Darkside (2002), page 7
Ev nodded thoughtfully. “And did she? Promise?”
Liz sipped some scotch. “You know, I’d swear she hesitated. Just a fraction, but it was there.”
“I’m not entirely surprised,” he said. “What you’re telling her makes perfect lawyer sense, but it violates just about every principle of ethics and professionalism they’ve been pounding into her for four years. I can understand that hesitation.”
“About telling the truth?”
“No, no, about not talking to them. About clamming up and hiding behind a lawyer’s skirts, so to speak. The mids are taught to address issues head-on. To be forthright. Truthful to the degree of pain. Never to equivocate.”
“I suppose. But look: Our legal system is trial by lawyer, not trial by jury. Usually, the best lawyer wins, not necessarily the most innocent client. I can’t be the best lawyer here unless I know the truth. And frankly, that’s what I think the hesitation was about. Not about hiding behind my so-called skirts.”
Ev blinked. “You think she’s hiding something?”
Liz waved her hand dismissively. “Hell, Ev, I don’t know. But I’m a defense lawyer. My clients tend to be deceptive. I always make them promise to tell me the truth. She did, but she tingled my trip wires in the process.”
What has my daughter been thinking? he wondered, frowning. And was she, God help us all, involved in what happened to that poor plebe? “Well, I’ll certainly reinforce that notion,” he said. “That’s fundamental.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Back to rule two: not to offer them anything, even out of some sense of duty. She’s dealing with cops now. Nine times out of ten, when cops have nothing, it’s the suspect who hands something to them by opening his yap. Remind her of that. Coming from you, it might carry more weight.”
Upset by the word suspect, he got up and started to pace around the room. “We’re so close to commissioning week,” he said. “More than just graduation. It’s a victory in every sense, victory after four very hard years operating within a system designed to remove a quarter to a third of them by attrition. And here she is, being worked over by federal cops for something some damned plebe did?”
“We’re assuming it was something the plebe did; they’re acting like somebody may have helped him do it.”
“What?” he shouted, whirling around. “Now you’re talking homicide?”
She leaned back in the chair, a picture of lawyerly composure now. “If NCIS is interviewing people and conducting searches without warrants, then this is more than just a routine incident investigation.”
Ev swore and went to refill his drink. This day was truly turning to shit.
“Look,” Liz said, obviously concerned that she might have gone too far. “I’ve upset you, and perhaps prematurely. Bottom line? They’re on notice over there. Now we have to wait.”
He plopped back down in his chair and tried to get his mind around what was happening. She smiled at him, and it transformed her face, putting a sweetness there. He’d forgotten how attractive she was, with those coloratura features and silken white skin. He unconsciously glanced over her shoulder toward his wife’s picture up on the bookshelf. She caught his glance, turned, and looked at the picture for a moment. “That was your wife? Worth told me what happened. That’s a lovely picture.”
“That was…Joanne, yes,” he said softly.
“Julie favors her,” she said, turning back around. “How are you coping with all that?”
“Poorly,” he said immediately, then almost regretted his candor. He didn’t know her that well. “I mean, I get by, one day at a time, I suppose. There are places I don’t go. Like chapel—I stopped going to Sunday chapel because I’d get too emotional. The senior chaplain—he’s an ex-Marine—asked me one day whom I was weeping for, her or me. As in, Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
“That’s such bullshit,” she said. “Grief suppressed poisons the soul.”
“Well,” he said with a small shrug. “He did make me think. Didn’t take me long to figure out the real answer, either. But I still stopped going.”
“Showed him,” she said, and he smiled despite himself.
“How about you?” he asked, surprising himself. “Worth said you’d been married before. You have someone in your life?”
“No one of substance,” she said. “I was married twice, actually. You know what they say about the triumph of hope over experience? Well, my first ex was a Marine aviator. That one was all experience. Second ex was another lawyer, and that was hopeless.”
