Body Farm: Bones Of Betrayal Part 20

As I reached the intersection, the concrete walls around me gave way to a wider chamber made of brick. Iron bars jutted from the bricks-the rungs of a ladder set into the wall. Overhead was a large black disk; water poured down on me through a dozen or more holes s.p.a.ced evenly inside its circ.u.mference. I was directly beneath a manhole, and I was confronted by not two alternatives but three.

I shone my faint light on each. I didn't much like the tunnel branching to the right; it seemed to be carrying more water than the one to the left, so between the current and the stooping, the going would be extremely difficult. Of the two, I'd be inclined to take the left fork.

But there was also the manhole. A world of freedom, an infinite number of paths to freedom, lay just beyond that barrier of iron. I made my choice. I grasped a rung and began to climb.

As I neared the top, some ten rungs up, doubts and questions set in. Would she have seen the manhole, if she didn't have a light? Would she be able to raise the heavy disk? Would I be able to raise it? Well, if you can't, she probably didn't, I realized. Might as well try it.

Gripping the topmost rung with my left hand, I leaned back slightly into the vertical shaft and pushed upward at one edge of the manhole cover. It did not move. I tightened my grip and pushed harder, and the disk lifted slightly. I s.h.i.+fted my feet on the iron rung and put more force behind the push. The cover tilted upward-six inches, a foot, more-and then the iron rung in my right hand tore from the mortar between the bricks, and I was falling. When I hit the water, the shock of the fall and the chill of the water nearly claimed my consciousness. I struggled to regain my footing but the current was too swift, the walls were too smooth, and I was too weak. I felt myself swept along, down the dark pa.s.sage, down toward icy oblivion. And then, just as I felt myself slipping into inner darkness, I shot out into a deeper pool of water, into a world lit by strobing blue lights, and unseen hands were bearing me up to safety.

CHAPTER 44.

OKAY, HERE'S WHAT WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO PIECE together so far," said Thornton. "Alvin and Theresa Morgan were young American missionaries who went to j.a.pan in 1935, right after their marriage. By virtue of some incredibly bad luck, they settled in Nagasaki. In August 1945, Theresa was eight months pregnant. She was badly injured by the bomb. The doctors couldn't save her, but they did manage to save the baby. Newspaper stories in j.a.pan called him 'the Nagasaki miracle.' That baby was Isabella's father, Jacob Morgan."

"That's a h.e.l.l of a beginning," I said. "What next?"

"He was adopted by another missionary couple. Raised in j.a.pan. Married another Nagasaki survivor-a young woman who was the daughter of a j.a.panese nurse and an Italian physician. He took his wife's family name, which was Arakawa."

"So Isabella was only one-quarter Asian," I said. That was why, despite her dark, exotic beauty, she didn't look j.a.panese. "But why turn killer? Lots of people lost parents or grandparents in the bombings without becoming murderous."

"Isabella's mother died of bone cancer when Isabella was ten. Her father was treated for prostate cancer in his fifties. I'm sure she blamed the bomb for their cancer as well as her grandmother's death. I suppose, for someone looking to avenge a Nagasaki family's suffering, the guy responsible for the success of the plutonium reactors seemed a logical target."

Miranda shook her head sadly. "Three generations of fallout from Nagasaki," she said. "Gives a sad twist to the term 'radioactive daughter product,' doesn't it?" n.o.body smiled at the grim pun. "But if Isabella's j.a.panese heritage mattered so much, why'd she change her name from Arakawa-that was the name on her master's-degree thesis-to Morgan?"

"Two reasons, I suspect," said Thornton. "First, in memory of her grandmother, the one who was killed by the Nagasaki bomb. Second, to make her connection to her father and to j.a.pan harder to trace, once she set the wheels in motion."

"Say some more about her father's part in all this," I said.

Thornton nodded. "Remember, Jacob Arakawa lost his mother and his wife and maybe his prostate to the bomb," he said. "So it's possible he raised his daughter on hatred. But that's just speculation. What we do know is this. Four weeks ago, he retired from Pipeline Services, Inc., on the eve of the company's financial collapse. Three weeks ago, according to credit-card transactions at gas stations, he drove from New Iberia to Oak Ridge. The very next day, he turned around and drove home again."

"So he made the trip just to bring the radiography camera he'd stolen," said Emert.

"Looks that way," said Thornton. "Shortly after he got back to Louisiana, he showed up at a hospital ER in New Orleans. Two days ago, just as we were closing in on him, he died of acute radiation sickness."

"From removing and handling the iridium source," I said.

