P Deutermann - Darkside

“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.

“Hey, counselor,” he said. “Change your mind about dinner already?”

“No. But have you heard anything more from Julie?”

“No,” he said, sitting up as he sensed the urgency in her voice. “Has something happened?”

She hesitated. “I need her to call me as soon as possible, Ev. I’ve left her a message to that effect, but she may contact you first.”

“What’s going on, Liz?”

“There’s a rumor circulating through law-enforcement circles that the midshipman suicide case isn’t as clear-cut as everyone wants us to believe.”

He didn’t understand. “What’s that got to do with Julie?”

“Hopefully, nothing. And I’ve got to tell you, cops are the worst rumor mongers there are. Let’s make a deal: no Dell case this evening, okay? I’ll see you later.”

After dinner, they walked up the hill from the Colonial seaport area toward State Circle. Liz’s eighteenth-century house was framed inside an iron-fenced compound just off State Circle. They entered a tree-lined, cobblestoned drive through two leaning stone columns that were engraved with the name Weems. Her house was three stories of ivy-covered Flemish lock brickwork outside, with glowing, if somewhat uneven, heart pine floors, plaster and lathe walls, leaded windows, ornate crown moldings and wainscoting, and sixteen-foot ceilings inside.

Liz left Ev in a living room furnished with what looked like period reproduction furniture and went out to the kitchen to get the makings for the Rusty Nails they had talked about over coffee. He first sat down in a lovely Sheraton-period wing chair, which was downright uncomfortable, then moved over to the sofa. He felt apprehensive about being here, in this woman’s house. They had enjoyed themselves once he’d overcome his own awkwardness. This was the first time he’d been out with anyone since Joanne had died, and he hadn’t been sure what to think of it. Liz had put him at his ease with a steady flow of bright conversation, quick-witted jokes, and stories about clients. Once he’d relaxed a bit, he joined in with equally funny stories about midshipmen and their antics. He’d ended up talking about his own life toward the end of dinner-growing up in Annapolis, the pervasive influence of the Academy on life in the state capital, and the satisfaction of finally returning home after his time in the Navy.

He’d done twelve years in naval aviation before getting out, and then he’d gone to grad school out on the West Coast to get a Ph. D. A week after he’d successfully defended his dissertation, and while he was still shopping around for a faculty appointment, his father had had a heart attack and died. He and Joanne had come back to the East Coast with their eleven-year-old daughter to stay with his mother for a while, and then the appointment in the Academy’s Political Science Department had opened up and they’d never left. Once he’d taken the Academy position, his mother, to his surprise, went into what seemed like a deliberate decline, becoming a semi-invalid. One night five years later, she turned her face to the wall and died.

He had explained to Liz that leaving the Navy after almost thirteen years had been Joanne’s idea, although he knew the truth to be somewhat more complex. His father had been a strong and domineering man, and Ev’s passage into the academy and naval service had been something of a foreordained matter, not really open for discussion. Not that Ev had objected, at least not until he had become a plebe and had all those romantic notions about midshipman life yelled out of him in the first twenty-four hours of plebe summer. He’d met and married Joanne, a Merrill Lynch stockbroker, while doing an instructor tour in Pensacola, and then watched with chagrin as she underwent a similar experience once he had to return to the real Navy world of sea duty, with a lot of the romance being flattened by the stark fact that naval aviators mostly flew in the away direction. The truth was, he’d been as lonely as she had been when he was cooped up in the hot, crowded, constantly noisy steel catacombs underneath the flight deck. Life as a carrier aviator alternated between two extremes. There was the huge adrenaline rush of being flung off the end of the flight deck while strapped inside a cramped Plexiglas cocoon mounted over a pair of unruly rockets built by the lowest bidder. And then there was the seemingly endless, six-month blear of briefs, debriefs, alerts, training sessions, transits, crowded port visits, duty days, safety stand-downs, no-fly Sundays, punctuated occasionally by the jolt of seeing a squadron mate misjudge a landing and go over the angle in a rending screech of flaming metal into the always-waiting sea. Doing this while missing his new wife, their daughter’s early years, and the luxury of life in America made it hard to ignore the fact that the next promotion would mean more deployments and more separation. Even when he had been on shore duty, he had detected a gradual hollowing out of their marriage, as each next deployment loomed ever closer and Joanne began to erect those walls that would support her once he left. Give her credit: She’d never issued any ultimatums, but he had been able to see the choice he would ultimately have to make.

It hadn’t hurt that Joanne had some money. She’d stayed with Merrill Lynch during his active-duty career, and her money had paid off his parents’ remaining mortgage when his father died and they’d moved into the house. They’d had eight years of a wonderfully normal life in Annapolis as he moved from probationary to tenured status on the faculty. Eight years of coming home every night, waking up in the same place every morning without the crash and bang of jets landing on the roof, or the rattling, scraping sounds of the arresting wires reeling into their greasy lairs to await the next trap, sharing the travails of bringing up just one teenager, actual family vacations over on the Atlantic beaches, the short, sharp spats they both recognized as episodes of cabin fever, the sad subsidence of his mother as she pined away for his father, the care of a home and yard and gardens, secure in the knowledge that he’d probably be around to see the results of his labors. In short, normal American life. He explained to Liz that if he’d never been in the Navy, he would never have appreciated the relative tranquility and productive purpose of his civilian existence.