Issues, Ev thought. It had become the latest buzzword when people couldn’t or wouldn’t be specific. He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, Julie,” he said to his daughter, “if you get the sense that someone-excuse me, anyone -in authority is even thinking about holding you responsible for what happened this morning, you stop talking and call me.”
“It’s not going to be like that,” Robbins protested, but Ev raised a hand. With the height disparity between them, an observer might have thought Ev was going to swat the captain.
“Captain, I had to deal with NCIS before, back when I was on active duty. I’m sure you have, too. I submit that you have no idea of how it’s going to be, especially since you can have no direct influence over their line of questioning, correct?”
“Well, of course, Professor Markham,” Robbins said, visibly angry now. He was trying to be polite but barely making it. “We just need to find out what happened, and why, if that’s possible. A young man’s dead, sir. His parents are going to want to know why.”
“I understand, Captain Robbins,” Ev said, matching the commandant’s formal civility. “But this parent wants to make sure there’s no rush to judgment for purposes, say, of getting this unfortunate incident rapidly behind us.”
Robbins stiffened at that. Ev was speaking in code, but it was a code they both understood. The Academy was highly sensitive to bad news, and the administration had become very adept at damage control in recent years. From the look in Captain Robbins’s eye, Ev realized he might have pushed things too hard. The commandant was the number-two executive at the Academy, reporting only to Rear Admiral McDonald, the superintendent. A civilian professor, tenured though he might be, was well down the food chain from the commandant of midshipmen. But Ev sensed he needed to put the administration on immediate notice: Any attempt to railroad Julie was going to light some fuses.
“Midshipman Markham,” Robbins said, turning to Julie. “Please go with Mr. Hall there. He will escort you to my conference room, where you’ll meet with the NCIS people.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Julie said, and headed for the rangy civilian standing next to the partition. Ev waited for her to disappear into the executive hallway before turning back to the commandant. “The word in the Brigade is that the plebe jumped,” he said.
“The ‘word’ in the Brigade is more properly called scuttlebutt and is almost always bullshit, Professor,” Robbins said. Ev noticed that Robbins was beginning to do what the mids irreverently called the “Dant’s Dance,” popping up and down on the balls of his feet whenever he became impatient. It probably didn’t help that he had to crane his neck to look up at Ev. “Look, we’d appreciate it if you would back off for the moment and let the system work. I guarantee you that your daughter will be treated fairly. She has an excellent reputation in her class. Again: Our objective here is to find out what happened and why. That’s all.”
Ev started to reply, but the way Robbins had said “That’s all” sounded very much like a dismissal. It was not an unreasonable request. Julie was an adult, twenty-one, and about to be a commissioned officer. Even as a parent, Ev had no legal standing here; thus, discretion was probably the better part of valor at this juncture. If he got too far up the commandant’s nose, it would be Julie who’d take the heat for it. He nodded and left the rotunda. The commandant, still rocking up on his toes, watched him go for a moment before heading for the partition that separated the public Academy from the very private one.
It would take Ev five minutes to walk from Bancroft Hall back to Sampson Hall, home of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences. It was 1:30, so the mids were all in class by now. Except for tourists, he had Stribling Walk to himself. The central Yard was a beautiful parklike setting, with its many marble monuments to famous people or incidents of naval history. The brick walk began at the imposing circular colonnade in front of Bancroft Hall and ended one thousand feet away at the equally imposing marble facade of the Mahan Hall complex. There were statues, cenotaphs, an obelisk, heavily oxidized bronze busts, and cannons littering a landscape of brick walks and bright green grass, all presided over by stately old trees. The towering dome of the Academy chapel rose twenty stories through the trees to his left, and the glimmering surface of the Severn River shone between the academic buildings to his right. Stubby gray Yard Patrol boats, YPs, used for seamanship training, blatted their horns out along the quay wall. He had to step around some open trenches, signs of the Academy’s notorious “diggers and fillers” at work on their seemingly perpetual endeavors.
An NCIS investigation, he thought, mentally shaking his head. Overseen by the Academy’s administration. Hell, maybe the FBI would even get into it, depending on what those mysterious “issues” were. There were already too many bureaucracies getting involved in this incident. And once the media engaged, Ev knew the administration would begin to circle the wagons, if they weren’t doing so already. He was determined to make damn sure they didn’t leave Julie outside the circle. He stopped halfway down Stribling Walk, thumbed his cell phone open, and called Worth Battle, Esquire.
“Rivers, Linden, Battle and Hall,” a smooth female voice answered. Ev loved the title of the firm: It had such a reassuring resonance.
“Hi, Felicity,” he replied.
“Oh, hi, Professor Markham,” she said.
“Is himself around?”
“Let me check,” she said, putting him on hold to the sound of Mozart. Ev sat down on one of the benches that lined the walk and waited. Worth came on the line.
“Doctor,” he said.
“Counselor,” Ev responded in the familiar litany. “We may need a lawyer.”
“We?”
“Julie and I.”
“Are we on a cell phone by any chance?”
“Yes.”
“Call me on a landline. Say thirty minutes.”
Ev went on back to Sampson Hall, which flanked Mahan at the end of Stribling Walk. He headed directly for his office, putting a finger to his lips when Dolly tried to tell him the meeting was still going on. He shut the door as quietly as he could and sat down at his desk. There were no messages. He worried about Julie, sitting in the commandant’s conference room with two thugs from the NCIS.
Thugs -that’s too strong a word, he reflected. NCIS agents weren’t thugs, but his experiences with NIS, the current organization’s predecessor, had not impressed him. Maybe things were different now that they had a new title and civilian leadership. He just wished it wasn’t his only daughter they were interrogating. Okay, interviewing. He sighed and checked the clock, anxious to talk to Worth. To his surprise, the intercom line on his phone rang.
“Mr. Battle, sir,” Dolly said. He punched the flashing button on his elderly Navy desk phone.
“Okay, what’s going on?” Worth asked without preamble.
Ev described what had happened that morning, then told him that Julie was now closeted with NCIS agents over in the commandant’s office.
“Right. And nobody will say what put the spotlight on Julie?”
“Nope. I talked to the dant himself. He wasn’t exactly forthcoming. The word in the Yard is that the kid was a jumper, but the official party line is accident until proven otherwise. Supposedly, everyone’s still in the fact-finding mode. There are, apparently, ‘issues.’”
“Did Julie know this kid? As in, Anything going on?”
“Not like that. Yes, she did know him. She was on last year’s summer detail, and she’d had him come around a couple of times during the year. But no to your second question. Worth, she’s a firstie. This kid was a plebe, and, according to her, something of a weak sister. Firsties don’t get emotionally involved with plebes, except when they’re yelling at them.”