More Deaths Than One (21 page)

Bob smiled at her. “You’re an amazing woman,
Kerry Casillas.”

Her eyes laughed at him. “You’re just now
noticing?” She swung out from behind a semi. “The guy I know used
to work at the restaurant, and now that he’s off parole, he’s back
in business. Nobody can tell his paper is fake because he gets it
input into the proper computers, like it’s for real.”

“If he’s so good, how did he get caught?”

“He didn’t. He went to jail for possession of
drugs.” She passed the truck and moved back into the right lane.
“He charges a lot. Too bad you’re not rich.”

“How much does a person need before you
con-sider them to be rich?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a half million. I don’t
suppose other people think that’s much, but it sure would make me
feel rich. I’d be able to travel and then settle down in a nice
little house somewhere.”

“Then I’m rich.”

She swerved into the left lane. When she had
the car under control again, she glanced at him. Her eyes appeared
to be all pupil.

“You have a half million dollars?”

“More, actually.”

“Where . . . how . . .”

“From Hsiang-li. He was always giving me
money. He paid me a handsome salary, and at the end of each year he
gave me a bonus—a percentage of his considerable profits. And, of
course, the money for my paintings. Since my expenses were
minimal—Madame Butterfly’s was my one extravagance—I saved most of
it. Also, when Hsiang-li left, he gave me an envelope containing a
check that doubled what I had.”

“But the boardinghouse, the cheap clothes,
the junky car . . .”

“Things don’t mean much to me. I’ve always
been more interested in being at peace.”

She made an exasperated sound. “You want
peace? I’ll give you peace. A piece of my mind.”

He smiled. “At least it won’t be anything
weighty.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then
she burst out laughing. Wiping her eyes with one hand, she said,
“It always takes me awhile to recognize when you’re being
facetious. You were being facetious, weren’t you?”

“Of course. I think you’re exceptionally
smart.”

“Yeah, well, if I’m so smart, how come I’m
out of a job?”

Bob jerked his head toward her. “What!”

“My boss wouldn’t let me take tonight off, so
I quit.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “You can hire me to be
your agent.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“What I want is . . .” She drove in silence
for a mile or two. “You don’t have any more surprises for me, do
you? I mean, every time I get to figuring I know who you are, you
throw another surprise in the works.”

“No more surprises. You know everything about
me I know.”

“Okay. Now tell me about your meeting with
the girl. What was she wearing?”

Chapter 18

“How can I help?” Dr. James Willet rested his
chin on his steepled fingers. The backs of his hands were crepey
and mottled with age spots, but he seemed only about ten years
older than Bob.

“I’m doing research for a book,” Bob said. “A
friend told me you specialize in the problems of soldiers who had
been abused or interfered with.”

Dr. Willet nodded. “That is correct.”

For a moment Bob thought he caught a glimpse
of buried sadness, then the look of patent interest re-appeared in
the bluish-gray eyes.

“This friend has been plagued with recurring
nightmares,” Bob said. “He was a conscientious objector during
Vietnam, and he dreams that several times he grabbed a weapon and
fired on the enemy, though it goes against everything he believes.
He now thinks he really did do it.”

“Does your friend have a name?”

“I’d prefer not to say.”

“What does your . . . friend think happened
to him?”

Noting the slight hesitation, Bob realized
the doctor assumed he was the friend. He thought of correcting the
assumption, then decided it didn’t matter.

“He has a vague idea someone programmed him,
possibly during a visit to a hospital after receiving a flesh
wound.”

Dr. Willet tapped the tips of his fingers
together. “I see.”

“It’s as if someone tried to turn a less than
ideal soldier into a perfect cog in the military machine, and I
became curious about what went on back then. I think there might be
a book in it.”

Dr. Willet’s lips twisted in a sardonic
smile. “So do I. I’ve been working on it for twenty years, but
since I don’t have anything more than circumstantial evidence and
hearsay, editors aren’t interested. Also, patriotism is big right
now, so an exposé of military malfeasance isn’t in hot demand.”

“Malfeasance? Is that what you call it?”

