Darkside

by P. T. Deutermann

  He walked the entire length of the Dewey Field seawall without finding it, then remembered the engineer’s comment about the tides. The grating was submerged most of the time. He looked over the wall and saw that it was high tide, or very close to it. He watched the water. The streak of flotsam along the seawall seemed to be edging its way out toward the bay. Ebb tide under way? He decided to come back after the meeting with Hays. He went back to the upper end of Dewey Field and carefully paced the distance to where the storm drain should be. It supposedly ran under the walkways that sloped up to the chapel. When he reached the point where his pacing told him the drain ought to be, he looked up and saw that he was lined up with the steps between Michelson and Chauvenet. Perfect. The drain had been run so as to not penetrate either of the two academic buildings. So this was where it should be. There was a metal railing along the seawall. He got out his pocket knife and scratched an X in the railing at the point where he thought the seawall grate should be.

  He looked around. It was close to eleven o’clock and already the first of the noontime joggers were out on Ingram. He watched for a few minutes to see if anyone appeared to be interested in what he was doing out there on the seawall. He was dressed in his usual coat and tie office outfit. Probably look like just another alumnus, he thought, recalling those thrilling days of yesteryear when he’d been a midshipman. And the program had been a whole lot tougher then, by God, sir. A whole lot tougher. He grinned and went to see if he could find a sandwich somewhere before his noon meeting.

  As he was walking back up into the Yard, his cell phone chirped. It was the lady lawyer, Liz DeWinter.

  “Mr. Hall,” she said. “Got a minute to talk?”

  “I’m on my cell,” he warned.

  “Yes, I know. Your chief gave me your number. This concerns a person of mutual interest.”

  Julie Markham, he thought. “Go ahead.”

  “What’s your current thinking on the railroad business, Mr. Hall?”

  He found an empty park bench and sat down. A group of Japanese tourists were being herded up Stribling toward Mother B. for the noon meal formation. The drum and bungle corps was thumping something martial in the central plaza, the drums echoing madly around the wings of Bancroft, creating a cacophony of rhythms. “The railroad business is still a possibility,” he said. “Although I have no direct indications, I can tell you the management is less than pleased with the subject.”

  “My subject.”

  “Your subject, yes. Uncooperative is the term, I believe.”

  “I’ve heard a rumor, Mr. Hall. That the subject might be held back on throw-the-hats day. Until the matter is resolved. Can they do that?”

  “Absolutely, counselor. Sometimes there are matters of academic probation to resolve. Sometimes health issues-whether the candidate for commissioning is still physically qualified for commissioning, for instance. Football players end up in that situation often enough.”

  “So they can if they want to?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Any progress on the underlying issue?”

  “Not that I can share. But I can offer some advice.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The subject should stop screwing around.” Then something else occurred to him. “You might also probe whether or not she’s under some kind of pressure other than from the system. Anyone, inside or outside, another mid even.”

  Liz didn’t answer right away. “Noted,” she said finally. “I’ll get in touch with the subject as soon as possible.”

  He looked at his watch. “Time is probably of the essence, counselor,” he said, thinking of the meeting coming up in fifteen minutes. He reminded himself to tell Branner about this call.

  Jim and Branner arrived together at the commandant’s office right at noon. The noon meal formation was just getting under way out front. The secretary went to get Captain Rogers, then returned to show them into Rogers’s office, where they found the captain and Midshipman Hays standing next to the deputy’s desk.

  “What do you have for us, Mr. Hays?” Branner asked.

  “Nothing to report, ma’am,” Hays replied, facing straight ahead and not looking directly at either of them.

  “What the hell? Over,” Jim said quietly.

  “Sir, I spoke at length with Midshipman Markham. She insists she knows nothing about the Dell incident. She doesn’t know what happened to him or why it happened. She said we could ask anybody, talk to anybody, but it wouldn’t change anything.”

  “And that’s it?” Branner said. “All this stuff about the big bad Brigade Honor Committee in the sky-she didn’t care?”

