Darkside Read online

  “No contest there,” she said. “Those Chinese are all Communists, so go for the vino. When your daughter checks in, have her call me if it isn’t past eleven. If I’m going to be her lawyer, she has to ask me directly.”

  “I’ll tell her. And thanks for getting on this so quickly. And, of course, I’ll be paying the bills. Is there a retainer?”

  “Yes, but let’s see what we’ve got first. Who knows, they may just be playing it straight and interviewing anybody who might have known the dead guy.”

  “I guess that’s what they should be doing,” he said. He thanked her again, hung up, and went to throw a fish he’d bought earlier on the grill. The porch was settling into shadows as evening fell. The property was heavily wooded, and he could only see the homes on either side because of their lights. The creek behind the house, which was an estuary of the Severn River and not a real stream, was nearly two hundred feet wide. Its surface was calm and black except where lights from houses across the way reflected on it. Someone’s dog was barking excitedly on the other side.

  The lady lawyer was probably right: This would blow over once they ruled it a suicide, and that would be that.

  You hope, a voice echoed in his head.

  Conscious of thinking in circles, he checked to make sure his fish wasn’t burning. C’mon Julie, he thought. Call me.

  Jim Hall tossed the remains of a greaseburger extravaganza into the pier Dumpster as he walked through the darkness toward his boat. He lived aboard a thirty-six-foot Pearson ketch. His father had owned a large boat-repair yard in Pensacola, and he’d spent his childhood in the yard, learning everything there was to know about steel, aluminum, and wooden hull repairs, diesel and gasoline marine engines, and the byzantine economics of the boat business, from small runabouts all the way up to large commercial fishing boats. He’d restored the ketch after buying it at an insurance auction for one-tenth its initial price. He’d been living here in the Bayside Marina ever since his original assignment as the CO of the Academy’s Marine detachment, which meant he’d been a resident of Crabtown for going on six years now.

  He let himself through the wire gate at the head of the pier and made his way down the gangway to the floating portion of the pier. His boat, at nearly forty feet, took up almost one entire side of the pier, its graceful bow looming over the sun-bleached planks and bobbing inflatable fenders. He automatically inspected the mooring lines as he walked down its shining white length. He was proud of his work on the Chantal, which had been named for the hurricane that had brought the boat to him, literally. He was equally proud of the fact that he owned her outright, unlike his three neighbors on the other side of the pier, who were never more than one or two bad days on Wall Street away from being ex -owners. He disarmed the alarm system, using the keypad at the top of the gangway, and then let himself in through the railing gate. As soon as he stepped aboard, there came a throaty squawk from inside the main lounge. Guard parrot on the job, he thought.

  Jim changed into jeans and sweatshirt, turned on the air conditioning to refresh the air down below, and then took a small scotch up the companionway to the awning-covered cockpit and plopped himself down in the large captain’s chair. Jupiter, his double yellow-headed Amazon parrot, was perched on the left shoulder of his bird vest, where he began his preening ritual. Jim had to keep his glass on the upwind side to avoid the silent rain of fuzz, down, and other feathery debris that always accompanied the nightly preening session.

  “You’re a dirty damned bird,” he muttered.

  “Dirty damned bird,” Jupiter croaked, unmoved by epithets.

  The evening was cool and clear, and the water was relatively quiet. Someone was having a small party two piers over, and he could hear the background music, but the live-aboards in this marina were pretty considerate about not making too much noise on weeknights.

  It had been an all-around ugly day. Unsure of the police protocol, he’d not stayed for the NCIS interviews, nor had the two agents-no, special agents-asked him to. He was the Academy security officer, but they were the investigating agency. They had made that “exclusive jurisdiction” point several times to anyone who would listen, especially Flasher Babe, who was apparently very sensitive about her bureaucratic prerogatives. The local Annapolis cops backed out with what to Jim felt like unseemly haste, but he supposed they had enough on their plates without getting entangled in what was sure to become yet another Naval Academy media success.

