A quarter mile later, the road cut through a gap in a low, wooded ridge, and the Y-12 Plant disappeared from view. Just beyond the gap, a blocky concrete guardhouse, its windows and gunports long since boarded up, marked what had once been one of the Secret City’s gates. Passing the guardhouse, I was leaving the federal reservation and entering the town; leaving the past and rejoining the present. Yet pulling into the police department’s parking lot behind the municipal building, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had one foot in the twenty-first century and one foot in World War II. And sometimes it was tough to tell which foot was on firmer ground.
DETECTIVE JIM EMERT peered at one of the prints through a magnifying glass, then laid the lens down in exasperation. “Hell,” he said, “with all that grain in the image, magnifying it just makes it worse.”
I’d done exactly the same thing an hour before, in my office under the stadium. Magnifying the print was like enlarging a newspaper photograph into a meaningless cloud of dots. “The prints aren’t great,” I said, “but it’s amazing there’s anything there at all.” Considering how faint the images on the film had been, I wasn’t sure whether to think of the guy at Thompson’s as a darkroom tech or a psychic medium. After conjuring up that first startling image of the young soldier’s body, Rodney had spent most of that night and all of this morning experimenting with different exposure times, contrast filters, and developer baths. He’d tried burning and dodging, which sounded like an arsonist’s modus operandi, but which actually meant using masks and screens to increase or decrease the amount of light falling on different regions of the photo paper. He’d also scanned the negatives into a digital-processing computer. In short, he’d tried every trick in the book to coax every speck of image out of that ghostly film. By the time he was through, he had used a hundred sheets of photo paper…and produced a sequence of prints that hinted at a chilling story.
The first image showed the rear end of an antique-looking car—late 1930s, I guessed, by the black paint, bulbous fenders, and small windows. The trunk lid was raised, and a pale bundle filled the cargo space. The detail left a lot to be desired, but over the years I’d seen enough blanket-wrapped bodies in enough trunks to recognize one. The second image showed the bundle lying beside a shallow, circular hole that appeared to have been freshly dug. In the third and fourth pictures, the body—no longer wrapped in the blanket or sheet, and wearing what appeared to be dark clothes—lay in the center of the depression. It was this third exposure Rodney had printed as I’d looked over his shoulder in the darkroom. But the fifth and sixth prints were even more haunting, for they showed close-ups of the man’s head and his face, the vacant eyes staring at us across the gulf of time.
Emert laid aside the last of the close-ups. “The weird thing,” he said, “besides who the hell’s this dead guy and what the hell’s going on here, is why Novak would take the photos in the first place? And why would he go to such trouble to preserve the film all these years? And why would he leave the film undeveloped, for Christ’s sake, if he wanted to keep the images?”
“That’s a whole bunch of weird things,” I pointed out. “You’re a man of many questions.”
“That’s what my mom used to say when I was a kid,” he said. “Since that’s the way I am, might as well get some good out of it. The way I see it, you ask enough people enough questions, enough times, sooner or later you might get an answer that tells you something.”
I’d been wondering about the same weird things as Emert, plus a few others. “Maybe it’s not Novak the pictures incriminate,” I said. I thought of the crumpled note outside Novak’s front door. “Maybe it’s somebody else. Somebody whose secret he knew. Maybe Novak was blackmailing whoever the pictures incriminated.”
“He was a pretty lousy blackmailer if he threw away the blackmail note,” Emert pointed out.
“Maybe he was still getting the hang of it,” I said. “Maybe he considered sending the note, then had second thoughts.”
“Come on, Doc—he’d had that film on ice for a long damn time. If he were gonna put the screws to somebody, he’d have done it decades ago, while his target was still alive, and while Novak was young enough to enjoy the money. Besides, you saw his handwriting on that legal pad. It doesn’t match the note.”
