Darkside (25 page)

Jim tried not to laugh out loud. He could suddenly visualize a tiny commandant devil sitting on his other shoulder, whispering urgently into his ear, Say yes, yes! Immediately!

“Help doing what?” he asked as casually as he could.

“What you just did, there, earlier. Suggesting a line of questions for the roommate.”

“So you want, like, a consultant.”

“Basically. For the most part, our office works what I'd call ‘admin crime.' Fraud, theft, drugs, contractors cheating the Supply Department, mids cheating on exams. But this case is different, and I think you're right—solving it is going to turn on penetrating that blue-and-gold wall, as you called it. I can't ask the officers in the Executive Department because their boss initiated the investigation.”

“Go on.”

“Thing is, we both know what the administration wants in a case like this.”

He thought for a moment. “To solve it, of course,” he said. “To right all wrongs, root out evil, so that justice and the American way prevail.”

She laughed out loud, the sound echoing over the water between the docks. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Think about it? I'll even stop trying to break your balls.”

“That would be nice,” he said. “You feel obligated to put men down?”

“Only men who go through life at half power,” she said, not giving him an inch. “But give me a hand with this Dell thing, who knows? You might like a real investigation.”

“Will I get paid extra?” he asked with a straight face.

She laughed again. “How's an NCIS ball cap sound? Or, hell, maybe we'll figure something else out.” She gave him a mock leer, but then her face grew serious. “I'm going up to Bethesda today. Hopefully, talk to Bagger. Call me tomorrow morning? I do need some help with this. For the Academy's sake, and maybe for Dell's.”

“Sure, what the hell,” he said, trying to hide his elation. “The chief runs the day-to-day bits of my nothing job anyway. The only thing I have going is the vampire runner gig. And protecting my gonads from transient redheads.”

“Oh, lighten up, Hall,” she snorted. She got up, shot an imaginary finger gun at Jupiter, said, “Bye-bye, birdie,” and set off. “And thanks for the coffee,” she called to Jim as she went down the brow.

He watched her go up the dock, slim legs pumping. Jupiter muttered something unkind. No halfway measures with that one, he thought. Casually busting my hump, and I still don't know her first name. He almost called her back to tell her the rest of it. But she steamed right out of sight. Life was still unfair.

 

A pleasant young man dressed in the Annapolis Yacht Club work uniform asked if he could be of any assistance as Ev walked down toward the restricted dock area. He gave the young man Liz's slip number and was then politely escorted to the proper dock, where the man waited to see if Ev was indeed a legitimate and expected guest. Occupying slip 47 was Liz's so-called stinkpot, a gleaming white Eastbay 43 power cruiser with the name
Not Guilty
spelled out in bronze letters on her transom. Liz, dressed in white short shorts, a red halter top, wraparound sunglasses, and long-billed white ball cap, waved him on board as the young man dutifully disappeared back toward the parking lot.

“I have a boat,” he announced as he handed over two six-packs of beer. “It's about eight feet long and powered by Norwegian steam. This, on the other hand, is a
boat.
”

“Yeah, it is,” she said, indicating he should come below. The main salon was fully enclosed, decorated with rubbed teak, stainless steel, and lush carpeting. There was a
U
-shaped galley, a center island–style master stateroom, a guest stateroom with upper and lower berths, a head with shower, and storage compartments everywhere. Liz stashed the beer in the reefer and gave him the full tour. Ev realized this must be a half-million-dollar yacht at least.

“She can range four hundred miles, has a top speed of twenty-four knots on a good day and with a following sea. Twin Cat diesels. Forty-three-foot overall and a great sea-keeper. I mostly cruise the bay, but she can go offshore with the best of them.”

“It's magnificent. Do you just buy something like this, or do you take out a mortgage?”

She smiled at his question. “As the broker would say, if you have to ask…”

He put up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Okay, okay. And I would have to ask.” Although, he thought, you wouldn't, would you? On the other hand, he knew he would never spend a huge amount on a boat, remembering the old adage about the three things in life a man should always try to rent, not own.

