Maxwell Finley Harkness

Up and coming. Company man. Newlywed. Tall and lean with a swimmer's build. Wavy dark hair, boyish good looks, soulful eyes.

A farmer's boy from Stockton, California, but clearly destined for greater things. Smart. Ambitious. Handsome. Athletic. Star quarterback in high school, straight As, full ride to Stanford.

Put off college to enlist in the army, 1944. War ended a year later and he went to Stanford after all. Some sort of fancy science degree. Magna cum laude. Worked at Livermore Labs for a couple years, coming home on the weekends. That's how he met Claire.


Introduced to her on a blind date. Went after her hard, swept her off her feet with his charisma, his easy charm, his uncomplicated confidence. A whirlwind romance to the core. They were engaged a month later. Married in four. He took a new job soon after. Important work. World-changing. They moved four hundred miles south to La Jaula. A company town, new, modern, raised like Christ out of the desert sands. Their neighbors were his colleagues and their wives, young couples as ambitious, fun-loving, and future-minded as they were.

He still, for now, drives the old truck he had from home, but his house is stunning, all clean modern lines in concrete and glass, Utah stone and teakwood trim. The lawn is spotlessly green. The swimming pool is pristinely blue. Vast floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the bare desert mountains and flat desert terrain.

He lives there now with his pretty, demure, sweet little wife. A caring husband. A good man. An upstanding member of the community.

Or is he?