  “I’m sure she cares, ma’am,” Hays said, his demeanor stiffly formal. “But she insists she’s telling the truth.”

  “In other words: You do your damnedest; I don’t care because I’ve nothing to hide?” Jim said.

  “Yes, sir, essentially that’s it.”

  Captain Rogers intervened. “We said at the outset that the Honor Committee had no real leverage here unless Midshipman Markham was hiding something,” he said. “If she isn’t, there’s no case, honor or otherwise.”

  “I don’t actually recall you saying that,” Branner said. She stared at Hays. “You’re telling me that you got nowhere? That even the threat of an honor investigation this close to graduation didn’t make any difference to Markham?”

  Hays glanced over at Rogers. “Not sure how to answer that, ma’am,” Hays said.

  Branner shook her head and looked at Jim. “I think we’re done here, Mr. Hall,” she announced. “Now we’ll do it the hard way.”

  “What exactly does that mean, Agent Branner?” Rogers asked.

  “It means I detect obstruction, Captain. I’m going to report to my chain of command that I smell a cover-up in progress, aided and abetted by the Academy’s administration. Mr. Hall, we’re outta here.” She headed for the door, her face flushed with anger.

  “But-but-” Rogers spluttered.

  “You say graduation was planned for when, Captain?” Branner said over her shoulder. “You know the old deal when there’s a homicide investigation and the cops tell the suspects, all the suspects, not to leave town?”

  Rogers gaped at her as she led Jim through the door and out into the executive corridor. There they had to wait as the entire Brigade, all four thousand of them, filed through the side doors on their way down to the mess hall. Once the way was clear, they went through the big doors and down the steps toward Tecumseh Court, where the crowd of tourists was breaking up after watching the show. Branner’s heels were clacking forcefully on the brickwork. Jim decided not to speak until they were halfway across the courtyard in front of Bancroft Hall.

  “And the Oscar goes to-” he said.

  “Shut up and keep walking,” she said. “They’re probably watching.”

  “And thinking about getting clean skivvies,” he said with a barely suppressed grin. “Did you see Rogers’s face when you threatened to hold up graduation?”

  “I did, and it made me feel just a wee bit better.”

  “Not that you can do anything of the sort.”

  “No, I can’t. But they don’t have to know that just yet. I need to call Harry Chang.”

  They turned left at the bronze bust of Chief Tamamend, the massive figurehead from the sailing ship Delaware, which adorned the entrance to Bancroft Hall’s front courtyard. By tradition, everyone called him Tecumseh, hence Tecumseh Court. “I was really hoping that honor thing would work,” she said. “But it looks like Markham’s holding her ground. We’re nowhere.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Jim said. “I was watching Hays through all that. He wouldn’t look at either one of us directly. I think I need to get to him in private, somehow. Find out what really happened.”

  She stopped and turned to face him. “I think they just went through the motions. Of course I was grandstanding in there, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed. Hays very clearly implied to us that someone had something on
Julie Markham. Now suddenly we get stonewalled? Bullshit.”

  “He may have been under orders, based on the way Captain Rogers was acting. This may be the shutdown we’ve been anticipating.”

  They reached Branner’s car, which was parked illegally in one of the chapel spaces. A Yard cop car was pulling up behind it, but Jim waved him off.

  “I’m going back to the office,” she said. “I may have to go up to headquarters if I keep getting voice mail every time I call up there.”

  “You being shut out, too?”

  She thought about that. “Maybe.”

  “Remember that meeting this morning. They might be squeezing all the local players out of the loop. Oh, and I heard from Markham’s lawyer this morning.” He told her what Liz had said.

  “Great minds think alike, don’t they?” she said. “You have my cell number?”

  “Yep, got it,” he said, looking at his watch. “Have to remember when it’s low tide, too.”

  She gave him a blank look, but he just waved and continued down the sidewalk toward the administration building.

