Darkside (5 page)

“Oh, hi, Professor Markham,” she said.

“Is himself around?”

“Let me check,” she said, putting him on hold to the sound of Mozart. Ev sat down on one of the benches that lined the walk and waited. Worth came on the line.

“Doctor,” he said.

“Counselor,” Ev responded in the familiar litany. “We may need a lawyer.”

“We?”

“Julie and I.”

“Are we on a cell phone by any chance?”

“Yes.”

“Call me on a landline. Say thirty minutes.”

Ev went on back to Sampson Hall, which flanked Mahan at the end of Stribling Walk. He headed directly for his office, putting a finger to his lips when Dolly tried to tell him the meeting was still going on. He shut the door as quietly as he could and sat down at his desk. There were no messages. He worried about Julie, sitting in the commandant's conference room with two thugs from the NCIS.

Thugs
—that's too strong a word, he reflected. NCIS agents weren't thugs, but his experiences with NIS, the cur
rent organization's predecessor, had not impressed him. Maybe things were different now that they had a new title and civilian leadership. He just wished it wasn't his only daughter they were interrogating. Okay, interviewing. He sighed and checked the clock, anxious to talk to Worth. To his surprise, the intercom line on his phone rang.

“Mr. Battle, sir,” Dolly said. He punched the flashing button on his elderly Navy desk phone.

“Okay, what's going on?” Worth asked without preamble.

Ev described what had happened that morning, then told him that Julie was now closeted with NCIS agents over in the commandant's office.

“Right. And nobody will say what put the spotlight on Julie?”

“Nope. I talked to the dant himself. He wasn't exactly forthcoming. The word in the Yard is that the kid was a jumper, but the official party line is accident until proven otherwise. Supposedly, everyone's still in the fact-finding mode. There are, apparently, ‘issues.'”

“Did Julie know this kid? As in, Anything going on?”

“Not like that. Yes, she did know him. She was on last year's summer detail, and she'd had him come around a couple of times during the year. But no to your second question. Worth, she's a firstie. This kid was a plebe, and, according to her, something of a weak sister. Firsties don't get emotionally involved with plebes, except when they're yelling at them.”

“That's not something you could probably prove, Your Eminence. But, okay, I'll stipulate. For now. Look, you remember Liz DeWinter? I introduced you two at that dinner party I did on my boat?”

“Of course.” He did indeed. Liz DeWinter, a classy thirty-something who was also a lawyer. And twice divorced, he reminded himself. She had been vague about exactly what kind of law she did—something political, having to do with the fact that Annapolis was the capital of Maryland.

“You ever call her, by the way?” Worth asked.

“Well, no, I didn't. She was very nice and eminently streetable, Worth, but…”

“Yeah, ‘but.' Always the ‘but.' Well, look, she's a criminal defense lawyer. Under all that linen, legs, and lace, she's a gunfighter. Does mainly political corruption cases, of which we always seem to have one or two going here in the capital of the great state of Maryland, my Maryland.”

“So I've read. I mean about the corruption. Sounds a little high-powered for what's going on here. I mean—”

“You just stepped off your rock of expertise, Doctor, if I may be so bold,” said Worth, interrupting him. “If you think Julie's in trouble, high power is what you want right out of the gate. Especially if the Dark Side over there in Bancroft Hall is going shields-up, Mr. Sulu.”

Ev smiled at Worth's wild blend of metaphors and Hollywood allusions. But then he thought about what Worth was saying, which was precisely what he'd been worried about earlier.

“Look, I'll call Liz for you,” Worth offered. “You know, a referral. Then she'll owe me lunch.”

“Can I afford this?” Ev asked.

“Can you afford
not
to? Yes, Liz is expensive, but you've got the money, right?”

