P Deutermann - Darkside

“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.”

“But won’t they find it suspicious? That I called for a lawyer? Since I truly wasn’t involved?”

“You didn’t call for a lawyer. I did. Which is why you’ll let me break that news to them, okay? You’re twenty-one, about to be commissioned, so the administration will deal directly with you. But I want you to call Liz. Now, in fact. You can stay for another few minutes. Let her tell you what to say if anything else comes down.”

“And she’s a criminal defense lawyer?”

“Well, you were talking to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service today, Julie.”

“Got yourself a point, there, Judge,” she said, going for some more milk. “Sure, I’ll talk to her. Hell, yes. Then I’ve got to get back. Have an econ test tomorrow. God! Two more weeks.”

Well, it’s 2:30 in the morning and I’m back. Undetected, of course. I think I told you that I was going to be running the tunnels tonight. Left at 12:10, out the eighth wing’s basement door, the one the mokes use to remove the daily trash. Dressed myself out in full sweats, the ones with the West Point Army logo, courtesy of a swim match bet against the Whoops a year ago. Had to wear the hood up so my shiny head didn’t show. Did the usual recon: a slow jog, down toward the seawall. Everyone thinks I shave my head for the swimming, but, hell, I’m the Shark! Don’t need any edge. No, I shaved it for the resident Marines. Let ’em know I’m gung ho. I jog like I swim, with power and precision. Always have some Marine trail cadence echoing in my mind as I pick ’em up and put ’em down. Marine cadence: Le-oh-ft-le-oh-ft-le-oh-ft, right, le-oh-ft. Army cadence: Left, left, left…When I need to really breathe, I let my mouth hang open, baring my teeth. The Shark. Hungry. Top predator on the prowl. Cruising. I sometimes hope I’ll run into someone out on those marble terraces at night, give ’em a mouthful of white teeth inside a darkened hood.

But not tonight. I’d called my little Johnnie vampire over on campus. You don’t know her, but you’d like her, I think. Well, maybe not. She’s just a little bit bent. Heavy into magic mushroom just now, and not the kind they serve in the mess hall. Made the cell call right after evening meal. Did it right in front of two plebes I had sweating bullets while plastered against the wall in their room. Made a little torment drill out of it, talking so they could hear, purring out some highly suggestive sweet nothings about her underwear. They couldn’t hear her, but they sure as hell could hear me. A little phone sex routine, just to bother them, kept it going even after she’d hung up. But not before she set things up for after midnight, her room, of course, candles, some of that dismal shrieking shit they call Goth music, and with maybe a few friends to watch… Goths love to watch. And so many of them are so stone-ugly that watching is all they’ll ever get.

Anyhow, the Yard’s a ghost town at that hour. Mother Bancroft at darkened-ship except, if you look closely, you can see the occasional flicker of flashlights where some poor bastards were sweating out a 2.0 average. I don’t have that problem, of course. I study. Well, actually, there’s a little bit more to it than that. It’s what I study that makes the difference. I always get the Gouge. I am a master of the Gouge. Three, four times a day, I’m out there on the Academy intranet, sifting for fast-moving intelligence about the next day’s quiz, or past patterns of questions. And: news flash! I actually study the material assigned by the profs. What a concept, huh? See, I’ve figured out which profs telegraph their test questions in their homework assignments. And which ones are too lazy to create a whole new quiz or exam, which means they go back to previous exams. All of which have to be approved. Via the faculty intranet. Where I have learned to lurk.

But you know, the system here is pretty straight-ahead. You work like hell to get the good grades going early on, and then ride the expectations train, with a little help from some selective hacking. After awhile, the profs expect me to do well, and then grade accordingly. That’s how I have a 3.69 cume after almost four years. I do get help from the profs, of course. It’s just that they don’t always know they’re helping me…

So, where was I? Oh yeah, jogging down the road along Santee Basin, listening to the Academy sailboats bouncing around on a light evening chop coming in from the bay, their halyards clinking in time on their masts. Isn’t that poetic? Easing on down to Dewey Field, which always smells like fresh-cut grass and dead fish. Then the obligatory recce run: jogging around the perimeter, scoping things out. They’ve got all those big light towers out there, but the rich people across the river bitched about the lights being left on all night, so now they shut ’em down, which is perfectly cool for us night runners.

But of course I wasn’t out there for any exercise. I was on the lookout for the Jimmylegs. Funny-ass name. Apparently in days gone by, really gone by, the Academy’s civilian police wore white lace-up leggings on the bottoms of their trou. Now, of course, they drive around in small pickup trucks, one, sometimes two to a truck, patrolling the entire Yard and the housing areas. Looking for A-rabs, probably. That’s why I start out a tunnel run with a little topside jog, because the cops wouldn’t care about a lone jogger, assuming they could even see me out here in the darkness along the river. Us mid coolies are supposed to be locked up for the night, of course, but sometimes guys come out to decompress from a bad day, and there have been lots of those over the past years, haven’t there? This whole place is mostly a succession of bad days. You know what they say: This place sucks so bad, there’s a permanent low pressure system over Annapolis.