Jansen’s voice tensed. “Why exactly are you asking that, Ms. Evans?”
“John thinks that Rufus Harms was involuntarily given PCP when he was in an Army stockade at Fort Plessy twenty-five years ago. He thinks the exposure to PCP caused Harms to go berserk and kill a little girl. He’s been in prison for the crime ever since.”
Sara recounted all that she and Fiske had deduced, along with what they had learned from Rufus at Rider’s office. Sara continued, “Rufus Harms recently received a letter from the Army asking him to participate in a follow-up test to determine the long-term effects of PCP. That’s what happened to Sergeant James Stanley, right? The Army sent him a letter. That was the only reason he knew the Army had given him LSD. Well, we think a group of Army personnel forcefully administered PCP to Harms in the stockade, but not as part of any program. We think they intended to use the drug to kill him. Instead he broke free and committed the murder.”
Jansen said, “Wait a minute. Why did the Army send him a letter saying Harms was in the program, if he wasn’t?”
“We think whoever gave Harms the PCP enrolled him in the program.”
“And why would they do that?”
“If they killed him with the PCP and there was an autopsy, presumably the substance would have been found in his bloodstream.”
“Yes, it would,” Jansen said slowly. “So they enrolled him in the program to cover that up. The coroner would chalk it up to an unfortunate reaction to the drug. I can’t believe this.”
“Right. So such a program existed?”
“Yes,” Jansen conceded. “It’s public information now. All declassified. It was run jointly by the Army and CIA in the seventies. They wanted to determine if PCP could be used to ‘build’ super soldiers. If Harms was listed in the program’s records, he would have recently received a follow-up letter.” Jansen paused for a moment. “What are you and John going to do now?”
“I wish we knew.” Sara thanked Jansen and hung up.
She waited awhile longer and then left the plane and walked across the tarmac to the terminal. She was immediately stopped by the two FBI agents.
“Where’s Fiske?” one of them demanded.
“John Fiske?” she asked innocently.
“Come on, Ms. Evans.”
“He left a while back.”
The agents looked startled. “Left. How?”
“I assume he drove. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She smiled as the stunned men took off at a dead run toward the plane. They had no grounds to detain her. She took the opportunity to hop on the shuttle bus to the garage and got her car. She drove out of the airport and headed south. A sudden thought hit her and she pulled off the road and into a gas station. Keeping the motor running, she opened Fiske’s briefcase and took out the packet of documents they had received from St. Louis. She wasn’t sure how closely Fiske had examined them, but it had occurred to her that it was possible the Army might have put a copy of the letter they had sent to Rufus Harms in his official file — although technically it had been closed upon the occasion of his court-martial. It was worth a look.
A half hour later she sat back, disappointed. She started returning the papers to the briefcase when her hand closed around the personnel list from Fort Plessy. She leafed through the pages, noting the names of Victor Tremaine and Frank Rayfield. Then her eye sadly passed over the name of Rufus Harms. So many years of his life gone.
As she was thinking this, she was continuing to turn pages, running her eye down the personnel list; as soon as she saw the name, she froze. When she finally broke out of her trance, she did so with such force that she bumped her head against the window. She threw the file down and slammed the car into gear, burning rubber on the slick pavement as she sped out of the gas station. She glanced down at the floorboard where the personnel list had landed, where the name Warren McKenna seemed to stare back at her, taunting her. She never looked back, so she didn’t notice the car that had followed her from the airport.