Strange Highways

Judge said, "I decided I had to obtain copies of his personal files on you. I remained in the building, out of sight in a maintenance closet, until all the offices were closed and the employees went home."
     "I don't believe you," Chase said, aware of what was coming, dreading to hear it.
     "You don't want to believe me, but you do." Judge took a long, slow breath before he continued: "The eighth floor was clear by six o'clock. By six-thirty I got the door open to Dr. Fauvel's suite. I know a little about such things, and I was very careful. I didn't damage the lock, and I didn't trip any alarms because there were none. I required an additional half an hour to locate his files and to secure your records, which I copied on his photocopier."
     "Breaking and entering - then theft," Chase said.
     "But it hardly matters on top of murder, does it?"
     "You admit that what you've done is murder."
     "No. Judgment. But the authorities don't understand. They call it murder. They're part of the problem. They're not good facilitators."
     Chase said nothing.
     "You'll receive in the mail, probably the day after tomorrow, complete copies of Dr. Fauvel's notes on you, along with copies of several articles he's written for various medical journals. You're mentioned in all these and are, in some of them, the sole subject of discussion. Not by name. 'Patient C,' he calls you. But it's clearly you."
     Chase said, "I didn't know he'd done that."
     "They're interesting articles, Chase. They'll give you some idea of what he thinks of you." Judge's tone changed, became more contemptuous. "Reading those records, Chase, I found more than enough to permit me to pass judgment on you."
     "Oh?"
     "I read all about how you got your Medal of Honor."
     Chase waited.
     "And I read about the tunnels and what you did in them - and how you failed to expose Lieutenant Zacharia when he destroyed the evidence and falsified the report. Do you think the Congress would have voted you the Medal of Honor if they knew you killed civilians, Chase?"
     "Stop."
     "You killed women, didn't you?"
     "Maybe."
     "You killed women and children, Chase, noncombatants."
     "I'm not sure if I killed anyone," Chase said more to himself than to Judge. "I pulled the trigger ... but I was ... firing wildly at the walls ... I don't know."
     "Noncombatants."
     "You don't know what it was like."
     "Children, Chase."
     "You know nothing about me."
     "You killed children. What kind of animal are you, Chase?"
     "Fuck you!" Chase had come to his feet as if something had exploded close behind him. "What would you know about it? Were you ever over there, did you ever have to serve in that stinking country?"
     "Some patriotic paean to duty won't change my mind, Chase. We all love this country, but most of us realize there are limits to-"
     "Bullshit," Chase said.
     He could not remember having been this angry in all the time since his breakdown. Now and then he had been irritated by something or someone, but he had never allowed himself to feel extremes of emotion.
     "Chase-"
     "I bet you were all for the war. I'll bet you're one of the people that made it possible for me to be there in the first place. It's easy to set standards of performance, select limits of right and wrong, when you never get closer than ten thousand miles to the place where it's all coming down."
     Judge tried to speak, but Chase talked him down:
     "I didn't even want to be there. I didn't believe in it, and I was scared shitless the whole time. All I thought about was staying alive. In that tunnel, I couldn't think of anything else. I wasn't me. I was a textbook case of paranoia, living in blind terror, just trying to get through."
     He had never spoken about the experience so directly or at such length to anyone, not even to Fauvel, who had pried his story from him in single words and sentence fragments.
     "You're eaten with guilt," Judge said.
     "That doesn't matter."
     "I think it does. It proves you know you did wrong and you-"
     "It doesn't matter, because regardless of how guilty I feel, you haven't the right to pass judgment on me. You're sitting there with your little list of commandments, but you've never been