Fallout

by Sara Paretsky

  Albritten gave a grim smile at my sharp intake of breath.

  “Jordan had ten fits when he saw it here. I guess you know where it came from.”

  “August Veriden’s Prius was green,” I said.

  “Ed’s daddy was a good friend of my husband’s. They didn’t mind doing me a favor. Painted it, changed some number plate, took out the spy eye behind the dashboard.”

  Whoever Ed was, he’d changed the VIN and disabled the car’s built-in GPS signal.

  I knelt down to look Peppy in the eye. “You’re going to stay here, girl. You stay, you look after Ms. Albritten.”

  Peppy stared from Albritten to me with grave eyes and moved next to the older woman. I buried my face in her ruff. When I got to my feet, I felt as though I had lost my last friend on earth.

  “We’ll be fine, and you’ll be fine,” Albritten said. “Trust Jesus that far, young woman. The car keys are under the floor mat. Don’t know why I did that—old habit and the first place anyone would look. You think you can get this business cleared up? Soon?”

  “I’d better. I’m spending a fortune down here that I don’t have, and I need to get back home.”

  “Husband waiting for you?”

  “Friends,” I said lightly, putting Jake to one side of my mind. “Friends and clients.”

  When I’d pulled out of her driveway and made sure the garage was firmly locked behind me, I drove over to Lou and Ed, the pair whose scrapyard advertised itself as “Breathing New Life into Old Metal.” Albritten had phoned them after I left, and they had a set of Kansas plates ready for me. Two big men, taciturn, so alike that when they changed positions, I couldn’t tell which was which. They looked me over to see if they agreed with Albritten’s assessment that it was okay to trust me.

  “You expecting cops to stop you?” Lou, or maybe Ed, asked, slapping the plates against his open palm.

  “Sheriff might if I’m not clever enough to stay out of his way.”

  “What are you going to say about the plates being expired?” Ed asked.

  Good question. “I’m borrowing the car from my cousin’s husband’s sister, over in Fort Riley. I didn’t know the plates were expired, honest.”

  “Good woman.” Ed swatted my shoulder. “Bat those baby blues, and they’ll let you off with a warning.”

  “Not when they see my Illinois driver’s license, they won’t. And not if Sheriff Gisborne sees my name, so I’d best not do anything that makes them want to pull me over.”

  When Ed bent to screw the plate onto the back holder, a plastic-covered container dropped out. I knelt to inspect it: a small box, about five inches square, wrapped in thick plastic, taped tightly shut. Under a film of dirt, the plastic looked new, the tape fresh.

  “I need a sharp blade.” My voice came out hoarsely.

  Lou felt in his coverall pockets and came out with a box cutter. I slit the tape, careful not to nick the box. Lou and Ed leaned over to watch, breathing heavily. The box was old, the surface rough from damp and age. I pulled it gently apart and found a second plastic bag inside, new plastic again, covering a small reel of film.

  My hands were sweaty. I wiped my fingers on my jeans legs, but I was afraid to lift the reel. This is what August had found, what my troublemakers had been hunting for. Not the thumb drive, nor yet the baby’s hand. A movie.

  Lou, or Ed, went over to a supply cabinet and came back with a pair of latex gloves. “Good lamp over on that worktable.” He jerked his head toward a high wooden counter where tools and engine pieces were laid out in careful stacks. He moved a fan and turned on a high-wattage work light.

  With the gloves on, I carefully unspooled the reel, holding it so we could all see the tiny images, ghostly figures in the reverse coloring of a black-and-white negative. Before digital media, before VHS and Beta tapes, someone had shot film. This could be the sole copy of whatever it was.

  I thought there were frames of a plane, of a woman with a baby in her arms—Jenny with Baby Cady Number One?—and maybe an aerial view of a campsite, but it wasn’t possible to piece together a story by looking at the frames. I needed a projector, I needed a duplicator, I needed to dump this onto video and get a million copies made.

  “Found that old projector once, didn’t we?” Lou asked Ed. “We keep that or what?”

  “Got it over to the house,” Ed said. “Thought it would come in handy one of these days. You expecting anyone this afternoon? It’s getting dark, may be time to close up the yard for the day.”

  He turned to me. “Ms. Albritten didn’t give us your name, just that you were a detective from Chicago helping out, but we’ve got to call you something.”

  “Vic. Your turn—how do I tell who’s Ed and who’s Lou?”

  The men gave a rumbling laugh. “Ed has a mole on his left temple,” Lou said. “I have the gold front tooth. Vic, you seal that box up and let me put it in my tool kit. You follow us out to the house, take it nice and slow so the sheriff don’t pay you no mind.”

  It was just on five o’clock, twilight in November, as I followed their old Chevy truck north. Traffic was heavy, homebound commuters, until we passed the exit to I-70. The truck turned left and started up a hill. We were immediately in the country, on a side road that decanted us at a small farm. Ed waved me around the truck and pointed to a barn, where there was space for the Prius.

  As I walked back, motion sensors turned on lights in the yard and behind the windows of a log-framed house that stood in the yard. The cabin was modern, not a historic relic, properly mortised and mortared, with skylights and solar panels on the roof.

  A collie trotted around the corner of the house. He stood at stiff-legged attention until Lou said, “Friend,” after which he sniffed me politely but unenthusiastically.

  Ed whisked me inside while Lou went out to the barn to look for the projector. Ed said he wasn’t going to close the shutters; it would only draw attention if a neighbor drove by. We’d go to the basement to watch the film.

  Ed took a sheet from a neatly stacked pile in the linen closet under the stairs. I followed him to the basement and helped him tack the sheet to the paneled wall of what he told me was their storm shelter. It was minimally furnished—an old armchair, a daybed against one wall, a cabinet stocked with emergency food and water, a small bathroom in one corner.

  “We don’t sit down here much—we like being upstairs where we can watch the sky. After being in the yard all day or out poking through people’s junk, we want stars and fresh air.”

  We paced nervously, not talking much, until Lou appeared with the projector. “Just needed a new cord. Got that laid on. Now, Vic, you got those slim fingers, not covered with cuts and burs like ours, you thread the film.”

  My slim fingers were thick with nerves, but I followed Lou’s instructions on the threading order, and we had the projector rolling in a few minutes. The film started with the clacking noise of cellophane against spindles and the sparks of black and white that I remembered from childhood movies, and then we were facing a warning:

  Property of the United States Air Force. Classified. Top Secret. If you are watching this movie without proper clearance or authorization, you could face fines of $25,000 and up to five years in prison.

  “You got clearance, Vic? Ed and I sure don’t.”

  The three of us burst into nervous guffaws.

  The film ran for just under thirty minutes. It started with a close-up of the missile with its warhead in the Kanwaka site, then panned the faces of the brave men who sat there in shifts, ready to answer their country’s call if they needed to press a button to obliterate human life. This seemed to have been spliced in from a PR film; it looked more professionally shot than what came next, and it was the only segment that didn’t have a date stamp.

  Monday, August 15, 1983, 0800 Hours

  The ragtag protesters’ camp. The numbers, never large, had dwindled; the tents were shabby, and you could tell that the ground was baked hard by the prairie sun. Jenny Per
ec was there with her baby, along with a dozen other people, most of them young, many wearing tie-dyed shirts or dresses with the peace symbol painted on the front.

  The camera had contained a mike, but the focus had been on sight, not sound, so we got only murmured snatches of conversation. Ed, Lou, and I all jumped when a loudspeaker suddenly blared at the campers.

  “Now hear this, now hear this: at six hundred hours tomorrow morning, a test of highly toxic materials will commence in this region. Vacate the premises by twenty hundred hours tonight. After tonight the air force cannot guarantee your safety.”

  The film showed chaos among the protesters. Some seemed to be confronting guards at the silo gates, others were huddled in a group by one of their tents. The film showed most of them packing their belongings into their cars or VW campers and driving away. I didn’t see Jenny among them.

