They already questioned the other men who were a part of the incident, most recently Corporal Louboutin. Dillard Louboutin stood at attention the entire time and refused to comment on any element of his original statement other than to affirm the words contained within it. If it hadn’t been obvious from the behavior of the other four men they’d already spoken to, Dill’s attitude drove home the point: they all thought the army was looking for someone to blame for Hank Vogel’s death, and Ed was the man with the power to make that accusation.
The men were closing rank and backing each other up. Usually, with something like this, at least one person would start in with dark hints that maybe someone did something they weren’t supposed to, but that hadn’t happened. It spoke to the six men having a strong leader at their center. Ed was pretty sure he was looking at that leader.
“I’ve read the reports, yes,” Ed said. “Can I walk through your statement with you?”
“You can do whatever you want to, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me sir, I’m not an officer. I’m not even army.”
“My mother raised me to be polite to my elders regardless, sir.”
Ed caught Morris stifle a laugh of his own.
“Son, you can relax,” the general said.
“Yes sir, thank you sir,” Cornell said, visibly not relaxing.
Ed sighed.
“According to… well, everyone, Corporal Vogel was sleep-walking,” Ed said. “Had he ever done that before?”
“Not that I’m aware of, sir.”
“You knew Vogel for some time, didn’t you?”
“Knew of him, sir. We were neither friends nor foes. It’s a large base. I knew him by sight.”
“Did he know Louboutin?”
“You’ll have to ask him that.”
“We did that, yes. As I’m sure you know.”
“Not sure what you mean by that, sir.”
“I only mean Dill Louboutin thinks highly of you and would confide if given the opportunity. So Vogel was sleepwalking, and nobody remembers him ever doing that before. Does anybody else have that problem?”
Corning hesitated. It wasn’t a question he’d been expecting. “In the world, sir?”
“On the base. In the barracks. Has anyone ever sleepwalked before?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. That might be a question best asked of the doctor.”
“You’re right, it is. I’ll take it up with her. What I’m getting at, corporal, is that I’d like to know just how unusual it was, seeing Vogel walk around like that.”
“Not sure what you mean, sir. People get up and down all through the night. We roll three eight-hour shifts, people are always about. I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to tell if one of them was sleepwalking or running to the toilet or heading off to guard duty. I was trying to get some sleep myself.”
“Yet there was something different about Vogel that night.”
The corporal looked as if he was about to deny this, then thought better of it. His testimony and Louboutin’s were united on this point: Dill Louboutin thought something was wrong with Hank Vogel and attempted to engage Vogel because of it. Sam Corning couldn’t very well turn around and claim otherwise.
This was the line of questioning that had been missing from the original testimonies.
The statements from the six men were pretty straightforward. Four only reported on what happened after Vogel began choking Louboutin, because before then those soldiers were uninvolved. The two other statements—from Sam and Dill—were so nearly identical they sounded like they’d been memorized ahead of time…, which was probably exactly what happened.
“Not sure how to answer that, sir,” Sam admitted.
“According to both of you, Corporal Louboutin tried to get Corporal Vogel’s attention by touching Vogel on the shoulder. Vogel responded by attempting to murder Louboutin. What I’d like to know is why Dill wanted to get Vogel’s attention in the first place. As you said, people were up and down all the time, and you wouldn’t necessarily know if one of them was sleepwalking or running to the bathroom or going out to howl at the moon. But Pickles knew something was up with Hank Vogel.”
Corning blinked at Ed’s use of Louboutin’s nickname. It implied a level of familiarity with the soldiers Sam was perhaps not expecting.
“You’d have to ask him,” Corning said.
Ed met Sam’s gaze and considered the best way to proceed.
“General,” Ed said, “this is a little unorthodox, but I wonder if I can speak to Sam alone for a few minutes? I know it’s your office, but—”
“Not at all.” Morris stood, which made Sam stand. “Remain at ease, corporal.”
“Sir.”
“I mean sit down.”
Sam sat.
“Answer the man’s questions,” Morris said.
“Yes sir.”
The general left, and an uncomfortable silence took his place.
“Just you and me, Sam,” Ed said. “There aren’t any listening devices in here, you’re not on camera, and my word holds no particular weight with the brass.”
“Yes sir. But if I can ask… all that being true, what are you doing here? Seems to me you just ordered a general to vacate his own office.”
Ed laughed. “I guess I did, at that. Annie can pick ‘em, can’t she?”
He looked confused, which was perhaps the first non-soldierly, human emotion Ed had seen him register. “How do you mean, sir?”
“I mean, she speaks well of you, and she has high standards.”
“Well I appreciate that, sir.”
“Look, I just want to know what Dill noticed about Vogel. I’m asking you, because I think you noticed too, and because Annie told me I could trust you.”
Annie told him no such thing, but he had a feeling if he asked, she would. He also wished she were there with him, but bringing her to a military interrogation—for, as informal as this was, it was still an interrogation—would have been impossible. Plus, she had enough to deal with.
She’d have gotten an answer by now, though.
“Why are you here, Mr. Somerville?” Sam asked.
“Well, some of that’s confidential.”
“Which part isn’t?”
Ed smiled. “The part that really needs to know what happened to Hank Vogel isn’t. At least, not yet. Look: I think something’s going on in Sorrow Falls. Or maybe not some thing, so much as a lot of little sort-of somethings that add up to one big something, only we don’t know what things to add together yet. I’ve got a lot of pieces that don’t make sense yet, and this is one of them. Nobody here did anything wrong. Hank Vogel died of a brain aneurysm, and medically speaking everything that happened in his skull that night would have happened if he’d remained in his bunk. But he didn’t remain in his bunk, and I’d like to know why, and what his last few minutes of life on Earth looked like to someone who was there. Can you help me with that?”
Sam didn’t answer for long enough that Ed was ready to give up.
“He looked empty, sir,” Sam said. His eyes, which had been directed either straight-ahead or locked with Ed’s, had fallen to the floor.
“Call me Ed, please. What do you mean, empty?”
“Empty like he wasn’t in there.” His eyes drifted back up. “Nobody home. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, sir.”
“Ed.”
“Ed. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, because I… I can’t stop seeing his face sometimes. It wasn’t that he was sleepwalking. He was moving wrong. That’s what Pickles saw. Up close you could see…”