“About always being straight with you?”
“Precisely.”
There was a pause. “What do you want to know, Ms. DeWinter?”
“Please, call me Liz. And I want you to refresh my memory on how well you knew Midshipman Dell. Take your time to think.”
“I don’t have to,” Julie said. “He was one of about twelve hundred entering plebes this past summer. He ended up being assigned in my battalion for the academic year, but not in my company.”
“That means you were in the same building?”
“In the same wing, yes. There are six battalions, five companies in each. There are eight wings to Bancroft Hall, so the battalions overlap, but, for the most part, company rooms are adjacent.”
“So you’d know everyone in your company pretty well, but not necessarily everyone in your battalion?”
“That’s correct. As a firstie, I know my classmates very well. The second class also-they’ve been right behind us for three years now. The youngsters are last year’s plebes, so they’re the new guys. This year’s crop of plebes are sort of a probationary class: Those who survive into youngster year achieve a class identity.”
“So all plebes look alike, then?”
There was a shuffling sound as Julie moved around in her chair. “Not entirely,” she said. “There are some plebes who stand out-at both ends of the spectrum. The ones who get with the program, who rise to the challenges of plebe year, become gung ho-they stand out. And the ones who are barely keeping their heads above water-they also stand out.”
“What happens to them?”
“It depends,” Julie said. “If they’re busting their asses to make it, the plebe year system will cut them some slack. Not a lot, but enough to keep them trying. Sort of a subliminal message to penetrate all the plebe year bullshit: You can do this, and we actually want you to succeed.”
“And if they’re not busting their asses?”
“If they’re lazy, dumb, or dishonest-you know, making it, but doing it by climbing over the backs of their plebe classmates-we’ll run them out.”
“‘Run them out’?”
“Make life so miserable, they ask to quit. Resign.”
“The Academy countenances that?”
“The Academy created the plebe year system. They want as many quality plebes as possible to succeed, to make it to their youngster year. But they expect some to fail.”
“How does that happen?”
Julie gave a short laugh. “A million ways. Look, what I’m telling you is how I see it, as a firstie. The official Academy line would probably be to deny everything I’m saying.”
“Okay, I accept that. Tell me how you’d do it.”
“It’s usually not a conscious decision or anything,” Julie said. “It’s not like we get together and declare someone a shitbird. It’s more like a collective conclusion among the upperclassmen. So-and-so’s a weakling and doesn’t belong here. And that doesn’t happen out of the blue, either. Usually, people will try to help a plebe who’s struggling. I’m talking about the ones who don’t struggle, or who whine and complain, or who try to skate.”
“And what happens to them?”
“Basically, a plebe’s day is supposed to be split between plebe year stuff and his academics, with a strong emphasis on allowing time to do the academics work. We reverse that. They get eternal come-arounds. They get sent on daily uniform races. They get ordered to roam the mess hall, where they report to a different table of strangers every meal, who harass the shit out of them. They get asked professional questions at meals and then get come-arounds when they show up without the answers. They get no free time, so pretty soon they’re on academic probation, too. They get fried-that means put on report-three, four times a week for small infractions: unshined shoes, failing room inspections, having nonreg gear, failure to get to places on time. Any number of things.”
“Sounds like piling on.”
“Yep. That’s what happens. They get loaded down until it’s hopeless, and then they resign. Keep in mind, we’re talking about the shitbirds here. Most plebes make it, one way or another.”
Ev could hear Liz get up and walk around her office. “What personal attributes would line a guy up for shitbird designation?”
Julie said, “I guess it’s like art: We know one when we see one.”
“But how do shitbirds get in? I’ve read that there are ten thousand applicants who qualify each year, but only twelve hundred or so get admitted.”
Julie cleared her throat. “Everyone here, except the prior enlisted, is on a political appointment. Congressmen and senators from the fifty states. The president, the vice president. All appointments are supposed to be competitive, but-”
“But what?”
“Well, some people are more special than others. Football players, for instance. I can’t prove this, but everybody knows that some of them don’t belong here, academically speaking. Still, they get preferential treatment-their own tables in the mess hall, special chow, extra academic attention, curved grading. Some minorities get special breaks, too. These hug-’em-and-and-love-’em programs come along, to get people in here from inner-city situations. And some people just manage to fool the system.”
“What category was Midshipman Dell?”
“Category?”
“I guess I’m asking if Dell was thought of as someone busting his ass or a shitbird.”
“Oh. I think Dell was on the edge,” Julie said slowly. “Maybe someone who’d been busting his ass but was now sinking into the failure mode. You know those National Geographic programs, where they show an old or sick animal being eased out of the herd? Like that. I wasn’t close to the Dell situation. The people responsible for Dell were the firsties and youngsters in his own company. You’d have to ask them.”
“And you didn’t really know him in any other context?”
“Why do you keep asking me that?” Julie said with an audible touch of heat. “I’ve told you, and I’ve told everyone else-”
Liz interrupted her. “I’m having a problem with the notion that he chose your room at random to go in and heist a pair of your underwear,” she said. “Unless he was a panty fetishist, in which case they should have found a stash somewhere.”
Julie was silent for a moment. Ev could just see her expression-he’d heard the anger in her voice. “I can’t explain that, and I don’t know what else they’ve found. I did not know him, and certainly not on an underwear basis! And I can’t help it if you don’t believe that.”
“It’s not just me, Julie,” Liz said. There were noises indicating she was sitting back down. “If this is indeed a homicide, the cops are going to pull that string until something emerges. Cops look for connections, in addition to motive, opportunity, and means.”
“Okay, so what’s my motive supposed to be? And for that matter, opportunity? I was asleep in my bed when he went out that window. Whose side are you on, anyway?”
Ev groaned out loud, but Liz waved it off, as if she’d been expecting his reaction. “I’m on your side. The point of this meeting was to introduce you to the tone and tenor of a homicide investigation. I don’t know what the cops have, but something’s gone off the tracks with the suicide or accident theory. There was something else going on here, and I need to make sure that you don’t know what it is.”
Once again, Ev could almost see his daughter, sitting there in a barely controlled rage. She did not reply.
“Julie, look at me,” Liz ordered. “Did part of the problem with Dell have anything to do with sexual orientation? Was Midshipman Dell gay?”
“I don’t know,” Julie said. Ev had heard that tone of voice, too, but not for several years. Joanne sometimes had to be restrained from slapping the shit out of her when she got that way.
“Let me try the question another way: Were there rumors that Dell was gay?”
“Possibly.” Ev perked up at that. This was new.
“Oh, c’mon,” Liz was saying. “Possibly? There either were or there weren’t.”