Chapter 41
This was starting to feel like a mistake. A very bad mistake.
Elizabeth Conover sat facing Jo across the interview table, her lips in a perpetual half smile, clearly unruffled by any of the questions Jo had asked her. If indeed Elizabeth had once worked for the Agency, then she’d been trained to resist even the harshest of interrogation techniques. No wonder Jo was finding it so difficult to drag the truth out of her. They’d been at this for half an hour, and while Elizabeth had been cordial and seemingly cooperative, she’d denied knowing anything about the identity of the lady in the lake. Jo wondered if Detective Alfond, who was interviewing Arthur Fox in the room next door, was having any better luck.
“Really, Chief Thibodeau,” said Elizabeth. “I have absolutely no idea who those bones belong to. I don’t know why you think I would know anything.”
“You spend every summer on Maiden Pond.”
“So do any number of other people.”
“In a house that you and your husband have owned since 1968.”
Elizabeth smiled. “To you, that probably seems like the Stone Age.”
“The woman’s bones were found just a few dozen yards offshore from Moonview.”
“It doesn’t mean I know who she was, or how she got there.”
Jo sat for a moment, tapping her fingers on the table. Decided, what the hell, just hit her with it and see how she reacts.
“It’s interesting, that you and your husband came to Purity the same year that Arthur Fox and Dr. and Mrs. Greene did.”
“Is it? Interesting?”
“That’s also the same year that Vivian Stillwater moved here.”
A beat. “Is that so?”
“You know it’s so, Mrs. Conover. Because you were all part of the same team.”
Elizabeth’s lip twitched. At last, a visible reaction. The air in the room suddenly seemed charged with tension. Surely Elizabeth realized her past was about to surface.
“In fact,” said Jo, “you all came to Purity for a specific reason. Didn’t you?”
“The same reason a thousand other tourists come every summer.”
“But you weren’t tourists. Neither were Arthur Fox or Dr. Greene. Or, for that matter, Vivian Stillwater. Within a year or two, you and the Greenes and Arthur Fox all bought property in Purity. And you weren’t here just for the summer. Those first few years, you stayed year round, because you weren’t here just to enjoy our fine summer weather. You were here to work.”
Elizabeth’s face tightened, and she broke off eye contact. Instead, she seemed to focus on a point above Jo’s shoulder. It appeared the Martini Club had indeed reached the correct conclusion.
“You were an interesting collection of people. Dr. Greene was a pharmacologist. Vivian Stillwater was a neurochemist. Then there was your husband, George, who claimed to work for a pharmaceutical company, which never really existed. All of you living quietly and privately in our little town.”
“Where are you going with this?” Elizabeth looked down pointedly at her wristwatch. “This has taken far too long already. Over the phone, you said this would take just a few minutes. While you ask all these irrelevant questions, my son Ethan’s been sitting out there, waiting to drive me home. You’ve disrupted the evening for my whole family.”
“Just answer my questions, Mrs. Conover.”
“No.” Elizabeth straightened in her chair. Only a moment ago, she’d played the part of the cooperative grandmother, ready to assist in the investigation. Now a different Elizabeth stared back at Jo, cool and unyielding. “We’re finished here. I don’t know why you’re asking these questions, or what you think you know about me, but you have clearly been given some wrong information. Unless I’m under arrest, I would like to go now.” She stood up and turned toward the door.
“Tell me about Project MKUltra.”
Elizabeth froze.
“Surely you know all about it,” said Jo. “Since that’s the reason you came to Maine.”
Slowly, Elizabeth turned to face Jo. “You are way out of your depth.”
“You and your husband were part of it. So were Arthur Fox and Dr. Greene. So was Vivian Stillwater.”
Silence.
“But Vivian became a problem, didn’t she? She developed a conscience after what happened to Sam Tarkin. Five people dead. What a disaster for your group, if the truth ever came out. Which drug did you feed him, LSD? Or was it some other hallucinogen that broke his mind and made him so paranoid he saw monsters on Main Street? That’s why he killed those people. Not because he was evil or deranged, as everyone thought, but because your little experiment went awry. You couldn’t afford to expose yourselves, so you let the whole world believe that Sam Tarkin was simply a madman. Easy enough to sweep this unfortunate incident under the rug and pretend it had nothing to do with you or your project. But unlike you, Vivian must have had a conscience. She decided she wanted out. She was ready to expose you, blow it all wide open, and she planned to meet someone in Washington, DC. You and your colleagues must have panicked. You needed to ruin Vivian’s credibility, and what better way to make that happen than to induce a convenient psychotic break? Who gave her the drug, Mrs. Conover? Who’s responsible for what happened to her next?”
