He held up a hand by way of declining. “Doesn’t mix well with the gum,” he smacked. “Besides, I’m a little off my feed since this morning’s session in the morgue.”
“Feeling a bit squeamish?” He nodded sheepishly, and I laughed. “The last time I was in the morgue with Dr. Garcia, a detective from Oak Ridge was in there with us. First he threw up on me, then he fainted. You, by comparison, held up brilliantly.”
“That Oak Ridge case,” he said, “that’s the one that injured Dr. Garcia, right? Where the woman murdered the old guy by slipping a radioactive pellet into his vitamin pills?”
I nodded. “He was a retired physicist—an atomic scientist. He died within hours after swallowing the pill.”
“And Dr. Garcia’s hands got cooked during the autopsy?”
I nodded again.
“What was the scientist’s name?”
“Novak. Dr. Leonard Novak. He played a key role in the Manhattan Project during World War II. Dr. Garcia found the pellet in Novak’s intestine. He held it for less than a minute, but that was enough to destroy his hands.”
Culpepper shook his head. “Damn shame.”
“It was—still is—but it could’ve been even worse. Garcia nearly died. Miranda got some burns on her fingertips, too, but not serious. Garcia’s borne up pretty well, considering, but what a blow.” I thought of his wife and child, Carmen and Tomás, whom he could not hold again in the same way. “Hard on the whole family.”
“I don’t get it, Doc. I mean, why single out one guy from the whole atom-bomb project? And why not just shoot him or stab him?”
I agreed that it was arbitrary to wreak vengeance on one scientist, but I did see the symbolism behind choosing radioactivity as the murder weapon.
“The killer was a Japanese-American librarian, right?” I nodded. “For chrissakes, why couldn’t she have beaten him to death with theEncyclopaedia Britannica ? What kind of wacko would use radiation? She could’ve killed or hurt dozens of people.”
His comment pressed a bruised spot in me. “She was deeply disturbed,” I acknowledged. “She was trying to settle Japan’s score with the U.S. over the atomic bomb. Sounds crazy, I know, but that was how she saw it. And she got pulled under by it—she went off the deep end—and she took some other folks with her.” I looked away from Culpepper, out through the grimy windows of my office. What I saw with my eyes was a spiderwork of filthy steel girders, the supports for the hundred thousand stadium seats and the plush skyboxes overhead. But what I saw in my mind was Isabella Arakawa Morgan, who’d purposely killed an old man and accidentally maimed a young physician. Isabella, who’d helped me research and solve a sixty-year-old murder in Oak Ridge, one that had been mysteriously connected to the creation of the atomic bomb. Isabella, who’d come to my house one night and made love to me. Isabella, whom I’d confronted when I realized what she’d done. Isabella, who’d run from me when I did, disappearing into the underground maze of Oak Ridge’s labyrinthine storm sewers. I looked back at Culpepper, who was studying my face closely. I realized that I had no notion of how long I’d stared out through the dusty pane and the dirty girders. Had it been a few seconds or many minutes? “Sorry, Detective. I seem to have spaced out on you there. Ghosts.”
“I understand, Doc,” he said. “I get blindsided by one every now and then, too. My first year on the force, there was this kid—a six-year-old girl—who’d be alive today if I’d been a little smarter, a little quicker. She’d be seventeen now, and I’d probably never think of her. But she’s not seventeen and alive—she’s six and she’s dead. Always six, always dead, and often on my mind.”
“I’m sure there are other people who are alivebecause of you. Don’t forget to think about those.”
“Funny thing,” he said. “Those are harder to remember than the ones who aren’t alive.” He shrugged and turned his palms up. Maybe the gesture was expressing helplessness, maybe acceptance. Maybe both.
“So I remembered something I should’ve asked you this morning at the morgue—an old case of yours. You worked a dismemberment case some years ago, didn’t you?”
“I’ve worked several, actually,” I said, “but only one here in Knoxville. Ten or twelve years ago? No, longer—fifteen years, maybe more.”
“Any similarities to this one? I mean, besides the fact that the victim was cut up? Any chance it was the work of the same killer?”