The General looked up at the DA. “I take a lot of responsibility for that. Vanessa and I lived in California but I worked in Washington, D.C.”
“You were in charge of the Agency for Intelligence Data Coordination?”
“Yes. I should have been home more, but I couldn’t be, especially after Vietnam started. The workload was punishing.”
“Was there a specific event that further affected the relationship between you and Miss Kohler?”
Wingate nodded. “In 1985, Vanessa saw Carl Rice murder Eric Glass. It was a terrible murder-very gruesome. She had a breakdown and had to be hospitalized. I checked her into an exclusive private sanatorium where she would get the best care possible. She fought her hospitalization. She insisted that locking her away was part of some plot against her.”
Wingate paused and took a sip of water before continuing.
“Putting Vanessa in a mental hospital was very painful for me, Mr. Kirkpatrick, but sending her to Serenity Manor was absolutely essential for her mental health.” The General looked down. “After I had her committed, she refused to speak to me.”
“How long have you known Carl Rice?”
“I believe we first met at my home in California in 1969. It was the beginning of Vanessa’s senior year in high school. Carl was a classmate.”
“What was your initial impression of Mr. Rice?”
“I liked him. He was bright, articulate, and a serious student and athlete.”
“What was Mr. Rice’s sport?”
“Karate. He’d been studying since he was young and he was very good, a black belt.”
“You know that Mr. Rice has accused you of being the head of a secret army unit that recruited him during the Vietnam War.”
“Yes.”
“Are you aware that he alleges that this army unit committed illegal acts, including murder, at your command?”
“Yes.”
“Are you also aware that Mr. Rice has testified that you ordered him to torture Congressman Eric Glass to death in order to retrieve documents which your daughter took from your safe in California? These documents were supposed to prove the existence of this secret army.”
“I’ve heard about the testimony.”
“Did you order Carl Rice to kill the congressman?”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Did this secret army unit ever exist?”
“No. The Agency for Intelligence Data Coordination is an intelligence-gathering organization that works with data supplied by other intelligence agencies, like the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The agency’s charter does not permit it to have agents of its own.”
“What about these records that your daughter claims she took from your safe that prove the existence of this secret army-the records Mr. Rice said he took from Congressman Glass after torturing him? What do you have to say about them?”
“Mr. Kirkpatrick, those documents are a figment of my daughter’s and Mr. Rice’s imaginations. They were never in my safe, because they never existed.”
“Do you know why Mr. Rice made up this story about the secret army?”
General Wingate hesitated. “I have a theory,” he said at last.
Judge Velasco looked at Ami because he expected an objection. When she didn’t make one, he chalked it up to her inexperience.
“Please tell it to the court.”
“I’m not particularly proud of what I’m about to say. At the time I believed that I was doing what was best for all concerned.”
Wingate paused to collect himself. Ami thought that he looked like a man who was being forced to perform a necessary, but regrettable, duty. From the silence in the courtroom, it was obvious that he had captivated the spectators and the judge.
“As I’ve said, Mr. Rice was an extremely bright young man who made an excellent first impression. Unlike most of the children at St. Martin’s Prep, Carl was on scholarship, and I admired his grit. I came from a poor family and was also a scholarship boy. I knew how hard it was for someone who is poor to be around other children who have everything. It was only later that I discovered that he was deeply confused, especially about his relationship with me.
“Mr. Rice’s father deserted his family when Carl was very young, and his mother raised him. There was no significant father figure in his home while he was growing up. It soon became apparent to me that he envied Vanessa her wealth and wished that he could be part of our family. He began relating to me as if he were my son. I didn’t realize that this was happening at the time, or I would have distanced myself from Carl.”
“Did a particular incident make you realize that there was a problem?”
“Yes. In those days I knew a man who organized fights between combatants from different martial arts disciplines: boxers would go up against wrestlers, judo players would fight Thai kickboxers. I took Carl to one of these matches because he was a serious student of karate.
“One of the fighters was a black belt named Torrance who ran a dojo and was a local karate champion. After he won, Carl and I discussed the fight and I asked him how he thought he would do if he went up against Torrance. It was a casual conversation, and I didn’t think anything of it until several weeks later when I received an envelope in the mail. There was no name on it and no return address. There was no letter inside either, only a newspaper clipping about Torrance. Someone had broken into his karate studio and beaten him almost to death. I was certain that Carl was the assailant and had sent me the clipping to impress me. It didn’t. I felt terrible that I might have inadvertently caused Carl to attack Torrance, and I was deeply concerned that someone this unbalanced was close to my daughter. But there was no way I could talk Vanessa into breaking up with Carl. By her senior year in high school our relationship was very strained. If I’d even suggested that she stop seeing Carl, she would have intensified the relationship just to spite me.”
“What did you do?” Brendan asked.
“I thought about calling the police, but I had no proof that Carl was involved. Besides, he had a scholarship to an Ivy League school by this time and I knew that an arrest would ruin his chances of going to college. And, as I’ve said, I felt terribly guilty about what had happened. Then fate intervened. Carl received a draft notice, and he came to me for advice.”
“Did you have anything to do with his being drafted?”
“I did not. This is another one of Vanessa’s delusions.”
“Go on.”
“Carl wanted to know if I thought that he should serve or get a student deferment. I should have helped him go to college, but I wanted to get Carl as far from Vanessa as possible, so I persuaded him to go into the army. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of the fact that he saw me as a father figure, but I did it to protect my daughter. I also thought that spending time in the military might help Carl mature.
“When Carl saw Vanessa again in 1985, he knew that she hated me. I think he made up this story about a secret army so she would take him back. He may still have been in love with her.”
“Did you ever meet with Mr. Rice between his senior year in high school and this year when he invaded your home?”
“No, we had nothing to do with each other.”
“You did not have him come to your town house in Virginia soon after his first combat mission so that you could recruit him into this secret army?”
“No. He was never at my town house in Virginia, and, as I’ve testified, there was no secret army.”
“And you did not meet him in a motel in Maryland and order him to torture Congressman Eric Glass to death?”
“Certainly not.”
“Okay, let’s move forward to more recent events. Please tell the judge how the defendant came to be at your home after she helped Mr. Rice break out of the county hospital.”
“You have to remember that Carl had murdered Congressman Glass in 1985, and was also the main suspect in the murder of an army general named Peter Rivera around the same time. Then there were the two men he nearly killed at that Little League game. Needless to say, I was horrified that Vanessa was on the run with someone that dangerous. So I instructed some of my people at Computex…”