A small, ragged blob of metal lay on a tray beside the skull. I laid the skull down and picked up the blob. Although it was small, it felt heavy and soft. “You got the bullet out,” I said.
“I did,” she said. “I managed to shake it out the foramen magnum,” the opening at the base of the skull through which the spinal cord exited. “Took me back to my childhood days, when I shook coins out of my piggy bank.”
As I studied the deformed bullet, I was struck by its shape. “Does this remind you of anything?”
“Reminds me not to get shot in the head,” she said.
“No, I mean the shape.”
She plucked it from my hand and held it in her fingertips, and the gesture clutched at my heart: It was the same way Garcia had held and studied the iridium in the morgue. It was the same way Miranda had plucked the deadly pellet from his grasp with these very fingertips. Now, though, they were tipped with white gauze.
“Well, I’ll be,” Miranda said. “This bullet is a dead ringer for a mushroom cloud.”
CHAPTER 30
I dialed the Oak Ridge Public Library at five minutes to eight and asked for Isabella. “Sir, the library’s closing now,” said the young woman who’d answered the phone. “I don’t think she’s still taking questions.”
“It’s not a question,” I said, “it’s an answer. It’ll just take a second, and she’ll be glad to hear what it is.”
There was a pause, and then the woman said, with more curtness than I thought necessary, “Just a moment, sir, I’ll see if I can catch her.”
Another pause, then a click. “Library Reference; how can I help you?”
“You already did,” I said. “We found him.”
She laughed. “I don’t even need to ask what you’re talking about. Congratulations! You found him somewhere near that barn?”
“I’ll show you a picture,” I said. “The trees are taller and the barn’s turned to metal, but the view of the silo is dead-on.”
“Do you know who he was? Who killed him? Why?”
“No,” I said. I thought of what Thornton said. “Maybe he was stealing atomic secrets. Maybe he was saving atomic secrets. Maybe he just made a pass at some hothead’s wife.” I wanted to keep talking. I imagined the lights in the library going dark, Isabella sitting at the Reference Desk in the empty building, connected to me, sitting in my dark living room. “The bullet in his skull? It was shaped like a mushroom cloud,” I said. “Like a tiny atomic bomb going off in his head.” I laughed. “Oak Ridge is a strange place,” I said. “I think it’s making me a little strange, too.”
She was silent for a moment. “What do you think of strange love?”
“Huh?” I was baffled by the sudden shift in topic. “Well, let’s see,” I hedged, stalling for time, trying to think of something to say that might be clever and maybe even slightly naughty — was that what she wanted, sitting alone in the darkened library? — but not offensive. “I think strange love is a matter of personal…you know….”
“No, silly. Not ‘strange love,’ as in kinky sex. ‘Strangelove,’ as in Dr. Strangelove. The movie.”
I was still at a loss. “Dr. Strangelove? Sounds like something from the adult section of the video store.”
“You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never seen it—Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb? It’s a classic. You grew up during the Cold War; how could you have missed the greatest Cold War satire ever made?”
“I lived the Cold War,” I said. “Duck and cover. Hiding under the desk at school. Running to the basement at home. I didn’t need to see it on the screen.”
“But your Cold War experience isn’t complete until you’ve seen this film,” she insisted. “What are you doing right now?”
“Huh?”
“You keep saying that,” she said. “It makes you sound far less intelligent than you are. What are you doing right now?”
“I’m looking at chainsaw brochures,” I said.
“Oh, good grief,” she said. “Your cinematic education has a hole in it the size of Lake Michigan, and you’re squandering your precious time on power-tool porn?”
I laughed again. “I am not going to touch that line.”
“Yeah, I know: with a ten-foot pole,” she said. “Stay right there. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“You’re coming here? To my house?”
“Yes. The wonders of MapQuest. And I’m bringing Dr. Strangelove with me. Unless you’d rather I didn’t.”
“No,” I said.
“No, which?”
“No, I wouldn’t rather you didn’t. Yes, I’d rather you did. I mean, please do.”
She hung up without another word, and I found myself staring stupidly at the receiver. Isabella was coming to my house? At nine o’clock at night? To bring me a movie?
I wasn’t sure what else, if anything, to make of it. I’d put on a pair of scrubs after I ate dinner — for some reason I’d always felt silly in pajamas, but scrubs gave me the comfort of PJs without the self-consciousness. Now I changed into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
Forty-five minutes later, I saw headlights in the driveway, and then the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, I saw that Isabella had a canvas book bag hooked over one shoulder.
“You’re nuts,” I said. “Why didn’t you just hand it to me next time I came to the library to flirt with you?”
“Because I know you’d never get around to watching it if I just handed it to you,” she said. “You’d set it aside and look at bones. Or chainsaw brochures.”
“So you’re not just handing it to me now?”
“Not a chance. We are going to sit down and watch this together.”
“What — now? You’re making me watch this right now?”