The detective was right. Novak’s handwriting was small and precise. The lettering on the note was large and blocky. “Okay, I give,” I said. “You got any theories?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “All I can come up with is that maybe he wanted an insurance policy of some sort, leverage he could use if he needed to. But he wanted to reduce the risk somebody might just stumble across the pictures—the maid or the home-health nurse or whoever—so he left the film undeveloped. It’s not a great theory, but it’s all I’ve got so far.”
The last three pictures in the series were different. They showed tree trunks and thickets of foliage, and—off in the distance, through a gap in the trees—a small barn. Here’s the view from the grave, I thought, trying to think like Leonard Novak might have. Here’s how to find it again someday.
I’d brought two sets of prints with me. I left one with Emert, and took the other with me as I left the police department, crossed the parking lot, and unlocked my truck. I slipped behind the wheel and started the engine, but then I just sat, my mind spinning faster than the motor.
A story had unspooled from that roll of film. A strange tale from beyond the grave, told by a man whose own murder was the most bizarre I had ever encountered. I didn’t know what it meant yet, and maybe I never would, but I couldn’t wait for the next chapter.
I switched off the key and got out of the truck.
CHAPTER 17
I DIDN’T SEE HER AT THE REFERENCE DESK, AND THE Oak Ridge Room was locked and empty. Disappointed, I turned to go, figuring I’d stop at the circulation desk on my way out and ask what hours Isabella, the history-minded librarian, worked. As I approached the desk, I heard a voice at my elbow, from somewhere amid rows of bookshelves. “Dr. Brockton? Is that you?”
I spun. “Oh, hi,” I said. “I was just looking for you. I was afraid maybe you weren’t working this afternoon.”
“Till six,” she said, stepping out of the shadowy stacks. “What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if I could look through those Manhattan Project photo binders again?”
“Of course,” she said. She led me back to the glass-walled room and unlocked the door. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
“Seems like I remember there was a set of photos of houses and farms that were already here when the project started. Sort of the ‘before’ picture of Oak Ridge?”
She smiled. “You paid good attention,” she said. Pulling a fat binder from among the dozens filling the bookcase, she handed it to me. “Anything else I can help you with?”
I almost said that she could help me with my lack of a dinner companion, but that seemed a bit forward. “Just this, for now,” I said. “Thanks.”
“If you think of something later, let me know,” she said. She hesitated slightly before she turned and walked away. I didn’t know why, but that half second of hesitation made me hope that she’d somehow read my mind, and that maybe she liked what she read there.
The binder was three inches thick, its black-and-white prints tucked into clear plastic sleeves. Flipping through the pages, I saw weathered farmhouses, ramshackle barns, tobacco sheds, haywagons, general stores, one-room churches, mule-drawn plows. I knew the photos were from the early 1940s—early 1943, most of them, because construction of Oak Ridge and its three huge installations began in earnest that spring—but many of the pictures could have passed for images from the 1920s, or even the 1890s. What inconceivable change: to go from such a rural, sleepy area—a place the transplanted scientists referred to as “Dogpatch”—to a churning, teeming enterprise, one that pushed the limits of science, engineering, and human endeavor on a gargantuan scale. What must those displaced farmers
have thought? How many of them had heard of John Hendrix and the wild-eyed vision he’d shared back at the dawn of the twentieth century?
The images were fascinating without being helpful. I had opened the notebook hoping one of the photos might show a barn like the one in Leonard Novak’s photos—a small barn tucked at the base of a wooded ridge, a silo at one end. Although the binder contained pictures of barns and silos and woods, none of those pictures combined all three elements: here was a photo of a barn with no silo; there was a photo of a silo with no barn; a few pages farther, a barn and silo but no hillside or woods.
I closed the binder and sighed.
Just then I heard a slight tap on the glass. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Isabella, and I stood up. She opened the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said. “I was just about to take a break, and thought I’d ask if you need anything before I disappear.”
“Thanks for asking, but I think I’ve hit a dead end here,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is there anything other than a photograph that might tell you what you need to know?”