  Ev called Julie on her cell phone right after lunch but got her voice mail. He asked her to call him at the end of classes that afternoon. He had done exactly what Liz had suggested yesterday afternoon when he got home. He’d taken the scull and gone out for almost two hours, until he was so tired that he wasn’t sure he was going to make it back to the creek. By the time he got cleaned up and had some dinner, he felt sufficiently drained not even to want to go out of the house. He had called Liz at home and left her a message that he was just beat and going to bed early. He’d wondered for a whole three minutes if she’d be annoyed. Then he fell fast asleep and he’d almost overslept this morning.

  Ahead was an afternoon seminar and then a faculty advisory board meeting. He was really anxious to hear from Julie. There were too many people moving around in her backfield: the NCIS, the Executive Department, that security officer. He wanted to warn Julie to be particularly careful, and to start communicating with Liz DeWinter. He absolutely hated not knowing what the hell was happening behind the scenes. The class bells began to ring. He groaned out loud, suddenly sick of academia.

  As it turned out, it was Midshipman Hays who found Jim. Two hours later, as Jim was jogging along Dewey Field, Hays overtook him along the seawall. Jim became aware of the big shadow thumping along just behind him and turned to see who was there.

  “Mr. Hall,” Hays said between breaths.

  “Mr. Hays,” Jim replied. “This a coincidence?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Hays said, looking over his shoulder. “But maybe when we get around to the far end, we could go across the footbridge, maybe take a walk in the cemetery?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Jim said, and turned it up a little. Hays fell back and kept pace, about twenty feet behind him as they jogged down to Rickover Hall and then across the arched wooden bridge that crossed Dorsey Creek and took them to the athletic fields on Hospital Point. From there, they slowed to a cooldown walk and went up the hill and into the trees of the Academy cemetery. Once they were entirely out of sight of the Yard proper, Jim plopped down on an iron bench next to a massive funerary monument and toweled his face. Hays did a 360 visual check and then sat down beside him.

  “Some shit happened a few nights ago,” he said. “Let me tell you what it was, and then I’ll tell you who it is you’re probably looking for.”

  Jim said nothing. Hays looked around again before continuing. “The deputy dant has put a lid on the whole Dell thing. The Honor Committee was told to shove off and shut up about what you and Agent Branner brought in.”

  “Any explanations?”

  “No, sir,” Hays said. “He told us to back out and graduate. Seemed like a pretty clear message to me.”

  “Okay, that’s useful.”

  “That’s part of it,” Hays said. “A couple of nights ago, I went back to my room from a study hall session down in Mitscher Hall. Actually, I’d been meeting with this youngster who’s doing a term paper for me.”

  Jim nodded. The same thing had gone on when he was there: Graduating firsties, who had their hands full with finals, would pay a third-class mid to put together their senior year research paper. The firsties had to do the research and the writing, but the youngster would actually produce the formal paper.

  “So. I got back to my room; my roomie’s not there. I get my uniform off, get into a B-robe, go to sit down at my desk, and I get bit.”

  “Bit by what?”

  “By a hundred and ten volts AC. It wasn’t a bad bite, because I had my rubber klacks on. But then I finally figured out that my whole desk was at line potential. The power had to be coming from my desktop PC-that was the only AC equipment on the desk.”

  A Yard cop car nosed along the narrow lanes of the cemetery. The cop waved at Jim, who waved back. Hays looked nervous. “Somebody had rigged this?” Jim asked.

  “Affirmative. I unplugged the desktop, took a look. There was the tiniest little copper wire you ever saw, coming from the hot side of the monitor’s power supply, through a hole in the case. It was married to the steel frame of the desktop with a drop of solder. Best yet, there was water on the deck on my side of the desks.”

  “Whoa. For a perfect ground.”

  “Damn straight. There were even one-inch rubber pads under the desk feet, which meant nothing happened until I touched the desk and the wet floor. One ten, straight in. And I’m not talking microvolts, either. Line voltage, line current. Just my side of the two desks. If I’d been sitting down, man, I’d have been welded to it.”

  “Somebody wanted you dead.”

