“Want a beer?” he asked brightly, and she managed a smile.
“Whole point was to work off the last one,” she gasped. “But I’m definitely going to walk back. Slowly, too.”
“Okay, so give: What went down with the NCIS people?”
She took another minute to regulate her breathing. Every night except Sundays and Wednesdays, firsties in good academic standing were allowed to leave Bancroft Hall after dinner for what was called “town liberty,” but they had to be back in by midnight. Given the academic load, Julie rarely took town liberty during the week.
“I didn’t want to use the hall phones,” she said. “Everyone’s eavesdropping at the pay phones, and the cell phones-”
“Are radios. Right, I know that. Now, what happened?”
“There were two of them,” she said. “A man and a woman. They started out being real polite. Then they went into one of those good cop/bad cop routines. I mean, how dumb is that? It was so cop show.”
“What was the connection?”
She told him.
He blinked. Panties? “WTF? Over.”
“Roger that, Father Time. They traced them back through my laundry number. I mean, c’mon, Dad, how embarrassing is that!”
“Certainly different,” he said, getting up from his chair. “And they assumed that you and this plebe were closer than the regs envision?”
“They weren’t exactly sharing. They flat out asked if Dell and I had been intimate. Answer: negative, of course. I wouldn’t be caught dead dark-siding a plebe, even if it were legal, which of course it isn’t. No firstie would.”
“But he was found wearing your underwear, and dead, to boot. Logical question: How did he get your skivvies, and why on earth would a normal guy wear women’s underwear?”
“You’re assuming Dell was normal,” she snapped. “Ipso facto, he wasn’t.”
“Is there some way a plebe could raid your skivvy drawer?”
“He’d have to be pretty brazen, but, yes, our rooms aren’t locked during the academic day. You know, for surprise room inspections.”
“So he could have knocked on the door, stepped in, and sounded off. Anyone in the passageway seeing him do it would assume that he was coming around. If no one happened to be in the room, once the door closed, he could take anything he wanted?”
“I suppose,” she said. “Except this plebe, well, I don’t think he’d have the balls to do that.”
“So you did know him?”
She shrugged defensively. “Sort of. Like, I helped a lot of plebes during plebe summer, Dad. That’s what we were there for, to get them through it, and to keep them from bolting out the front gate on parents’ weekend.”
He paced around the room, while Julie remained sprawled in her chair. “And they wanted to know if you remembered Dell, right?”
“That was the gist of their questions: Did I know Midshipman Dell? When was the last time I’d seen him? Did I have any sort of relationship with him? Had I contacted him via E-mail? Did I have him come around often?”
“And you told them what, exactly?”
“That I’d trained him, plus a thousand other worms, during plebe summer. That I’d had Dell come around a couple of times earlier in the year. I actually had to explain what a come-around was. That woman was pretty ignorant.”
“Or playing dumb,” he said.
“Whatever. I guess I saw Dell from time to time. Just like I saw every other plebe in our battalion. But I didn’t really know him. He was just another plebe, you know? Unless they’re really screwed up-you know, notorious-all plebes look alike.”
“You said they did a bad cop/good cop routine. Over what?”
“The black guy played good cop. He was encouraging me to think real hard, remember every detail. Sincere. Concerned. Encouraging. The woman-” Julie shivered. “She was a piece of work. Good-looking, but so full of herself. Acted like she thought she was on TV or something. Kept reminding me they’d be checking my answers out with lots of other mids, so make sure I didn’t hold anything back. That I was under oath, and that they’d be reporting everything to the commandant. Like that. It was so transparent.”
“Unless they’re partners, in which case they may have rehearsed all those moves,” he said. “But I guess I can understand their interest.”
“Dad, there’s nothing to tell. He was just another plebe. Really! There are over a thousand of them.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, sitting back down so he could face her. “Were they, in fact, interviewing other mids?”
“I saw his company officer, the Twenty-fourth Company’s commander, and another plebe in the commandant’s waiting room. You should have seen the looks I got.”
Julie was a pretty girl, so naturally other mids might make assumptions, Ev realized. Except he knew from his own personal experience that the plebe-firstie taboo was pretty strong. Plebes were lower than whale shit, and no firstie would demean him-or herself-by getting into any kind of relationship with such a lower-tier life-form other than to run the hell out of them. On the other hand, Ev had graduated before there had been women midshipmen at the Naval Academy, so maybe the dynamic had changed more than he knew.
“How’d they leave it?” he asked.
“‘Thank you for your time, Midshipman Markham. We’ll be in touch if we have further questions, Midshipman Markham. Don’t talk about this interview to anyone, Midshipman Markham.’ Oh, and the kicker: The woman gets up, shakes my hand, and then goes, ‘We’re finished with you. For now.’”
Ev frowned. “You think you’re not done?”
“I was waiting for her to say, ‘Don’t leave town, Midshipman Markham.’ I put out rumor fires for the rest of the day within my own company. Hosed a control system quiz this afternoon. Then, of course, we had the obligatory company all-hands, touchy-feely to ‘talk out’ the Dell incident. Lieutenant Tarrens playing at grief counselor. That kind of wimp-ass, liberal shit really bites, you know? And there’ve been lots of grave pronouncements from the commandant’s office. Heavy-duty cautions about discussing the incident: ‘Remember, there are grieving parents involved here. Don’t make it worse.’ Like that.”
“That last bit is reasonable enough,” he said. “A midshipman is dead, after all. His parents didn’t send him here to die.”
“Okay, but you know what? There’re lots of channels open if a plebe is having that much trouble. Everyone gets training on how to detect a suicidal situation, and every plebe is told a million times he can take a time-out if the plebe year shit gets too heavy. Where were his own company firsties? And how about his squad leader? The youngsters who’re supposed to be mentoring? That’s who they ought to be grilling, not me.”
“Except for that one odd feature,” he reminded her.
She flushed. “Okay, so I can’t explain that,” she said, getting up to go get something to drink. “But it wasn’t like I was wearing his underwear.”
He followed her into the kitchen. She was bent over, rooting impatiently around in the refrigerator for something to drink. Joanne had done the same thing in precisely the same way. Julie was even shaped like Joanne. He was struck by how much his daughter was like her mother. More so, now that Joanne was gone, he realized. He told her about calling Liz DeWinter.
“Really?” she said, straightening up with a jug of skim milk in her hand. “You think I need a lawyer?”
“Maybe,” he replied. “And so does Liz. Especially right now, when everyone’s staking out their positions. If nothing else, it will make them be more careful, say, if there’s more to this incident than we know.”
“‘Liz’? Do you know this woman from before?” she asked a bit too casually. He hesitated a fraction of a second before replying. Julie was still sensitive about the possibility that another woman might replace her mother. She could mouth all the right words about his getting on with life and so forth, but all the same, Ev knew he had to be careful. “Worth Battle recommended her, after I called him. I’d met her once at one of his boat parties. He thinks she’s pretty good.”