He laughed. “I know all about those Marine aviators,” he said. “We had a couple in my first fighter squadron. Certifiably crazy bastards, but definitely fun.”
“Precisely,” she said. “But, trust me, you wouldn’t want to marry one.” She shook her head and got up to leave. He got up, as well.
“We need to take this Dell matter one day at a time,” she said. “It’s in their interest to put it to bed quickly, so unless there’s some glaring evidence of foul play, that’s what they’ll do. I’ll keep Julie as safe as I can.”
“Good,” he said. “And I’ll keep in touch with you, too. Julie will probably want to talk to me.”
“Yes, please do,” she said, pausing at the front door. “And if you need to talk—about anything—please feel free to call me.”
He looked down into her eyes and saw a smile of friendly sympathy. “Thanks,” he said. “I will.”
It’s me. I’m in computer lab. Finished their stupid little finals project. So, let me tell you how it went. My after-hours town libs, that is. I mean, it was a blast. Met up with the Goths in their lair on West Franklin Street. That’s what they call it—“their lair.” Okay, so these Johnnie chicks are seriously whacked, but they’re hot as hell underneath all those black rags and the weird makeup. What a surprise when you check out the underscene! And they will do anything as long as I play along with their Goth shit. And I mean anything. I’ll bet you know what I mean.
It’s a rush, especially when I can experience such a total Jekyll and Hyde existence. By day, I’m supermid. Sir! Yes, sir! At the top of my considerable lungs. A-J squared away to the max. Creases on my creases. A military-bearing ramrod stuck so far up my ass that my ears are aligned. Hoo-ah! And then, once the superstraight world of Mother B is asleep, out comes the vampire Dyle. That’s right, vampire. Okay, okay, so the whole Goth-vampire–death worship scene is—what’s the word, infantile? Fucking laughable? Especially when you realize that they’re serious about that shit? Thing is, though, I’m like a dead ringer for the bad guy, especially in costume. One of the girls is in their drama club, so she got her claws on a vampire costume. And that’s our town gig—the Goths as bait, and Dyle as the hammer.
You ought to come along. Works like this: past midnight—the girls in their Goth drag: calf-length black dresses, some very white makeup, lots of eye shadow, red, red lipstick, hair everywhere, maybe a dog-collar, laced-strap witch-bitch boots. Those swirling black dresses are slit up the sides, so if they work it right, they can flash black mesh thigh-highs. And that’s what they do: They stroll down the street after midnight, ease into and out of the townie bars. Inevitably, a couple of locals will rise to the occasion. Come out onto the street and make their drunken noises. Jeering at the Goths. Calling them “lezzies” “freaks,” the usual. The girls pretend to ignore them. Put their noses in the air, supremely intellectual Johnnies, much too high-and-mighty to respond to the provocation of mere village louts. Tossing back quietly muttered words about losers, white trash, the makings of a permanent underclass. But swirl the skirts just a little, enough to flash. Look back. Smile.
The boys follow, of course—they almost always do. Usually, one of them is the alpha dog, the others, onesies, twosies, almost never more than two, the perpetual followers. Not quite sure of what they’re going to do next, but enjoying the scene. Everyone shining attitude, which goes pretty quick to sexual taunts: The girls are pros, sluts, whooers, ready to peddle their asses, and hey, the boys are game, right? They’ve each got two-bits. That’ll do it, right, babe? Then the girls begin to ape the walk of working girls on the stroll, laughing at the following rubes, putting an element of challenge into it, but keeping thirty feet or so between the boys and themselves, leading them, always leading them, toward the alley. Toward me. The girls flash some more leg, attend to a stocking, maybe rub each other on the ass a little, making sure the rubes are watching. That usually does it.
When they get to the alley, they turn on the boys and make vampire faces at them, hissing, showing teeth, looking ridiculous, of course, but setting up the play. By now, they’ve undone their tops a little, giving the village idiots an eyeful, then pretending to discover that they’re exposing themselves, hissing some more, making witch signs, but grabbing at their clothes, maybe a little scared now as the big bad boys approach while the poor defenseless vamps retreat farther into the alley. Toward where I’m waiting.
