"Not a word. Hope he's sucking up sun and fun. Guy was a basket case, Sergeant. He really needed a break."
"Everyone needs a break." He stood up. "Lunchtime. I'm going to check in on my mother."
"How's she doing?"
"Pretty good. She's a real survivor."
"Yeah, you look like you're from strong stock."
"Short but strong."
"Your brother is short?"
"Once he was very short," Poe said. "That was a long time ago. In another decade…in another century."
Having picked the lock so many times, Poe was thinking about having a key made. He flipped the latch, walked inside, fanned away the stale odor, and started opening windows. Hot fresh air mixed with hot stale air. Poe loosened his tie and opened his shirt collar. He went into the master bedroom.
Opening the closet, he riffled through the clothes for a second time. Nothing had changed since he had been here. The same empty hangers, the same holes in the groupings of shoes. The Jensens had packed some clothes, but only a week's supply. Maybe two if they stretched.
He folded his arms across his chest and tapped his toe. Something was off. Nothing he could put his finger on, just some invisible vibration of impending disaster.
Now who was going off the deep end?
Alison's paranoid ramblings. Her grandiose manner and illusions of power. The good Steve. The bad Steve. The jealous Steve. Steve was trying to drive her insane.
No need to drive anywhere, Alison, you're already there.
She was delusional. In the midst of breakdown. So why was he getting such a weird feeling?
He flipped his wrist to his watch.
Twelve-ten.
If he left now, he could make it to Rukmani's, spend some time with Mom.
Just put back the clipping and leave.
He dug into the closet corner until he found the RESEARCH shoe box that contained clips of Linda Hennick's tortured life. Underneath that carton were two more RESEARCH shoe boxes. Bigger shoe boxes. Poe regarded the stamp on the end of the boxes.
Men's size eleven. Steve's size.
Poe took out the stacked boxes and brought them into the open, laying them on the bed. Linda Hennick's research was housed in a women's size seven shoe box. The other two were men's size eleven shoe boxes. The night Alison had been attacked, Poe had found a running shoe—men's size eight.
Too small for Steve. Too big for Alison.
Men's size eight.
Probably a little guy with a small foot. Because even Poe was a nine. His own running shoes were ten and a half. The heat from running caused the foot to expand, so he always bought roomy athletic shoes, at least a size big—
Women's size seven.
Poe looked at the box stamp. Once the carton had contained a women's size seven pair of black pumps. A women's size seven pump could easily translate into a men's size eight running shoe.
He rubbed his face.
Alison, what have you done?
Maybe nothing. Maybe he was letting his imagination…
He opened the Linda Hennick research box and put back the senior class picture taken at NTS. He replaced the lid and licked his lips.
He moved on to the next box and opened the top.
Newspaper articles—dozens of them—as well as magazine articles, photographs, and political cartoons. Nothing was original; they were all reprints or Xeroxes. They had nothing to do with Linda Hennick.
Instead, they centered around the Nevada Test Site and the atomic bomb drops.
Poe picked up the longest article—two pages stapled together and printed on plain white paper. It looked like something Alison might have picked up over the Internet. It was a history that traced NTS and Nevada's atomic history. He skimmed the sentences, knowing most of the facts.
Truman had established the Nevada Proving Ground (NPG) in 1950 because it was too far and too inconvenient to test the bombs in the Central Pacific. On January 27, 1951—eleven years before Poe was born—a one-kiloton bomb named Able was dropped above Frenchman Flat in the 860,000acre area of the NPG later renamed NTS. More bombs followed, each one christened as if the government were birthing an infant. Some of the bombs were detonated at the surface of NTS, others were dropped from planes, mounted on steel towers, or suspended from large balloons. One was even fired from a cannon. From Able in 1951 to the last, Little Feller I, in July 1962. All in all, over a hundred aboveground or atmospheric detonations done in seven distinct series.
The Limited Ban Test Treaty forced the action down under. More charges were made—over eight hundred of them—but all exploded beneath the earth's surface. Still, radiation continued to spew into the air, because the charges had to be vented to release the pressure. Zillions of gamma rays and radioactive iodine particles shooting into the atmosphere, mixing with rainclouds, falling down only God knew where.
Poe tossed the article down on the bed, picked up a handful of clippings. He sorted through them.
A column from the Deseret News dated January 12, 1951. Fifteen days before Able:
The atomic tests planned for the Las Vegas bombing range will not endanger the health of area residents, Dr. John Bowers, new dean of the University of Utah College of Medicine and Atomic Energy Commission consultant, said Thursday.