"Exactly," said Thornton. "We'll probably never know which one of them put it into the vitamin capsule Novak swallowed, or how they got the capsule into Novak's pill bottle. From the burn you saw on Isabella's hand, she must have handled it at some point-probably longer than Miranda did, but not as long as Dr. Garcia." Miranda shot me a look of pain, and I knew she was grieving for Garcia's hands.

"So," I said to Emert, "where's Isabella now?"

"Don't know," he said. "It's like she's evaporated. She never showed up at her house, never came back for her car. Every officer in Oak Ridge has her picture committed to memory. If she surfaces here, we'll nab her. But I think she's gone. She knew we were onto her, Doc. She was about to skip out when you showed up at the library."

I turned to Thornton. "What about you guys? What are y'all doing?"

"We've frozen her bank account," he said, "we've tagged her credit cards, and her picture's at every international airport and border crossing in the country. We're also talking to everybody she worked with here and down at Tulane during graduate school. So far, we've got nothing. An elusive woman and her dead father. If she could find a way to get there," he went on, "she might try for j.a.pan. Her whole sense of ident.i.ty seems to revolve around Nagasaki. Turns out she's been there five times in the past ten years. But I don't see how she'd get out of the country now."

The memory of her hands, and how she'd cried out when I'd pried her fingers from the gun, stabbed at me.

Miranda s.h.i.+fted in her chair. "I hate to be the one to bring this up," she said, "but is there a chance she's still underground? Still somewhere in the sewer system?"

"Come on," said Emert. "It's been a week. Surely you don't think she's been hiding out down there in the dark for a week?"

"No," she said quietly. "That's not exactly what I was thinking." She glanced in my direction, saw the pain in my eyes, and looked away.

"Ah," said Emert awkwardly. "Well, we haven't been able to search all the tunnels yet. Some of the pipes are fairly small, and the folks who work on the sewers all seem to be fairly stocky guys." He seemed to have something more to say, but he stopped. n.o.body else seemed to want to say it, either.

"You might want to call Roy Ferguson," I finally said. "And Cherokee." The room was silent except for the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights. I stared at the table, and at my hands, which rested on it, the fingers spread slightly. "If there's scent from...human remains...in one of the tunnels..." I had to pause; I took a breath, and then another. "The scent would spool downstream with the water. The dog should be able to detect it at the outfall near the library." I focused on the right index finger on the table and willed it to move. The finger lifted slightly, yet still it seemed not quite my own. "Excuse me," I whispered.

I left the room and turned down a dim inner hallway, heading for a rectangle of light-a gla.s.s door to the outside world. Just as I reached it, I heard a voice behind me. "Dr. B.?" I turned, and saw Miranda running toward me. She stopped a foot away. In the light pouring through the gla.s.s, her eyes shone with such kindness and compa.s.sion, I wondered what I could possibly have done to deserve them. Maybe nothing; maybe-like grace or mercy-they were unearned yet freely given, dropping as the gentle rain from heaven. I started to speak, but she held up a hand to stop me. "I need to say something to you," she began, "and it's really hard for me to say, because I know it will be hard for you to hear. I'm sorry about Isabella-that's the truth, but that's not what's hard, because the fact is, you barely knew Isabella. But you did know Jess, and you did love Jess, and deep down, I think you're still not over Jess's murder. Not by a long shot. I think you're lost in a maze of love and grief-more lost than you know-and you're having a tough time finding your way out. It's not just my fingertips or Eddie's hands or some old scientist's guts that are in tatters, Dr. B.; it's your heart. And it's not the storm sewers of Oak Ridge that are the labyrinth; it's your life." Miranda's words shocked me-shocked me with the force of pure, blindsiding truth. "If you can work your way out of the maze, fine," she went on. "Work as if your life depends on it, because it does. But if work isn't the way out, then find another way instead. Talk to a therapist, take a sabbatical, get a dog, go on a pilgrimage. Whatever it takes to heal, do it. Do it for those of us who love you. Do it for Jess. Do it for yourself."

With that she laid a hand on one of my cheeks, kissed me softly on the other, and then retraced the hallway and disappeared around a corner. I turned toward the light again, pushed open the door, and stepped into the cold February suns.h.i.+ne.

A slight breeze was sighing through the pines on the hill behind the police department. To my left, I saw a bright-yellow school bus stop at the entrance of the American Museum of Science and Energy. Dozens of youngsters, the age of my two grandsons, poured out of the bus and into the museum, with its displays and stories about the Secret City and the Manhattan Project. Below and to my right-just across the small stream emerging from a seven-foot circle of pipe-lay the blocky buildings of the Oak Ridge Civic Center and Public Library.