“You’ll thank me later,” she said. “Your moral and intellectual development hangs in the balance. Besides, it’s funny as hell. Also scary as hell, because things haven’t changed as much as they should’ve.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a DVD case, which she handed to me. “Okay, you start the movie while I start the microwave.”
“Why are you starting the microwave?”
“To pop the popcorn, of course.” She reached into the bag again and pulled out a pack of Pop Secret. The name made me smile. Or maybe it was the way she wiggled her eyebrows as she wiggled the package. “I brought Diet Coke for you, Original Sin for me.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “Original Sin?”
“Hard cider,” she said brightly. “Apple juice for grown-ups. You should try it sometime.”
“I’ve got Menier’s disease,” I told her. “Occasional vertigo. The last thing I need is something else that makes me dizzy.”
“One bottle of cider would not make you dizzy,” she said. “But no peer pressure. I would never dream of telling you what to do. Now go start the movie.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I pointed her toward the kitchen, and a moment later I heard the microwave beep as she keyed in numbers and hit START. Then, as the FBI copyright warning on the television screen gave way to the film’s opening credits, I heard the staccato fire of corn kernels exploding. Over the noise in both rooms, I called, “Do you want me to pause this?”
“No,” she yelled. “I’ve seen it fifty-seven times. Sit. Watch.”
I sat. I watched the credits roll. “I didn’t know Peter Sellers was in this. I love the Pink Panther movies.”
“He plays three roles in this,” she said from the doorway. “He was originally supposed to play four, but he sprained his ankle and couldn’t do the fourth.”
The film appeared to be in black and white, which seemed odd. “When was this made? I thought color film was invented in the 1930s.”
“In 1964. It’s in black and white to look like the Cold War and civil defense films and whatnot. Now shush! Watch. And marvel.”
I shushed. I watched. And I marveled. Starting with the notion of “mutual assured destruction”—the Cold Wa
r strategy that created nuclear arsenals capable of incinerating the planet many times over — the film took the arms race to its logical conclusion, if “logical” can be used to describe a scenario in which one superpower booby-traps the entire planet and the other superpower springs the trap.
As I sat there on the sofa, it was almost as if there were two of me. One “me” was intent on the film. The other was acutely conscious of the woman sitting beside me, a bowl of popcorn nestled between us. Every time she took a handful of popcorn, I felt the bowl press slightly against my thigh. I wondered if she felt the same sensation when I reached into the bowl, and if she found it as electrifying.
The film ended badly for the human race — mushroom clouds blossoming everywhere, synchronized to the lilting melody and chirpy lyrics of “We’ll Meet Again Some Sunny Day.” Despite the incineration of the planet, though, the film managed to walk the tightrope between horror and hilarity. Generals and heads of state bickered like kindergartners. Doomsday dawned because an unhinged Air Force colonel became convinced that fluoridated drinking water was a Communist plot. And Peter Sellers — playing a gentlemanly British officer, a wimpy U.S. president, and a deranged ex-Nazi guiding U.S. weapons policy — turned in three brilliant performances.
“Okay,” I said as I got to my feet and switched off the TV, “you were right. I had a shameful gap in my cultural education. Thank you for filling it.”
“I seen my duty and I done it,” she said. She set the greasy bowl on the coffee table and stood, stretching. “I wouldn’t have slept a wink tonight if I’d left you in ignorance. Not knowing Dr. Strangelove is like not knowing Casablanca or Citizen Kane.”
“Citizen who?”
“Citizen Kane,” she said. “Please tell me you’re not serious?”
“Oh, Citizen Kane,” I said. “Right. Of course. That’s that movie about…you know…that…citizen.”
“That citizen? Oh my God,” she groaned, “you have a Citizen Kane gap, too. You’re hopeless.” She swatted me on the chest with an open palm. Once. Twice. The third time, she let her hand rest there on my chest. I reached up and laid one of my hands atop hers.
“Hopeless? Really?” A lopsided, sheepish grin seemed to be twitching at my mouth. Was I imitating Thornton, who seemed to have the gift of charm? Or was this just the way guys grinned when they were falling for someone pretty and smart? Would my version of the grin charm Isabella as thoroughly as Thornton’s seemed to charm Miranda?
“Really,” she said. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Well,” I said, “you could kiss me, if you had a mind to. I have a kissing deficit, too, which I personally think is a lot more worrisome than my Citizen Kane deficit.”
“A kissing deficit?”
I nodded gravely. “I’ve practically forgotten how.”
She took a small step forward, which brought her to within about an inch of me. She left her hand on my chest. I put both of mine on her shoulders. The air around us changed; the hairs on my arm and the back of my neck tingled, as if lightning were about to strike, and then it did: tilting her head slightly back and to the side, she raised her mouth to mine. Her lips were softer than I would have imagined; softer than I could have imagined any lips to be. I reached a hand up and stroked her hair — that thick, wavy black hair — and when I did, she trembled.
She pulled away from the kiss and laid the other hand on my chest, dropping her head onto my shoulder. Her breathing was quick and shallow, and she was still shaking. “Oh my,” she murmured. “I wonder how it’d be if you were in practice.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’d be nice to find out.”
