Darkside (62 page)

“But he did do this to Brian to get back at me,” Julie said in a small voice, speaking for the first time. Ev wanted to reach out to her, but she had been so withdrawn all day that he'd been afraid to make the first move.

A yacht rumbled into the marina from the outer harbor and blatted its horn for a line-handler. A young man came trotting down the pier from the clubhouse. “I think he did this to Brian Dell because he could,” Hall said, casting what looked to Ev like a quick warning glance at Branner. “The fact that Julie had pulled Dell under her wing probably made Dell a better target, but he was already a qualified target for the likes of Dyle Booth.”

“Shit. Shit.
Shit,
” Julie muttered, shaking her head. “I should have spoken up way earlier.”

“Well, you had something to lose, didn't you, Midshipman Markham?” Hall said. “He told us about the video.”

“What video?” Ev asked, sitting up in his chair. Hall didn't answer, but he looked at Julie expectantly.

She took a deep breath. “After that weekend in Charlottesville, Dyle sent me a video clip over the Academy intranet. Somebody at the party had filmed everything. I guess you could say I was the star. Dyle said he'd put it on the Web unless I did what he wanted.”

“When did he do this?” Branner asked softly.

“The clip came right after the UVA weekend,” Julie said. “Come to think of it, that was probably where my underwear went adrift. But the threat to put it on the Web was yesterday morning. He called it my ‘graduation present.'”

“Sweet,” Branner said.

“Where's the video?” Ev asked.

“No one knows,” Jim said. He was watching Julie's face, but she just shook her head.

“And that's how he was able to take you prisoner this morning?” Branner asked.

Julie nodded. “I stewed about it all day and all night. Especially after having to run away from Bancroft Hall last night.” She flashed her father a quick look but then faced away again. “Then when I heard that something huge had happened down in the tunnels, I figured it must have to do with goddamned Dyle. I went to his room, but he wasn't there. So I waited. A long time. But he didn't come back. Thirty minutes before reveille, I gave up, went back to my room.”

“And there he was?”

“And there he was. All dressed out in his jarhead costume. He put a knife to my throat, said he'd stick Mel if I made a sound. She was asleep in her rack, right there, next to us. He pulled me out into the passageway and put a pillow-case over my head and taped it. After that, I don't know where we went, but we ended up on the roof. That much, I could tell. Right as morning meal formation was going down, he started screaming crazy shit down into the court. Now I know what Hitler sounded like.”

“Where's Booth now?” Liz asked.

“We think he escaped back down into the tunnels,” Hall said. “The old part, the Fort Severn magazines. Way down there, under Lejeune Hall. But we also think they collapsed while he was down there. Knowing what we know about those tunnels, we suspect he's dead.”

Julie just nodded. “Good,” she said. “Dyle needed to be dead. Hell, I think he
wanted
to be dead.”

“The final part of our meeting with the heavies was about you, Midshipman Markham,” Hall said.

“Oh, I can just imagine,” she said. “Four valiant years, down the tubes.” She looked over at Ev. “Sorry to disappoint you, Dad. Almost made it.”

Ev really wanted to get up and hold her, but Hall was shaking his head.

“Actually, I think you're going to be all right,” he said. “There's maybe something you didn't know: Booth gave you a roofie that night at UVA.”

Julie just stared at him.

“What's a roofie?” Ev asked.

“Rohypnol,” Branner said. “The date rape drug. A tasteless, odorless, clear liquid you put in the girl's drink and she's all yours, all inhibitions gone, and, what's even better, she won't remember a thing.”

“Holy shit.”

“He said that? He slipped me a roofie?”

“Did you get tested afterward?” Branner asked. “Anyone do a rape kit on you? Blood test?”

Julie shook her head. “I thought it was all me, getting drunk, letting it happen. Just once, in four years, letting go, totally losing control. That was the Dyle effect. And let me tell you, I dreaded that commissioning physical exam like the end of the world.”

“Well then, you had no way of knowing,” Branner said. “But he told Mr. Hall here that he gave you a roofie. Put it in your drink. You never would have noticed until the next morning, when I'm sure you did notice.”

