“More than weighing in,” Grace said. “I’ve talked to him twice already today. This is all he’s focused on right now.”

“Then why no results?” Dryden asked.

“I don’t think I’ve made it clear just how deeply the military buried what happened in Ashland. That investigation the Army did? They destroyed their own files on it after they finished it. They did the same for any documentation of what Rigel was about, which is why the Pentagon’s database didn’t have anything useful in it. They also wiped out the personnel files for Ashland: everyone who worked and lived there, everyone in D.C. who was connected to it, everyone who took part in the investigation afterward. Twenty-nine years later, we simply don’t have their names. We’d have to interview thousands of ex-military people to stumble on a few who worked at that site, and hope they could point us toward a few others. In weeks, we could do it. Not in hours.”

“What about the names in the binder?” Danica asked. “People my father knew there.”

“We got through to some of them. Out of seven names, four had passed away, two were retired and willing to speak to us, and the last was Russell Moss, who never even served at Ashland. The two we interviewed weren’t much help. They’re both in their eighties now. They gave us a handful of names, other people they worked with in Ashland, but the ones we could track down were all dead of old age. Same for the guys who ordered Moss to drug you, at that roadblock north of town. Everyone old enough to be in charge, back then, is gone now.”

Grace was quiet a moment. Then: “There was one other name in that binder. We think it was a civilian, because it doesn’t match any military ID from 1989. Someone named Lauren Coleman. Does it ring a bell with either of you?”

Dryden thought about it, but could only shake his head. He saw Danica do the same.

“What does the binder say about her?” Dryden asked.

“Only a few lines,” Grace said. “Questions, really, like mental notes Richard Ellis jotted down for himself. He wrote, What happened to her? If she survived, where is she? Relocated somewhere? Whoever she was, it sounds like Ellis knew her before the accident, and then never found out what became of her. Beyond that, we know nothing about her—not even her age at the time. Right now there are over three hundred Lauren Colemans in the United States. And if she’s still around somewhere, she could be married and going by a new name. Like anyone else from Ashland, we might track her down in the long-term, but not today.”