He gave a bitter laugh. “No. That’s what my
agent calls it. I call it criminal behavior. I call it murder.”

His hands fluttered in an agitated manner. He
set them flat on the desk, took a deep breath, and exhaled
slowly.

“Sometimes it seems to me as if the
prevailing American attitude is ‘I want mine and I don’t care what
happens to anyone else as long as I get it.’ And always, throughout
history, the combat soldier got screwed first. In the 1800s, the
Chicago meatpackers sold their tainted meat to the army. Many
soldiers died on the frontlines not from bullets but from beef. In
this century, soldiers have been forced to use leech repellents
that didn’t repel leeches, shark repellents that actually attracted
sharks. They’ve been supplied with weapons that sometimes failed to
fire and weapons that blew up in their hands. And they’ve been
experimented on, like lab rats or guinea pigs.”

“It makes a certain sense,” Bob said. “The
military, particularly the infantry, is a captive population that
can be easily controlled and, unlike prison populations, they have
little recourse to lawyers since basically they have no
rights.”

Dr. Willet nodded. “Exactly. And if they ever
mentioned that something had been done to them, chalk it up to
battle fatigue. If they got injured or killed, that’s easily
explained too, even if the country isn’t at war. If any serious
questions are ever asked, all that’s necessary is to call it a
snafu, and everyone understands because people have come to accept
incompetence from the military.”

“I heard about a scientific test,” Bob said,
“where they sent some soldiers to the tropics equipped with winter
gear, and posted other to sub-arctic areas with tropical clothes.
The soldiers sent to the tropical areas had it easy. They took off
their clothes. But those sent to the cold regions could not put on
winter gear they didn’t have. Most got frostbite. The military
laughed it off as another snafu.”

Dr. Willet leaned back in his chair; the
brown leather groaned. The look of professional interest in his
eyes became more personal.

“You’ve been doing your homework, I see.”

Bob nodded, taking the credit, though
Harrison had once mentioned it to him. Thinking about Harrison, Bob
realized that despite Harrison’s expansive ways and the doctor’s
air of self-containment, the two men were alike in their concern
for the plight of the common soldier.

“They deserved better from their government,”
Dr. Willet said, as if he had heard Bob’s thoughts. “Besides the
experimentation, some of the most reprehensible measures concerned
POWs. After Korea, the government changed the status of the
remaining POWs to KIA. They assured the country they left no
American POWs in North Korea, but those were just words. The POWs
had been moved to China and the Soviet Union.”

“Why did they get listed as killed in action
if they were still alive?” Bob asked.

Dr. Willet rubbed a thumb over his fingers in
the universal sign for money.

Bob’s eyebrows drew together. “Who makes
money off POWs?”

“The American military. By removing someone
from MIA status and placing them on the KIA list, there is a
one-time insurance payment. This saves the government a fortune in
monthly service pay—which includes promotions and pay raises—over
the life of the POW. And it saves a great deal of embarrassment for
military officers and politicians who do nothing to secure the
release of their men.

“They did the same thing to the POWs after
Vietnam, but in that case they had a reason to keep the POWs from
coming home. Many had been sent to northern Laos and were held
among the poppy fields, where they couldn’t help but learn of the
American involvement in the drug trade. The U.S. government
certainly did not want those soldiers to return home and talk about
what they had learned. In fact, one man did manage to escape and
make his way back to America. When he tried to tell what he saw,
they court-martialed him for being a deserter.”

Not knowing what to say, Bob remained silent.
He glanced around the office with its homey touches designed to put
patients at ease: the restful blues and greens of the landscapes on
the walls, the comfortable couches and chairs, the simple wooden
desk. The only incongruous note in the room was the table shoved in
a corner and piled with stacks of paper. Underneath the table lay
cardboard boxes overflowing with more paper.

“My research,” Dr. Willet said. “None of
those interviews or snippets of information mean much by
themselves, but the preponderance of material has proven to me, if
no one else, that American soldiers have, in fact, been
experimented on.”

Bob related what Tracy had told him about the
secret agent from the Korean War who was so secret even he didn’t
know he was an agent.