  He had secured the impact zone, his term for it, as best he could for the NCIS Crime Scene Unit, and also the boy’s room on the fourth floor of the eighth wing. Only later in the morning had he thought to secure all access up to the wing’s rooftop gallery. Agent Branner had been upset about that, forcing him to remind the two ace investigators that they hadn’t directed him to secure anything. The grumbling subsided after their CSU came up virtually empty at the end of the day. There were no evidentiary questions to be explored down on the plaza, where the boy had actually landed, the cause of death being copiously obvious, even after the efforts of a medical decontamination unit. The plebe’s room had apparently produced no evidence of a crime.

  The choleric Captain Robbins had spent the afternoon in a marathon meeting with his executive staff. Jim had tried to duck out, but Robbins wanted everybody present for duty. The Academy’s Public Affairs officers, knowing what was coming, had spent a lot of time preparing everyone for the inevitable media onslaught. The commandant himself had crafted the approved spin: The investigation team assumed it was an accident but was going to also look into the possibility of suicide. Given what he had seen of the plebe’s remains after impact, Jim thought that was going to be a tough call.

  He shook his head. Suicide didn’t compute. Here was an eighteen-year-old kid who had successfully navigated the annual service academy admissions wars, and now he was a smashed pumpkin in a drawer over at the Anne Arundel County morgue. There were over ten thousand applicants each year for each of the academies, twelve hundred of whom were finally appointed after a grueling year and a half spent dealing with the competitive admissions process. Granted, plebe year at the academies was a rough road, as he knew from personal experience. But to have achieved sustained success for twelve years of primary and secondary school in academics, extracurricular activities, student government offices, athletics, and then the Academy appointment process, and then to jump off the roof? The Academy typically graduated 76 percent of an entering class, which meant that three hundred or so mids fell to attrition out of every entering class. Usually, they either failed academically or decided that the program was too hard and opted out on their own. But suicide?

  He’d been intrigued by the one interviewee, the bright-looking female first class midshipman-what was her name? Mark something. Markingham? Admittedly, he hadn’t paid that much attention to her name. But she was going to be one important way into the investigation, given that the deceased had been wearing her underwear. On the other hand, he thought, if this was something more than a suicide or accident, and you were a bad guy and wanted to implicate somebody in a crime, that was one sure way to do it. But that meant murder, and Jim simply could not envision any motive for murder within the Brigade of Midshipmen. The possible exception would be a boy-girl thing, and even that was remote. Midshipmen did date other midshipmen, but usually within their own year group. It was sufficiently unusual that even the mids called it “dark-siding.” And plebes weren’t given time to think about dating.

  Jupiter shook his feathers out, producing a veritable cloud of parrot dust. Jim waved his hand in front of his face and was rewarded by a love nip to his left ear.

  “What’s your act, bird?” he asked, looking up sideways at the bird’s beady-eyed face. Jupiter ignored him and began to gnaw on one of his claws, gripping harder with the other one. Jim was glad for the padded bird vest. Jupiter could really grab if he wanted to, as some of Jim’s lady friends had found out. Jupiter wasn’t a bad parrot; he was simply Jim’s parrot.
/>   He finished his scotch, grateful for its ability to overcome the queasy-greasy feeling in his stomach. Tomorrow will probably be worse, he thought. Tomorrow the press will be into it. He suddenly felt very tired.

  “C’mon, bird,” he said, getting up out of the chair. “It’s tree time in the city.” He swept the bird off his shoulder and onto his right hand, then held the parrot over a sand-filled trash can, where Jupiter did the right thing. “Good bird,” he said.

  “Good bird,” Jupiter acknowledged, and they went below.

  At nine o’clock that evening, Ev was in his study, correcting some student papers, when he heard Julie bang through the kitchen screen door and call for him.

  “In here, Julie,” he called back, placing the papers in a folder and closing it. She came in a moment later, dressed in full sweats. Her face was bright red, almost the color of the reflective vest she wore over her hooded shirt. She dropped the headless eight iron she carried to ward off unruly dogs and flopped down in one of the big leather chairs. Both she and the chair let out an enormous exhalation.

  “Want a beer?” he asked brightly, and she managed a smile.

  “Whole point was to work off the last one,” she gasped. “But I’m definitely going to walk back. Slowly, too.”

  “Okay, so give: What went down with the NCIS people?”

  She took another minute to regulate her breathing. Every night except Sundays and Wednesdays, firsties in good academic standing were allowed to leave Bancroft Hall after dinner for what was called “town liberty,” but they had to be back in by midnight. Given the academic load, Julie rarely took town liberty during the week.

  “I didn’t want to use the hall phones,” she said. “Everyone’s eavesdropping at the pay phones, and the cell phones-”

  “Are radios. Right, I know that. Now, what happened?”

  “There were two of them,” she said. “A man and a woman. They started out being real polite. Then they went into one of those good cop/bad cop routines. I mean, how dumb is that? It was so cop show.”

  “What was the connection?”

  She told him.

  He blinked. Panties? “WTF? Over.”

  “Roger that, Father Time. They traced them back through my laundry number. I mean, c’mon, Dad, how embarrassing is that!”

  “Certainly different,” he said, getting up from his chair. “And they assumed that you and this plebe were closer than the regs envision?”

  “They weren’t exactly sharing. They flat out asked if Dell and I had been intimate. Answer: negative, of course. I wouldn’t be caught dead dark-siding a plebe, even if it were legal, which of course it isn’t. No firstie would.”

  “But he was found wearing your underwear, and dead, to boot. Logical question: How did he get your skivvies, and why on earth would a normal guy wear women’s underwear?”

  “You’re assuming Dell was normal,” she snapped. “Ipso facto, he wasn’t.”

  “Is there some way a plebe could raid your skivvy drawer?”

  “He’d have to be pretty brazen, but, yes, our rooms aren’t locked during the academic day. You know, for surprise room inspections.”

  “So he could have knocked on the door, stepped in, and sounded off. Anyone in the passageway seeing him do it would assume that he was coming around. If no one happened to be in the room, once the door closed, he could take anything he wanted?”

  “I suppose,” she said. “Except this plebe, well, I don’t think he’d have the balls to do that.”

  “So you did know him?”

  She shrugged defensively. “Sort of. Like, I helped a lot of plebes during plebe summer, Dad. That’s what we were there for, to get them through it, and to keep them from bolting out the front gate on parents’ weekend.”

  He paced around the room, while Julie remained sprawled in her chair. “And they wanted to know if you remembered Dell, right?”

  “That was the gist of their questions: Did I know Midshipman Dell? When was the last time I’d seen him? Did I have any sort of relationship with him? Had I contacted him via E-mail? Did I have him come around often?”

  “And you told them what, exactly?”

  “That I’d trained him, plus a thousand other worms, during plebe summer. That I’d had Dell come around a couple of times earlier in the year. I actually had to explain what a come-around was. That woman was pretty ignorant.”

  “Or playing dumb,” he said.

  “Whatever. I guess I saw Dell from time to time. Just like I saw every other plebe in our battalion. But I didn’t really know him. He was just another plebe, you know? Unless they’re really screwed up-you know, notorious-all plebes look alike.”

  “You said they did a bad cop/good cop routine. Over what?”

  “The black guy played good cop. He was encouraging me to think real hard, remember every detail. Sincere. Concerned. Encouraging. The woman-” Julie shivered. “She was a piece of work. Good-looking, but so full of herself. Acted like she thought she was on TV or something. Kept reminding me they’d be checking my answers out with lots of other mids, so make sure I didn’t hold anything back. That I was under oath, and that they’d be reporting everything to the commandant. Like that. It was so transparent.”

  “Unless they’re partners, in which case they may have rehearsed all those moves,” he said. “But I guess I can understand their interest.”

