Darkside (2002), page 25
“I’ve been investigating a runner. It seems like he’s aware of it, and wants to play games.”
“Not a midshipman, I hope?”
“I actually think it is, but I can’t prove that. We arrested his companion, a Johnnie, but couldn’t hold her. It may be also related to a couple of beating cases in town.” He didn’t elaborate on his use of the “we,” not wanting to make a connection with what had happened to Bagger Thompson. He didn’t want the commandant calling for reinforcements. The runner was his. Just like Branner wanted an exclusive on the Dell case.
The commandant shook his head and looked at his watch. “All right. Thank you, Mr. Hall. Keep me advised. I’ve instructed my people to get you in whenever you call. Use that privilege sparingly, please.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Jim said, more out of habit than anything else, as the diminutive commandant hurried by.
When he got back to the admin building, there was a message from Branner. Markham was to be on deck in the conference room at 1430. He looked at his watch. That gave him time to work out, get a sandwich, and still make the meeting. He went to the locker room, got into his running gear, and headed outside.
After a half hour out on the track, he fell in with another runner, someone he’d seen before. They paced each other through the noon-hour running crowd and then walked together along the Severn River seawall to cool down. An Academy YP boat sounded its horn as it got under way, bright signal flags fluttering on both yardarms. The glare off the river was intense.
“Jim Hall, security officer,” Jim offered.
“Ev Markham, Political Science Department,” the other man said.
“You’re a prof?” Jim said. “You don’t look old enough.”
“Thank you, I think. Actually, lots of folks tell me that. But I’ve been here for almost ten years.”
Jim stopped to redo a shoelace, and Markham stopped with him, wiping his face with a small towel. “I graduated in ’93,” Jim said. “Must have missed your class.”
“I teach firstie history,” Markham said, stretching an incipient cramp out of his calf muscles.
“Can’t say I did very well in history,” Jim said, wishing he’d worn his shades. “Still wouldn’t. Can’t remember all those dates. One of the reasons I went Marine infantry.”
“And now you’re security officer? Isn’t that a civilian position here?”
“Yep. Got out and moved sideways. I was OinC of the Marine detachment here for two years.”
“Lemme guess: After two years of dress parades, honor guards, and funeral details, you felt your classmates had passed you by?”
Jim was surprised. “Close,” he said. “You ex-Navy?”
“Yeah, flew carrier aviation. I was class of ’73.”
Jim looked him up and down. “Never know you were almost fifty. Good work. Didn’t I see your name in the crab wrapper this morning? Something about a rescue out in the bay?”
“So I’ve heard,” Markham said, wiping his face again. It was the warmest day of the spring so far. “Happened to pass by an overturned boat. A quick swim to get two people off the hull. Fortunately, I’ve been keeping in shape, so it was no big deal. Woman lost her husband, though. Big deal for her.”
“I saw that water yesterday. I work out regularly, but I’m not sure I’d have been ready for that.”
“It was salt water and I had a life jacket on,” Markham said. “You run every day?”
“Sometimes I swim, but usually I run, out in town. The women are better-looking.”
Markham glanced sideways as two fairly attractive female midshipmen jogged by, as if to say he wasn’t so sure about that.
“Those are girls,” Jim observed, turning back toward the admin building. “I’m talking about women.”
“My daughter’s a firstie,” Markham said. “She’d probably argue with you.”
Holy shit, Jim thought. That Markham. Whom he was going to interrogate—no, interview—in about forty minutes. And he hadn’t thought of Julie Markham as a girl that day at the pool. “No offense,” he said quickly. “But I’m on staff and still enjoying the bachelor life. I observe the sand-box rule.”
“Good thinking,” Markham said, staying with him as they jogged up the steps toward Michelson Hall. “I don’t know how the administration here deals with all those raging hormones. You know, four thousand healthy boys and girls jammed together in Mother Bancroft. All that pressure.”
Jim was beginning to wonder if their meeting had been entirely accidental. Next thing he knew, Markham might start talking about the Dell case. He wasn’t sure what the ground rules were now that he was working with NCIS, but when they reached the top of the steps, Markham waved and headed toward the Mahan Hall complex. Jim breathed a sigh of relief. Markham’s daughter had to be talking to her father about what was going on in her life. The next time he ran into the professor, the exchange might not be so cordial. He made a mental note to do his noontime runs in town for the next week.
Ev Markham didn’t give his interchange with Jim Hall a second thought by the time he got back to his office, especially when he read the message slip from Julie. “Meeting with NCIS again at 1430. Called Liz, but she was out. Please inform her. Julie.”
And here we go, he thought. He looked at his watch: The meeting would start in twenty minutes. Should he go over there? He assumed it would be in the commandant’s conference room. He dialed up Liz’s office phone number, but she was in court for the rest of the day. The secretary asked if he wanted to leave a message. He told her to have Liz call him, gave her his home and office numbers just to be sure, and hung up. Liz had instructed Julie not to attend any meetings with NCIS unless she, Liz, could be present. But that was before Julie had had her little tantrum. Even as her father, he had no standing to attend such a meeting. Julie would be on her own. Based on their last meeting together, she might actually prefer it that way. He hoped she would remember some of the things Liz had told her.
