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?”