Darkside Read online

  “Who said it was a homicide?” she asked, those green eyes flashing.

  Jim didn’t answer, and then she realized he’d been talking to Bagger. She came back to the chair and flopped down. “Actually, it could go either way,” she said. “Something’s not quite right with Markham’s answers. On the other hand, the ME’s report is ambiguous. I’m still trying to decide.”

  “So it’ll be your call?”

  “Pretty much. The dant’s hating life right now, just wants it all to go the hell away. Here comes all the commissioning week bullshit, the vice president, the Board of Visitors, and they have mids flying off the damned roof.”

  “Anybody putting the pressure on you to call it a suicide and move on?” he asked.

  “Not in so many words,” she said slowly. He could see that she was unsure about trusting him. “They’re sensitive to the command influence problem. But I’ve been here long enough to read between the lines.”

  “You need a statement from me about our little op last night?”

  “I guess I do,” she said.

  “How much you want me to say about the booze?”

  “Could you just say what you had to drink?”

  “Can do,” he said. “How about the Goth girls?”

  “Yes, you should mention them. My bosses know Bagger.”

  “I’ll have a draft over to you this morning,” he said. “You chop it, and I’ll smooth it. I don’t want to cause him any trouble.”

  “Appreciate that,” she said, holding the jacket out at arm’s length like a wet cat. “You and your people pursue the runner. I think this Dell thing’s going to come to a head in a few days. Then we’ll look into whether or not your runner is connected with Bagger’s getting mugged. Then maybe we’ll both kick his ass.”

  “Is that a date?” he asked, just for the hell of it.

  She raised her eyebrows. “You asking me out, Mr. Hall? At this hour of the morning?”

  “Well,” he said. “I guess we are going about it bassack-wards. You having already been to my bedroom and all.”

  She cocked her head and gave him a speculative look. She was standing now with one hand on her left hip, the other holding the jacket out by one finger, as if she were going to twirl it. He saw a flash of amusement in her eyes. Good morning, America: Maybe there’s a real girl in there after all, he thought.

  “It was just a thought,” he said finally, remembering that he had paraded in the buff earlier. He got up. “Seeing as we might be kicking a little ass together in the future, that is.”

  “Everyone likes a little ass,” she began, glancing at his for an instant. “Or so I’m told. Say, you have an umbrella I can borrow?”

  “Is that a yes?” he asked. The rain came down even harder.

  “Let me call you,” she said patiently. “An umbrella?”

  Jim waited in line to refill his coffee cup at 10:30 that morning. Saturday mornings were regular working days, and most of the headquarters staff people were in the building. He had already spent a half hour with the fire marshal working up the report on the rocket incident, and he had just finished bringing Chief Bustamente up to speed on the night in the tunnel and what had happened to Bagger Thompson afterward.

  Commander Michaels, his boss, joined him at the coffee mess table. Jim back-briefed him on the tunnel business and asked if he wanted a written report. To Jim’s surprise, Michaels shook his head.

  “Verbal’s good enough right now,” he said, looking out into the hallway to make sure no one was listening. “But look: This Dell thing is turning into a real media firestorm. The possible homicide angle has leaked. Dell’s parents have their congressman into it, and he, for our sins, is on the House subcommittee that has Academy oversight. The supe’s so happy, he could just shit.”

  “And the dant?”

  “Lotsa Dant Dance, last time I saw him. He’s ready to Class-A Dell’s corpse for causing all this shit.”

  Jim got the picture. “In other words, nobody wants to hear more bad news about a mid going out into town and beating up on locals just now?”

  “Especially if he’s dressing up as a frigging vampire. Frame that as a breaking story on CNN. So, you’re the security officer. See if you and your cops can catch this guy, preferably on federal ground. Keep the story in government channels until we get this other thing squashed. You know, one fire at a time, if we can manage it.”

  Jim almost told him about the dant’s order to get inside the NCIS investigation, but he stopped himself. The chain of command for that had been very specific. “So, I keep you informed?”

