P Deutermann - Darkside

He sighed and she laughed. “Okay,” she said. “Try this. I’m the supervisor of the Naval Academy NCIS office. It’s my supervisory judgment that there’s new and important evidence regarding what happened to Special Agent Thompson. Nothing to do with Midshipman Dell, of course.”

“Ah.”

“So I’m not disobeying orders here so much as exercising initiative. About Bagger. Not Dell.”

“It sounds good,” he said doubtfully.

“Look,” she said. “We catch Booth in the tunnels tonight, we’ll have enough to open the whole thing back up, SecNav or no SecNav. Especially if I can have five minutes alone with him.”

“Just by catching him down there?”

“We have the unexplained Dell death, linked by Markham to Booth. We have the missing college girl, who went into the tunnels, most probably with Booth. We have Bagger’s fatal assault case, plus some other assault cases over in town, linked to some guy in vampire drag-whom you saw in the tunnels. We have various destruction derbies down there since you’ve been looking for this guy, linked to a tag with a shark logo. Booth calls himself ‘the Shark’ on the Navy swim team.”

“Okay, so lots of circumstantial. But if Booth remains silent, we’ve got jack, right?”

She gave him a wolfish smile. “Like I said, Mr. Naval Academy Security Officer, I’m along to provide some adult supervision. By now, Booth has probably figured out that you know more than you should. And you’ve directly challenged him to meet you in the tunnels. If he’s been watching Markham, and I think he watches pretty good, he’s probably aware that she bolted out to her lawyer’s office earlier today. He’ll be more than prepared to meet you down there. One-on-one denotes personal combat, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely. Especially to a Marine recon wanna-be.”

“Okay, then. It’s probably going to get interesting down there-that’s more his turf than ours. What he doesn’t know is that I’m going to be down there. You two get together, you need to talk a little trash, provoke him into some boasting. Something that I can hear. I’m the arresting officer here. That’ll do it.”

He just looked at her for a moment. “He won’t do that unless I’m in the corner,” he said.

She smiled at him. “‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright,’” she said.

“Bleated the goat,” he replied. “The one tied to the stake.”

“Got any better ideas? Like you said, it’s not like we have a bag full of evidence here. Tell you what: As soon as he admits doing Bagger, I’ll just cap his ass, and then it’ll be just us chickens testifying at an inquest about an accidental shooting. That would get the balance of justice about right.”

“C’mon.” He laughed. “You can’t just go shooting the guy.”

“Watch me. In my book, that’s better than having some Communist defense lawyer get him off.”

He shook his head. Wyatt Branner at the O.K. Corral. She probably would do it, too. He glanced up. The light was on in Booth’s room.

“Yo, Houston,” he said, switching on the engine. “I believe we have contact.”

They drove to the back of Mahan Hall and parked the truck in the Alumni Hall parking lot. The chief materialized out of the darkness as they approached the grate.

“Decided to hang around and give you these personally,” he said, handing over the radios. “Plus a message-from a Mr. Harry Chang?”

Branner stepped forward. “That will be for me,” she said.

“Yeah, sounded like it. Mr. Chang was in a bad mood. Says he thinks you and my boss here are up to some wild-haired shit, to use his words. Says he has it on best authority that Mr. Hall has been told to cease and desist in regards to the Dell case, and that you have been similarly so instructed. Asked me to pass that along, should I happen to see you out and about the Yard.”

“And you said?”

“I said that I didn’t know anything about any police operations, and if I didn’t know anything, there weren’t any. That I had no idea where either of you was, but if you were together, it was probably not business.”

Jim smiled in the darkness, especially when he saw Branner’s expression.

“Anyways, he also said there were some people coming down tomorrow morning from headquarters to…lessee, this guy used a lot of code. Oh, yeah, he said there were some people coming down to ‘collate the available evidence, compile the final official report, and to review some recent management concepts with Special Agent Branner.’”

“Tomorrow morning?” Branner asked. “Definitely not tonight?”

“That’s what the man said,” the chief replied. “The retransmitter is in place in the main tunnel. I got guys physically securing all the grates from the outside. You want me to seal the one over on the Johnnie campus?”

“Can you?”

“Leave it to me. You’re trying to catch this vampire runner, right?”

“Right. We think we know who he is.”

“Why tonight?”

“Mr. Hall left him a little invitation,” Branner said. “Plus, another mid has given us reason to believe this guy had something to do with the Dell kid’s flying lesson.”

“Man, oh, man. This is definitely not my father’s Naval Academy.”

“Chief, I need one more favor,” Jim said. “Will this radio reach all the way over to the public works center?”

“Sure,” the chief said. “That’s a ten-watt transmitter.”

“I need you to go there, tell the utility watch officer that we’re in the tunnels, and listen for a code word: lights-out. This guy has had a couple years to put his own surveillance network up, and I think he gets electrical power for it by tapping into local lighting circuits. If I speak that code word, I need all the juice in the tunnels turned off. When I say, ‘lights on,’ turn it all back on, okay?”

“I can handle that,” the chief said. “You going along, Special Agent?”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Chief,” she said, patting the bulge where the Glock lived.

“Watch out using that thing down in the tunnels, Special Agent. That’s one big ricochet chamber.”

“Only if I miss his criminal ass, Chief,” she said with a sniff.

The chief gave her a two-finger salute and they went down the steps and through the steel door. They heard the chief lock it behind them, then brace the door with a metal bar. It was five minutes to midnight.

Ev and Liz picked Julie up in front of Dahlgren Hall. She carried a small overnight bag. She got in the backseat without a word. Tommy Hays had walked her out to the car. He waved and she waved back as Ev made a left turn and drove up the circular drive in front of the chapel.

“Any problem signing out?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

Ev looked sideways at Liz, who arched her eyebrows as if to say, Told you so. He went out the Maryland Avenue gate and drove up to State Circle, where he let them out by the gate to Liz’s house. He tried to think of something to say to Julie, but he couldn’t come up with anything, so he told Liz he’d be at home for the rest of the evening. She nodded and took Julie through the iron gates.

As if I had anywhere else to go, he thought as he circled around the old Weems estate and headed back down in front of the St. John’s College campus. There were a few students out and about among the giant old trees on the front lawns. He stopped to let two oddly dressed girls cross the street. They looked like they were going to a Halloween costume party. Okay, he thought, so Julie’s pissed off at me. And at herself, because now the onus is on her to solve the honor problem. Ev wondered if the NCIS team had picked up Dyle Booth yet.

He tried to visualize Julie dating a guy like Dyle Booth but couldn’t quite do it. They had nothing in common except the swimming. Julie came from a very traditional family background; Booth from the white fringes of a Baltimore ghetto. Liz might have been right: The acerbic way Dyle could verbalize things didn’t square with a verbal skills problem. Had the kid been manipulating him in order to get at Julie?