Jim still wondered if they were hearing the whole story. Branner was right: A one-night hookup in your senior year ought not to be the end of the world. “Was he really trying to score again, or was he just crowing?” he asked.
“I thought it was just Dyle doing his Tarzan act, but then he got pushy, real pushy. I told him no way in hell. He kept it up. One day, I went off on him after practice. Very public scene. I said some things, the kind of things we all felt about Dyle Booth, although no one had ever come out with them before. Especially classmates. He got all quiet.”
“Did he threaten you?” Branner asked.
“I started to get these E-mails,” she said, running her fingers through her hair. “No name line, but they were from Dyle all right. Lots of stuff about being the Shark. They’d just appear on my screen when I’d go on-line. I couldn’t do anything with my computer until I’d read them. And then they’d disappear, all by themselves. I’d try to delete them. No go. But once I clicked on them, they’d delete themselves. No path. No trace.”
“What’d he say?”
“He began to tell me stuff, stuff that he’d been doing over the past year. In Bancroft. Here in Crabtown. Stuff about the Goth scene over at St. John’s. Seriously weird shit. Sex parties. Some of their cult stuff. Things he called ‘vampire drills.’ Stuff I didn’t want to hear.”
“Did he talk about going into town and beating up townies?” Jim asked.
Julie nodded. “He called it ‘training,’ for when he got into Marine recon. He was always talking about going ‘ree-con.’ He said he uses the tunnels to come and go, whenever he feels like it. Says he owns them.”
Jim looked over at Branner. “When did all this happen?”
“The E-mails started during dark ages-January or thereabouts. It was like I was his best friend, so he could tell me all this shit. He’d even send pictures. There was this one, where he dressed up as Dracula or something. It just bannered on my screen one night while Mel and I were retrieving some papers. It even had sound. Mel damn near fainted, it was so real, so clear…and so Dyle.”
“You think he was getting into your room, messing with your computer?” Branner asked.
“No, I think he did it over the Brigade intranet. Dyle can make computers do anything he wants. He claims to have done shit on the faculty intranet, too. Like penetrate the faculty servers? He sent me a single history exam question once, and it was on the exam the next day.” She looked at both of them. “He talked about you two. That he’d done stuff to you.”
“Did he ever threaten you?” Branner asked.
“What do you mean?” Julie said, looking at Liz as if for help.
“Did he ever say that if you didn’t come across, he’d do something to you? Hell-o, Julie? A threat, you know?”
Liz intervened. “Where are you going with that question?” she asked.
Branner sighed. “If this guy was threatening Midshipman Markham, she should have gone to her chain of command. Obviously, she didn’t. I’m wondering why.”
“Julie was a three-striper,” Hays said. He saw Liz’s confusion. “A striper, you know, a midshipman officer. She was a three-striper on the battalion staff. If she’d gone to the Dark Side about Dyle, she would’ve had to tell what happened down at UVA. That she got drunk and had sex with a classmate. Total loss of personal control. It would have destroyed her reputation in the battalion and probably in our class. Wasn’t going to happen.”
“From what you’ve told us, I’m wondering why Dyle Booth didn’t tell,” Branner said. “To get even for you shutting him down.”
“Not his style,” Julie said. “First, because that would be bilging a classmate. Not done. And second, I think he wanted to hurt me himself. The E-mails were some kind of campaign, as if he were exposing himself to me. And then he found out about Brian Dell. That I was secretly helping him. I think he decided it would be more fun to terrorize Dell than to come at me directly. And since, strictly speaking, I was outside the chain of command in helping Dell, I couldn’t report Dyle for that, either.”
“But surely Dell’s own mentors, his youngster, the other youngster in his own company-they would have known that Booth was going after this kid.”
Julie shook her head. “That was the thing. Dell’s youngster resigned halfway through the year. Didn’t come back after Christmas leave. He was failing three subjects, and he’d decided he hated being here. So Dell didn’t have a youngster. No top cover. That was one of the reasons I took him on.”
“Wouldn’t somebody in his company have seen it happening?”
“Not with Dyle. He’d come in the night. Or catch Dell out on one of the athletic fields. Ambush him coming back from an E.I. you know, extra instruction, session. Sometimes Dyle just…appears. Plus, that company isn’t one of the better ones. The youngsters in his company knew that Dell was adrift, but it meant they had one less plebe to worry about, so they let it slide. They probably were clueless about what Dyle was doing. Hell, I didn’t know about Dyle’s running him until just before…before Brian, you know.”
“What happened?” Jim asked.
“Dell came to my room shortly before taps. Melanie was studying in the next room with some of her friends. He wanted to go topside. He was really upset. We used to talk sometimes, up on the roof. Guys go up there when they want privacy. He asked if we could meet that night, after taps. I said okay. He seemed really down, really tired. He was this little guy, you know? He looked about fourteen that night. So I said I’d meet him.”
“And did you?”
“Yes. That’s when he told me about Dyle. That he’d been ordered to come around to Dyle’s room at all hours. That Dyle was putting shit in his E-mail account, that Dyle had penetrated his computer, erased homework assignments, shit like that. Dyle would appear after midnight sometimes, or real early in the morning. Brian said he was scared of Dyle. That Dyle was making him do stuff.”
“‘Do stuff’?”
“He wouldn’t say what exactly, but I got the impression that Dyle was, like, turning him out. You know, maybe sexual humiliation stuff? Like he assumed Dell was gay. You have to remember-Dyle was twice Dell’s size.”
“ Was Dell gay?” Branner asked.
“I don’t think so,” Julie said. “More like weak. Math wizard, supposedly a high-scoring diver, but I don’t know where he ever competed. He was wiry, but too small.”
“Why didn’t he report what was going on? Tell me this wasn’t normal plebe year stuff,” Jim said.
“Not at all. It’s really changed, even since I’ve been here. It’s much more structured now. That’s what all the mentoring layers are about. But even so, plebes don’t go to the Dark Side with complaints against the upperclass, not if they want to stay here.”
Jim knew this was true. The way the system was supposed to work was that a plebe’s own upperclassmen would step in if someone got out of hand. “Was he suicidal?”
“No. Just down. Felt he couldn’t win. And Dyle was scaring him. He wanted to put his chit in. Resign. But not kill himself. He talked about going to another college. ‘A real one,’ he said.”
“What did you do?”
“When I heard how bad it was getting, I told him to go back to his room and that I was going to get it stopped.”
Branner had been taking notes. “How?” she asked, looking up.
“I didn’t know at the time. But I had pretty much decided to go to Dell’s company officer and tell him everything I knew. They had some other problems in that company that I’d heard about, so I figured they’d be in the mood to deal with an outside firstie running one of their plebes.”
“And did you?”
“No,” she said. “Because I ran into Dyle Booth on the way back to my room. I’d swear he knew I’d been up there with Dell. I don’t know how, but Dyle gets around, especially at night. He said he’d been to my room, and then he’d come topside to find me. Anyway, I told him off. Said I was going to get this shit stopped, one way or another.”