P Deutermann - Darkside

“Or so he said.”

Julie thought about that for a moment and then shrugged. “I guess that’s possible. But when I signed out in the batt office this evening, no one seemed to care.”

Liz turned to Ev, who was sitting on the brick apron of the fireplace.

“I’ll take you up on that offer of a drink now,” she said.

“I have some single malt,” he said. “Straight up?”

“Perfect,” she said, apparently surprised that he remembered from the boat party. As he fixed her drink, she looked over at Julie. “Now that you’re a suspect, you want a drink, too?”

“What!” Julie exclaimed, her eyes widening. Ev brought Liz her drink and then sat down in one of the upholstered chairs.

“If federal police did in fact come in and search your room,” Liz said, “it means they may have a federal search warrant with your name on it. Did they go into your computer?”

“Gosh, I don’t think so, but then-”

“Right, you’d have no way of knowing.”

“Warrant?” Ev asked. “Based on what?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” Liz said. “Until they charge her, they don’t have to tell her anything. But they must have something that implicates Julie in that plebe’s death, something more than the underwear thing.” Then she stopped. “Unless-”

“Unless what?” Ev said. Julie was sitting on the edge of her seat now, just like he was, chewing on a fingernail.

“Does the Academy have the right to search a midshipman’s room at any time? Or do they have to go through due process?”

Julie looked at Ev. “I’d have to look in the reg book,” she said. “But my guess is, they can if they want to. It’s not like a civilian school. They can inspect anytime they want to.”

“And your company officer knew nothing about this?” Ev asked.

“He failed open when I asked him,” Julie said, surprising Ev with the naval engineering expression. “He said he’d find out, but I hadn’t heard anything by evening meal hour.”

The phone rang. Ev checked the caller ID. “It’s a two-nine-three number; that’s the Academy,” he said. He picked it up and identified himself. “Yes, she is,” he said, and then listened for another minute, his eyes on Julie, who was getting a deer-in-the-headlights look back on her face.

“Very well, I’ll pass that on, Mr. Tarrens.” He glanced at his watch. “Will twenty-one hundred be satisfactory? She’s meeting with her attorney right now.” Another pause. “That’s right. So twenty-one hundred works?…Good. And could you please pass something up your chain of command for me? Midshipman Markham will want her attorney present for any further encounters with NCIS regarding the Dell incident.”

He saw Liz frown when he said that, but he didn’t waver. She probably would have wanted him to wait a little longer before revealing that Julie had counsel, but what the hell. There had to be something going on over there. Something bad. He identified Elizabeth DeWinter as Julie’s attorney, then said good night and hung up.

“How’d he react?” Liz asked.

“Audible gulp. Said he’d pass it right along. And twenty-one hundred is when they want you back in Mother Bancroft,” he told Julie.

“He mention searching my room?” she asked.

“Nope. Just that he wanted you back at Bancroft, in his office, as soon as possible. He was trying for a little bluster, as in, Right now would be nice, until I mentioned Liz here. He didn’t seem to know what to do then.”

“Okay,” Liz interjected. “I don’t propose to spend the evening in Bancroft Hall. If they want to ask more questions when you get back, you reiterate that you’re not talking to anyone until your lawyer is present, and your lawyer’s not available until normal working hours tomorrow morning. On the other hand, see if you can find out why NCIS agents were in your room. I’ll be interested to see what they say, if anything. Especially if they use the inspection pretense.”

Julie was shaking her head slowly. “I don’t know what’s going down here,” she said in a small voice. “I haven’t done anything. Not to that plebe, nor to anyone else.”

“Good,” Liz said brightly. “Ev, is this how the Navy usually does business?”

“The Naval Academy isn’t the Navy,” he said immediately. “But, once you swear the oath, you do surrender a lot of civil liberties when you go into military service.”

“So they could go in and search her room just because they wanted to?”

“They can do a room inspection anytime they want to.”

“Using NCIS agents?” Julie asked.

“Well, that’s a point,” he admitted. “But if the OOD was present, they could simply say they were along for the ride while he did the inspection.” He turned back to Liz. “But look: If military law’s been invoked-you know, the UCMJ-and they’re getting ready to accuse Julie of something, maybe she needs to ask for a military co-counsel.” He paused, realizing Liz might take that wrong. “I mean, um, I don’t mean-”

She let him off the hook. “I understand what you’re saying. Military law is different. But I don’t think we’re there yet. Besides, if it comes to that, we don’t let them appoint a JAG defense counsel. We’ll go get our own, preferably from somewhere outside the Academy.”

“Defense counsel?” Julie squeaked. Ev could see real fear in her eyes now.

“Normally, I’d tell you to relax, Julie,” Liz said, “But what you need to be now is vigilant. They’re going to be afraid of me, or at least more afraid of me than they would be of some JAG lawyer they appoint as your defense counsel. A midshipman is dead, and that’s serious enough. Somehow, it involves you. Beyond that, we don’t know squat. Which means our next step is to make them tell us.”

Julie just stared into space.

“Why don’t I give you a ride back to Bancroft Hall?” Liz said, giving Ev a look that meant, Go with me on this. She put down her scotch, untouched, and got up to emphasize the point. Ev understood and nodded. While Julie went back out to the kitchen to get her hat, Liz said she’d come back after dropping Julie off.

When she returned twenty minutes later, they went back to the study, where she now sampled the single malt.

“So, how’d that go?” he asked.

“Basically, I needed to calibrate the client,” Liz said. She told him that Julie was more pissed off than anything else and, unfortunately, more than willing to talk to the authorities if that’s what it would take to clear this mess up, especially since she hadn’t done anything. “I told her she needed to play by my rules for a while. That you don’t talk to the enemy, especially when they’re keeping you in the mushroom mode.”

“Right.”

“I think she got the picture. I told her to be perfectly respectful: no displays of attitude. On the other hand, she shouldn’t talk to anyone, not her friendly company officer, not the commandant, not the NCIS, the FBI, or the CIA, whoever and whatever, unless I was present.”

“They won’t like that,” he said.

“Probably not. I reminded her that if she hasn’t done anything, they can’t make any kind of case against her, unless, of course, she inadvertently hands them something. And that that’s rule two, by the way.”

“Rule one being never lie to your lawyer?”

“Precisely. I told her that she must tell me the absolute truth with regard to any question I ask. I promised, in turn, not to make value judgments, and confirmed that what she tells me is always protected by lawyer-client confidentiality. I made her promise.”

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.”