A reprint of a handbill distributed by the Atomic Energy Commission dated January 11, 1951, sixteen days before Able:
From this day forward the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission has been authorized to use part of the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range for test work necessary to the atomic weapons development program.
Test activity will include experimental nuclear detonations for the development of atomic bombs….
Poe skimmed down to bold letters.
NO PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE TIME OF ANY TEST WILL BE MADE.
A Bruce Russell cartoon from the Los Angeles Times, dated
1951. A mushroom cloud labeled "U.S. Atomic Weapons Superiority." Next to it was a toad labeled "Soviet Aggression." The caption read: "The mushroom that's deadly for the toad." Mom's words echoing in Poe's brain. This was the heart of the Cold War. If the government told us we needed the bomb to hold back the Reds, well then, it was our patriotic duty to test 'em, and we were honored to be a part of it.
A part of what? A guinea pig for radiation?
Another piece from the Boulder News. The streamer stating: "Our Atomic Alarm Clock Is the Talk of Boulder City."
Quotes about the bomb drops:
If it will help them make the peace and more security for our country, I don't care how many they shoot off.
I think it is necessary for national defense and it doesn't scare me in the least.
A young man "wishes the blast would go off every Friday morning at 3 A.M. to wake up his brother Mike to deliver papers."
From the New York Times, June 9, 1957:
The best view of the detonations can be obtained from Mount Charleston, which lies just east of US 95, only an hour's ride from Las Vegas, over good roads.
Mount Charleston was around fifteen minutes away from Poe's house. He sighed, remembering Mom's words from last night: It was a tourist attraction.
Article upon article. Support for the drops at first. And then came the criticism:
A cartoon by Herblock reprinted in the Las Vegas Sun, in June 1957. A chubby avuncular-looking man painting a mushroom cloud. The paint bucket read, "Keep Smiling." The paint ladder held a sign that read, "Atomic Energy Good News Commission." The caption read, "I'm painting the clouds with sunshine."
The details were interesting, but none of the content was new. As Mom said, it was part of the Silver State's dubious history—a well-documented, well-orchestrated, and non-consensual dupe perpetrated on the American people and southern Nevada by the AEC. Because they really did know radiation was dangerous.
But did they know how dangerous?
And what did all this have to do with Alison?
Both Alison and he had been born in St. George, Utah. Poe's family
had moved when he was three. Alison had moved when she was three, following the Poe trail several years later. Both of them had been essentially reared in Las Vegas, just an hour away from the test site.
A shoe box of her mother.
Another shoe box of NTS history.
Was she blaming NTS for her mother's illness?
Was she blaming NTS for her own illness?
To a warped mind, the conclusion might make sense. Her mother had become mentally ill shortly after Alison was born, after her move from St. George to Las Vegas.
It was conceivable that the radiation had something to do with Linda Hennick's illness.
And while he was musing, maybe it had something to do with Alison's illness as well.
Or with his mother's cancer.
Or maybe his and Remus's height problems, while he was on the subject. Not to mention the sterility.
But the testing had been moved underground before he moved to Vegas. In the overlap between his life and the atmospheric testing, he had been miles from the action.
Poe thought a moment.
As he had stated to his mother, radiation hung in the air, was kicked around by the winds. And everyone knew about the desert winds. Also, there was the venting of the underground charges.
Still, as his mother had so aptly pointed out, her Vegas buddies were a pretty healthy bunch. And his classmates from school—no big problems so far as he knew.
His eyes returned to another political cartoon.
Dated much later…1984. Mike Smith and the Las Vegas Sun. A side-by-side diptych photo.
The left cartoon showing a mushroom cloud. In front of the cloud, two men were talking to each other, the first one saying: "Don't worry. Someday this'll all blow over."
The right cartoon showed the same cloud. The second man answering the first man, saying: "Over Utah, over Nevada, over Arizona."
The caption stated: "Government not negligent in aboveground testing. U.S. Court of Appeals."
Poe stared at the cartoon.
Over Utah, over Nevada, over Arizona.
Why not over California? NTS was just as close to the California border as it was to Utah. He racked his brain, trying to bring the cartoon's appeals case into memory. Scrambling through the articles. He vaguely recalled an appeals case. He had been relatively new on the LVMPD force, so it must have been around the late eighties.
He opened the third shoe box.