  Michaels nodded. “Yeah. We don’t know this is a mid doing this shit, do we?”

  “Just a hunch right now.”

  “Okay, maybe we’ll get lucky on this one. We’re overdue.” He looked around the hallway again and lowered his voice. “Look, we’ve got two weeks left in this academic year, and then all the firsties become enswines, and the rest of the little dears go off to the seven seas for their summer cruise. If we can just get through this Dell mess, we can maybe get things back to normal around this damned place.”

  “Whatever normal is,” Jim said. Michaels raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, I mean, shit,” Jim said. “A mid gets himself killed; another one is out there consorting with witches and mugging drunks in back alleys. Is this what normal means here now?”

  Michaels, who’d been a carrier pilot until a catapult accident had damaged his neck, was also an Academy graduate. He shook his head. “Gee-go,” he muttered. He filled his coffee mug and left for his office.

  Jim stirred his own coffee. GIGO was one of the not-so-secret code words around the office. Garbage in, garbage out. Given all that the Academy had accomplished over the years, it wasn’t fair that the 1 percent that was garbage could absolutely demolish the reputation of the 99 percent who were gold. It reminded Jim of his time in the Corps-he had spent 90 percent of his personnel admin time on 5 percent of his Marines.

  He went to his own cube to find out the commandant’s schedule for the day. Saturdays were more flexible than regular workdays, and he wanted to back-brief him on what he’d learned about the NCIS investigation. Then he wanted to call the hospital and check on Bagger. He still felt bad about the Guinness. He should have been paying more attention.

  He wondered if Branner would really call him to go out. That might be more of a thrill than he could stand at his advancing age.

  Ev had spent Saturday morning in the Nimitz Library, doing some research on the Uniform Code of Military Justice and its bible, the Manual for Courts-Martial. The academic offices in Sampson were only about half-occupied for Saturday classes, especially as the academic year drew to a close. Ev taught mostly seniors, and they were definitely slacking off at this stage of the game.

  The rainsqualls had quit just after sunrise and the morning dawned cool and clear, with eye-dazzling sunlight. Looking out the office windows, Ev could see the first clumps of weekend tourists filtering down from the Maryland Avenue gate. Now back in his office, he put a call into Liz at home, got voice mail. He tried her office number.

  “Morning, counselor,” he said. “I talked to Julie last night. I think we have a problem.”

  “Now what?”

  “Julie wants to unlawyer. My fault, probably. I got clumsy, made one probe too many.” He filled her in.

  “And it was the question about her getting up for early swim practice that set her off?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did she actually answer it?”

  He thought back for a moment. “No. So I’ve put a call in to the varsity swim coach to see if they’re still doing the prereveille sessions, and if so, whether Julie has been involved. But this business about her talking to the NCIS people without you being present…”

  “You told her that she’d be going against my advice?”

  “Hell, I told her you’d fire her as a client.”

  “I won’t do that, not yet anyway. But no
w you’re definitely going to have to get into this, Ev. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to me just now, and she won’t until they scare her.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Let me start with the coach. I think we need to establish whether or not Julie could have been out of her room that night-or early morning, I guess.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Oh, I ran into one of the marshals at the sub shop a little while ago. He’s heard a rumor that one of the agents from the Academy NCIS office apparently got into some kind of trouble out in town last night. The nice black guy. The word is, he’s in the hospital. It gets kinda fuzzy as to what happened, which means the local cops are probably sitting on something.”

  “Well, maybe that will distract NCIS, vis-a-vis Julie,” he said hopefully.

  “One can always hope,” she said. “But call me when you hear from that coach. I won’t do anything until I hear from you.”

  “Thanks, Liz. For not jumping ship, I mean. She needs you. She just doesn’t know it.”

  “Not to burst your bubble, Ev, but if she won’t do what I tell her to, I can’t represent her. But let her swim with the sharks for a while, see how she likes it.”

