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.