“Come topside while I get her lit off,” she said, and went up the polished companionway to the bridge area. Ev followed, enjoying the sight of her slender legs and full figure climbing ahead of him. Follow you anywhere, he told himself. The day had bloomed into one of glorious sunshine and a twenty-knot sea breeze that was already rippling the Annapolis harbor with tiny whitecaps. Julie and her problems were suddenly forgotten.

“Stinkpot—that means powerboat?” he asked.

“In sailboat language. As opposed to the much more politically correct and environmentally considerate
sailing vessels.
Annapolis is the premier sailing harbor on the East Coast. Just ask any sailor. We heedless Philistines who dare to sully the sea breeze with diesel fumes, engine noises, and
big wakes are held in some long-nosed contempt by our bay-hugging betters.”

“Hoo-boy,” he said.

“On the other hand, our popularity rises somewhat when there's a dead calm out on the bay and our purist friends have zero chance of getting back in before sundown on a Sunday afternoon, unless of course one of us Philistines offers them a tow.”

“You do that often?”

“Often enough to get enormous satisfaction when it happens. Have a seat while I do the checklist.”

He watched as she sat up on the captain's chair, her legs not quite long enough to reach the deck, and flipped switches. A few minutes later, she brought the two big Cats to life. Ev was directed to bring in the mooring lines, and then she backed the big boat expertly out of the slip, brought her about, and headed for the channel at the prescribed idle speed. She motioned for him to bring up the fenders, then beckoned him back up to the bridge.

“You don't take your scull out of the river, do you?”

“Did it once,” he said, rubbing on some sunblock. “On one of those dead-calm days you talked about. Then came fog.”

“Yow,” she said. “I'll take some of that.”

He obliged by standing behind her while she sat at the wheel and rubbing the sunblock cream on her shoulders, upper arms, and back. “And you under way with oars? What'd you do?”

“One of these enormous ‘stinkpots' came by, idling in on radar,” he said. She had wide shoulders and surprisingly taut muscles for such a petite woman. Then he remembered that she swam regularly for exercise. He stopped when he got to her waist. “He was going really slow, so I fell in behind him, following his wake. Ended up in a marina, hoisted out, and took a cab home to get my car and trailer. Felt like a proper idiot.”

“I'll bet they never knew you were back there.”

They were passing the Naval Academy on the port hand as they headed for the entrance of Spa Creek, another river estuary. Bancroft Hall rose in gleaming splendor beyond the landfill hump of Farragut Field. They could see tourists swarming around the visitors' center, and there were several knockabout-class sailboats trying not to collide with one another around the Santee Basin on the Severn side. When they pulled abreast of the Triton Light monument, which memorialized all the lost American submarines now on eternal patrol, she brought the speed up and pointed fair for the bay itself.

Ev wedged himself into a corner of the pilothouse and watched as she concentrated on maneuvering the big cruiser through all the smaller powerboats, dinghies, fishermen, yachts, channel buoys, and even two YPs out into the more open waters of the bay. He could see a large tanker plowing its way up toward Baltimore about five miles out, seemingly motionless until he lined it up visually with a distant buoy and saw the buoy appear to move.

“Get yourself a beer and bring me up a Coke, if you would, kind sir,” she said, checking the radarscope. “We'll go down past South River and then anchor for a swim and some lunch, if that's okay.”

“This is glorious,” he said, looking around at the sparkling water and grateful that his sunglasses were polarized; the glare was very strong. “Whatever you want to do suits me.”

She flashed a mischievous smile over her shoulder and then went back to her driving. He went below and got the drinks. The interior air conditioning was on, and the salon was already wonderfully cool.

An hour later, she turned in toward the bluffs below the South River estuary and began paying attention to the depth finder. She asked him to go forward and release the anchor stopper chain. When the depth finder read twenty-five feet, she slowed, stopped, backed the engines gently, using them to point the yacht's bow into the breeze, and then released the anchor. She backed slowly, veering chain un
til she had it set, veered more chain, and then shut down the engines.

