When Lieutenant Bonham had finished his appeal to the court, the general in charge of the tribunal ordered the room to be cleared so that the judges could deliberate, and Slater was taken back to a holding cell, where he was given a Coke, a bag of chips, and an egg salad sandwich wrapped in plastic.
“You hungry?” he said, sliding the sandwich toward his lawyer.
“Yes, but not that hungry.”
“What do you think our chances are?” he said, popping open the Coke.
“Guilty on all counts—that goes without saying.”
Slater knew he was right, but it still wasn’t exactly pleasant to hear.
“But there’s a lot of mitigating factors in your favor, so the sentencing could be light. And I think Colonel Keener has a certain reputation as a prick. That could help, too.” Gesturing at the bag of chips, Bonham said, “But if you’re not going to eat those …”
“Help yourself.”
Slater pushed his chair back and stared out the narrow window placed high in the wall and covered with chicken wire. It was about a foot and a half square. Nothing bigger than a beagle could have ever made it through.
Bonham checked his BlackBerry for messages, sent a few texts, then put it away. He polished off the potato chips and brushed his fingers clean with a hankie.
“There’s no reason to stick around in here on my account,” Slater said.
The lieutenant said, “Not much I can do anywhere else.”
“How long do you think it’ll be?”
“No telling.” Bonham drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “But maybe I could try to pry some news out of the bailiff.”
“You do that,” Slater said. But before the young lawyer closed the door behind him, he added, “You did a good job.”
Unexpectedly, Bonham glowed. “You think so, Major?”
“Yeah,” Slater said. “You just had a lousy case.”
Alone in the cell, Slater sipped the Coke and waited. A couple of rooms away, his fate was being decided by five judges who’d never even laid eyes on him before. It was a hard thought to hold in his head—that in a matter of minutes, maybe hours, he would learn, from the lips of a retired general, what the dire consequences of his actions might be. Reflecting on it all now, a month later and a world away, Slater couldn’t fault himself for what he did in trying to save the girl’s life. What else could he have done and still been able to face himself in the mirror? As for the punch … well, that was ill-advised, to say the least. And it wasn’t the first time his temper had gotten him into trouble. But whenever he remembered the look on the colonel’s face, the smug tone in which he’d announced the girl’s death … well, his fist went right back into a ball and he wanted to slug him again. Only this time he wanted to stay completely awake and aware the whole time.
The question was, would he still feel that way after serving five years in a military prison?
There was no clock in the holding cell. There was no phone, or TV, or magazine rack. The walls were cinder block, the door was steel. There was nothing for a prisoner to look at, nothing to do, except sit there and contemplate his destiny, which was something Slater had been doing everything he could to avoid.
He slumped forward and put his head down on the table—the wood was worn and scarred and the smell reminded him of his grammar-school classrooms—and closed his eyes. At night he could never sleep, but during the day his weariness often overwhelmed him. A few nights before, he had called his ex-wife, Martha, in Silver Spring. She hadn’t sounded all that happy to hear from him—and that was before he told her why he was stateside again. Once he had, he could hear her sigh, mostly in sympathy, but there was also a note of relief in it—relief that she had severed their relationship when she had, and that this latest act of self-immolation was not her problem anymore.
“Where are they keeping you?” she asked, and he had explained that he was free on his own recognizance until the trial began—though without a passport, he wasn’t going to go very far.
“Do you want me to come and see you?” she said. “Would that help?”
But he really didn’t see how it would. He had only called to let her know what was up, in case she ever got curious about his whereabouts … or the Army notified her that her portion of his Army pension would be severely diminished.
Not that she needed the money.