“Yes.”
Bright shook her head slowly. “No idea,” she said, looking back at both of them and turning that smile back on. Jim once again felt that Bright might be just blowing them off. Know nothing, saw nothing, and, like, heard nothing. He knew that if his roommate had ever gotten across the breakers with the NCIS, they would have talked out every tiny detail. He passed another note to Branner.
“Are there any weirdos in your class, Midshipman Bright? You know, heavy dudes, guys who are known or thought to be…well a little different?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Agent Branner,” Bright replied, that smile still pasted on her face. “I mean, this is the Naval Academy. People like that? My high school had some, you know, out-there guys, the kind that some people thought might show up at school with guns one day? Like, to do a Columbine? But here? The system wouldn’t put up with that sh-um, with that attitude.”
“So this place is strictly for Boy Scouts, then?” Branner asked with a faint note of challenge in her voice.
“And Girl Scouts,” Bright said, coming right back at her. The smile never wavered.
Branner shot him that “What next?” look. He shook his head, and Branner ended the interview. Once Bright had left, Branner turned off the tape recorder. Jim realized he had not seen her turn it on, and then he remembered that she had been fooling with it just before Bright had walked in. Branner being sneaky.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, I think she’s shining us on,” Branner said. “I’m so pretty. I’m so full of personality. I’m so…so very Bright. Yes, that’s it,” she said in a singsong voice that sounded remarkably like Bright’s voice. Jim was laughing by the time she’d finished.
“They’ve not only talked about it; they’ve probably agreed on what Bright would say or not say.”
“Gosh, you think?” Branner said drolly.
“Yeah, I think. Roommates are damn near married-it’s usually that close, especially by first class year. Way back in the real old days, midshipmen used to call their roommates ‘wives.’ We need to check to see how long they’ve been roomies. If it’s been a couple of years-and that’s not unusual-then this was smoke and mirrors.”
Branner made a quick note. “At least a little contrived,” she said. The commandant’s secretary stuck her head in and asked if they were finished, as the room was scheduled. Jim helped Branner pull her stuff together. “The important thing I’m finding out here is that the midshipmen are perfectly willing and able to close ranks,” she said. “Buncha guys with a code of silence. Remind you of anyone?”
“That’s a little extreme. Part of it is the system here. The conduct system, where people get put on report for about a million different infractions, large and small. Getting ‘fried,’ as it’s called, becomes a bit of a cops and robbers game. But two rules do apply: One, it’s a cultural crime to bilge someone else.”
“‘Bilge’?”
“Get someone else in trouble, especially a classmate. Think rat squad. And it’s even worse if you do it to save your own ass, or to gain advantage. I’m talking of infractions outside of the honor code, of course. That’s different.”
Branner paused in the doorway, ignoring the hovering secretary. “How is that different?”
“That’s rule two: Rule one doesn’t apply in honor cases, because an honor offense is an offense against everyone. I’m talking cheating on exams, lying, stealing, like that.”
“How about covering up for someone?”
“If you lie to do the cover-up, it’s an honor offense. If you’re asked a direct question by a competent authority, you’re supposed tell to the truth. What you don’t do is slip into the deputy dant’s office after hours and bilge someone for offenses, other than honor offenses.”
They moved out of the anteroom and into the hallway. “So if the roommate was covering for Julie-that is, if she knows Julie did go out of the room early that morning, she’d be obliged to tell us that?”
“That’s what the system expects.”
“Now who’s equivocating? Is that what the system always gets?”
Jim shook his head. “I’d have to call that a gray area. See, the midshipmen are always watching. The administration tends to forget that the honor system is a two-way street. The mids watch to see how the Academy administration comports itself, too. Every time something bad happens, like this Dell case, they watch to see how the administration’s response squares with what they think to be the facts.”
“In other words, if they think the administration is trying to cover something up, then it’s okay for them to play cover-up, too?”
“It may not be okay technically, but now they’ll play the game. Or at least that’s my take on it.”
Branner thought about that for a moment. “This is going to be hard, isn’t it?” she said. “Finding out what really happened here?”
Jim looked around to see who was listening. Nobody appeared to be. “Yes, it is,” he replied. “Fact is, we might never find out what really happened, especially if the administration persists with this ‘accident’ spin.”
“The mids recognize spin when they hear it?”
“Oh yes. Plus, there’s the basic fact of leadership: Whenever the leader goes into the ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ mode, he forfeits his moral right to be the leader. That’s the problem with teaching a bunch of smart kids about leadership: They learn.”
Branner shook her head again and started walking down the corridor. They didn’t speak until they were out on the steps leading up to the rotunda.
“I’ve got to do some thinking,” she said. “Hate that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I may not be able to keep this case to myself after all.”
“I’m still willing to help,” he said.
“But you’re not really on the inside, in Bancroft Hall,” she said. “I mean, I appreciate it all to hell, but we’ve got to break through this wall.”
“Let me think about it, too,” he said. “If we can inject the honor system into the problem, we might be able to crack that wall. You really think someone killed that plebe?”
“I’m not hearing any substantiated reasons for him to commit suicide,” she replied. “Other than that he was a little guy who kept mostly to himself. As I told you, my orders were to rule homicide out first. If I can do that, then it becomes a question of accident or suicide. That’s a whole lot less pressing than homicide.”
They stood there on the wide marble steps while midshipmen came and went around them. “I’ve never understood suicide,” Jim said. “But if you were a guy and you were depressed, despondent, suicidal even, would you kill yourself wearing women’s underwear?”
“One might,” she said. “In theory, suicide is very often a statement. A final ‘Screw you, world. See what you made me do? Now it’s all your fault. And by the way, I was a flaming faggot, and now you know. So there, world. I showed you.’”
“But there was no suicide note. The roomie says Dell was making it through. Nobody was on Dell’s ass so hard that the roomie was willing to point a finger. You said that the parents reported no indication of a suicidal frame of mind.”
“All true. On the other hand, he’s wearing Markham’s panties, and forensics indicates he may have had some help going off the roof.”
“So what the hell was this?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Jim thought about those clothes. He had a bad thought. “What if Dell wasn’t the real target here?” he said. “What if the real target was Markham?”
Branner blinked. “Whoa,” she said. “Kill Dell to frame Markham? That’s pretty damned cold. You’re talking psychopath now.”
“Dell jumps wearing Markham’s underwear. X days after Dell goes over, some of his uniform items turn up in Markham’s locker. She even picked up on it: If she had been involved in Dell’s death, she never would have allowed those clothes to show up anywhere near her.”
“But that brings us back to a connection between Dell and Markham, something more than their being on the same sports team.”
Jim kicked at a small stone. Circles. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”