“Who-ee! It’s Draculady! Hey, Draculady, bite this. How ’bout it? Want to suck something? Here it is, witchy woman!” Grabbing at their crotches and laughing their asses off as they turn into the alley, their jeers and taunts becoming more explicit. They’re aroused now, sensing the possibility that they can maybe get some. Hell, there’s no one around. The girls have been flashing T and A for the past block, begging for it, really. There’re three of them and just two weird-ass St. John’s College bitches playing at being vampires or some other equally strange college-girl shit. The girls stop halfway down the alley, blank brick walls rising into the dark on either side. They back up to one of the walls, spread their arms out behind them, flat on the wall, breasts heaving in obvious excitement, moving their bodies. The boys are locked on now, alpha dog intent, responding to a raging short circuit between his brain and his crank, the followers eager but not sure who’s going to do what.
Then the girls start chanting weird shit in unison: “Begone! Begone! Fie on the lot of you.” The boys, jeering again at the vampire act, approach in a loose semicircle. The girls let their slit skirts part just a little, showing off some more, but keep chanting. “Oooh, I’m so scared!” the alpha dog goes, rubbing his crotch again, letting them see his action. “Don’t bite me. Please, don’t bite me!” Trying to laugh, but mostly focused on what they’re showing them.
And then: I’m there. Behind them. In full fucking costume: black cavalryman boots that add about two inches to my height. Black midshipman uniform pants stuffed into the boots. White Ballanchino formal shirt with no collar. And the cape: this huge fucking cape, black outside, all red satin inside, sweeping down to the tops of my boots. My face painted dead white. Eyes circled in yellow-looking makeup. Teeth glistening with a little Vaseline. My very big teeth. My shaven head covered in a black rubber wet suit hood. I’m stretching up to damn near seven feet tall, arms wide under the cape, black rubber gloves on my hands. Sometimes I stick two extra-long white plastic fangs on my canine teeth.
The girls know the drill: They look behind the followers, put trembling hands to their mouths, open their clothes up just a little more. Alpha dog, he’s on autotrack, can’t tear his eyes away. But the followers? They see the girls looking over their shoulders, and they turn around to see whassup. Which is when I let out a sound like a king cobra, the hiss from Hell, causing their blurry, drunken eyes to get as big as saucers and their stupid mouths to drop open like turtles. At which point, I slam their slack-jawed heads together like the pair of cantaloupes they really are. As they go down, alpha dog, who hears the cobra bit, is turning around to check it out, tearing his eyes away from the girls at last, not seeing them lunge for him, grabbing his arms, pulling them behind and up, not even aware they’re doing it because all he can see is my face, my painted, hooded death’s-head face looming down at him, my eyes coming unhinged as I cross them ever so slightly and bare my glistening teeth, and then—here’s the topper—I fucking roar.
He faints. They always do. Get the guy sober, he’d laugh at the thought of a vampire. But drunk? And after the girls have set him up? It’s pure fear, helped along by the girls doing their weird vampire shit. He turns around, suddenly he can’t move, his buddies are flat on the ground, and he’s looking up at the biggest human-shaped thing he’s ever seen, which looks, sounds, and acts like every vampire nightmare he’s had since he was a little kid, and it’s right fucking there, fangs and all, right in his face!
They faint. And sometimes they leak a little. Yes, they do. The girls run, of course, bursting with laughter. I follow, but not before I do some things to the big man on campus. I usually don’t really injure him, but he might just hurt a little—when he wakes up, of course. This last time, we took his buddies’ pants down, arranged the two of them in the 69 position, and called the cops just for grins. But usually, we just fly out of there, running down the block behind the bar, back to the lair. A cop car saw us once, the guy driving so surprised when he got a look at me that he rear-ended a parked car, which gave us time to disappear through the St. John’s campus and back to their shitty little apartment—excuse me, Goth lair. Must stay in character, we must. And when we get back there, guess who’s really excited now? Heh-heh.