“This is good holding ground,” she said. “But we'll just watch for a few minutes to make sure.”

Now that the boat was no longer under way, it was suddenly hot and muggy up in the pilothouse, even with the sea breeze. “How will you tell?” he asked.

“And you were in the Navy how long?” she asked, staring down into the cone of the radar display.

“I was a naval aviator. Navigation, piloting, that's black-shoe stuff. Shipboard duty, that is. Our idea of a boat was ninety thousand tons, a thousand feet long, with a crew of six thousand people who did the nautical stuff.”

“I see,” she said archly. “So your ignorance of seamanship, navigation, boat handling, rules of the road—”

“Is damned near infinite,” he said before she could continue. “Hell, all we did was fly our trusty, if aging, warbirds onto the flight deck at a hundred and eighty knots and hope the frigging arresting wire didn't break. The ocean was just something that kept the carrier afloat and provided a soft spot to land in if we had to eject.”

Liz laughed at that and shook her head. She checked the radar again to make sure the range rings weren't moving downwind. Satisfied the anchor was holding, she suggested a swim. He got his suit and went below to change while she deployed a sea ladder and a buoyed line off the stern. By the time he came back topside, she was in the water. He looked around to see if there were any other boats in view, but they had the shoreline to themselves. As he headed for the transom, he spied that red halter top on the aftermost cushions. He went over the side and swam toward her, coming up alongside her fifty feet from the transom of the yacht. She was treading water, with only her neck and face bobbing above the slight chop.

“What's this for?” he asked, grabbing the buoy line with one hand. He tried not to look at anything other than her face.

“For just exactly what you're doing. Also, if you get tired,
or catch a cramp, you can pull yourself back to the boat with a minimum of effort. You'd be surprised at how often the Coast Guard finds perfectly intact boats out here with no crew aboard.”

The waves were just big enough to require some effort to keep his face out of the water, and he found himself having to work his legs to stay in one place. She was doing the same thing, and their legs touched from time to time. The water was cool, almost cold, and a nice relief from the humid air. The upper part of her body was a blue-green blur. He felt a flush rising in his face that wasn't entirely due to the sun.

“I was a swimmer back in my Academy days,” he said, determined to keep things totally normal. “But I never once went into the bay.”

“Why not?” she asked. There were little beads of water glistening on her forehead, and he wanted to wipe them off her perfect complexion. He realized what he really wanted to do was touch her. She'd left the sunglasses back on the boat, and her eyes were laughing at him.

“Didn't like the thought of all those creatures swimming around down there and looking up at
their
lunch. Plus, we used to go hunting for sharks' teeth along these bluffs. Some of those teeth were serious.”

“And all a hundred million years old, too,” she pointed out. “Biggest problem out here are the damned jellyfish, but it's too early.” She ducked beneath the water for a moment, then came back up, flipping her hair back. Her bare breasts nearly popped out of the water, and this time he found himself staring. She was wiping the water out of her eyes. “Ready to go back?” she asked.

“Yep,” he said, a slight catch in his throat. They pushed off together, their legs and hips touching again, just for an instant. He was the more powerful swimmer, arriving at the ladder first, but he moved aside to let her go up. She rose out of the water like a sleek mermaid. Those white shorts were now thoroughly transparent. She was sufficiently well made to carry it off, and he almost forgot to climb the ladder him
self once she was on deck. Realizing he was getting an erection, he hesitated at the bottom of the ladder long enough for things to calm down. It had been two years since he'd really even looked at a woman, and he was surprised at the strength of his reaction.

“You coming aboard?” she called from the top of the ladder. He forced himself not to look up.

“Uh, yes, right,” he answered, and pulled himself up the ladder, trying to turn sideways as his own wet trunks clung to his thighs and exposed his arousal. When he got on deck, she was rubbing her face and hair with a towel, and her breasts swung gently in time with her efforts. He reached quickly for a towel and unconsciously, and absurdly, began drying off his middle.