The Devil_s Workshop

Chapter 3

They were standing in front of Building 810 with their luggage, a cold wind whipping the hems of their dresses. Joanne was still sobbing and Stacy still burning mad.

"That fucking guy… who does he think he is?" she said. "A drug user? Max with mood swings? He was the steadiest guy on the planet. He ran the microbiology program at USC. He got that job because he was calm and organized, as well as brilliant. He wasn't some X-over-Y geek head case."

Joanne continued to cry and made no response. Her shoulders were down, her chin on her chest.

"Honey," Stacy said firmly, "I know you're torn up. So am I. But these people are lying. They're lying about Max, and if they're lying, the next question is 'Why?' And why did they burn his body? Were they trying to destroy evidence? What the hell happened here?"

Joanne looked up, tears still wet on her cheeks. Stacy reached into her purse, pulled a fresh tissue out of a travel pack, and handed it to her sister-in-law. "I want to find out what's going on, and I may need your help, but you can't help me if you don't pull yourself together."

Joanne wiped her eyes, sniffed, then blew. "How are you going to find out what went on? They're not going to tell you anything," she said.

"I don't know how Army docs are, but I know how civilian medical people think. It's standard procedure on a suicide to do an autopsy. I suppose the same holds true on a military base. If I ask Colonel Chittick for a copy of the autopsy, I'll probably just get ten pages of creative writing. So, I'm going to get Max's autopsy report myself."

"And they're just going to give it to you?"

"Let's go find out."

They went into the Base Information Center and got the Fort Detrick phone book. They took it to one of the long wooden tables at the far end of the room and sat there under the stare of a grandmotherly civilian volunteer in a brown wool suit.

"What are we looking for?" Joanne asked.

"Just a minute," Stacy said, as she paged through the book index. "Under 'Scientific Disciplines,' we have Microbiology, Aerobiology-that's wind, or insects usually. If this is a defense facility, I wonder why they're screwing around with that?" She shook her head in confusion, and kept going. "Then we have Immunology, Biotechnology… Chemical, Industrial. Nothing there. Next section is Plant Sciences and Entomology. Forget that. Here we go… 'Medical and Veterinary Sciences.' That's in USAMRIID. Okay, could be there," she said, and flipped to that section in the book.

"What?" Joanne asked.

But Stacy was scanning, muttering department names as she went. "Biometrics, Clinical Investigations, Bacteriology, Diagnostic Systems, Virology, and, bingo, Pathology.." She flipped the book to and started looking. Then she stabbed the page with her index finger. "We're headed to Building 1666, Experimental Pathology, Labs A through H, first floor."

They moved out of the building, still carrying their overnight bags and the Information Center map of the base. They headed toward Building 1666 along the manicured walkways.

Fort Detrick was beautiful in late April, with flowerbeds blooming spring colors. There were elm trees lining the streets and old Civil War cannons. It was a twenty-minute walk across the Fort on the strangely named Ditto Avenue. They were chilled by the brisk weather, but they found the building on the comer of Potter Street and Randall Drive. It was a huge gray concrete-and-steel structure, an eighties or nineties addition. The sign out front read: