible,” he said. “More likely, we’ll get a life sentence, but then I might be able to win transfer to a place like that on appeal. From what I’ve found in my reading, it’s a whole lot easier to get a lenient verdict in an appeal forum than it is in a general court-martial.”
Mathers narrowed her eyes and looked at him. “That’s true,” she said. “It might even be possible to get an appellate panel to overturn your conviction, which would take a whole lot less evidence than we have to come up with to walk out of this one unscathed. Do you think there’s any possibility that one of your friends might speak up for you in an appeal?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he said. “Hansen might, if he were given immunity. He’s a real religious kid, and I bet that the only thing keeping his mouth shut now is outright fear of what the others would do to him. Is there any chance an appeal would bring charges back against the rest of them?”
Mathers shrugged. “It’s possible, but not likely,” she said. “It would be entirely up to the appellate judge as to whether he would send the original charges back for review. To be honest, I doubt he would do so, simply because, A: judges don’t like to overrule each other, and B: the original victims in this case were those girls, and a military court isn’t likely to consider them important enough to take any action about. Besides, they never found the bodies. I mean, you’re only charged with the murders of your own men; there’s no mention of any crime against Iraqi civilian girls.”
Noah shook his head and looked at the tabletop. “And this country talks about human rights all the time, how these Muslim countries mistreat their people so badly. Welcome to American hypocrisy—Ameri-pocrisy. There, I’ve coined a whole new word, and it means that America gets to tell everybody else how to live, as long as they don’t expect us to live up to our own standards.” He raised his head and looked Lieutenant Mathers in the eye once again. “According to this booklet they gave me, you’ll probably be my lawyer for this whole thing, right?”
She grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, unless you get mad and fire me, or this gets stalled for years and I discharge out before we go to trial. Why?”
“Just hoping we can pull off this appeal gimmick,” he said. “If we do, and I get out one day, then maybe I can write a book about this, or something. I didn’t know those girls at all, but I have to think that they deserve to have the truth told about what happened to them.”
Mathers stood there and looked at him for a long moment. “I’ll do my best,” she said, and then she walked out the door of the interview room. Noah sat there for another two minutes, before one of the guards on duty came to take him back to his cell.
TWO
Mathers was frustrated. Over the past week, she had filed all the necessary paperwork that should have allowed her to have access to Foster’s psych files, but no matter what she tried, it seemed like she was being blocked at every turn. After the last communication informing her that she would not receive the access she was requesting, she began to feel like there was something going on, something she couldn’t see.
Being with the JAG office at Victory Base Complex at Baghdad meant that Mathers was one of dozens of military lawyers who assisted service members with everything from minor issues involving disputes with local landlords all the way up to major criminal charges, such as she was currently handling for Sergeant Foster. She got up and went to knock on the door of her commander’s office.