  Tuesday, August 16, 1983, 0600 Hours

  The filming began with the plane I’d noticed under the shop light. It wasn’t possible to tell whether the plane was near the silo, but four men in protective gear were loading tanks under the wings, emptying stainless tubes that looked like Colonel Baggetto’s missing fuel-rod container. Several men in uniform, wearing gas masks, were overseeing the operation. With them stood a trio of civilians.

  I told Lou to stop the film so we could look at the civilians. Matt Chastain, Magda Spirova, Nathan Kiel. In 1983 Kiel had been a vigorous forty-eight or -nine with thick black hair like Sonia’s, and sinewy arms and legs. Spirova and Chastain seemed impossibly young.

  “Lady looks sly,” Ed said. “Up to no good.”

  I looked more closely at Spirova’s face. Ed was right; she was swallowing a smirk. Kiel was fussing with the equipment, but in the frozen frame he was facing the camera, saying something to one of the military men. I identified the three figures I knew to Lou and Ed, and Lou started the projector again.

  We were above the protesters’ encampment now, flying low, the plane trailing clouds of something—Y. pestis?—over the tents.

  Thursday, August 18, 1983, 1600 Hours

  A jeep carrying men wearing protective gear drove into the camp. From the jerky quality of the picture, I guessed someone was filming in a following jeep or truck. I felt motion sick as the camera tilted and swung around. The crew in their protective gear were looking into the tents, giving thumbs-up to the trailing camera team, until they came to the tent closest to the silo. For a count of almost two minutes, the camera showed only the open flap to the tent.

  Finally a man emerged, carrying a woman in his arms. She was either unconscious or dead, and I was guessing dead.

  A man spoke into his walkie-talkie, but we couldn’t hear what he said. For another minute or so, the camera swung between the walkie-talkie and the body on the ground, and then the cameraman stopped filming.

  The next segment was so macabre I asked Lou to run it three times before I could finally believe it. A trio of cars arrived, traveling fast judging by the dust clouds. First came Kiel, fishtailing as he pulled up. Behind him a second car decanted Spirova. A beat-up Toyota squealed to a halt in front of Kiel. Matt Chastain jumped out and ran over to Jenny. Her body had been laid on the ground. Chastain flung himself onto it.

  It took three air force men to pull him away and to hold him while he struggled. Kiel knelt and looked at Jenny and then looked up. His younger self displayed a wider canvas of emotions than angry spite. He was alarmed, but puzzled as well. Spirova’s smirk appeared again, but only Lou, Ed, and I were watching her.

  The air force men put Jenny into the Toyota and drove it away. Matt broke free and tried to run after the car but stumbled and fell. We saw blood spread across his left shoulder: he’d been shot in the back. Two soldiers picked Matt up and laid him in a cart attached to one of the jeeps, shoving aside camera paraphernalia and other equipment to make room for his body. The movie ended there, but on the third viewing I saw fourteen-year-old Sonia’s face peering from behind one of the tents. They laid him on the cartafalque, Sonia had said in the hospital last week. The cart, Matt’s cartafalque.

  54

  Now the Wench Is Dead

  “What was that all about?” Ed demanded when the tail of the film had clack-clacked across the spindles.

  “That was all about why Doris McKinnon and Magda Spirova are dead and why August Veriden and Emerald Ferring are in hiding.” My voice was a thin croak; Lou went to the emergency supply cabinet and poured water from a gallon jug into a mug.

  I drank it down and leaned against the back of the armchair, eyes closed. Magda Spirova came back to Kansas. In her journals Sonia wrote that she’d taunted “the Magpie,” telling her she’d seen her in the movies. Sonia meant the air force’s private film of the destruction of the protest camp—somehow Sonia had ended up with that film. Back in 1983 or now? She’d watched it, that was clear—it explained why Team Baggetto was so eager to silence her. Maybe it was why someone had stolen her journals from my room.

  “How’d that movie end up behind the boy’s plate holder?” Ed asked.