  “Dad, there’s nothing to tell. He was just another plebe. Really! There are over a thousand of them.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, sitting back down so he could face her. “Were they, in fact, interviewing other mids?”

  “I saw his company officer, the Twenty-fourth Company’s commander, and another plebe in the commandant’s waiting room. You should have seen the looks I got.”

  Julie was a pretty girl, so naturally other mids might make assumptions, Ev realized. Except he knew from his own personal experience that the plebe-firstie taboo was pretty strong. Plebes were lower than whale shit, and no firstie would demean him-or herself-by getting into any kind of relationship with such a lower-tier life-form other than to run the hell out of them. On the other hand, Ev had graduated before there had been women midshipmen at the Naval Academy, so maybe the dynamic had changed more than he knew.

  “How’d they leave it?” he asked.

  “‘Thank you for your time, Midshipman Markham. We’ll be in touch if we have further questions, Midshipman Markham. Don’t talk about this interview to anyone, Midshipman Markham.’ Oh, and the kicker: The woman gets up, shakes my hand, and then goes, ‘We’re finished with you. For now.’”

  Ev frowned. “You think you’re not done?”

  “I was waiting for her to say, ‘Don’t leave town, Midshipman Markham.’ I put out rumor fires for the rest of the day within my own company. Hosed a control system quiz this afternoon. Then, of course, we had the obligatory company all-hands, touchy-feely to ‘talk out’ the Dell incident. Lieutenant Tarrens playing at grief counselor. That kind of wimp-ass, liberal shit really bites, you know? And there’ve been lots of grave pronouncements from the commandant’s office. Heavy-duty cautions about discussing the incident: ‘Remember, there are grieving parents involved here. Don’t make it worse.’ Like that.”

  “That last bit is reasonable enough,” he said. “A midshipman is dead, after all. His parents didn’t send him here to die.”

  “Okay, but you know what? There’re lots of channels open if a plebe is having that much trouble. Everyone gets training on how to detect a suicidal situation, and every plebe is told a million times he can take a time-out if the plebe year shit gets too heavy. Where were his own company firsties? And how about his squad leader? The youngsters who’re supposed to be mentoring? That’s who they ought to be grilling, not me.”

  “Except for that one odd feature,” he reminded her.

  She flushed. “Okay, so I can’t explain that,” she said, getting up to go get something to drink. “But it wasn’t like I was wearing his underwear.”


  He followed her into the kitchen. She was bent over, rooting impatiently around in the refrigerator for something to drink. Joanne had done the same thing in precisely the same way. Julie was even shaped like Joanne. He was struck by how much his daughter was like her mother. More so, now that Joanne was gone, he realized. He told her about calling Liz DeWinter.

  “Really?” she said, straightening up with a jug of skim milk in her hand. “You think I need a lawyer?”

  “Maybe,” he replied. “And so does Liz. Especially right now, when everyone’s staking out their positions. If nothing else, it will make them be more careful, say, if there’s more to this incident than we know.”

  “‘Liz’? Do you know this woman from before?” she asked a bit too casually. He hesitated a fraction of a second before replying. Julie was still sensitive about the possibility that another woman might replace her mother. She could mouth all the right words about his getting on with life and so forth, but all the same, Ev knew he had to be careful. “Worth Battle recommended her, after I called him. I’d met her once at one of his boat parties. He thinks she’s pretty good.”

  “But won’t they find it suspicious? That I called for a lawyer? Since I truly wasn’t involved?”

  “You didn’t call for a lawyer. I did. Which is why you’ll let me break that news to them, okay? You’re twenty-one, about to be commissioned, so the administration will deal directly with you. But I want you to call Liz. Now, in fact. You can stay for another few minutes. Let her tell you what to say if anything else comes down.”

  “And she’s a criminal defense lawyer?”

  “Well, you were talking to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service today, Julie.”

  “Got yourself a point, there, Judge,” she said, going for some more milk. “Sure, I’ll talk to her. Hell, yes. Then I’ve got to get back. Have an econ test tomorrow. God! Two more weeks.”