P Deutermann - Darkside

Bright’s smile dimmed somewhat. “Yes, ma’am. Our room went down for that this past weekend. I wasn’t there, and Julie was ICOR-So, like, she’s the one who got fried. I can’t explain the clothes bit, either.”

Either? Jim thought. Maybe she had seen Julie since her 1430 interview. And yet, this young woman looked completely guileless.

“To your knowledge, was there anything going on between Julie and Dell? Other than that they were on the same varsity team?”

“No way,” Bright said. “I mean, yes, they were on the same team. But he was a plebe.”

“I understand that,” Branner said. “How about between Julie and any other members of the swim team?”

“Well, there was Tommy. Tommy Hays? He’s a classmate. But they broke up a while ago. They’d been dating since second class year, I think.”

“And no one else? Maybe outside of the Academy?”

Bright shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not after her mother died and all. I mean, there were a couple of times when she and Tommy had some ups and downs-you know, the usual stuff. Didn’t see each other. Like that. She saw some other guys then, but nothing serious.”

“Does she get mail?” Branner asked, looking down at her notepad.

“Mail? Well, yeah, bills, stuff like that.” Bright patted her hair self-consciously.

“No, I mean personal mail. From friends outside the Academy?”

Bright thought about it for a moment. Jim suddenly had the impression that Miss Bright Eyes here might be putting on just a little bit of an act. “You’re talking about snail mail, right?” she said. “Because personal stuff? That’s going to be on the Net. I mean, I don’t know anybody who actually writes letters.”

Jim made a note to find a way to get into Markham’s E-mail account. He looked up when Branner asked her next question.

“Where were you on the morning Dell went off the roof?” she asked.

“Me? I was in my rack, I guess. I mean, I don’t know exactly when it happened. I didn’t find out about it until morning meal formation. Gross.” She made a face.

“Was Julie in her rack? When you guys got up at reveille that day?”

“Yes, ma’am, she was.” Jim wrote another note and passed this one to Branner. She glanced at it before proceeding.

“Midshipman Bright, if Julie had gotten up earlier, would you have noticed?”

“You mean like for early swim practice? She did that all the time, although I think they’re all done now. But no, I’da slept right through that. I mean, if you’re gonna get up early, or come in late, you don’t wake your roommate.”

“Early swim practice?”

“Ya. The whole swim team does it. They go down to the pool at zero dark-thirty and swim until reveille. Then they go to their classes, and practice again after that.”

“Are you on the swim team?”

“No, ma’am. I run track and field.”

“Do you know people on the swim team?”

“I guess I know my classmates on the team, or most of them anyway.”

Branner glanced momentarily at Jim, as if considering whether or not she should ask the next question. But then she went ahead. “Midshipman Bright, we’re really trying to figure out the business with the clothes. Julie’s and Brian Dell’s, if you follow me. Julie states that she has no idea of how they got where they got. Assuming that’s true, who else might have done that?”

“You mean put Dell’s uniform stuff in her locker?”

“Yes.”

Bright shook her head slowly. “No idea,” she said, looking back at both of them and turning that smile back on. Jim once again felt that Bright might be just blowing them off. Know nothing, saw nothing, and, like, heard nothing. He knew that if his roommate had ever gotten across the breakers with the NCIS, they would have talked out every tiny detail. He passed another note to Branner.

“Are there any weirdos in your class, Midshipman Bright? You know, heavy dudes, guys who are known or thought to be…well a little different?”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Agent Branner,” Bright replied, that smile still pasted on her face. “I mean, this is the Naval Academy. People like that? My high school had some, you know, out-there guys, the kind that some people thought might show up at school with guns one day? Like, to do a Columbine? But here? The system wouldn’t put up with that sh-um, with that attitude.”

“So this place is strictly for Boy Scouts, then?” Branner asked with a faint note of challenge in her voice.

“And Girl Scouts,” Bright said, coming right back at her. The smile never wavered.

Branner shot him that “What next?” look. He shook his head, and Branner ended the interview. Once Bright had left, Branner turned off the tape recorder. Jim realized he had not seen her turn it on, and then he remembered that she had been fooling with it just before Bright had walked in. Branner being sneaky.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, I think she’s shining us on,” Branner said. “I’m so pretty. I’m so full of personality. I’m so…so very Bright. Yes, that’s it,” she said in a singsong voice that sounded remarkably like Bright’s voice. Jim was laughing by the time she’d finished.

“They’ve not only talked about it; they’ve probably agreed on what Bright would say or not say.”

“Gosh, you think?” Branner said drolly.

“Yeah, I think. Roommates are damn near married-it’s usually that close, especially by first class year. Way back in the real old days, midshipmen used to call their roommates ‘wives.’ We need to check to see how long they’ve been roomies. If it’s been a couple of years-and that’s not unusual-then this was smoke and mirrors.”

Branner made a quick note. “At least a little contrived,” she said. The commandant’s secretary stuck her head in and asked if they were finished, as the room was scheduled. Jim helped Branner pull her stuff together. “The important thing I’m finding out here is that the midshipmen are perfectly willing and able to close ranks,” she said. “Buncha guys with a code of silence. Remind you of anyone?”

“That’s a little extreme. Part of it is the system here. The conduct system, where people get put on report for about a million different infractions, large and small. Getting ‘fried,’ as it’s called, becomes a bit of a cops and robbers game. But two rules do apply: One, it’s a cultural crime to bilge someone else.”

“‘Bilge’?”

“Get someone else in trouble, especially a classmate. Think rat squad. And it’s even worse if you do it to save your own ass, or to gain advantage. I’m talking of infractions outside of the honor code, of course. That’s different.”

Branner paused in the doorway, ignoring the hovering secretary. “How is that different?”

“That’s rule two: Rule one doesn’t apply in honor cases, because an honor offense is an offense against everyone. I’m talking cheating on exams, lying, stealing, like that.”

“How about covering up for someone?”

“If you lie to do the cover-up, it’s an honor offense. If you’re asked a direct question by a competent authority, you’re supposed tell to the truth. What you don’t do is slip into the deputy dant’s office after hours and bilge someone for offenses, other than honor offenses.”

They moved out of the anteroom and into the hallway. “So if the roommate was covering for Julie-that is, if she knows Julie did go out of the room early that morning, she’d be obliged to tell us that?”

“That’s what the system expects.”

“Now who’s equivocating? Is that what the system always gets?”

Jim shook his head. “I’d have to call that a gray area. See, the midshipmen are always watching. The administration tends to forget that the honor system is a two-way street. The mids watch to see how the Academy administration comports itself, too. Every time something bad happens, like this Dell case, they watch to see how the administration’s response squares with what they think to be the facts.”