Scandal in the Secret City

by Diane Fanning

  ‘I have clearly been warned that the pursuit of answers in the mystery of Irene Nance’s death could be detrimental to my career. As a scientist, I can’t help but bristle when any authority tries to interfere with the finding of facts. As a human being, I am conflicted by my obligation to my country and my commitment to my friend. I have resolved these diametrically opposed needs by reaching the conclusion that the former is a false paradigm.

  ‘It is up to each one of you to decide if you want to help me uncover the truth behind these events and, thus, put your careers in jeopardy. No one can make that decision for you. If you decide to back away, I only ask that you hold this matter in confidence as you all vowed you would any discussion occurring within this group. Thank you.’

  I stared down at the surface of the table, unwilling to look any of them in the eye, fearing that they would all look away. For a couple of minutes no one spoke. The only sound in the room was caused by bodies shifting their weight in chairs, beer mugs sipped and set back down on the table and a host of erratic sighs and audible exhalations.

  Gregg spoke up first. ‘As you all know, I brought Libby into our group because I believed that she had a need to uncover facts and that we might possess the ability to help her do so. I, for one, will assist her in this project whether the group chooses to become involved or not.’

  ‘Do you say that because you and Clark are stuck on each other?’ Tom asked, a leering expression on his face.

  Gregg jerked his head toward Tom’s voice. ‘If we were, so what? That wouldn’t alter the problem under consideration. But here are the facts: Clark and I work together in the same lab. I have great respect for her competence in the lab and the nimbleness of her mind. Until last week, we had never met each other outside of Y-12. And then we had lunch together to discuss this same problem.’

  ‘But, Gregg,’ Tom said. ‘She’s a woman. You know how they overreact and exaggerate.’

  Gregg leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table. ‘How can you overreact to a murder? How can you exaggerate a murder? It was a murder, you know. That’s not an exaggeration. The authorities admit it is a murder. The only dispute is over where it happened. Or do you disagree with that, Tom? Do you think you know more than the police, the sheriff’s office and the military?’

  ‘But you only have her word on that, don’t you?’ Tom taunted.

  I held my anger at bay, sensing that any interference from me could possibly send some of the group out of the room and, thus, decimate any hope of cooperation. As long as others were defending me, I was safer simply observing.

  ‘Oh, come on, Tom,’ Teddy interjected. ‘We’ve all heard that Irene Nance is dead. We’ve all heard about her body being found outside the Solway gate. We all heard the preachy message about the dangers that lurk out there among some of the disenfranchised locals.’

  ‘Yeah, but before now, we never heard anything about a body being found in the high school bleachers, did we? What if she’s making it all up to get attention?’ Tom asked.

  Joe, the archetypal quiet one, with his studious demeanor and thick, dark-framed glasses, cleared his throat. Every head turned in his direction. ‘I find it quite offensive that someone would question the honesty and integrity of one of our scientific peers without cause.’ When he paused, no one said a word or made a move, except for Tom who pushed back from the table and rolled his eyes. ‘It seems obvious to me,’ Joe continued, ‘that the first step here is to determine who among us has ever dated the deceased.’

  Gary, who seemed to follow Tom’s lead, snickered. ‘Who hasn’t?’

  Tom spoke up again. ‘I really don’t like speaking ill of the dead …’

  I jerked my head up and snapped, ‘Then don’t!’ I looked at the faces of the men gathered around me. ‘Are you telling me that every one of you dated Irene Nance?’

  The question was greeted with a mingled mutter of yeses and nos. ‘How about a show of hands?’ To my surprise, five of the nine men present raised their hands. ‘My word. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Her sister said she went out every night of the week.’

  ‘I regret saying this,’ Joe said, ‘but everyone who raised a hand is now a suspect. Perhaps we should discuss the nature and duration of your relationships with Miss Nance?’

  Teddy’s face flushed. ‘It wasn’t much for me. In October, I took her to a dance in the cafeteria. Then a couple of nights later, we just went walking.’

  ‘Where, Teddy?’ Joe asked.