I smiled. “What I need to know? There’s no end to the things I need to know; just ask my colleagues or my secretary or my graduate assistant. But the thing I was hoping to find out just now? I’m not sure anything but a photograph would work.” She looked confused, and I didn’t blame her. “Here, I’ll show you, if you don’t mind,” I said. “But if you want to take your break instead, don’t let me keep you.”
“Show me,” she said.
I opened the manila envelope I’d brought with me, the prints of the Novak film. Reaching to the back of the sheaf of photos so as to keep the photos of the dead man tucked inside the envelope, I slid out the last few. “These are old, crummy pictures, taken somewhere near here—I think—in the 1940s. Maybe. Somewhere in the woods, apparently”—I used the end of a pen to point to the trees, and she nodded—“but with a view of what appears to be a barn and a silo.” She bit her lip and bent low over the photo, her black hair hanging down and curtaining off her face. “Hard to tell much from these pictures, but I didn’t see any pictures in the notebook that looked like they could possibly be this barn.”
“And you’re trying to identify this particular barn?”
“Yes,” I said. “Well, not exactly. What I’m really trying to do, if you want to split hairs, is find the spot from which this photograph of this barn was taken.”
She puzzled over that a moment. “In other words, if you knew where this barn was, you could figure out where this photographer was standing when he or she took this picture?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Is there any hope?”
“Absolutely none,” she said. Seeing my face fall, she laughed. “I’m kidding. I’m not making any promises, but if you’ll let me scan a copy of this, I’ll do some research. This is a lot more interesting than most of the questions I get.”
“Scan away,” I said. “That would be a big help.”
“If I find it, then what?”
“Then maybe I could buy you dinner,” I said, “to say thank you.”
“Oh,” she said, looking flustered and turning red. There was an awkward pause before she added, “I meant, then should I call or email you?”
“Ah,” I said, taking my turn to blush. “Calling is better. I’m not big on email.” I handed her one of my cards, which contained my office number and my home number.
She glanced at the card, then up at me. She paused again. “When I call to say I’ve found it, do you want the details over the phone? Or over dinner?”
I felt myself smile. “To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’m not all that keen on the telephone, either. How about over dinner?”
She did that half-second pause again, then nodded, and I left the library—walking or floating, I couldn’t have said which. This time, when I cranked the truck’s ignition key, the engine sounded not like aimless spinning, but like power and energy, awaiting my direction. I shifted out of park, pointed the wheels toward the east end of Oak Ridge, and gunned the gas. The vehicle surged forward, and I thought, Now we’re getting somewhere.
Then I thought, In your dreams, and laughed at myself.
CHAPTER 18
FROM THE LIBRARY, I HEADED EAST ON OAK RIDGE Turnpike, then meandered up the winding street to Beatrice’s house. I had set up another visit with her—Miranda and Thornton called it a date—in hopes of learning more about Leonard Novak, her not-so-happily-ever-after marriage to him, and the secret that had gotten him killed in such bizarre fashion.
I called her on my cell phone to make sure she was still expecting me. “Of course I’m still expecting you,” she said. “My dance card’s not exactly full these days. I’ll leave the door open for you. Just let yourself in and pour me a vodka.”
“Yes ma’am,” I laughed.
She must have made the tea and filled the ice bucket after she hung up the phone, because the tea was still steaming and the ice had not yet melted when I made her drink and sat down in what I had begun to think of as “my” chair.
“I drove past the Y-12 Plant on my way into town today,” I said. “I thought about you in there at the controls of your calutron.”
“What a tedious thing to think of,” she said. “My calutron is only interesting thanks to the hindsight of history. It helped make the bomb, so we’ve decided it was important and fascinating. But it was bloody boring to operate, I can tell you that. Like working on a Detroit assembly line, but without the satisfaction of seeing the car take shape. Without even seeing the conveyor belt move. We weren’t making a goddamn thing, as far as we could see. So even though we were cheered on every day by patriotic billboards and PA announcements, the inspiration wore pretty thin after a few hours of staring at those damn dials and needles. Only time things were interesting was when they went wrong.” Her lips twitched upward slightly at a memory.