  “Now there’s a comforting image for a father to hear.”

  “Ev, Julie’s well out of the nest. All those kids over there are. Call me at home when you have something.”

  Ev put down the phone and stared at the wall in front of his desk. It was now past noon, and the Academy weekend had officially begun. He’d changed into his running clothes, then sat back down at his desk to finish reading his notes on suspects’ rights. The leather of his chair was starting to stick to the backs of his thighs. Goddamn, Julie. This is the wrong time to get pigheaded. He decided to jog over to MacDonough Hall to see if he could chase down Coach Downing in his office or at the Nat. It being Saturday, he was probably going to fail, but he needed to do something.

  He stepped outside, did his warm-up, and then broke into a gentle jog across Radford Terrace and down onto Ingram Field, where there was only the Saturday complement of midshipmen and officers out for their daily running exercise. Physical fitness was an integral part of Naval Academy life, for everyone-faculty, staff, and midshipmen. Even on a liberty day, people were still exercising. Being fat or even out of shape at the Naval Academy was a cultural offense, from the admiral on down to the lowliest plebe.

  He made ten circuits of the track to kill some time through the lunch hour and then cooled down by walking over to MacDonough. He went upstairs to the coaches’ office complex, which was, as he suspected, already empty for the weekend. He asked a passing mid if he’d seen Coach Downing in the building. The coach was down at the training pool with some Class IV swimmers. Ev went back down to the Natatorium, where he found Downing in the water, finishing up a lesson on the basics of the survival breaststroke. The Class Fours, as they were called, were midshipmen who couldn’t swim either because they just couldn’t get it or because they were basically terrified to be in the water. The Nat was not designed with a shallow end, so there were several frightened young faces bobbing along the side of the pool. They had also missed the noon meal.

  Downing, a sixty-year-old former national diving champion, launched the last two plebes from the side, one with each hand. They thrashed their way to the other side with all the style of a light-loaded ship’s propeller that is half out of the water. Then he blew his whistle and sent everyone to the locker room. The clinging plebes came out of the water like so many salmon trying to get up a dam’s spillway. Downing climbed out of the water in one graceful spring to the side, and Ev walked over. Because of Julie, the coach recognized Ev immediately.

  “Hey, Professor: Come to do a tower jump for old times’ sake?”

  “Not exactly, Coach. Had a question for you. It concerns the swim team. And Julie.”

  To Ev’s surprise, he thought he saw a flicker of apprehension in Downing’s eyes. “Shoot,” Downing said, reaching for a towel.

  “Is the swim team still doing the zero-dark-thirty practice sessions?”

  “Prereveille? Negative. We’ve just finished up the regular competition season. We’re in the maintenance mode these days. And the firsties like your daughter, they’re just swimming for exercise, if they’re swimming at all. You know, graduation looms. They’re almost through.”

  Ev thanked him, said, “See you,” and started to walk away.

  “Ev?” Downing said. “This isn’t about that Dell mess, is it?”

  Ev stopped and almost unconsciously glanced around to see if anyone was listening in, but the pool area was empty. Downing came over.

  “I’ve heard some disturbing rumors,” he said quietly. “One involves Julie.”

  “The underwear thing?”

  “So you’ve heard about that? Well, of course she would have told you.”

  “It’s true. Although Julie thinks it’s probably a laundry mistake.”

  “That he was wearing them?”

  “No, no, that he had them in his possession. Surely there was nothing going on between Dell, a plebe, and my daughter, right?”

  “Not that I ever saw. We have some swim team romances every year; Julie and Tommy Hays, for instance. But no, Dell was a diver. Nice form, but not quite good enough for varsity stuff. I let him stay on as a manager on the plebe bench. Plebes know to keep their distance from firsties.”

  “Yeah, that’s my experience. What else are you hearing?”

