Spencer replied, “As much as you can socialize in this place. We’d have dinner together, play cards.” He guessed what Brodie was getting at and added, “I did not know about the psilocybin. That was a surprise to me.”
“Why?” asked Taylor.
“Because it was reckless,” said Spencer. “If he’d been caught, he’d have been relieved of command. And that would be a major blow to our work here.”
Brodie said, “Maybe it was part of his work. Expanding his mind.”
Spencer looked at him skeptically. “Aren’t you CID?”
“That’s what it says on my paycheck.”
Spencer sighed. “I’m sure he justified it to himself like that. Or he was bored. I don’t know how he got the stuff.”
Taylor added, “Or if he was doing it with other people.”
Spencer nodded. “It’s possible. Off the record, there’s some speed freaks here. Maybe they got involved. I just don’t know.”
Brodie said, “We heard about Private Beal.”
Spencer did not respond for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, “He pushes them too hard.”
“Who?” asked Brodie. “Captain Pickman?”
Spencer looked at him. “The general.”
They stopped walking as the road ended in a wide cul-de-sac ringed by identical Sixties-era ranch houses. Each house had a desert-landscaped front yard of stones and succulents, along with an attached garage and driveway. A few cars were parked in the drives, along with a handful of golf carts.
If you squinted it almost looked like regular suburbia, but behind the houses was the steel security gate topped with razor wire, and beyond that, endless desert.
Spencer said, “These are the original houses from the old base, but they’ve been updated on the inside.”
“Looks nice,” said Brodie. Actually, it looked like one of those fake towns the government used to build to drop nukes on.
Spencer led them along the sidewalk. Taylor asked, “Did Major Ames have family?”
“Next of kin is his sister, who will be receiving the body,” said the captain. “His parents passed a few years ago, and he was divorced with no kids. By his own telling, he was more married to his work than his wife.”
Right. Why deal with the complexities of a spouse when you can spend all day with machines? They’re simpler, more rational, and less likely to kill you. Until recently.
Taylor asked, “What will his sister be told about his death?”
Spencer looked at her. “That’s not up to me, but I can assure you it won’t be the truth. Hopefully not a lie either. She deserves at least to know that she’s not being given the full picture. The major died while conducting classified research at a top-secret Army facility.”
Brodie said, “I can’t imagine that will satisfy her.”
“It will have to,” replied Spencer, almost brusquely. “If she or anyone else wants to dig, it’s not too hard to figure out he was at Camp Hayden, whose existence is acknowledged by the military. But that’s all she’ll know, and that’s how it has to be.”
Brodie felt the captain was speaking a little callously, especially concerning the death of his own colleague. On the other hand, the man had a point. When you step behind the veil of secrecy, you are let into a privileged world, and that has a cost. In this case, Major Ames’s sister—and his ex-wife, if she cared—would have to live without ever really knowing what happened to him.
Spencer pointed to a house with a number two on the door. “That’s the general’s house.”
The house was identical to all the others. A sand-covered green Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked in the driveway, and lights were on behind drawn sheer curtains. Brodie asked, “Why do you think the general was not with us today?”
Spencer hesitated, then said, “I imagine he felt that Colonel Howe was better suited to give you an overall impression of the operations here.”
That was a hell of a non-answer. There was clearly some tension here. Dinner was going to be interesting, even if Mrs. Morgan’s cooking wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Brodie spotted another house—number six—with yellow police tape across the door. “Major Ames’s house?”