“What sort of things went wrong?”
“Well,” she said, looking arch, “one evening in late 1943, when I was working the 3-to-11 shift, there was a bit of a commotion, and I glanced around and saw General Groves and Colonel Nichols and two civilian men, fairly well dressed. The officers were being very deferential to the civilians, especially the good-looking one in the expensive suit. He looked around, then came over to my cubicle—I was the best-looking girl working that evening—and asked my name. When I told him, he said, ‘Beatrice, would you mind if I borrow your calutron for a moment?’ I looked at my supervisor, who practically fell over himself to pull me away from the controls. ‘This is far too low,’ the man said. ‘You’ll never produce enough at those settings.’ He fiddled with the controls till the needles were practically off the scale. ‘There,’ he said, ‘you’ll get a lot more…product…at those settings.’ They turned and left. I said to my boss, ‘So who was that fancy guy?’ My boss, looking all starstruck, said, ‘That was Ernest Lawrence, the inventor of this machine.’ Five minutes later, we heard a boom. My calutron had exploded.”
I laughed. “That’s a great story,” I said. “Is it really true?”
“Mostly true,” she said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time it was mind-numbing work. You shouldn’t think of me running a calutron. You should think of me singing or painting or playing Beethoven or writing poetry instead.”
“You can do all those things? I’m impressed.”
“I didn’t say I can do them, Bill. I just said you should think of me doing them. Where’s your imagination, man?” I laughed. “Now Leonard, he could do all those things. And brilliantly.”
“But he couldn’t be a brilliant husband to you.”
Her head snapped up at that. “Is that why you’re here? To grill me about Leonard’s failings?”
“Beatrice, we’re trying to figure out how he ended up with a pellet of iridium-192 in his gut,” I said, “and whether other people might be in danger, too. Not his failings. His vulnerabilities, maybe.”
She looked out the window for a long time. “All r
ight,” she said finally, still looking outside. “I don’t suppose there’s any virtue in guarding his secret any longer.” She turned to face me. “Leonard was a fairy. ‘Gay,’ it’s called these days. Queer as a three-dollar bill.” I wasn’t sure which I found more surprising, the fact that he was gay, or the fact that she expressed it so coarsely. She must have seen the startled look on my face. “Today, nobody cares, but things were different then,” she said. “It was considered a perversion. He’d never have been able to keep his security clearance if they’d known.”
She was probably right about that. “I don’t mean to be indelicate,” I said, “but how could you not have realized that before you got married?”
“I told myself that he was being a perfect gentleman,” she said. “That he had set me on a pedestal and didn’t want to risk sullying my reputation.” She looked down. “Or maybe I was so thrilled to have caught a big fish, I chose to ignore the warning signs.”
“If he was gay, why did he ask you to marry him?”
“Maybe to protect his secret,” she said. “Or maybe he actually hoped he could overcome it. People thought that back then, you know. But he couldn’t overcome it, of course. On our wedding night, he kissed me on the lips, but it was the sort of kiss you might give a sister or an old friend—a quick peck with pursed lips. Then he pulled away and looked at me, and his eyes were full of shame and sadness. ‘Oh, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘What have I done to you?’ Then he turned his back to me and cried. My bride-groom—the brilliant, sparkling wonderboy of the Manhattan Project—wept because he did not want me, and he never would. We didn’t talk about it. You just didn’t, in those days, unless you were Oscar Wilde. We entered into a pact of silence, without even speaking about the pact. Even the pact was a secret. He carried his burdens alone; I carried mine alone. After the war, after the bomb, I asked him for a divorce.” She fell silent, and I let her sit with her thoughts awhile.
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