  ‘I don’t remember exactly where but we ended up at the football field at the high school.’

  ‘On the bleachers, Ted?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Well, yes, actually we did. We sat down on them and looked at the moon.’

  ‘Looked at the moon? Oh yeah, I bet that’s all you did,’ Tom said and guffawed.

  ‘Look,’ Teddy said. ‘We did hold hands and I kissed her twice …’

  ‘Was she a good kisser?’ Tom teased.

  ‘Shut up, Tom,’ Gregg snapped. ‘You were saying, Ted?’

  ‘I thought we had something going,’ Teddy admitted, ‘but after that night, I asked her out four or five more times. She was always busy, always had a date with someone else. I finally gave up. I’ve only seen her in passing since.’

  One by one, the other men who dated Irene described their brief fling with her. Not one of them admitted to getting any further with her than hand-holding and a kiss or two.

  Tom blew out a long breath. ‘And what have we got – a bunch of suspects who want us to take their word for what happened with no proof, no documentation.’

  ‘That’s really not a helpful attitude,’ Joe said. He stared at Tom and used his middle finger to push the center of his glasses up higher on his nose. ‘We need to trust one another unless and until that is shown to be unwise. Does everyone else agree with that?’

  Murmurs of agreement went around the table. Stephen, pale as a worm and thin as a zipper, rose to his feet and paced the length of the table, his body leaning forward at a near impossible angle while he walked. ‘Don’t we need to start with an inventory, as it were? A list of all the scientists so we can know who is called Bill here at – uh, we can call this place Oak Ridge now, can’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gregg said, ‘At least inside the fence. I don’t think we’re supposed to use the name if we go into Knoxville or any of the little towns around here.’

  ‘OK, well, how can we get all those names?’

  ‘I can ask Ann Bishop, I think she might give me a list,’ I offered. ‘But she’s only going to have names for those in Y-12. We know work has started at K-25 but I, for one, have no idea if it’s still in the basic construction stage or if scientists are at work in functional labs.’

  ‘But, Libby,’ Gregg said, ‘if we don’t know anything about or anyone working at K-25, how would Irene?’

  ‘She worked at the guest house. She saw all sorts of people. She once described a man who was the spitting image of Enrico Fermi but she said his name was Eugene Farmer. Who knows who else she met there?’

  ‘So it could be a resident scientist or a visiting scientist,’ Stephen said. ‘Does anyone have any contacts at K-25?’

  The question was greeted by a shaking of heads. ‘We need to start somewhere. Why not Y-12? That is what we know,’ Teddy said.

  ‘I hate to complicate matters even more,’ Stephen said. ‘But what if this Bill guy wasn’t the one who killed her? What if someone else did out of jealousy or some other motive?’

  ‘I thought about that, Stephen, and you’re right,’ I agreed. ‘But we need to approach this problem in a linear fashion. If we discover data that points to another possibility, we need to retain that information for possible exploration, but we need to start somewhere and focus on the answer to one question before moving on to others.’

  Nods went around the table. Everyone agreed to attempt to identify anyone they could whom they knew as Bill or who was hiding behind an official alias. They would meet again
on Wednesday. At last something was being done. But my relief was short-lived as I tried to fall asleep. What if I had placed my trust in the wrong hands?

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  After work the next day, I stoked up the fire in the coal stove in the living room and put on a pot of water as soon as I walked in the front door. Hot tea was the perfect antidote to a nippy night, filling me with a delightful warmth with each swallow and driving the stiffness out of my fingers as I held the cup tight in my hands.

  As soon as my digits felt limber, I picked up stationary, a pen and the letter I had received from Ruth the previous week. I reread the chatty correspondence, chuckling about the convoluted and subtle way Ruth had referred to her sister’s murder. To the censors, it had to sound like nothing more than the nearly meaningless babble of a shallow young woman.

