P Deutermann - Darkside

“Did he ever threaten you?” Branner asked.

“What do you mean?” Julie said, looking at Liz as if for help.

“Did he ever say that if you didn’t come across, he’d do something to you? Hell-o, Julie? A threat, you know?”

Liz intervened. “Where are you going with that question?” she asked.

Branner sighed. “If this guy was threatening Midshipman Markham, she should have gone to her chain of command. Obviously, she didn’t. I’m wondering why.”

“Julie was a three-striper,” Hays said. He saw Liz’s confusion. “A striper, you know, a midshipman officer. She was a three-striper on the battalion staff. If she’d gone to the Dark Side about Dyle, she would’ve had to tell what happened down at UVA. That she got drunk and had sex with a classmate. Total loss of personal control. It would have destroyed her reputation in the battalion and probably in our class. Wasn’t going to happen.”

“From what you’ve told us, I’m wondering why Dyle Booth didn’t tell,” Branner said. “To get even for you shutting him down.”

“Not his style,” Julie said. “First, because that would be bilging a classmate. Not done. And second, I think he wanted to hurt me himself. The E-mails were some kind of campaign, as if he were exposing himself to me. And then he found out about Brian Dell. That I was secretly helping him. I think he decided it would be more fun to terrorize Dell than to come at me directly. And since, strictly speaking, I was outside the chain of command in helping Dell, I couldn’t report Dyle for that, either.”

“But surely Dell’s own mentors, his youngster, the other youngster in his own company-they would have known that Booth was going after this kid.”

Julie shook her head. “That was the thing. Dell’s youngster resigned halfway through the year. Didn’t come back after Christmas leave. He was failing three subjects, and he’d decided he hated being here. So Dell didn’t have a youngster. No top cover. That was one of the reasons I took him on.”

“Wouldn’t somebody in his company have seen it happening?”

“Not with Dyle. He’d come in the night. Or catch Dell out on one of the athletic fields. Ambush him coming back from an E.I. you know, extra instruction, session. Sometimes Dyle just…appears. Plus, that company isn’t one of the better ones. The youngsters in his company knew that Dell was adrift, but it meant they had one less plebe to worry about, so they let it slide. They probably were clueless about what Dyle was doing. Hell, I didn’t know about Dyle’s running him until just before…before Brian, you know.”

“What happened?” Jim asked.

“Dell came to my room shortly before taps. Melanie was studying in the next room with some of her friends. He wanted to go topside. He was really upset. We used to talk sometimes, up on the roof. Guys go up there when they want privacy. He asked if we could meet that night, after taps. I said okay. He seemed really down, really tired. He was this little guy, you know? He looked about fourteen that night. So I said I’d meet him.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. That’s when he told me about Dyle. That he’d been ordered to come around to Dyle’s room at all hours. That Dyle was putting shit in his E-mail account, that Dyle had penetrated his computer, erased homework assignments, shit like that. Dyle would appear after midnight sometimes, or real early in the morning. Brian said he was scared of Dyle. That Dyle was making him do stuff.”

“‘Do stuff’?”

“He wouldn’t say what exactly, but I got the impression that Dyle was, like, turning him out. You know, maybe sexual humiliation stuff? Like he assumed Dell was gay. You have to remember-Dyle was twice Dell’s size.”

“ Was Dell gay?” Branner asked.

“I don’t think so,” Julie said. “More like weak. Math wizard, supposedly a high-scoring diver, but I don’t know where he ever competed. He was wiry, but too small.”

“Why didn’t he report what was going on? Tell me this wasn’t normal plebe year stuff,” Jim said.

“Not at all. It’s really changed, even since I’ve been here. It’s much more structured now. That’s what all the mentoring layers are about. But even so, plebes don’t go to the Dark Side with complaints against the upperclass, not if they want to stay here.”

Jim knew this was true. The way the system was supposed to work was that a plebe’s own upperclassmen would step in if someone got out of hand. “Was he suicidal?”

“No. Just down. Felt he couldn’t win. And Dyle was scaring him. He wanted to put his chit in. Resign. But not kill himself. He talked about going to another college. ‘A real one,’ he said.”

“What did you do?”

“When I heard how bad it was getting, I told him to go back to his room and that I was going to get it stopped.”

Branner had been taking notes. “How?” she asked, looking up.

“I didn’t know at the time. But I had pretty much decided to go to Dell’s company officer and tell him everything I knew. They had some other problems in that company that I’d heard about, so I figured they’d be in the mood to deal with an outside firstie running one of their plebes.”

“And did you?”

“No,” she said. “Because I ran into Dyle Booth on the way back to my room. I’d swear he knew I’d been up there with Dell. I don’t know how, but Dyle gets around, especially at night. He said he’d been to my room, and then he’d come topside to find me. Anyway, I told him off. Said I was going to get this shit stopped, one way or another.”

“And what did he do?”

“He went all cold. Gave me his big-deal shark look. That’s what we call it on the team. That wall-eyed thing he does underwater. Told me to go ahead, knock myself out. Got real calm, like he had a plan all ready. That scared me, actually. I’d expected him to get in my face. But he backed off, said he had something to do that night out in town, and that he’d be ready to deal with the Dell problem in the morning.” Julie shivered. “I had no idea then-”

“Did he actually threaten to do something to Midshipman Dell?”

Julie shook her head. “No, it was more like I could do or say anything I wanted to, but it wouldn’t make any difference. To him or to Dell. I know now I should have gone right to the OOD, right then and there. But I was scared, and I didn’t know what I was going to do the next morning. It never occurred to me that he’d-” She stopped, tears forming in her eyes.

Jim was about to ask another question, but he felt Branner’s hand touch his arm. Wait, she was signaling. See what she says next. Jim waited for her to continue.

“I got back to my room, and Mel was already asleep. I decided just to hit my tree, regroup in the morning. Like I said, it never occurred to me that Dell was in physical danger. I figured that Dyle might run him harder, or do some physical hazing. But he’d said he was going over the wall, out into town. So I figured nothing would happen that night.” She looked up at them, anguish in her eyes now. “I got that wrong, didn’t I?”

Tommy Hays moved sideways in his chair and took her hand. He looked at both Jim and Branner. “Hey?” he said quietly. “This is the Naval Academy. This kind of shit, this kind of guy-this doesn’t happen here. We’re here to become naval officers. We all bitch and moan about the system, but we believe in it. The officers believe in it. Somehow, this evil bastard got in, and the system can’t see him because they’ve forgotten how to look for some psycho like this.”

“Julie,” Liz said, “do you think Dyle Booth actually killed Brian Dell?”

“I don’t know,” Julie said in a very small voice. “He was big enough, and Brian was small. If he got him up on that roof, you know, by ordering him to go there, walk the ledge, something like that, he could have. Why don’t you ask him?”