Straight ahead, through the trees and farther away, was a third destination, the one I chose. Approaching it from above, all I could see was a wooden, paG.o.da-like roof. Only as I descended the slope through the woods did the long, cylindrical shape of the Peace Bell come into view beneath the sheltering overhang.

The breeze kicked up slightly, and some of last fall's dead leaves swirled around my feet. Most were brown, but some still bore traces of red and gold.

And fuchsia.

As I drew nearer the bell, a stream of fuchsia leaves flowed toward me from its base. But they were not leaves. Angular and sharply creased, they were paper cranes. Origami cranes. Hundreds of them; perhaps even a thousand.

I reached into my pocket, and my fingers closed around the hardness of silver and the softness of a silken cord.

I took the symbol of remembrance from my pocket and laid it at the base of the bell, amid a swirling flock of cranes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

MANY PEOPLE, PAST AND PRESENT, CONTRIBUTED TO this story. Chief among them are the legions of scientists, engineers, soldiers, construction laborers, calutron operators, and other workers who brought the Manhattan Project to such swift, spectacular, and sobering fruition.

A number of physicians generously contributed their time and knowledge. Dr. Doran Christensen, of REAC/TS, answered countless questions about radioactive materials and acute radiation syndrome, as did REAC/TS health physicist Steve Sugarman, Department of Energy expert Steve Johnson, and State of Tennessee rad-health official Billy Freeman. Numerous other insights into emergency-room procedures, autopsies, and other medical matters came from Drs. Laura Westbrook, Shannon Tierney, Court Robinson, and Coleen Baird. University of Tennessee medical physicist Wayne Thompson provided remarkable and rea.s.suring insight into how UT Medical Center could respond to a radiation emergency such as the one described in these pages. Special Agent Gary Kidder and Special Agent Chris Gay-both of the FBI's Knoxville Field Office-offered valuable information about the Bureau and its WMD Directorate. Ron Walli, of ORNL's Communications & External Relations Office, got us inside the fence and made us welcome, as did Al Ekkebus of the Spallation Neutron Source.

Bob Mann and Tom Holland-anthropologists and also fellow authors-provided helpful details about the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (formerly known as the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii) and about World War II-era military records. Bob also graciously forgave a phone call that unintentionally awakened him at 3 A.M. in Cambodia.

Oak Ridge historians Ray Smith and Bill Wilc.o.x shared their knowledge generously and enthusiastically, as did Bill Sergeant, security guardian turned polio crusader; Barbara Lyon, founding editor of the ORNL Review; and Helen Jernigan, who grew up near a Tennessee POW camp that housed German and Italian prisoners. Ray Smith's newspaper columns on Oak Ridge history made for fascinating reading and provided splendid anecdotes, and his help in reviewing the ma.n.u.script, securing photos, and accessing historic structures on the Oak Ridge Reservation went above and beyond the historian's call of duty. So did the staff of the Oak Ridge Public Library, whose reference librarians are remarkably resourceful and helpful. Three other employees of the City of Oak Ridge offered extraordinary a.s.sistance: Cindi Gordon, ORPD Lt. Mike Uher, and public-works director Gary Cinder (the keeper of the storm-sewer tunnels). We're also indebted to William Westcott (Ed's son) for a guided tour of the labyrinth, and to Nicky Reynolds of the Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Center for her swift, gracious photo help.

Several people appear in these pages under their own names, with gracious permission. Ray Smith is one of those. Others are fingerprint guru Art Bohanan (whom our returning readers will remember from our prior books); legendary Manhattan Project photographer Ed Westcott, whose cameras brilliantly captured an amazing slice of history; K-9 handlers (and dear friends) Roy and Suzy Ferguson, and their amazing dog Cherokee, whose recent death was a deep loss; ORNL research scientist Arpad Va.s.s, who really has developed a "sniffer" for the Department of Justice; darkroom wizard Rodney Satterfield; and Darcy Bonnett, James Emert, and Townes...o...b..rn.

Putting a story into the hands of readers requires a surprising amount of work by a large number of people. We're fortunate to have many bright and gracious people helping bring that to pa.s.s. Our agent, Giles Anderson, has been a wise and enthusiastic partner with us for six books now. Our first editor at William Morrow, Sarah Durand, was a wonderful colleague for five books, and we shall miss her. Our new editor, Lyssa Keusch, promises to be equally splendid. a.s.sistant editors Emily Krump and Wendy Lee never cease to amaze us with their capable efficiency, and production editor Andrea Molitor remains a miracle worker. Our publisher, Lisa Gallagher, has been consistently, blessedly supportive; Morrow's a.s.sociate publisher, Lynn Grady, is also an enthusiastic and creative champion. Morrow's sales and marketing staff have worked tirelessly and successfully to put our books in bookstores and readers' hands; so has our hardworking and cheerful publicist, Buzzy Porter.