More NTS articles. As he sifted through them, he found what he was looking for. The U.S. Court of Appeals had overturned the case against the government, clearing the AEC of negligence for all the billions of radiating atoms it had exploded into the air.
People had sued the government for their ailments. But they had lost.
What were the details of the original case? Poe thumbed through more clippings. He found a piece in the Reno GazetteJournal. Headline: "People 1, Feds 0."
It took a long time—far too long, in fact—but at last a federal judge had said what many Nevadans have long believed: that the aboveground atomic tests of three decades ago endangered the lives of people downwind from the Nevada Test Site.
The original case against the government had been brought to trial right about the time Poe's mother had moved to Reno. The case had been adjudicated a couple of years later, after Poe had moved back to Vegas.
Another article. This one was dated in 1991. It was actually an official legislative document—the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990. Poe skimmed the legalese, concluded that it had something to do with compensation for high-risk people with illnesses linked to radiation exposure in general.
He paused.
That certainly could include Mom.
He read further.
People at high risk included uranium miners (Mom was out of this category), subjects of human radiation experiments (had Mom ever been an experimental subject?), military personnel involved in weapons tests (to his knowledge, Mom had never been in the military), and the downwinders.
The downwinders.
Poe hit his head.
Of course, you idiot! The downwinders!
Because weather moved downwind—from west to east. Which meant that the fallout also moved from west to east. Land due east of NTS was at extremely high risk for excess radiation: eastern Nevada…Arizona…Utah. And east of NTS was forgotten land—sparsely populated areas, lots of grazing ground, and small towns of good Mormon stock. Especially in the 1950s when Mom had been a teen.
God, apple pie, and Chevrolet.
Patriotism.
America: Love it or leave it.
God bless the USA.
Unimportant, expendable people.
Bunkerville in Nevada. In Utah, there was Cedar City, American Fork, Ephraim, Kanab—and St. George.
When Poe had lived in St. George, aboveground testing had still been going on. Huge clouds and winds of radiation enveloped the air he had breathed as a baby. And Emma, a young mother taking out the baby stroller for long walks with her sons through the countryside. Her two tiny infants—little babies with developing brains, and developing thymus glands, and developing thyroids, and developing pituitary glands. The three of them, breathing in mouthfuls of radiation with each gentle, passing breeze.
What had it done to Remus and him?
What had it done to his mother?
What had it done to Linda Hennick?
And what has it done to Alison Jensen?
THIRTY-THREE
NOT THAT it was now or never. Things could always be changed…or altered…or redefined physically and mentally, as it were. But being that the old man and the boys were settled in Los Angeles, it left long stretches of time alone to assess the situation.
No one knew where they were. And no one even bothered to look for them. Because of the temporary leave of absence.
A smile on the face.
It just worked out perfectly. Long days and nights to make things right…to do things correctly.
It was good to be correct.
It was very good to be perfect.
Because perfection was an asset in this world. So few people are really careful…really observe.
So the time was right.
Now all that was required was balls to do the deed.
Go out in style. Like that oldie song.
Good-bye cruel world, I'm off to join the circus.
Because life was a circus—a crudely constructed theater of the absurd. Living in a cesspool while fending off blows from insignificant people who pummel and smash your self-esteem. Until you get so sick and tired of all of it that you lash out and—
Well, what does it really matter?
Because…because…all the world's a stage.
Or at least a bad Hollywood movie.
Lights! Camera! Action!
And here were the director, the producer, the writer, and the star—all wrapped up into one.
Now for the title.
How about "Predators of the Night."
Or "Night of Prey."
Or "Death Under the Moonlight."
Or "Moondance Death."
Or "Moon Music."
Dancing to the rhythm of the nightcall.
Be it alive or be it dead, I'll grind the bones to make my bread.
"I've got a job for you, Y."
The old man said nothing as he put a dollar token in the poker-machine slot.
Poe stared at the Chief's silvered fingers. "Why don't you use a money card, guy?"
"Too sterile," Y responded. "Don't feel like you're playing the machine."
Poe chuckled, but understood exactly what Y was saying. He said, "Anyway, my job's a simple one. I'll even pay you."
"You always pay me." A beat. "How's your arm?"
Poe rotated the limb, flexed his wrist. "Still intact. You know, Mom's waiting for her medicine man."
"I'm negotiating."
"Negotiating?"
Ping! went the token as it plunged into the machine's infinite coin c
avern. "These things take time. Lots of charlatans in the business. Even the good ones…they smell money, they get greedy. Tell her a couple more days."
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