We’ve done it a couple times this year, all to different town slobs. You’d think the word would get around. On the other hand, I’d bet it’s not like they want to talk about it, right? Like: Hey, man, listen to what happened to us last night. Like: You remember when we went after those Johnnie bitches in their vampire costume? And then…I don’t think so.
I know, I know: One of these nights, the guy won’t faint. Or it’ll be some dude we’ve done before. But I’m ready for that, too. In fact, I’m getting more ready for that possibility every day, especially now that June week is approaching. Just between you and me, I’m planning a little solo op. Maybe go lurking in town on my own this time. Let a previous victim get a quick look. See if I can get him to chase me. See if I can get him to catch me down in my tunnels. See what happens then. More good training for my next incarnation in the glorious Corps.
It’s like I want to experience some maximum violence before I leave here. Maximum. Like what happened to that plebe. That was certainly extreme, don’t you think?
4
As of Wednesday morning, Ev still hadn’t heard back from Julie. All through his eight o’clock class, he’d been anxious to call Liz DeWinter to see if she’d heard anything. At the break, he tried her office, but she was already in court. Frustrated, he went down to talk to the HSS division director, Captain Donovan. Ev technically worked for Professor Welles, the chairman of his department, but Captain Donovan was the senior military officer. Growing increasingly anxious, Ev had felt he needed a military opinion, not a civilian one. But the captain had not been helpful. He’d heard about the incident, of course, and also about Julie’s involvement. He’d been polite but firm: Let the Academy do its investigation. That way, we get the facts. Then we focus on any required actions. Ev expressed his concerns about the administration possibly using Julie as a scapegoat, but the captain had dismissed that notion. Let them do their investigation. It was the Navy way.
He’d gone back to his office to get ready for the next class, more uneasy than ever, and really wishing Julie would call. He was sitting at his desk, correcting some papers and chewing absently on some folded-up mystery meat, when Liz called.
“Talked to Julie,” she said. “Kind of anticlimactic. Her big meeting with the company officer turned out to be a nonevent. He just wanted her to know that the visit from NCIS was a room inspection, quote, unquote.”
“Sounds to me like your presence has been a shot across their bows, then.”
“That was the point, Ev.”
“I talked to my boss this morning,” he said. “Checking to see what was filtering through the military network.”
“And?”
“And he said he’d heard there was an investigation, that Julie was involved, and that she had a lawyer.”
Liz thought about that for a moment. “That was quick. So, he’s in a neutral corner?”
“He’s a division director,” Ev said. “That makes him part of the Academy administration.”
“As opposed to being an ally of yours.”
“Well, he was friendly, and sympathetic. I think.”
“Okay. That brings me to something I need to say to you, and it goes along with what I told Julie last night when I dropped her off. You need to stop talking to people about this. I know I can’t order you to do this, of course, but as Julie’s attorney, I should be the primary interface with anyone in the Academy administration from here on out.”
He thought about it and then sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. So anything I hear or find out about should come to you, then?”
“Yes. And don’t go playing detective. The next step is up to them.”
“But she hasn’t done anything!”
She ignored his protest. “We wait until they want to see her again.”
“I just hate not knowing,” Ev said. “Since Joanne died, Julie’s well…well, more important.”
Then she surprised him. “Would you like to have dinner with me?” she asked.
“What? Why, sure. Uh, do you have a favorite place?”
“How about Maria’s? Tonight. Say seven? Subject, of course, to any breaking developments over in the Yard.”
“Roger that. Seven it is. If you have to cancel, call my home number. In the meantime, I’ll keep away from Bancroft so they won’t catch me looking in the windows of the interrogation cell.”
She laughed. “See you at seven, Ev.”
He checked his schedule. He had two more classes that afternoon, a fuller day than usual, which was probably for the best, considering his state of mind. He was surprised when Liz called him again just after three o’clock.