Other colleagues and friends have also played key roles in supporting our work. Heather McPeters offered crucial encouragement, a keen critical eye, and countless suggestions for turning fragmented drafts into a cohesive, compelling story. Sylvia Wehr once again provided a beautiful, peaceful writing haven along the banks of the Potomac River at crucial moments. JJ Roch.e.l.le offered Oak Ridge hospitality, friends.h.i.+p, encouragement, insights, and miles of running company along the gravel roads of Black Oak Ridge. Carol Ba.s.s is unfailingly supportive and loving; so are the many other members of the Ba.s.s and Jefferson clans. We love and appreciate you all.

ON FACT AND FICTION.

IT'S WITH NO SMALL AMOUNT OF TREPIDATION THAT we've dared to spin a fictional tale of murder and espionage against the epic backdrop of World War II, the Manhattan Project, and Oak Ridge. We've mentioned many historical characters, including General Leslie Groves and physicists Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer, because no story about the Manhattan Project would seem credible without those famous, larger-than-life figures. However, our plot and our main Oak Ridge characters-Beatrice, the storyteller; Novak, the murdered scientist; and Isabella, the librarian-are creations of pure fiction.

We've tried to follow the chronology of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project faithfully, with one notable, willful departure: the uranium storage bunker that figures prominently in the story was not built until 1947. But the camouflage scheme chosen for it by General Groves-a rustic Tennessee barn and silo-was simply too good to pa.s.s up.

AN EXCERPT FROM CUT TO THE BONE.

CHAPTER 1.

Brockton TUGGING THE BATTERED STEEL DOOR OF THE OFFICE tight against the frame-the only way to align the lock-I gave the key a quick, wiggling twist. Just as the dead bolt thunked into place, the phone on the other side of the door began to ring. Shaking my head, I removed the key and turned toward the stairwell. "It's Labor Day," I called over my shoulder, as if the caller could hear me. "It's a holiday. I'm not here."

But the phone nagged me, scolding and contradicting me, as if to say, Oh, but you are. I wavered, turning back toward the door, the key still in my hand. Just as I was about to give in, the phone fell silent. "Thank you," I said and turned away again. Before I had time to take even one step, the phone resumed ringing. Somebody else was laboring on Labor Day, and whoever it was, they were d.a.m.ned determined to reach me.

"All right, all right," I muttered, hurrying to unlock the bolt and fling open the door. "Hold your horses." Leaning across the mounds of mail, memos, and other bureaucratic detritus that had acc.u.mulated over the course of the summer, I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver. "Anthropology Department," I snapped. The phone cord snagged a stack of envelopes, setting off an avalanche, which I tried-and failed-to stop. I'd been without a secretary since May; a new one was scheduled to start soon, but meanwhile, I wasn't just the department's chairman; I was also its receptionist, mail sorter, and answering service, and I was lousy at all of those tasks. The envelopes. .h.i.t the floor and fanned out beneath the desk. "c.r.a.p," I muttered, then, "Sorry. h.e.l.lo? Anthropology Department."

"Good mornin', sir," drawled a country-boy voice that sounded familiar. "This is Sheriff Jim Cotterell, up in Morgan County." The voice was familiar; I'd worked with Cotterell on a murder case two years before, a few months after moving to Knoxville and the University of Tennessee. "I'm trying to reach Dr. Brockton."

"You've got him," I said, my annoyance evaporating. "How are you, Sheriff?"

"Oh, hey there, Doc. I'm hangin' in; hangin' in. Didn't know this was your direct line."

"We've got the phone system programmed," I deadpanned. "It puts VIP callers straight through to the boss. What can I do for you, Sheriff?"

"We got another live one for you, Doc. I mean, another dead one." He chuckled at the joke, one I'd heard a hundred times in a decade of forensic fieldwork. "Some fella was up on Frozen Head Mountain yesterday, fossil hunting-that's what he says, leastwise-and he found some bones at a ol' strip mine up there."

I felt a familiar surge of adrenaline-it happened every time a new forensic case came in-and I was glad I'd turned back to answer the phone. "Are the bones still where he found them?"

"Still there. I reckon he knew better'n to mess with 'em-that, or he didn't want to stink up his jeep. And you've got me and my deputies trained to leave things alone till you show up and do your thing."

"I wish my students paid me as much mind, Sheriff. Have you seen the bones? You sure they're human?"