He called Lieutenant Tarrens, Julie’s company officer, to see if he knew about the meeting. The lieutenant did not. Ev asked him what might be going on. The lieutenant had no idea. The summons had probably come through the watch organization in the battalion office. He assumed it was about the Dell case again, but the commandant’s office wasn’t in the habit of clearing a summons like that through the company officer.
“They’re doing an investigation, Dr. Markham,” Tarrens said. “Word is that they’re calling people in, asking everybody a shitload of questions. Dell’s roommate, his squad leader, his company officer. They’ll probably question all his profs next. Hell, maybe even the mokes. I don’t think you should worry. This is routine.”
Ev thanked him and hung up. It might be routine for NCIS, but it was not routine for him. The bells rang for class break. It took all his self-control not to cancel his next class and go over there right now. But what would he say to her? She’d as much as said she wanted to cooperate with them and dispel this cloud of suspicion. Hell, maybe that was the way to play it. If she’d had no part in this incident, what did she have to worry about? He sat there tapping a red pencil on the desk. He really wanted to talk to Liz. And not just about Julie.
Jim went directly to the conference room, where Branner was already set up. Midshipman Markham was due in five minutes. He had bummed a cup of coffee from the receptionist.
“Once again, how do you want me to play it?” he asked Branner. She had everything in place and was sitting at the head of the table.
“If we have a homicide here, then she qualifies as a potential suspect, as far as I’m concerned. So I’ll do another Article Thirty-one warning. If she’s willing to talk without her lawyer, I’ll try to take her from the clothes to a connection with Dell.”
“You want me to chime in when I sense the wall?”
“How about making notes and passing them? If she turns out to be involved in this kid’s death, I don’t want any ambiguities about your being here tainting testimony. That way, the tape will have only me and her in the interview. You’ll be identified as being present, but that’s all. You okay with that?”
“Absolutely. I want to help, not screw the thing up.”
“Marvelous,” she said brightly.
“What?” he asked.
“A man who can take direction from a woman without a bunch of bullshit.”
“Heck, I often take direction from women,” he said with a grin. “But it’s not called an interview.”
“Believe it or not, I can relate to that, too,” she said, brightly. “Okay. Let’s get our grillee.”
Julie was dressed in her working blues, which consisted of not particularly flattering dark blue, almost black trousers, a long-sleeved black shirt and tie with the collar insignia denoting first class rank, and black shoes. Next to Branner, she looked almost asexual. She glanced quickly at Jim. He was pretty sure she recognized him. Branner asked her to sit down and then led her through the Article 31 warning procedure again.
“Are you willing to make a statement without Ms. DeWinter being with you, Midshipman Markham?” she asked.
“I am,” Julie said. “I’ve got nothing to hide, and I want this over with. I suppose this is about that report chit?”
“Yes, it is. The deputy commandant’s office alerted me to what the report chit contained. My first question is, What were those clothes doing in your room?”
“No idea,” Julie said. “They weren’t there before. When you and that other agent searched my room.”
“We did not search your room,” Branner asserted. “We accompanied the officer of the day on an authorized room inspection. That does not mean those uniform items weren’t there at the time. It just means the OOD didn’t find them.”
“Well, this one did,” Julie said impatiently. “Bottom line? I don’t know. And I still don’t know what Dell was doing wearing some of my underwear. The only connection I had with Dell was that we were both on the swim team. I think we’ve been through all this.”
“We have,” Branner said. “Was there anyone on the swim team who had it in for Dell?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Julie replied. “We’re a team.”
“No resentments? No stars who got all the glory while the rest of the team just swam heats?”
“A Navy varsity team doesn’t work that way, Agent Branner,” Julie said. “Everyone’s busting his ass. If you’re just there for personal glory, you usually don’t stay.”
Jim could agree with that. None of the midshipmen were eyeing million-dollar contracts in professional or Olympic sports after graduation. They were going to get commissioned and spend the next five years serving their country. He also noticed that Markham had become a little more assertive in her demeanor. No more automatic “sir” or “ma’am” to civilians like Branner. He wondered why the lady lawyer wasn’t here.
“If you weren’t stashing those clothes, then perhaps someone put them there, most likely to implicate you in the Dell matter. Why would someone do that?”
“To implicate me in the Dell matter, I suppose,” Julie said patiently.
Branner bristled. “Someone have it in for you, Markham?”
“Not that I know of. I broke up with another firstie a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t a jealousy scene or anything. He wanted to keep going after graduation, and I’m going to be too busy for that.”
Branner asked for his name and company, which Julie gave him. “So he wouldn’t be plotting against you?”
“He’s had his feelings hurt, but he’ll live. It’s not like I dumped him for someone else.”
“Okay, then, who else? You strike me as a go-ahead young lady. Some men can’t handle that. You beat out someone for promotion, or status here in the Academy? Class standing, or grades in a particular class?”