Elizabeth didn’t say a word.
“Was it your husband? Or Arthur Fox? Or did you slip her the drug? Drop it into a glass of wine, maybe. Or a nice gin and tonic?”
Jo had laid it all out in the open now, what their group had done, and who was really responsible for the massacre on Main Street. Judging by Elizabeth’s reaction, Jo had hit a vein of truth.
Shoulders drooping, Elizabeth returned to the table and slowly sank back into the chair. “It wasn’t me,” she murmured.
“Then who was it?”
“Dr. Greene. He was in charge of the project. He made all the decisions.”
At last, an answer from her. It might not have been the entire truth, but it confirmed what Jo had just said.
“And the rest of you? Did you all agree this was how to deal with Vivian Stillwater?”
“As I said, he was in charge. He called the shots.” She looked at Jo. “How did you even know MKUltra had a local connection?”
“I have my sources.”
A raised eyebrow. “Really?”
“I know you think I’m just a small-town cop. But even I can put two and two together. I know Vivian Stillwater was a problem for you and your colleagues. She was going to expose what went wrong, so you slipped her a drug that took care of that problem. Did the fact it left her in a coma bother any of you? Did it bother you that a beautiful, accomplished woman’s life was ruined? ‘Too bad, so sad.’ Is that how you looked at it?”
“We weren’t heartless.”
“But your project was. You tinkered with people’s minds. You destroyed lives. Is that who the lady in the lake was, another Vivian who had to be disposed of? Did you make that particular problem disappear by weighing her down with rocks and dumping her in the pond?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Who was the woman, Mrs. Conover?”
“I have no idea.”
“Some local girl you recruited for your study? Or did you talk some summer visitor into getting high on her vacation, only to have it go terribly wrong?”
“I know nothing about those bones.”
“Bones that your granddaughter Zoe discovered when she went swimming that second day, after her visit with Callie Yount. She would have raised the alarm. You knew those bones would expose your secrets. That’s why you had to dispose of Zoe, as well.”
“Wait. You think that I—that I’d even dream of—” She gave a disbelieving laugh. “You’re insane if you think I’d hurt my own granddaughter .”
“We’ll let Zoe fill in the gaps. She should be waking up soon, and when she does ...” Jo paused to let Elizabeth reach the obvious conclusion: that Zoe would reveal who attacked her. Jo didn’t know if Zoe would remember a single damn thing, but the mere possibility could prove useful. It might be enough to force Elizabeth’s hand. “Eventually we will identify that skeleton,” said Jo. “Maybe then, you’ll remember whose bones they are.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my memory,” Elizabeth shot back. “And you, Chief Thibodeau, are going to regret this harassment. You have no idea who and what you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, I know who I’m dealing with, Mrs. Conover. I know you worked for the Agency. Or are you going to deny that too?”
“No, I’m not going to deny it. Yes, I served my country. Yes, in retrospect, what we did may have caused some harm, but remember, we were at war . You’re too young to know the global threats we faced back then—nuclear war hanging over us, the enemy infiltrating our government, our military. It’s easy for you to feel morally superior now, but unless you were there, fighting to protect our country, you have no right to judge us.”
There was a sharp rap on the door. Jo turned as Detective Alfond stuck his head in the room.
“Chief Thibodeau, we need to talk.”
“I’m still in the middle of—”
“ Now. ”
That one word, and the look he gave her, told Jo her evening was about to get much worse. Reluctantly, she stood up and followed him into the hallway, leaving Elizabeth sitting at the table. She shut the door behind her, so they could speak without being overheard.
“This is a total fuckup,” said Alfond.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“You’ve wasted my time and theirs. These are not insignificant people. They have friends in high places, and probably high-priced lawyers too. I’ve already sent Mr. Fox home, and you should let Mrs. Conover go as well, along with a big apology. These people had nothing to do with the bones in the pond.”
“Is that what Arthur Fox told you? Of course he’d say that. They’re not going to come right out and confess.”
“Mr. Fox didn’t have to say a word. The updated crime lab report says it all.” He shoved a sheet of paper at her. “This just came back, along with the facial reconstruction of the skull.”
Jo frowned at the page. “This is about her dental filling?”
“Look at the final analysis.”
Jo skimmed down to the bottom of the page and focused on a paragraph with words so obscure they might have been written in hieroglyphs. She frowned at the words amalgam restorations and polycarboxylate-adhesive liners and composite resins . “What does this mean?”