Julie blushed but then nodded. “I was so damned ashamed—of myself, of Dyle, even. Everything they teach us here…”

“Well, like I said, I think this is going to come out all right for you,” Hall said. “The commandant does not view your mentoring Dell as a serious conduct offense. And the fact that you weren't entirely forthcoming in the NCIS investigation can be justified by the grotesque blackmail Booth was running. They're working on an official version of events, but your part in it is going to get sanitized. A lot.”

“Why are they doing this?” Julie asked.

“Because you really didn't do anything so very wrong, Julie,” Hall said. “You tried to help some poor plebe who was barely afloat, and in the process you crossed paths with a sadistic monster who had fooled the system, big-time. I think they're more than a little embarrassed about that too.”

“But I lied when I said I didn't know Brian very well!” she said. “That's—”

“Understandable, given the circumstances. Before this
morning's events, Booth was already responsible for two other deaths. If it hadn't been Brian, it may well have been someone else. We think he was getting a taste for it. And what he did last night in the tunnels was absolutely homicidal.”

Julie shivered. “When he hung me out that window, I thought it was all over. But then he said we'd go together when the time was right.”

“Sometimes things work out,” Hall said.

“So it's finished?” Ev asked. “She can graduate?”

“As best I can tell, unless she blows an exam or two.”

Julie blinked and then put a hand to her mouth. “I want to go home, Dad,” she said, finally facing Ev. “I think I want a big sleeping pill and twelve hours to enjoy it.”

Ev stood up, more than happy to oblige. “When does she have to be back?”

“They said Sunday night, eighteen hundred,” Hall said, also standing. “Agent Branner will want to get a written statement for the record, but she can do that early next week. Why don't you take her home, Prof? We're gonna secure, too. It's been a long damned night and day.”

Ev gathered up his jacket and shoes, put his arm around Julie, and escorted her off the boat. He told Liz he'd call her later, and she just smiled and waved. He hoped, as they went up the pier, that the smile was a good sign. He was vastly relieved at the outcome of the meeting in Bancroft Hall and that Julie was going to graduate after all. But in ten days' time, she'd be on her way to Pensacola, and he still had no damned idea of what he was going to do then.

 

Jim watched them go as darkness settled on the marina, and then he and Branner got ready to leave. Branner unsuccessfully stifled a huge yawn as she went over to the railing and began putting on her shoes. Liz DeWinter came over as Markham and his daughter passed out of sight around the clubhouse building.

“Okay,” she said, looking up at him. “How'd you really manage all that?”

“Manage what, counselor?” he asked innocently.

“Getting my client out of the shit. As all you boat-school types have told me repeatedly, they take that honor code very seriously over there.”

“Oh, that,” Jim said, teasing her just a little until he saw Branner giving him that range-finding look over Liz's shoulder. “Well, a certain captain, who shall forever go nameless, walked right into my little standoff with Booth on the fourth deck up there. Booth held this officer in somewhat low regard. He emptied a forty-five all around said individual, who was at the time attempting to find that fabled route to the Indies right through the center of the earth.”

“And?”

“And he may have pissed his pants. Just a little.”

“Just a little?”

“Well, perhaps more than a little. Think lake.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. And as he was winding himself up this afternoon to unleash the Honor Committee and the Brigade investigators and all the rest of the ethics and morality mafia, I called for a coffee break and had a private word, during which he and I reviewed certain aspects of the incident that had not yet reached the public domain.”

“How you do go on, Mr. Hall,” Liz said.

“He's learning,” Branner said from across the deck. “Slowly, though.”

“I certainly am. Anyway, in the fullness of time, you can share this insight with your erstwhile client. Maybe
after
she throws her hat in the air and swears the appropriate oath.”

“And tell her what, exactly, Mr. Hall? That you blackmailed the dant into letting her go forward?”

“Call it leverage, not blackmail. Plus it seemed like the appropriate thing to do, counselor. And I guess you can tell her, ‘Welcome to the real Navy, Ensign.'”

