He saw Liz frown when he said that, but he didn’t waver. She probably would have wanted him to wait a little longer before revealing that Julie had counsel, but what the hell. There had to be something going on over there. Something bad. He identified Elizabeth DeWinter as Julie’s attorney, then said good night and hung up.
“How’d he react?” Liz asked.
“Audible gulp. Said he’d pass it right along. And twenty-one hundred is when they want you back in Mother Bancroft,” he told Julie.
“He mention searching my room?” she asked.
“Nope. Just that he wanted you back at Bancroft, in his office, as soon as possible. He was trying for a little bluster, as in, Right now would be nice, until I mentioned Liz here. He didn’t seem to know what to do then.”
“Okay,” Liz interjected. “I don’t propose to spend the evening in Bancroft Hall. If they want to ask more questions when you get back, you reiterate that you’re not talking to anyone until your lawyer is present, and your lawyer’s not available until normal working hours tomorrow morning. On the other hand, see if you can find out why NCIS agents were in your room. I’ll be interested to see what they say, if anything. Especially if they use the inspection pretense.”
Julie was shaking her head slowly. “I don’t know what’s going down here,” she said in a small voice. “I haven’t done anything. Not to that plebe, nor to anyone else.”
“Good,” Liz said brightly. “Ev, is this how the Navy usually does business?”
“The Naval Academy isn’t the Navy,” he said immediately. “But, once you swear the oath, you do surrender a lot of civil liberties when you go into military service.”
“So they could go in and search her room just because they wanted to?”
“They can do a room inspection anytime they want to.”
“Using NCIS agents?” Julie asked.
“Well, that’s a point,” he admitted. “But if the OOD was present, they could simply say they were along for the ride while he did the inspection.” He turned back to Liz. “But look: If military law’s been invoked-you know, the UCMJ-and they’re getting ready to accuse Julie of something, maybe she needs to ask for a military co-counsel.” He paused, realizing Liz might take that wrong. “I mean, um, I don’t mean-”
She let him off the hook. “I understand what you’re saying. Military law is different. But I don’t think we’re there yet. Besides, if it comes to that, we don’t let them appoint a JAG defense counsel. We’ll go get our own, preferably from somewhere outside the Academy.”
“Defense counsel?” Julie squeaked. Ev could see real fear in her eyes now.
“Normally, I’d tell you to relax, Julie,” Liz said, “But what you need to be now is vigilant. They’re going to be afraid of me, or at least more afraid of me than they would be of some JAG lawyer they appoint as your defense counsel. A midshipman is dead, and that’s serious enough. Somehow, it involves you. Beyond that, we don’t know squat. Which means our next step is to make them tell us.”
Julie just stared into space.
“Why don’t I give you a ride back to Bancroft Hall?” Liz said, giving Ev a look that meant, Go with me on this. She put down her scotch, untouched, and got up to emphasize the point. Ev understood and nodded. While Julie went back out to the kitchen to get her hat, Liz said she’d come back after dropping Julie off.
When she returned twenty minutes later, they went back to the study, where she now sampled the single malt.
“So, how’d that go?” he asked.
“Basically, I needed to calibrate the client,” Liz said. She told him that Julie was more pissed off than anything else and, unfortunately, more than willing to talk to the authorities if that’s what it would take to clear this mess up, especially since she hadn’t done anything. “I told her she needed to play by my rules for a while. That you don’t talk to the enemy, especially when they’re keeping you in the mushroom mode.”
“Right.”
“I think she got the picture. I told her to be perfectly respectfuclass="underline" no displays of attitude. On the other hand, she shouldn’t talk to anyone, not her friendly company officer, not the commandant, not the NCIS, the FBI, or the CIA, whoever and whatever, unless I was present.”
“They won’t like that,” he said.
“Probably not. I reminded her that if she hasn’t done anything, they can’t make any kind of case against her, unless, of course, she inadvertently hands them something. And that that’s rule two, by the way.”
“Rule one being never lie to your lawyer?”
“Precisely. I told her that she must tell me the absolute truth with regard to any question I ask. I promised, in turn, not to make value judgments, and confirmed that what she tells me is always protected by lawyer-client confidentiality. I made her promise.”
Ev nodded thoughtfully. “And did she? Promise?”
Liz sipped some scotch. “You know, I’d swear she hesitated. Just a fraction, but it was there.”
“I’m not entirely surprised,” he said. “What you’re telling her makes perfect lawyer sense, but it violates just about every principle of ethics and professionalism they’ve been pounding into her for four years. I can understand that hesitation.”
“About telling the truth?”
“No, no, about not talking to them. About clamming up and hiding behind a lawyer’s skirts, so to speak. The mids are taught to address issues head-on. To be forthright. Truthful to the degree of pain. Never to equivocate.”
“I suppose. But look: Our legal system is trial by lawyer, not trial by jury. Usually, the best lawyer wins, not necessarily the most innocent client. I can’t be the best lawyer here unless I know the truth. And frankly, that’s what I think the hesitation was about. Not about hiding behind my so-called skirts.”
Ev blinked. “You think she’s hiding something?”
Liz waved her hand dismissively. “Hell, Ev, I don’t know. But I’m a defense lawyer. My clients tend to be deceptive. I always make them promise to tell me the truth. She did, but she tingled my trip wires in the process.”
What has my daughter been thinking? he wondered, frowning. And was she, God help us all, involved in what happened to that poor plebe? “Well, I’ll certainly reinforce that notion,” he said. “That’s fundamental.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Back to rule two: not to offer them anything, even out of some sense of duty. She’s dealing with cops now. Nine times out of ten, when cops have nothing, it’s the suspect who hands something to them by opening his yap. Remind her of that. Coming from you, it might carry more weight.”
Upset by the word suspect, he got up and started to pace around the room. “We’re so close to commissioning week,” he said. “More than just graduation. It’s a victory in every sense, victory after four very hard years operating within a system designed to remove a quarter to a third of them by attrition. And here she is, being worked over by federal cops for something some damned plebe did?”
“We’re assuming it was something the plebe did; they’re acting like somebody may have helped him do it.”
“What?” he shouted, whirling around. “Now you’re talking homicide ?”
She leaned back in the chair, a picture of lawyerly composure now. “If NCIS is interviewing people and conducting searches without warrants, then this is more than just a routine incident investigation.”
Ev swore and went to refill his drink. This day was truly turning to shit.
“Look,” Liz said, obviously concerned that she might have gone too far. “I’ve upset you, and perhaps prematurely. Bottom line? They’re on notice over there. Now we have to wait.”
He plopped back down in his chair and tried to get his mind around what was happening. She smiled at him, and it transformed her face, putting a sweetness there. He’d forgotten how attractive she was, with those coloratura features and silken white skin. He unconsciously glanced over her shoulder toward his wife’s picture up on the bookshelf. She caught his glance, turned, and looked at the picture for a moment. “That was your wife? Worth told me what happened. That’s a lovely picture.”