“Read the conclusion. The other side.”
She flipped over the paper, where the conclusion was printed.
The presence of composite resins used to bind the amalgam on the deceased’s etched tooth structure indicates this dental work was performed sometime after such resins were first introduced for amalgam restorations. Therefore, the estimate of the postmortem interval must be revised. This places the time of death to the mid-1980s or later.
“That blows your whole theory out of the water,” said Alfond. “Jane Doe, whoever she was, died at least a decade after you thought she did. Years after Project MKUltra ended. Who the hell gave you the crazy idea these two old people had anything to do with killing her?”
Jo’s attention was still fixed on the report. How could I have been so wrong?
“Chief Thibodeau? What was your source?”
“Someone with, um, inside information.”
“Their information’s obviously wrong.”
“But they didn’t know about this lab report. They didn’t know the time-of-death estimate was off by at least a decade. This changes everything.”
“Have you been sharing information with this source? Then I need to know who it is.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Excuse me?”
She looked up at him. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. It’s a confidential source who needs to stay out of the limelight.” And out of trouble, she thought. Leaving me to take the heat.
“Are they with a state agency?”
“No.”
“Are they with law enforcement?”
Jo sighed. “No.”
“So they’re amateurs ?” He threw back his head. “Jesus, I’m in a goddamn episode of Murder, She Wrote !”
The interview room door swung open. They both turned as Elizabeth Conover stepped into the hallway.
“I would like to go home,” she said. “ If you’re quite finished with me.”
“Of course, Mrs. Conover,” said Alfond, his demeanor instantly transforming to that of the polite public servant. “And I want to apologize for this misunderstanding.”
“Is that what harassment is called these days?”
“We were operating on incomplete information. New details have just come in from the crime lab, and it’s clear this young woman’s death happened in a completely different time frame than we thought. Come, let me walk you out. Maybe I can get you a cup of coffee?”
It irritated Jo to see how deferentially he escorted the woman through the connecting door, into the front office. Elizabeth was hiding something—Jo felt certain of it—but the woman had friends in high places , as Alfond had said. Of course she did. People like the Conovers and Arthur Fox were bound to have friends and lawyers to bail them out of trouble. She followed the pair into the front office, where Ethan had been waiting for his mother.
“We’re done here,” Elizabeth said to her son. “Let’s go home.”
“What was this all about?” he asked.
“The skeleton in the pond.” Elizabeth shook her head and laughed. “They thought I might know something about it.”
“Why you?”
Alfond said, “We were operating on incomplete forensic information. The latest crime lab report says the woman’s death was more recent than we thought. Now it’s just a matter of putting a name to her face. Hoping someone recognizes her.”
“Recognizes her?” Elizabeth looked at Alfond. “You know what she looked like?”
“Roughly. Based on a facial reconstruction from her skull.”
“May I see it?”
Alfond pulled out his phone and scrolled through his emails to the crime lab report. “These facial reconstruction programs have really improved over the last few years. We’ll be sharing the image with the public, and hopefully someone will know who she was.” He handed his phone to Elizabeth.
She went stock still. Didn’t say a word, didn’t react in any way. Not a frown, not a gasp, but those few seconds of frozen silence caught Jo’s attention. Elizabeth handed the phone back to Alfond. “That could be anyone,” she said, then turned to Ethan. “Let’s go home.”
Jo watched mother and son walk out of the building. “Did you see how she reacted to the face?” she said to Alfond. “She knows something.”
“I didn’t see any reaction.”
“Because she was trained that way. To show nothing, reveal nothing.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, leave those people alone.” Alfond turned to the door. “And maybe return to what you do best. Go write a few tickets.”
Jo watched him walk out of the building and wondered if she’d ever live down this evening’s humiliation. She couldn’t blame this all on the Martini Club because she’d been the one to buy into their theories. She’d been the one to bring in Arthur Fox and Elizabeth Conover for questioning. As it turned out, the Martini Club had been correct about one thing: Elizabeth had worked for the Agency, but it was an irrelevant detail that had nothing to do with the bones in the lake.
Or was it irrelevant?
She pulled up the crime lab report on her computer, and the image of Jane Doe’s facial reconstruction appeared on her screen. The face was bland and expressionless, as were most computer-generated reconstructions, yet something about the woman’s features was distinct enough to make Elizabeth momentarily freeze at the sight of the image.
She recognized this woman, thought Jo. Elizabeth knows who she is.
But does she know who killed her?