Worth was right about the money. Joanne had been killed one rainy night by a drunk driver, an elderly but still practicing surgeon, no less, at the top of the towering Chesapeake Bay Bridge. He'd passed her in a drunken weave on the westbound bridge at high speed and lost control on the wet, steel surface. Caroming off both guardrails, he'd come back at her, head on, and knocked her car completely off the bridge. The state troopers had found her car's license plate in the road debris. It had taken divers two days to find the car, intact but windowless, so she'd probably survived the bridge impact, but not the drop into the bay from nearly two hundred feet in the air. Or maybe she had, considering the fact that her air bag had been deployed but the shoulder belt unlatched. Joanne wouldn't start the car without her seat belt.
Even worse, her body had never been recovered. While Ev and Julie were still reeling from this news, Worth had stepped right in, threatened the doctor's insurance company with a $20 million personal injury lawsuit, and obtained a substantial seven-figure settlement in less than a week, plus a public admission by the drunk-driving doctor that he was an alcoholic. So, yes, he had the money. He would have preferred to have his wife.

“Okay, Worth,” Ev said, still thinking about what had happened to Joanne. “And, not for the first time, many thanks.”

“Semper fry,” Worth said, and hung up.

 

Ev made an almost-perfect landing with his scull alongside the pontoon dock, then nearly tipped himself into the creek extracting himself. He ended up sitting on the hemp mat with skinned knees and elbows, holding on to the slim craft with one heel. He looked around as discreetly as he could to see if any of his rowing neighbors on the creek had been watching, but no one appeared to be about except Mrs. Murphy next door, who waved and smiled. He smiled weakly, waved back, and pulled the scull up onto the dock, secured it on its rack, and went up the path to the house, cooling rapidly as the sweat evaporated from his skin. He'd gone all the way up to the Route 50 bridge in a burst of sustained effort he hadn't attempted since his days rowing crew for the Academy. He would pay for that run tonight, he realized, but this business with Julie had stressed him out, and heavy-duty exercise was his best cure for that.

He got a shower and checked messages. Nothing from Julie, but there was one from Liz DeWinter. She'd given him her home number. Brother Worth coming through, he thought. Battle had become a big-time legal eagle in the capital, and Ev knew he was lucky to have him as an attorney. He went out to the back porch to start up a charcoal fire, got himself a glass of wine, and then called Liz. Just when he
thought he was going to get voice mail, she picked up.

“Hi, Liz, this Ev Markham. Is this a convenient time to talk?”

“It is indeed, Ev. How are you?”

“Worried.”

“Yeah, Worth filled me in. Have you heard any more from your daughter?”

“No, I haven't, but I expect she'll call tonight. You know how it is over in Bancroft Hall—they keep those kids running all day and half the night.”

“So I've heard. But she hasn't been accused of anything that you know of, right?”

“That's correct.”

“What's her connection to the plebe who died?”

“Don't know,” he replied. “I'm waiting to find out what that is, assuming she's found out by now.”

“Okay. Let's assume I do get into this. She would be the client, right?”

“I think so. She's legally an adult. I sure as hell know nothing about all this, except for what Julie is telling me, so I can't imagine I'll need representation. But I'd feel better if Julie had access to legal counsel, if not outright representation.”

“Understood. Usually government bureaucracies, like the Academy or the state government, which is my area of expertise, act differently if they know there's a lawyer in the game for the other side.”

He considered that. “The Navy's pretty conservative,” he said. “If Julie gets a lawyer right away, will it make her look like she's done something that now needs defending?”

“If you detect that, you simply mention my name and tell them that I'm
your
attorney and that you've told me there's something going on. That way, you're just an individual who put a call in to his lawyer. Trust me, the bureaucrats will get the message.”

“And Julie? What does she say?”

“As little as possible. How old is your daughter?”

“She's twenty-one. Which means that technically, even as her father, I've got no standing in this.”

“Which makes you feel just wonderful.”

“Exactly. I just beat my brains out on the Severn in my scull to decompress.”

“I know that feeling: I go to the pool for laps when I get that way.”

He remembered her more clearly now, especially when she mentioned the swimming. She was no more than five two, if that, but sleek, with short dark hair, intense blue eyes, and a full-breasted, voluptuous body that he'd noticed all the way across the lounge before they'd been introduced on Worth's yacht. “Now I'm trying to decide between drinking or taking some Chinese herbs before I stiffen up in this chair,” he said.

