Page 89 of The Summer Guests

Jo could feel them watching her, patiently waiting for her to catch up. Why did it seem she was always a dozen steps behind these people?

“MKUltra,” Jo finally said. “Those drugs they were testing ...”

Maggie nodded. “They can lead to temporary psychosis. Hallucinations, delusions, memory loss. We don’t know how many test subjects this happened to, because those files were destroyed, butwe do know the drugs led to the death of at least one man. His name became part of the public record, and you can look him up on Google. The man was Frank Olson, and he was a biological warfare expert who worked for the CIA. His family believes he became disillusioned with Project MKUltra, and he planned to resign. Someone—probably one of his colleagues—spiked his drink with LSD. Nine days later, Olson jumped—or was pushed—out of the tenth-floor window of the Hotel Statler in New York. The timing of his death was blatantly convenient. Was he given the drug to silence him? To stop him from turning whistleblower?”

Now Jo understood why Project MKUltra was relevant. Why Vivian Stillwater’s death might have been more than an accident.

“I think Vivian also had moral qualms about the project and wanted out,” said Maggie. “We know she planned to meet someone in DC. Her sister thought it was about a new job, but I think Vivian planned to expose the program, and she was on her way to do just that.”

“But her colleagues made sure she never got there,” said Jo.

“Maybe they didn’t intend to kill her. But whatever drug they gave her caused a mental breakdown. Even if she’d survived, how reliable would she be as a witness? Would Congress, would anyone, trust the testimony of a woman who’d gone briefly insane?” Maggie leaned over Jo’s desk, and her gaze was fierce enough to make Jo edge back in her chair. “The question is,whydid Vivian suddenly turn against the project, against her colleagues, even against the Agency? What made her decide to expose MKUltra at that particular time? It had to be something that happened here, in Purity. Something that went very wrong.”

“The skeleton in the lake,” said Jo. “Wasshewhat went wrong?”

“That’s one possibility. A death they had to cover up, a victim they had to dispose of. But there was something else that went wrong here, something so public, so catastrophic, it couldn’t be simply disposed of in a pond.”

Jo didn’t need any hints, any prompting, to know the answer. She thought about her visit to that ramshackle house on Maiden Pond. She thought about Reuben and his sister and how their future was destroyed by what their father did. Not because he was evil or insane, but because his brain was on fire from the chemicals that had been fed to him.

“Sam Tarkin,” said Jo.

Maggie nodded. “A man who’d never been in trouble before. Who had a wife and two kids to support, one of them in a wheelchair. A man who one day, without warning, went berserk and killed four people on Main Street.”

“And no one ever knew why he did it.”

“Because the Agency quietly made a deal with Tarkin’s wife. They promised her and her children a lifetime of financial support, enough money to pay for Abigail’s medical bills. But the family had to remain silent. That’s one of the ways Project MKUltra managed to keep its secrets. Payoffs. Settlements. We’ll never know how many people were harmed because the Agency made sure those secrets would never be revealed.”

“Unless they get dredged up from a pond in Maine,” said Ben.

The lady in the lake,thought Jo. She rose to her feet and went to the filing cabinet to retrieve a folder. “I just got the report from the ME’s office, about the skeleton’s dentition. The victim had a dental filling in one of her upper molars, and there’s a preliminary analysis of the amalgam. It’s called Dispersalloy, a product that was first introduced in 1962.” Jo handed the folder to Maggie. “So the timing would fit.”

Maggie nodded. “MKUltra was in operation.”

Jo paced over to the county map hanging on the wall and focused on Maiden Pond. Such a modest little body of water, just a tiny blue smudge on the map, yet tragedy kept finding its way to that pond, like light sucked into a black hole. Even the name itself was tragic, commemorating a girl’s drowning a century ago. A place where bad things happened. Where they kept happening.

“If this is all to cover up MKUltra,” said Jo, “there are only two people still alive who were part of it.”

“Elizabeth Conover and Arthur Fox,” said Maggie.

Jo turned to look at her. “Would Elizabeth really hurt her granddaughter to keep this secret?”

“If they put that body in the pond, this could send both Elizabeth and Arthur Fox to prison.”

“Yes, but to hurt her owngranddaughter?”

“Step-granddaughter. You’ve met Elizabeth. You tell us.”

Jo thought about the first night she’d encountered Elizabeth Conover. Recalled the woman’s cool-eyed authority, her unquestioned command over her family. Zoe was not a blood relative but a recent addition through marriage. A girl Elizabeth would not have had the chance to bond with. A girl she might consider disposable, given the stakes.

“I’ll bring her in for questioning,” said Jo. “Arthur Fox too.”

“Good luck with that,” said Ingrid. “You know they’re going to deny everything. And you have no proof.”

“It might all come down to Zoe,” said Maggie. “And what she remembers when she wakes up.”

Zoe.

“They’ve just moved her out of the ICU,” said Jo. “The hospital’s keeping her room number strictly secret from the public, but the family knows it.Elizabethknows it.” Jo picked up the phone. “Zoe’s a sitting duck.”

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