Darkside (45 page)

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. Problem 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.”

“Yes, sir. With Dyle Booth.”

“That why you two broke up?”

“Yes and no. I wanted to maintain our relationship after graduation. Julie didn't. I made a jerk of myself about it. Finally, she drops this little bomb on me. I was fucking floored. I think that was her objective.”

“Julie Markham sounds like a tough young lady to me,” Jim said.

Hays shook his head again. “I was in love with her. You've seen her. But after her mother died, she changed. I thought I could go with it. Didn't work.”

“Other than having something to throw cold water on your romance, what's this UVA episode got to do with anything?”

“She said she told Dyle that it was all a big mistake. Dyle didn't like that. Dyle doesn't handle
no
very well.”

There were other runners coming across the bridge now, but they seemed to be staying down on the athletic field.

“And?” Jim prompted.

“Julie had been mentoring Brian Dell. He wasn't her plebe or anything, but she felt sorry for the little guy.”

“Whoa. That's not what she told us. She said she'd known him and a thousand of his closest friends during plebe summer detail, and then seen him around the halls of poison ivy. But otherwise, no big deal.”

“Not true,” Hays said. “She was helping him. His own youngster had resigned and Dell had lousy grease. The aptitude board was looking at him. You didn't know that?”

Jim thought for a moment. He had not. And Branner wouldn't have known enough to check with the aptitude board. They had just taken Julie's word for it. Shit.

“You saying what I think you're saying? That this guy Booth may have done something to Dell to get back at
Markham
?”

“Sir,” Hays said, eyeing Jim warily, “all I can say for sure is that Julie wouldn't hurt Brian Dell. But Dyle Booth? That's another story. I think he's the guy did my computer up that way.”

“Did you get any threats?”

“Not directly, but the last time we did swim practice to
gether, he was giving me the shark shit. And of course he knows Julie and I were…well, what we were. Before he did whatever he did to her down in Charlottesville.”

Jim heard the rationalization in Hays's voice. He clearly was not willing to accept the notion that whatever happened at UVA might have been entirely consensual.

“And that's all I know,” Hays said. “And, like I said, I can't prove shit.”

“You didn't tell this to Captain Rogers? Even after somebody tried to zap you?”

“No, sir. No proof. Plus, Julie's really sensitive about Charlottesville. Besides, today? Captain Rogers was in the transmit mode. He didn't want to hear anything from me or the other guys other than ‘Aye aye, sir.'”

Jim remembered the shark tag with the WD entwined in the limbs of the stick figure. “What was Dell's first name? Brian?”

“No, sir. William was his first name. William Brian Dell.”

Jim thought it over. WD. And we're back to Markham, he realized. Plus Midshipman Dyle J for Jones Booth. “I've got to discuss this with Special Agent Branner,” he said. “She may want to hear this firsthand, or she may go directly to Markham.”

“Sir?” Hays said, his expression tense. “Julie—Midshipman Markham—won't talk about what happened between her and Dyle Booth. Not to me, and probably not to anyone. I got the impression it was humiliating in some way.”

“Not as humiliating as what happened to Brian Dell,” Jim said.

Hays didn't respond.

“You're on the honor board, Mr. Hays. We both know the Academy is about to slam the lid on this incident. Maybe even as we speak. Look, Branner and I are not after Julie Markham. But if she won't talk to us, her expectations for a glorious commissioning week are going to blow up in her face. You understand what I'm saying?”