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"They reported you?"
"No. I felt guilty about it afterwards. Talked it over with a chaplain. He turned me in. Guess I don't blame him. There's got to be a difference between us and them, or what's the point? I'm almost so I want their brand of hemp medicine." He made a hanging motion at his neck with his finger, both gruesome and funny at the same time.
Roderick's words stayed with him for hours. Roderick deserved his fate-if the men saw their officers behaving that way, they'd degenerate into a sexually charged mob the next time . . . but wait. How different were their crimes, really-save that Valentine amassed a higher body count? Eight men had died in horrible pain.
In the afternoon he met with Captain Luecke in a little, white-painted room with a big table. She looked a little haggard.
"I was handling Farland's case as well. I thought it was just going to be plea negotiations. I heard something about Sime making you an offer."
"What happened to Thrush?"
"He moved onto death row. They hung him at midnight last night. In front of the witnesses." She took a long drag at her cigarette, and the shaking in her fingers stilled for a moment as the nicotine hit her bloodstream. "Farland will go tomorrow night. Our guests can't afford to stay long. Do Sime's deal."
"Or end up like Thrush and Farland?"
"Maybe they're having you go last for a reason. After a few hangings, the bastards might be willing to see a little mercy."
"'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,'" Valentine quoted.
"This last week has been strictly Old Testament, Valentine. Like Leviticus."
"How did your checking on Martinez go?"
"It was quite revealing. I'm glad I wasn't at that trial. Were there really bullets flying in through the windows?"
"The prosecuting officer almost got raped."
Luecke sent a funnel of smoke at the ceiling lights. "There were times I thought a lynch mob coming for some overeager scalp-taker wouldn't be altogether a bad thing. But to see it in real life-"
"It worked out in the end. My defense?"
"You don't have one. Every witness I wanted to call met with the same response from the judge: Major Valentine is on trial, not General Martinez. Denied. Valentine, honestly, take Sime's deal. If anyone has the pull to get you off the hook, it's him."
"Pull? What kind of justice system is this?" Valentine asked.
Luecke lit another cigarette from the butt of her first as she took a last drag. "A kind I've never seen before. Take Sime's deal."
"If I don't?"
"I'll do my best. I have a feeling it won't be good enough."
"Can you get me a visitor? There's-"
"Sorry, no. Maybe after sentencing."
"That'll do me so much good," Valentine said.
"You're frustrated. I understand. Go back to your room and think it over. Sime's offer is our only hope."
"Our? You're not going to be standing in the Garage with a rope around your neck by the end of the week."
She crushed her cigarette. "You think I don't feel for the people I defend? It's a rotten world. A lot of the men who wind up here just got an extra spoonful of rottenness. Maybe they were born with it, or maybe it got fed to them in little mouthfuls over their lives. In either case, I do what I can for them."
Valentine put his head in his hands. Keep it together, Ghost. "I'm sorry. You've done more for me than I should expect, considering."
"If it makes you feel any better, Val, I did turn up one thing. I couldn't see much of it, but Southern Command did investigate Martinez. There's some kind of intelligence file that I saw cross-referenced in the docs. Whatever they were looking into came up negative, so the file got sealed. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
"All I know is he shot two of my complement. And that he kept a few thousand men drunk and hiding in the hills when Southern Command needed them."