I bent to kiss her again, but she turned her face and pushed me away slightly. “Wait,” she said, and I feared I had overstepped, crossed some boundary in my eagerness. Her hands fumbled at the back of her neck. She unfastened a black cord and removed a necklace that had been hanging inside her sweater. The pendant, which was silver, looked striking — an abstract rendering of something real; a figure that was angular and curving and ancient and modern at the same time. She slipped the pendant in the pocket of her jeans. Then she kissed me again, and my interest in the necklace evaporated. I reached for her hair again, and ran my fingers through it like a comb — a comb that twisted and tugged gently as it wove through the strands — and when I did, she made a small soft sound. Half sigh, half whimper, it was the most thrilling sound I had ever heard. I drew in my breath and felt my fingers tighten, and felt her body begin to shake again.
She slipped out sometime after I fell asleep; I don’t know when. All I know is that I awoke at dawn to a sunrise the color of a blood orange.
CHAPTER 31
Peggy did a double-take when I stopped by her office to retrieve my mail and ask if there were any meetings on my calendar. “What happened to you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re smiling like you just got named ‘Professor of the Year’ or something,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s a beautiful day, I love my work, and I’m surrounded by bright, interesting people,” I said.
She shot back, “It’s cold as hell, the budget cuts are wreaking havoc with our equipment needs, and two of your junior faculty just sent a memo to the dean complaining about you.”
“Complaining about me? Why on earth would any of the Anthropology faculty complain about me?”
“It’s those two new culturalists you hired last year,” she said. “They told the dean, in no uncertain terms, that ‘race’ is a social construct, not a physical trait. They demand that you cease all references to ‘the three races of man’—which is sexist, too, they say — in your classes.”
I laughed. “See,” I said, “very interesting people. Boring guys like me, we study an Asian, an African, and a Scandinavian skull, and we come to the simplistic conclusion that the differences in the cheekbones and the slope of the jaws and the width of the nasal opening are structural — that they reflect millennia of evolution and adaptation by those three populations. Interesting folks, on the other hand, they look at those same cheekbones and jaws and noses, and they see social constructs.”
“Go ahead, make light,” she said, “but this is going to cause you headaches.” She eyed me more closely. “I know that smile,” she said. “This is about that librarian, isn’t it? Miranda told me about her. That’s why you’re making all these trips to Oak Ridge.” She grinned triumphantly.
“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” I said innocently.
As I turned to go, she summoned me back. “This came through the fax machine for you,” she said. “From somebody over in the tree lab.”
I practically ripped the page from her hand. “I’ll be down in the osteo lab,” I called over my shoulder. “See if you can get Detective Emert and Agent Thornton on a three-way call.”
“What should I tell them it’s about?”
“Tell them it’s about the forensic power of the chainsaw,” I said.
* * *
So the tree rings,” came Emert’s voice from the speakerphone, “can tell us whether he died in 1948 or 1984 or whatever?”
“They can,” I said. “In fact, they already have.”
I’d taken the three-foot section of tulip-poplar trunk to one of my colleagues in the forestry lab. He had recut the end with a fine-toothed table saw — he’d also bored out a core sample — and had counted the growth rings. According to both counts, the tulip poplar was sixty-three years old. “That means it started growing in the spring of 1946,” I said.
“Meaning it was sometime before that,” said Miranda, “that G.I. Doe was planted.”
* * *
Eddie Garcia looked weak and scared. It had been only two days since I’d seen him, but in those forty-eight hours he’d worsened dramatically. They’d begun giving him blood transfusions of packed red blood cells, because his bone marrow had virtually ceased to function. Ironically, the transfused cells were
irradiated to kill germs. As an extra precaution against infection, every nurse or doctor who entered his room had to scrub up and suit up in full surgical garb. Looking through the window, as a pair of masked figures checked his monitors and changed his IV bag, I was struck by the discrepancy between appearance and reality: it looked as if they were protecting themselves from Garcia, when in fact it was Garcia they were taking extreme precautions to safeguard. The most distressing sight, though, was his hands, swathed in thick layers of gauze. Unlike Miranda’s — so far, at least — Garcia’s localized burns had gone necrotic. His hands were dying.
I brought Garcia up to date on the Oak Ridge case, and he seemed intrigued, although maybe he was merely grateful for a distraction from his battle against acute radiation syndrome. But the drip must have contained something to ease his pain, because as I was telling him how the tree rings allowed us to estimate G.I. Doe’s time since death, his eyes lost their focus and he fell asleep. It shamed me to realize it, but I was relieved for the chance to ease away.
* * *
Late that afternoon I heard a dull thud outside my office door — the sound of something heavy hitting the floor — followed by the clatter of the stairwell door banging shut.
“Whoo,” gasped a voice I recognized as Thornton’s — a recognition confirmed by the appearance of his head in the entrance of my office as he tapped on the doorframe.
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