  “Yes, sir. I think somebody did. And it wasn’t my roomie. Now, let me tell you the rest of it.”

  “Wait a minute. Did Captain Rogers order you not to talk to me or Branner?”

  “No, sir. Just said for us to ‘back out.’ We, the Brigade Honor Committee, are officially backed out. This is me talking here.”

  “Okay. The rest of it.”

  Hays hesitated.

  “What?” Jim asked.

  “I can’t prove any of this,” he said. “That bothers me.”

  “Does Julie Markham going to the electric chair bother you?”

  “What?”

  “That’s ‘What, sir?’ Mr. Hays. See, the Dark Side here may shut down Branner’s investigation, but they’ll never shut down Branner. Or me, for that matter. And if what happened to Dell was homicide, Markham’s the best suspect NCIS has. Hell, she’s the only suspect NCIS has.”

  Hays took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked around the cemetery grounds again, but everyone around them was long dead.

  “There’s this guy,” Hays said. “One of our classmates. He’s also on the swim team. Calls himself ‘the Shark.’ Kind of a weird dude.”

  The Shark? The name resonated. The Shark. Holy shit, as in that tunnel tag? “This shark dude have a human name?”

  “Midshipman First Class Dyle Jones Booth. The middle name’s some kind of joke with him.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Big guy, freestyle swimmer. Black hair, dark, almost black eyes. Swims like a damned torpedo. Zero body friction. Totally hairless. Likes to look at you underwater as he’s passing you. Has one of those no-blink looks, man. Like I said, he’s out there, really weird.”

  “This is a Naval Academy midshipman we’re talking about? A firstie?”

  “Yes, sir. He was one of those special entries out of that diversity program four years back. No known parents-that’s the Jones joke, and he’s the first to tell you that. But this guy’s smart as a whip on the engineering side. Heavy into computer geekery, too. But no real friends. Hasn’t had a roommate for three years. Nobody’d stay with him. Total loner. In the Brigade and on the swim team.”

  “I was on the swim team,” Jim said. “We were first and foremost a team. There were no lone rangers.”

  “This guy is. But he’s unbeatable when he turns it on. Pr
oblem is, you never know when he’s going to turn it on. Once he wins, he sits on the bench by himself. No high fives or anything. Goes off into some Zen Zone. He’s super-fit. You wouldn’t want to mess with him.”

  “And the Dark Side is cool with this behavior?”

  “The dant’s always lecturing us about results. Booth gets results. N-star for three years at the varsity level. Academic stars on his shirt, too.”

  “And what’s this got to do with Dell?”

  “Dell was a plebe in Booth’s batt. The plebes are scared shitless of this guy. He doesn’t run ’em so much as terrorize them. When his company O finally got on his case about it, Booth went all extreme on him. Stopped even talking to plebes. But he still scared them. He’s a big guy and he’s got that look to him. Goes down the passageway, sees a plebe, slows down, gives him the voodoo eye, plebe starts squeaking his chow call.”

  “Why’s he still here? Why didn’t the aptitude board throw him out for unsuitability a long time ago?”

  “Sir?” Hays said. “You’re talking way above my pay grade, okay? Guy’s got a three-six cumulative QPR. He’s going Marine option. Gives really good gung ho. He sharpens his Marine dress sword, okay? Made a plebe shove out one time over the sword, then cut a piece of paper in midair with the thing in front of the plebe. Our house Marines eat that shit right up.”

  It sounded to Jim like some of the Marines in Bancroft Hall needed adult supervision. “What are you going to do when you get out of here?” Jim asked.

  “Surface line. Didn’t have the grades for aviation or subs. Only way I got in was with the swimming, sprint ball.”

  Jim nodded. “Okay,” he said. “What’s the connection to Markham? And what’s Markham got to do with what happened to Brian Dell?”

  Hays looked down at the ground for a long moment before answering. “Julie and I were close for three semesters. Then it went sour. Julie took a walk on the wild side. Down at UVA at an away meet. Once that she admits to.”

  “With Booth.”