Dr. Willet nodded. “They began using such
agents during World War Two and continued right on through Vietnam,
but more than simple hypnotism was usually involved. I don’t know
what procedures they’re using now. Light, sound, and color,
perhaps. I do know there are several drugs that help overcome the
mental and moral blocks we all have, and make us more susceptible
to suggestion.

“In nineteen fifty-three, the director of the
CIA said they had to find effective and practical techniques to
render an individual subservient to an imposed will or control. The
CIA created pain, produced headaches, used drugs, did anything they
could to make the subject open to manipulation. They strove to
induce amnesia, a way of gaining control over people’s memories by
wiping out certain areas of experience and leaving intact only what
the agency wanted them to remember.”

Bob felt a chill on the back of his neck.
“Have you ever heard of a project called Cerberus?”

“I don’t believe I have.”

“According to my informant, it originated to
help amputees overcome the discomfort in their phantom limbs by
removing the memory of it.”

Dr. Willet froze. There was a crack in the
calm façade at that moment, a lowering of the guard, and Bob saw
the extent of his pain.

The doctor’s voice shook when he spoke. “What
do you know about the memory removal?”

“Only that ISI—Information Services,
Incorp-orated—funded it and that they experimented on amputees
during the Korean War.”

“Cerberus,” the doctor said, as if to
himself. “An apt name. Similar to cerebrum. And, like the
three-headed hound, the brain has three parts—hindbrain, midbrain,
forebrain. It too sometimes guards the gates of hell, an internal
hell composed of terrible and unbearable memories.”

“I’d appreciate anything you can tell me
about ISI,” Bob said.

Dr. Willet sounded abstracted. “I don’t know
much.”

“Will it help if I promise not to use
anything you tell me?”

“No. I don’t know much. I’ve come across the
name a couple of times in the course of my research, but that’s
all. And if I did know, I wouldn’t care if you used it. I’m more
interested in getting the information exposed than in getting
credit.”

“How did you get involved in this research in
the first place?”

Dr. Willet studied him a moment, but didn’t
respond.

Bob returned his look.

“My brother,” Dr. Willet said at last. “Daryl
was eight years older than me, and my idol. We grew up in a farming
community here in Nebraska, and life seemed perfect.

“Then Daryl got drafted. He left home a
happy-go-lucky kid and returned a morose, remote stranger with one
leg. I endured rebuff after rebuff trying to get close to him. One
morning before school, I went looking for him, hoping that maybe,
this time, I could help him. I found him in the barn, crying. I
hugged him, and for once he didn’t push me away.

“When he got control of himself, he said, ‘I
can’t remember.’

“‘Can’t remember what?’ I asked.

“‘What it was like before,’ he answered. ‘I
vaguely remember you and the rest of the family, this farm, a dog
we used to have named Butch, but nothing else.’

“‘You don’t remember Jake?’ I asked.

“He gave me a blank look. ‘Who’s Jake?’

“‘Your dog,’ I told him. ‘The one you had
before you left. A car ran him over a few months ago, and we’ve all
been wondering why you haven’t asked about him.’

“‘I can’t remember,’ Daryl cried. ‘I can’t
re-member. Can’t remember.’ He banged his head against the
wall.

“I was scared. I wanted to run get my
parents, but I couldn’t leave him. I stayed with Daryl until he
calmed, then, reluctantly, I went to school.”

He drew in a ragged breath. “If I could
change one moment of my life, it would be that one. Years of
therapy, and I still can’t help thinking if I’d stayed with him,
he’d be alive.”

“What happened?” Bob asked softly.

“He killed himself. I found him hanging from
the rafters when I returned home from school that day. Everyone
assumed he couldn’t deal with the loss of his leg, and I didn’t
tell them any different.”

His smile had more teeth than humor. “You
should have my job. You’re certainly good at getting people to
talk. I’ve only told my therapist and my wife about that morning in
the barn.” He paused for a moment, then continued in a harder tone.
“That moment defined my life. It was thirty-six years ago and I now
have a family of my own, but my brother’s suicide still haunts me,
still drives me to understand. That’s why I became a therapist for
veterans.”