“The name rings a bell.” I do a quick scan through my files from Bruno, the homeless guy who was a patient of Kelsey’s. He never met a conspiracy theory that he didn’t embrace with his entire heart and soul. Aliens, mind control, the Illuminati, you name it. Bruno spent a lot of time on the computers at the public library, combing through conspiracy theory sites and posting his own strange combo versions. I keep most of his memories in their own separate compartment, because I don’t trust anything that Bruno “knew” until I fact-check it. “LSD, right? Government experiments with drugs to see what other powers the mind might have?”
“Yeah,” Aaron says. “It continued through the midseventies, when a Senate committee closed it down. Or rather, they made it look that way. The efforts shifted over to a military program, called the Stargate Project.”
“Why did they call it Stargate?”
“No clue. This was way before the TV series or even the movie. Anyway, the people involved lay low over at Fort Meade for fifteen, twenty years. Then in 1995, the CIA gets involved again. They conduct an investigation and close down the entire program, claiming it never yielded practical results. Except . . . I don’t buy it.”
“Why not?”
“A lot of reasons. For one thing, if you were the CIA and you wanted to cover up the fact that some program was getting results, what would be the best way to do it?”
I give him an I’ve-got-nothing look.
“You’d shut down the program. Say it was a waste of taxpayer money.”
“Maybe . . .” He’s actually starting to sound a little like Bruno.
Aaron stares out the window for a few moments. “I think my dad was in it.”
He spends the next few minutes giving me an abbreviated version of his family history. How his dad, Cole Quinn, joined the Army fresh out of high school, then decided to take this civilian job over at Fort Meade. Sam wasn’t too keen about his son taking the job. Part of it was a hunch, but the program also had some odd rules. Participants were under very restrictive security—they spent most of their time on post and couldn’t get married or start a family.
Cole Quinn took the position despite his dad’s objections. Said he wasn’t planning on settling down for a few years anyway, and the money was really good. A few years later, though, one of Cole’s colleagues, a guy named Ayers, went postal and killed a middle-aged couple down near Fredericksburg, then turned the gun on himself. The police wrote it off as random—the house was right off the interstate and there was no apparent connection between Ayers and the couple.
Only Cole Quinn knew better. He’d covered for Ayers on more than one occasion when the guy went down to Fredericksburg to visit his girlfriend and their son. She was former military, too, and they’d decided she and the kid should live with her parents for a few years until Ayers finished up his contract. That way, they’d have a nice nest egg built up. The plan was going well until Ayers shows up waving an assault rifle, screaming that the sun is bleeding. He’d have killed his girlfriend and the little boy, too, if she hadn’t escaped with her son out the back.
“Based on some things Dad told Sam,” Aaron says, “we think they were doing some sort of medical experiments. That’s what caused Ayers to snap. The girlfriend contacted my dad a couple of days later, scared to death.”
“Did he help her?”
“He did. And eventually fell into the same trap Ayers did.” Aaron laughs. “Okay . . . that came out all wrong. I’m definitely not saying my mom was a trap.”
“Your mom? So . . . that baby was Daniel? Your half brother?”
“Yeah. My mom and Daniel moved down to Richmond. Finished up school. When my dad quit the job at Meade, he joined us in Richmond . . . because Taylor and I were along for the ride at that point. Any program that wants to keep people in their twenties from having babies had better prevent it by medical means, because they’ll find a way around any sort of contract.”
Which is exactly what Aaron’s parents did. They waited until about six months after the contract expired, then Cole joined the rest of the family down in Richmond. Eventually, they married, and Cole Quinn adopted all three kids, even though Taylor and Aaron were biologically his. When Aaron was about five, they moved back to Maryland so his dad could attend the DC police academy, and once he joined the force, they settled into normal happy family life out in the suburbs.
“Except,” Aaron says, “Dad was always a little . . . erratic. Any time Taylor or I would do or say something that was . . . you know . . . abnormal? He’d lose it. He’d always apologize, but it never failed to set him off. Anyway, a couple of months before my sixteenth birthday, Dad started spending a lot of time at the library, and he’d come home with these stacks of computer printouts. Old newspapers, mostly. There was one about a congressional hearing. Claimed he was researching a cold case, but Mom wasn’t buying it. They argued, and Dad stormed out. Said too many people had been hurt and he couldn’t let Cregg start it up again.”
“Start what up?”
“I’m still not positive. But three days after that argument, Dad, Taylor, and I were coming back from one of her soccer games. When we passed a car parked at the entrance to our street, I got one of the clearest vibes I’ve ever had. Whoever was in that car wanted my dad dead.”