“Are you being treated well, Mr. Silver?” Forsyth asked, sitting at the table across from him. Redfern joined him while the guard waited at the end of the room.
“Not too bad. They have some awesome drugs in here,” Silver said.
“I understand you worked with Dr. Alexis Morgan,” Forsyth said, watching the way Silver’s eyes narrowed like those of a cornered animal’s. “She served with us on the council for a while.”
“Yeah, I did some research for her.”
“What were y’all working on?”
“I thought you weren’t going to ask any questions.”
Forsyth held up a palm and smiled. “Just making conversation, Mr. Silver. No need to go getting riled up.”
“Well, if you ask me, she ought to be the one in here, not me.”
“Is that so?”
Dr. Redfern gave Forsyth a sympathetic look, as if Silver had just revealed his own paranoid delusions. “Mr. Silver also believes he’s involved in a secret government conspiracy,” Dr. Redfern said.
“Sounds like a contagious idea,” Forsyth said, staring fully into Silver’s eyes. “What did Dr. Morgan do that was so terrible?”
“She did it. She gave me the formula, asked me to cook it up for her.”
“A formula? Some secret government drug?” Forsyth gave Redfern a surreptitious wink.
“Yeah. She called it Halcyon. It’s supposed to make you forget stuff. I played with it, put my own spin on it. That’s my style.”
Dr. Redfern cut in, speaking as if the inmate wasn’t present. “Mr. Silver has a record of illegal drug manufacturing. LSD, meth-amphetamine, OxyContin. His diagnosis states chronic drug use has damaged his perceptions of reality.”
“You call it ‘damaged,’ I call it ‘superduperfied,’” Silver said, swinging his dreadlocks in his exuberance. “What’s in a name, right? I mean, if they called MDMA ‘Funny Puppy’ instead of ‘Mad Dog,’ everybody would be taking it. It’s all about marketing, man.”
Forsyth ruminated while Silver finished his rant, and then said, “Do you think you could recreate this Halcyon?”
“No prob, dude.”
“You have a vast range of experience, Mr. Silver,” Forsyth said. “I think we can work something out.”
He gave a lopsided grin. “You think I don’t know what’s going on here?”
“What?” Forsyth asked.
“You guys are in on it. This Halcyon stuff. She said I had to be careful because important people were watching. People all the way up to the top.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Forsyth said. “If people in the government have secret drugs, then they can take away anybody’s rights at any time by making you think a certain way. By changing your mind. Why, they can even make you crazy, right?”
Silver’s eyes narrowed again, as if he was figuring Forsyth’s angle. “I tried some of that stuff. I can’t remember what it was like.”
Dr. Redfern’s face furrowed in deep concern and solemn sorrow. Forsyth was sure she’d refined that look in a mirror.
“Did Dr. Morgan ever mention a drug called Seethe?” Forsyth said.
“No, but it sounds cool,” Silver said. “Upper?”
“It doesn’t exist,” he replied. “But we got reason to think Dr. Morgan may be under a bit of…strain. As you can likely appreciate, her previous post as a presidential advisor means her actions reflect on all of us. If she needs help, she deserves the finest treatment and…” Forsyth turned to Dr. Redfern. “What did you call that?”
“Continuum of care,” she said, pleased to contribute.
“She didn’t talk about Seethe, but she did seem a little freaked out,” Silver said. “I offered her some weed to help her chill, but she said she didn’t do drugs.” He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Doesn’t do drugs. Now that’s what I call crazy, man.”
“Thank you for the information. Mr. Silver,” Forsyth said, rising from his chair. “I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with the federal prosecutors.”
“But this wasn’t an interrogation, right? If it was, I’d have had a lawyer and stuff, right?” As they retreated, he raised his voice to yell at their backs. “Unless my lawyer’s in on it, too.”
After the guard let them out, Dr. Redfern said, “We have more secret government drug conspiracies per square foot than any facility in the country, it seems.”
Forsyth gave an understanding smile, one full of paternal concern and a veiled promise of support. “Just between you and me, I think it’s the aliens and their little mind-scrambling ray guns.”
Dr. Redfern granted him a coy and unprofessional titter.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Roland checked the entire cabin, which wasn’t large, but he had to be careful not to arouse Wendy’s suspicions. The cabin was basically one open floor with a loft bedroom. While Wendy collected painting supplies for her afternoon session, Roland searched under the bed and the tiny closet.
He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been in the cabin. It didn’t make sense, because they hadn’t been anywhere except for their usual afternoon walk. They would have heard a car on the long gravel driveway, and the remote rural area held little attraction for burglars and thieves.
His laptop was on the table where he’d left it, and they didn’t have a television or other items easily pawned for cash. And they certainly didn’t have any money or jewelry.
The gun.
He jogged toward the loft stairs, nearly slamming into Wendy at the landing.
“Hey!” she said, gathering her paints in her arms.
He ran to the bedside table, cursing himself for letting down his guard. He should have been carrying the gun on the walk. However close or far away, somebody was watching them. And they could be very close.
“What are you freaking out about?” Wendy called from below.
“Shh,” he hissed, sliding open the table drawer. And there it was.
He pulled out the gun as Wendy joined him in the loft. “Did you see the fox?”
“Yeah.” He hurried back down to the open door and gazed into the woods, feeling a little stupid. A breeze played through the leaves, making a sound like faint laughter.
After a moment, he sensed Wendy behind him. “Maybe you should practice with that thing,” she said. “You’re not going to get many more chances.”
She nudged past him and he made room for her, looking at the. 38 revolver. As she spread her paint tubes around the easel, he glanced back at the table.
The laptop.
It was still there, but was it in the exact same position he’d left it? He tried to recall his last online activity. He’d been working on some lettering for a proposal. That had been before lunch.
Roland opened the laptop and powered it from its sleep. The Photoshop file came up, just as he’d last saved it. He knew the hard drive contained fingerprints of all commands the computer had ever performed, but such a search was well beyond his technical skills.
He looked at the USB ports on the side. Someone could have slipped a zip drive in and quickly downloaded his files.
But why? Maybe Wendy’s right. You’re getting paranoid.
But the e-mails were real. Even if it was the aftereffects of Seethe that were making him paranoid, that didn’t change the fact that someone knew about the Monkey House. And probably that he was a murderer.
National Clandestine Service, Burchfield, the enemy within.