  “Doris had it.” I kept my eyes shut, trying to picture what might have happened. “Doris McKinnon. It’s possible Sonia found it, or stole it, back in ’83, during the chaos around the end of the camp. She took it up to McKinnon’s house. Maybe it sat unseen there all these years. I don’t know.

  “Lucinda Ferring died right around the time of the fire at the camp. If Sonia or Magda Spirova or even Lucinda herself hid the film in McKinnon’s house, it would have stayed hidden for a long time—it’s an old farmhouse with a lot of cupboards and bureaus.”

  I could picture Doris coming upon it, the way you do—you’re looking for that old bank statement from 1983 that proves the air force forced you to sell your land for nothing. You’re scrabbling through every drawer and folder, and you stumble on this movie in an old box.

  “She managed to watch it and was outraged and called Emerald for help. Or she found it and thought, ‘Emerald’s in the movies, she’ll know how I can watch it.’ I think that’s more likely, because Emerald left Chicago so hastily. She had met young August, she knew he had film skills, and she paid him to come to Kansas with her—filming her origins story was a side project, not the main event. August could have borrowed a projector, maybe from his old film school.”

  I stopped to make a note—I should ask the Streeter brothers to find out if August had recently rented a projector.

  “Doris and August and Emerald watch the movie, they know they’re dealing with dynamite. Doris is furious with the air force for seizing her land and then turning it over to Sea-2-Sea. She wants samples to find out what they’d sprayed over her land all those years ago. Because whatever they sprayed killed Emerald’s mother, Lucinda, who was Doris’s close friend.”

  “They were in love. Don’t beat about that particular bush, Chicago,” Lou said. “That bit where they moved the girl’s body into the car, what was that about?”

  “That was about panic. They couldn’t afford an autopsy to show cause of death. They decided to drive her to the river and make it look like she’d lost her mind and committed suicide. By the time she’d been in the water three or four days, you wouldn’t stop to ask if that was where and how she’d really died.”

  “And what did those boys spray on the kids at the silo?” Ed asked. “It was a crop-duster plane. They pour pesticides on them?”

  “Plague,” I said. “Pneumonic plague, spread through the air, lethal ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

  “That’s criminal!” Lou cried. “Worse than criminal. Spraying innocent people? And that Dr. Kiel? He stood by and let it happen?”

  “I think he thought the air force was conducting a test using his bug: it would give you diarrhea but not make you hideously ill. I think he was taken horribly by surprise. It’s why he blew up at his poor young graduate student, the one who got shot in the back.”

  Ed and Lou digested that in silence for a moment. “What about now? If Ms. Emerald and young
August were digging out in that field, will they come down with this pneumonic horror?”

  “I don’t think so.” I told them what Lotty had said about the Y. pestis life span. It couldn’t have survived in the ground all those years.

  I stopped speaking midsentence. Roque and Hitchcock had contracted plague, and they had been handling McKinnon’s soil. Doris didn’t seem to have symptoms, though, so what was the story?

  A jumble of images ran through my head. Colonel Baggetto and his missing cylinder. The snakes warming themselves on the glass top to a piece of the missile grounds. Patriots CARE-NOW.

  I sat up straight again, and the doxycycline bottle dug into my thigh, warning me, reminding me to take another tablet. I swallowed one with the last of the water in my mug and got to my feet.

  “This film is the hottest object in Douglas County right now. I need to get it someplace safe, but I also want copies so that this isn’t the only testimony to what happened at that silo. If people think it’s worth killing to get their hands on the film, then the sooner they know it’s going out on the Web, the better. I don’t suppose you know anyone who could copy this and keep it to themselves.”

  Ed and Lou looked at each other, silent communication between two men who’d spent most of their lives together.

  Lou said, “We’ll take the movie. Know a fellow over to Tonganoxie who can turn it into a video. In the meantime we have a safe. What about you? What’s your next move?”

  “I feel like the man in the story who flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions at once. I need to talk to the colonel about his spent fuel rods and try to find out what Sea-2-Sea is doing on that land. But I’m going to start with Dr. Kiel—he has the least incentive to stay quiet these days.”