  Ruth’s craftiness in her composition was impressive. I would have never thought that my open, honest friend was at all capable of subterfuge. Nonetheless, there it was in her own handwriting – words veiled and cloaked but with an underlying meaning as clear as a glass of spring water to me. Ruth needed to know about her sister’s death. She wanted to know if I’d made any progress in finding the culprit. The not knowing filled Ruth with an anxiety that magnified her grief. Her silent scream for justice lurked between every line.

  I mimicked Ruth’s nonchalant tone as I drafted my response, taking care not to use any specific names like Y-12 or Alpha or Beta laboratories. I hoped my meaning was as clear to Ruth as Ruth’s had been for me:

  Dear Ruthie,

  The weather here continues to be dreadful – frigid, icy and only the smallest glimpses of sunshine. The silver lining in the cloud is that the colder it remains, the harder the mud freezes. I haven’t heard of anyone losing a shoe in the mud all month. Ha! Ha!

  I miss you a lot, Ruthie, and wish you were here. I often long for you to be here to talk over problems with me. But I have made a new group of friends – some scientists from my building. Yes, they are all fellas and I’m the only girl but NO, I’m not stepping out with any one of them.

  I get together with my new friends and we discuss different problems and seek solutions. Of course, we cannot talk about work since we are from different areas, but you’d be amazed at how adept they are at applying scientific method to basic, everyday problems. If one gave them a mystery to solve, I’m sure, given a little time, they could solve the toughest one you could imagine. Maybe I should ask them to find out what is really in that loaf they serve in the cafeteria. Ha! Ha! But their conclusions could very well get them in hot water. None of them would care though – finding answers is more important to them than facing the consequences. That’s one of the things I really like about them.

  Keep warm, Ruthie, and the next time you have a sip of Jack Daniels think of poor, dry me.

  Your friend always,

  Libby

  At 10:30 the next morning, I slipped away from the lab to speak to Ann Bishop. I found her at her desk pounding away on the typewriter. ‘Hi, Ann,’ I said. ‘Got a minute?’

  ‘Oh, do I! My mother just called and wanted me to ask you to dinner tonight.’

  ‘Tonight? Really?’

  ‘Yes. She’s so excited. After endless days of meatless spaghetti, tuna casserole and vegetable mishmash, she was the first person in line at the grocery store this morning and got ground beef, ground pork and ground veal to make a meatloaf. She couldn’t believe her good fortune and she wanted you to share it with us.’ Ann laughed and said, ‘Sometimes, I wonder if she thinks that working all day with a bunch of men puts too much temptation in your path and without a mother-figure in your life, you might forget the need to protect your reputation and your chastity.’

  I tried not to show any dismay at that remark, hoping there wasn’t any truth in it.

  ‘Oh, don’t look so shocked, Libby. I was just joking. Mom likes you, that’s all. And she wants to have you to dinner.’

  ‘That’s very nice of her. Please tell her that I will gladly accept her invitation.’

  ‘Swell! Now what brought you to my desk?’ Ann asked.

  ‘You know how it is with those men I work with?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, they think just ’cause they’re men, they’re smarter.’

  ‘You got it. You wanna help me get back at them?’

  ‘Soitently, pal.’

  ‘I need a list of all the scientists working at Y-12. Can you get that?’

  Ann narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s this all about, Libby?’

  ‘I’m saying that the most common male name in this place is Bill.’

  ‘You could be right. But it might be Tom.’

  ‘That’s what a couple of the guys say. Another one says Charlie.’

  ‘But what if I give you the list and you’re wrong.’

  ‘In that case, there would be a second part to the favor,’ I continued.

  Ann cocked her head to the side, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You could leave off a name here or there and where would they go to prove that I’m wrong?’

  Ann grinned. ‘Me?’

  ‘And what will you tell them?’

  ‘I’m not authorized to provide that information, sir. You’ll have to make a request through your supervisor.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, smiling at her quickness to fall for my scheme. ‘That means they would have to go through the building getting every single name. And with the racetrack about to be up and running again, they’re going to be far too busy.’

  ‘Swell. I’ll try to get it ready for you before lunch.’

  ‘Don’t take time from anything you need to be doing.’