"I ain't seen 'em myself. They're kindly hard to get to. But my chief deputy seen 'em yesterday evening. Him and Meffert-you remember Meffert? TBI agent?-both says it's human. Small, maybe a woman or a kid, but human for sure."

"Meffert? You mean Bubba Hardknot?" Just saying the man's name-his two names, rather-made me smile. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent a.s.signed to Morgan County had a mouthful of a name-"Wellington Harrison Meffert II-that made him sound like a member of Parliament. His nickname, on the other hand-"Bubba Hardknot"-sounded like something from a hillbilly comic strip. The names spanned a wide spectrum, and Meffert himself seemed to, also: I'd found him to be intelligent and quick-witted, but affable and respectful among good old boys like Sheriff Cotterell. "Bubba's a good man," I said. "If he says it's human, I reckon it is."

"Me and Bubba, we figured there weren't no point calling you out last night," Cotterell drawled on. "Tough to find your way up that mountain in the d.a.m.n daylight, let alone pitch dark. Besides, whoever it is, they ain't any deader today'n what they was last night."

"Good point, Sheriff." I smiled, tucking away his observation for my own possible future use. "Couldn't've said it better myself." I checked my watch. "It's eight fifteen now. How's about we-my a.s.sistant and I-meet you at the courthouse around nine forty-five?"

"Bubba and me'll be right here waitin', Doc. 'Predate you."

TYLER WAINWRIGHT, MY GRADUATE a.s.sISTANT, WAS deep in thought-figuratively and subterraneanly deep-and didn't even glance up when I burst through the bas.e.m.e.nt door and into the bone lab.

Most of the Anthropology Department's quarters-our cla.s.srooms, faculty offices, and graduate-student cubbyholes-were strung along one side of a long, curving hallway, which ran beneath the grandstands of Neyland Stadium, the University of Tennessee's ma.s.sive temple to Southeastern Conference football. The osteology laboratory lay two flights below, deep beneath the stadium's lowest stands. The department's running joke was that if Anthropology was housed in the stadium's bowels, the bone lab was in the descending colon. The lab's left side-where a row of windows was tucked just above a retaining wall, offering a scenic view of steel girders and concrete footers-was occupied by rows of gray, government-surplus metal tables, their tops cluttered with trays of bones. A dozen gooseneck magnifying lamps peered down at the bones, their saucer-sized lenses encircled by halo-sized fluorescent tubes. The lab's cavelike right side was crammed with shelving units-row upon row of racks marching back into the sloping darkness, laden with thousands of cardboard boxes, containing nearly a million bones. The skeletons were those of Arikara Indians who had lived and died two centuries before; my students and I had rescued them from rising river reservoirs in the Great Plains. Now they resided here in this makes.h.i.+ft mausoleum, a postmortem Indian reservation beneath America's third-largest football stadium.

Tyler laid down the bone he'd been scrutinizing and picked up another, still not glancing up as the steel door slammed shut behind me. "Hey, Dr. B," he said as the reverberations died away. "Let me guess. We've got a case."

"How'd you know?" I asked.

"A," he said, "it's a holiday, which means n.o.body's here but me and you and a bunch of dead Indians. B, any time the door bangs open hard enough to make the stadium shake, it's because you're really pumped. C, you only get really pumped when UT scores a touchdown or somebody calls with a case. And D, there's no game today. Ergo, you're about to haul me out to a death scene."

"Impressive powers of deduction," I said. "I knew there was a reason I made you my graduate a.s.sistant."

"Really? You picked me for my powers of deduction?" He pushed back from the lab table, revealing a shallow tray containing dozens of pubic bones, each numbered in indelible black ink. "I thought you picked me because I work like a dog for next to nothing."

"See?" I said. "You just hit the deductive nail on the noggin again." I studied his face. "You don't sound all that excited. Something wrong?"

"Gee, let's see," he said. "My girlfriend's just moved four hundred miles away, to Memphis and to med school; I've blown off two Labor Day cookouts so I can finally make some progress on my thesis research; and now we're headed off to G.o.d knows where, to spend the day soaking up the sun and the stench, so I can spend tonight and tomorrow sweating over the steam kettle and scrubbing bones. What could possibly be wrong?"

"How long's Roxanne been gone?"

"A week," he said.

"And how long does medical school last?"

"Four years. Not counting interns.h.i.+p and residency."

"Oh boy," I said. "I can tell you're gonna be a joy to be around."

THE BIG CLOCK ATOP THE MORGAN COUNTY COURT- house read 9:05 when Tyler and I arrived in Wartburg and parked. "d.a.m.n, we made good time," I marveled. "Forty minutes? Usually takes an hour to get here from Knoxville."