  Downing shook his head. “Nothing that concerns Julie.” He glanced around the Natatorium. “But there’s been some talk that Dell was maybe a little light in his loafers. If not gay, then maybe bisexual. One of our assistant coaches heard rumors about some ‘special’ massage treatments after some of the away meets, involving an unnamed manager. Admittedly, we’re talking nineteenth-hand scuttlebutt here.”

  “Specifically involving Dell?”

  “An unnamed manager, I tried to run it down, but…”

  “You hit the old blue-and-gold wall.”

  Downing nodded. They walked together toward the pool doors. The surface of the Nat had settled into a vast mirror. “Has that NCIS team been down to interview anybody about Dell?” Ev asked.

  “No. Will they?”

  Ev nodded. “Yeah, Coach, I think they will. Did you know they’re considering that the Dell incident might be a possible homicide?”

  “Judas Priest! You’re kidding. At the Academy?”

  “That’s rumor, too. Or maybe it’s a preliminary line-you know, to rule it out.”

  Downing stopped. “That why you got Julie a lawyer?”

  It was Ev’s turn to be surprised. It must have shown on his face, because Downing patted him lightly on the shoulder. “No real secrets around this hothouse, Ev,” he said. “You know that.”

  There might be one or two, Ev thought, but he didn’t say it. He needed to report back to Liz. The swim team wasn’t doing prereveille practices. So now it came down to a simple but specific yes or no: Had Julie been in her room when Dell went down?

  Jim Hall had been unable to get on the commandant’s calendar, so he called the chief instead and asked what he’d heard about Bagger since the last time they’d talked. The chief said the police rumor mill had the story, and that the locals were waiting to see if the G would react as it usually did when an agent went down-that is, bring in a platoon of angry agents. Jim then called the NCIS office to see what further word they had on Bagger Thompson. The secretary pretended not to know what he was talking about, so Jim didn’t press it. He called the hospital, hit the same brick wall, and decided just to go over there. There might be a town cop around who could get him in to see Bagger, or at least to find out how he was doing.

  It took fifteen minutes to find a parking place at the hospital, and another fifteen to find the hospital security officer’s office. He identified himself to a secretary and then told the security officer’s assistant that he knew Agent Thompson was there and that there was an official lid on that f
act. He asked if could she find someone who could tell him how Thompson was doing. Another fifteen minutes out in the main waiting room produced Agent Branner. She had changed clothes and was looking tired but efficient as she strode purposefully across the waiting room, heels clicking. She sat down next to him and a wave of subtle perfume wafted over him.

  “They’re moving him up to Bethesda,” she said softly, not looking at him while she scanned the almost-empty waiting room. “Major skull fracture. Something unpronounceable is swelling. If they don’t get it under control pretty quick, he’s not going to make it.”

  Jim swore. “I had no idea it was that serious. He talking?”

  “Hell, he’s barely breathing,” she said, and he heard something in her voice that made him turn to look at her face. Not tears exactly, but some of that gunfighter toughness was noticeably absent.

  “What are you looking at?” she snapped, sniffing.

  “Careful there, Special Agent. Don’t let anyone see you being human.”

  “Up yours, Hall.”

  He let it pass, thought about taking her hand, and then decided not to. If they were moving Thompson to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, it must be serious indeed. That’s where the president received his medical care. The vampire mugger was swiftly losing his appeal.

  “You going up there with him?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Can’t,” she said. “Dell.”

  He nodded. “Want me to go?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’ve done enough damage,” she replied, and then immediately put her hand on his. “Cancel that. I’m just…just wigging out. Oh and I called that Irish Pub. He had six of those Guinness stouts.”

  He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Six was a lot. Then he said, “I’m going into the tunnels tonight. Around twenty-two hundred. I could use some backup.”

  She was looking straight ahead, seeing nothing. Then she seemed to realize where her hand was and retrieved it. “What?”

  He said it again.

  “What about your cops?”

  “My cops deal mostly with patrolling the Yard, parking control, and tourist coordination. I mean backup. ”