“No contest there,” she said. “Those Chinese are all Communists, so go for the vino. When your daughter checks in, have her call me if it isn't past eleven. If I'm going to be her lawyer, she has to ask me directly.”

“I'll tell her. And thanks for getting on this so quickly. And, of course, I'll be paying the bills. Is there a retainer?”

“Yes, but let's see what we've got first. Who knows, they may just be playing it straight and interviewing anybody who might have known the dead guy.”

“I guess that's what they should be doing,” he said. He thanked her again, hung up, and went to throw a fish he'd bought earlier on the grill. The porch was settling into shadows as evening fell. The property was heavily wooded, and he could only see the homes on either side because of their lights. The creek behind the house, which was an estuary of the Severn River and not a real stream, was nearly two hundred feet wide. Its surface was calm and black except where lights from houses across the way reflected on it. Someone's dog was barking excitedly on the other side.

The lady lawyer was probably right: This would blow over once they ruled it a suicide, and that would be that.

You hope, a voice echoed in his head.

Conscious of thinking in circles, he checked to make sure his fish wasn't burning. C'mon Julie, he thought. Call me.

 

Jim Hall tossed the remains of a greaseburger extravaganza into the pier Dumpster as he walked through the darkness toward his boat. He lived aboard a thirty-six-foot Pearson ketch. His father had owned a large boat-repair yard in Pensacola, and he'd spent his childhood in the yard, learning everything there was to know about steel, aluminum, and wooden hull repairs, diesel and gasoline marine engines, and the byzantine economics of the boat business, from small runabouts all the way up to large commercial fishing boats. He'd restored the ketch after buying it at an insurance auction for one-tenth its initial price. He'd been living here in the Bayside Marina ever since his original assignment as the CO of the Academy's Marine detachment, which meant he'd been a resident of Crabtown for going on six years now.

He let himself through the wire gate at the head of the pier and made his way down the gangway to the floating portion of the pier. His boat, at nearly forty feet, took up almost one entire side of the pier, its graceful bow looming over the sun-bleached planks and bobbing inflatable fenders. He automatically inspected the mooring lines as he walked down its shining white length. He was proud of his work on the
Chantal,
which had been named for the hurricane that had brought the boat to him, literally. He was equally proud of the fact that he owned her outright, unlike his three neighbors on the other side of the pier, who were never more than one or two bad days on Wall Street away from being
ex
-owners. He disarmed the alarm system, using the keypad at the top of the gangway, and then let himself in through the railing gate. As soon as he stepped aboard, there came a throaty squawk from inside the main lounge. Guard parrot on the job, he thought.

Jim changed into jeans and sweatshirt, turned on the air conditioning to refresh the air down below, and then took a small scotch up the companionway to the awning-covered
cockpit and plopped himself down in the large captain's chair. Jupiter, his double yellow-headed Amazon parrot, was perched on the left shoulder of his bird vest, where he began his preening ritual. Jim had to keep his glass on the upwind side to avoid the silent rain of fuzz, down, and other feathery debris that always accompanied the nightly preening session.

“You're a dirty damned bird,” he muttered.

“Dirty damned bird,” Jupiter croaked, unmoved by epithets.

The evening was cool and clear, and the water was relatively quiet. Someone was having a small party two piers over, and he could hear the background music, but the live-aboards in this marina were pretty considerate about not making too much noise on weeknights.

It had been an all-around ugly day. Unsure of the police protocol, he'd not stayed for the NCIS interviews, nor had the two agents—no,
special
agents—asked him to. He was the Academy security officer, but they were the investigating agency. They had made that “exclusive jurisdiction” point several times to anyone who would listen, especially Flasher Babe, who was apparently very sensitive about her bureaucratic prerogatives. The local Annapolis cops backed out with what to Jim felt like unseemly haste, but he supposed they had enough on their plates without getting entangled in what was sure to become yet another Naval Academy media success.