  ‘No worries, Libby. Nobody ever yells at me ’cause nobody wants to have to explain why to my dad.’

  Ann surprised me by providing a typed document. I’d expected a hastily scrawled list of names that would be difficult to read.

  ‘And you were right, Libby. If you count up all the men named William, Wilbur, Wilfred – well, maybe we shouldn’t count the Wilfreds, people usually call them Freddie. But even without them the Bills win.’

  Now that I had what I wanted, I inwardly cringed at how easy it had been to manipulate Ann. I ran down the list looking for the men I knew were not married. That left a lot whose marital status was unknown to me and even more I didn’t know at all. Hopefully, my fellow molecules could help me cull the list down a bit more.

  That evening, I drove the car to the Bishop home. It was a bitterly cold night and I knew Mrs Bishop would insist that her husband give me a ride home after dinner. And I certainly did not want to be alone in a car with Dr Bishop, where he could question me again about security’s interest in my actions.

  I received another warm welcome from Ann’s mother who once again lived up to her sterling reputation as a cook. Dinner was fabulous. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a tastier meatloaf. Everything went as usual until the end of the meal.

  Dr Bishop rose to his feet and said, ‘Mother, Ann, if you will excuse us, I would like to have a private word with Miss Clark in the living room. I would really not like to be disturbed.’

  A lump lodged in my throat. I swallowed hard but it wouldn’t go away. Did Ann mention what she did for me today? Was he going to ask me to never return to his home? Had he heard news that I’d soon be sent packing?

  I trailed after him with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man heading for the noose. I remained standing, not knowing what to do until Dr Bishop said, ‘Have a seat, Libby.’

  I slumped into the nearest chair and summoned up the courage to meet his eyes. ‘Yes sir, is there something on your mind?’

  ‘There is, Libby. I imagine you are aware that you are under unusual scrutiny at this time.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I certainly am. I think it’s unwarranted but—’

  ‘I am not here to chastise you for anything you have done or you’ve been accused of doing. I consider myself a good judge of character and I don’t find yours lacking.’

  ‘Th
ank you for your confidence in me, sir.’

  ‘You’ve earned that, Miss Clark. And although I’ve been questioned about you more than once, I do not want to put you in a position where you’ll feel the need to defend yourself.’

  ‘I could—’ I began.

  ‘Quite frankly, the less I know the better. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said, as my guts clenched tight waiting for him to drop the ‘but’ and all that followed it.

  ‘But, I wanted to talk with you about two things. First, although I initially decided to keep this to myself, I think you should know that I have been asked to report back on every visit you make to my home.’

  ‘Have you agreed to do that?’ I asked, working hard to keep my feelings of alarm out of my voice and facial expression.

  ‘Yes. But I am telling you because you have never done anything here that is questionable in any way. You’ve always behaved like a lady and a professional. I’ve assured them that I have never heard you mention a word about our work in the presence of my wife or daughter. And I’ll repeat that in my reports about your visits. I simply felt you had a right to know about this.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. It is kind of you to inform me.’

  ‘How could I do less for a fellow scientist?’ he said with a smile that seemed a bit condescending. Still I smiled back.

  ‘The other matter is my daughter. As I said, I don’t know what you are involved in, but I do want to make it clear that I do not want you to drag my daughter into your problem in any way.’

  Oh dear. Did Ann tell him about the list? ‘I would not intentionally do anything to hurt Ann.’

  ‘I have no reason to believe you have done so,’ he said to my great relief. ‘Nonetheless, I wanted to make my feelings clear. I do not want my daughter compromised in any manner. She is not as educated as you. She is far more naive than you. As her father, I want your assurances that you will not involve her in any manner.’

  My conscience screamed for a confession that I’d already involved Ann but my common sense prevailed. ‘I promise, sir, that in no time in the future will I ever get Ann involved in anything that is the least bit questionable.’ It wasn’t a lie but it wasn’t the complete truth either; I added deceit onto the list of forgiveness items for my nightly prayers.