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happened, and why, if that’s possible. A young man’s dead, sir. His parents are going to want to know why.”
    â€œI understand, Captain Robbins,” Ev said, matching the commandant’s formal civility. “But this parent wants to make sure there’s no rush to judgment for purposes, say, of getting this unfortunate incident rapidly behind us.”
    Robbins stiffened at that. Ev was speaking in code, but it was a code they both understood. The Academy was highly sensitive to bad news, and the administration had become very adept at damage control in recent years. From the look in Captain Robbins’s eye, Ev realized he might have pushed things too hard. The commandant was the number-two executive at the Academy, reporting only to Rear Admiral McDonald, the superintendent. A civilian professor, tenured though he might be, was well down the food chain from the commandant of midshipmen. But Ev sensed he needed to put the administration on immediate notice: Any attempt to railroad Julie was going to light some fuses.
    â€œMidshipman Markham,” Robbins said, turning to Julie. “Please go with Mr. Hall there. He will escort you to my conference room, where you’ll meet with the NCIS people.”
    â€œAye, aye, sir,” Julie said, and headed for the rangy civilian standing next to the partition. Ev waited for her to disappear into the executive hallway before turning back to the commandant. “The word in the Brigade is that the plebe jumped,” he said.
    â€œThe ‘word’ in the Brigade is more properly called scuttlebutt and is almost always bullshit, Professor,” Robbins said. Ev noticed that Robbins was beginning to do what the mids irreverently called the “Dant’s Dance,” popping up and down on the balls of his feet whenever he became impatient.It probably didn’t help that he had to crane his neck to look up at Ev. “Look, we’d appreciate it if you would back off for the moment and let the system work. I guarantee you that your daughter will be treated fairly. She has an excellent reputation in her class. Again: Our objective here is to find out what happened and why. That’s all.”
    Ev started to reply, but the way Robbins had said “That’s all” sounded very much like a dismissal. It was not an unreasonable request. Julie was an adult, twenty-one, and about to be a commissioned officer. Even as a parent, Ev had no legal standing here; thus, discretion was probably the better part of valor at this juncture. If he got too far up the commandant’s nose, it would be Julie who’d take the heat for it. He nodded and left the rotunda. The commandant, still rocking up on his toes, watched him go for a moment before heading for the partition that separated the public Academy from the very private one.
    It would take Ev five minutes to walk from Bancroft Hall back to Sampson Hall, home of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences. It was 1:30, so the mids were all in class by now. Except for tourists, he had Stribling Walk to himself. The central Yard was a beautiful parklike setting, with its many marble monuments to famous people or incidents of naval history. The brick walk began at the imposing circular colonnade in front of Bancroft Hall and ended one thousand feet away at the equally imposing marble facade of the Mahan Hall complex. There were statues, cenotaphs, an obelisk, heavily oxidized bronze busts, and cannons littering a landscape of brick walks and bright green grass, all presided over by stately old trees. The towering dome of the Academy chapel rose twenty stories through the trees to his left, and the glimmering surface of the Severn River shone between the academic buildings to his right. Stubby gray Yard Patrol boats, YPs, used for seamanship training, blatted their horns out along the quay wall. He had to step around some open trenches, signs of the Academy’s notorious