Liz started to chuckle. Jim took Branner's arm. “Come on, Special Agent. It's tree time in the city.”

They drove back over to Jim's marina, which was not nearly so grand as the AYC, and then had to hunt for a parking place big enough to accommodate the pickup truck. After much backing and filling, he got the thing wedged in between two much smaller vehicles. Branner then discovered that she couldn't open her door.

“This damned thing needs tugboats,” she said. “Let me ask you something: You really think Booth's dead?”

“Shit, I hope,” Jim said with a yawn. “He was a resourceful bastard. I guess you'll have to get out this side.”

She didn't move. “I mean, what if those tunnels didn't collapse? What if that was something else caving in down there?”

“They collapsed when we were running for our lives,” he pointed out.

“So what was that noise this morning? When we were all trying to figure out how
not
to be the first one to go back down that hole?”

“Um.”

“Yeah. So what was left to cave in down there?”

“Maybe we should call the PWC?” He looked at his watch: 8:15. “They must still have crews down there, restoring power, drying those cabinets out.”

She rolled down her window, looked again at how close the other car was, and shook her head. “Yeah, I think we should. Just in case. Otherwise, we're assuming. I always get bit right in the ass when I make assumptions.”

“Oh, is that what it takes?” Jim asked, provoking a pained look. My prospects aren't looking so good, he thought. He said, “Okay,” then put a call in to the chief, who got him patched through to the PWC ops station. They, in turn, put him through to the on-scene coordinator down in the tunnels, a Lieutenant Commander Benson. Jim identified himself and briefly explained his problem. Benson, who said he was near the Fort Severn tunnel doors, told him to hold the line and he'd go take a look.

“Where would he go, if he did get out of that mess down there?” Branner asked.

“Either back into Bancroft Hall, where he could probably hide, for a little while anyway, or into town, where he could go to ground with his Goth crew.”

“Yeah, but they're just college kids. They'd only hide him until the heat began to build. You said he was ready to grandstand his way into the next world. If that was the case, what else might he do?”

“My brain's failing and my back hurts like hell. What are you getting at?”

“Would he try again for Markham?”

Jim had to think about that one. The cops had enough, based on what had been captured on tape, to put him away. Not to mention the fact that Booth had fired on the TAC squad officers. But this was Dyle Booth they were talking about.

“He might,” he said. “Just to show us he could. But that hole under Lejeune Hall went to the right-hand magazine. Which we know was flooded. Both those tunnels should have collapsed. I can't—Wait one. Yeah, Mr. Benson?”

Benson said they'd checked both tunnels left and right. Left was collapsed right up into the anteroom.

“And the right one?” Jim asked, a small tendril of apprehension coiling in his stomach.

“The right one was open,” Benson reported. “All the way down to the right-hand magazine. Lots of muddy mortar, but the ceiling was holding, barely. The cross tunnel had collapsed, and part of the right-hand magazine had collapsed.”

“Which side of the magazine collapsed, as you looked in from the door?” Jim asked, looking at Branner, who now appeared to be wide awake as she listened. Benson said he hadn't gone down there personally. Place scared him to death. But the cleanup crew's supervisor said there was apparently a ladder of some kind sticking down out of a hole in the ceiling, if that helped.

Jim sighed, thanked him, and hung up. “Right tunnel held,” he announced.

“Oh shit,” she said. “We'd better alert somebody. And
we'd better call Professor Markham, warn him that Booth might be loose.”

“That's not a call I'd like to get right now,” he said. “Why don't we go out there, tell him in person, maybe baby-sit the place for the night? Although Booth is probably long gone.”

“You start driving,” she said, pulling out her own phone. “I'll call my people. All that Washington help is still down here. They can notify the Feebs if they're still in town. And I guess we need to tell someone in Mother B. that their favorite psycho might still be up and running.”

“And he's only had all fucking day to get his shit together,” Jim said as he eased the pickup out of its parking place without removing anyone's mirrors.
“Damn it!”