“All those things happen constantly,” Julie said. “That’s the system. Class standing. Academic standing. President of the Glee Club or any other ECA. Everyone competes here, and if they don’t, the Dark Side will notice.”
“The what?”
Julie colored slightly. “The senior officers. The people who run the Academy. The supe. The dant. They are the system.”
Jim found himself nodding in agreement. No one would get killed because he had advanced over someone else in class rank or standing. Branner was appearing to read her next question from her notebook, but that pen was tapping again.
“So you had nothing to do with Midshipman Dell, and you have no idea of who might have done something, anything, to Dell that would have resulted in his going off the roof?”
“For the last time, I hope: Yes, that’s correct.”
“Will you be willing to take a polygraph test to that effect?”
“No,” Julie said promptly. Branner stopped tapping her pen.
“Why not?”
“Because a guilty person has nothing to lose by taking a lie-detector test, while an innocent person has everything to lose if he or she happens to fail it.”
“Who told you that?”
“Read it in a novel.”
Branner sat back in her chair. “And you believe that?”
“Yes, I do. Simple probabilities. A lie detector is a machine being interpreted by a human. That’s a two points of failure scenario, and one point of possible influence.”
Branner obviously didn’t know what to say to that.
“Look,” Julie said, leaning forward in her chair. “I know I didn’t do anything to Dell. If somebody put some of his uniform clothes in my room, then that’s the dude you want to find. In the meantime, I’d like you to leave me the hell out of this mess, unless you have some evidence to the contrary.”
“You’re an evidentiary expert now?”
“I know that the clothes thing, both sides of it, aren’t evidence of homicide. That’s what you’re looking for, isn’t it? Evidence of homicide?”
Branner controlled her expression and just looked at her, waiting.
“Okay, tell me this: You people picked up all of Brian’s personal effects after he died, correct?”
Branner nodded.
“Did you do an inventory? Because we all have a specified uniform allowance, especially plebes, who are required to maintain a full seabag at all times.”
“Assuming we did?”
“If the clothes found in my room are included in that inventory, then someone’s hit your evidence locker. And if they’re not, then someone else had them on the day he died. Find that someone else.”
“Who says we haven’t?”
Julie groaned in frustration. “Meaning me? I say so. You people went through my room that day. These clothes were found behind the towels in the closet. Any room inspector looks there. They reach behind the stacked clothes and swipe for dust. You would have looked there.”
“So maybe you had them somewhere else, then.”
“And then what? Brought them back to my room and put them out practically in plain sight? This after you’ve called me a suspect?”
Branner didn’t answer that, and Jim made his first note. He passed it over to Branner, who read it, nodded, and announced that the interview was over. She excused Julie, who looked from Branner to Jim for a moment, then got up and left without another word.
“Okay,” Branner said. “I shut it off. What’d you hear?”
“Deflection. Let’s play the tape back.”
She rewound it, fast-forwarded past the Article 31 prelude, and then set it on play. When it got to the point where Julie said that she knew she didn’t do anything to Brian Dell, Jim stopped it.
“She asserts that she knows she didn’t do anything to Dell. She does not assert that she doesn’t know who else might have done something to Dell. You asked her a two-part question, remember? She’s ducking the second part of your question. And I’ll bet that’s why she refuses to take a lie-detector test. I think she does know something.”
Branner rewound the tape and listened to it again. She seemed unconvinced. “She might just not have thought to say both things,” she said.
“She’s projecting a different attitude. Today, she was on offense. When she was with her lawyer, she was on defense, deferential, and it was the lady lawyer who was confrontational. Her demeanor just now is not typical of a midshipman in the presence of authority.”
Branner stopped the tape and began tapping her ballpoint pen. After thirty seconds of that, Jim was ready to swat it.
“Okay, suppose you’re right,” she said. “How do we get into her backfield and find out?”
“We pulled in Dell’s roommate; now let’s pull in Markham’s.”
“I don’t know her schedule.”
“The deputy dant does, and he’s right next door. But I think you should do the asking.” He checked his watch. “It’s just after fifteen hundred. She might be free.”
In the event, Julie’s roommate was available, and she arrived at the conference room twenty minutes later. Her name was Melanie Bright, and she looked like her name. Tall, athletic, sparkling blue eyes in a Nordic face, and a friendly, engaging smile. Even Branner smiled back at her when she introduced herself and sat down.
“Midshipman Bright,” Branner said, “NCIS is investigating the Brian Dell incident. You are neither a suspect nor a designated witness. We’d simply like to talk to you in order to fill in some background relating to this regrettable incident. Will you help us?”
“Yes, ma’am, if I can.” Midshipman Bright had a fairly broad California accent, and Jim was pretty sure she had a wad of chewing gum stashed back in her mouth somewhere.
“Good. You are Julie Markham’s roommate. Have you and she talked about the case, and her interactions with us so far? Including today?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bright said. “Although I haven’t seen Julie since today’s noon meal formation. She said she had to come in and, like, see you guys this afternoon.”
“Right, we’ve just spoken to her. You’re aware of the special circumstances that connect Midshipman Markham to Midshipman Dell? The clothes?”
