Scandal in the Secret City Read online

  The next Monday morning in the lab, I saw the effect of that night out on the men in the lab; they were much friendlier. You wouldn’t believe the number of invitations I got for the next dance. But I wouldn’t commit to anyone. I told them all that I’d be there and be sure to save him a dance but was not about to spend a whole evening with one partner; variety was much more fun. It also minimized the possibility of anyone thinking that I had romance on my mind. Jitterbug was a true gender equalizer and a great way to blow off steam, make friends and get exercise. It’s hard to get serious about anything when you’re not standing still.

  DECEMBER 26, 1943

  ‘Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry.

  Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.’

  William Saroyan

  SIX

  Wilson’s return jerked me from my pleasant memories and dropped me into the decidedly unpleasant present. He handed me a steaming, white coffee mug and offered a cigarette. I declined the latter and he lit one for himself, inhaling deeply and blowing smoke off to the side. ‘Are you sure you saw a body?’

  My jaw dropped at his stupid question. ‘What do you mean by that? What could I possibly have seen that I thought was a body and wasn’t?’

  ‘Your eyes can play tricks on you, Miss Clark.’

  ‘Sir, I crawled under the bleachers until I was right beside her – closer than you and I are now.’

  ‘Could she have been asleep?’

  ‘Sir, I touched her body. It was cold. It was stiff. She was unresponsive. There was a scarf wrapped tight – too tight – around her neck.’

  ‘A deep sleep, perhaps. Maybe she’d been drinking too much.’

  ‘Her eyes were wide open, sir.’ I didn’t like the direction of this conversation one little bit.

  There was a light tap on the door and Wilson rose, excusing himself again. Things were not going as they should. They’d had plenty of time to get to the bleachers and verify what I’d seen. What was the purpose of this line of inquiry? Was Wilson trying to confuse me for some reason? Did he think I had something to do with Irene’s death? Unless I was a suspect, his questions were a serious waste of time. It had to be a temporary tactic until Wilson received confirmation about the body. I just had to be patient enough to let them do their job and become satisfied that I had no role in Irene’s murder.

  Wilson returned to the room and his seat behind his desk. Folding his hands on the surface, he asked, ‘Had you two been drinking?’

  ‘Not today,’ I snapped, my irritation rising despite my best intentions.

  ‘Well, what about Miss Nance – Miss Ruth Nance.’

  ‘We both had a little to drink last night – a Christmas celebration.’

  ‘We didn’t find any spirits in your home—’

  ‘You went into my home?’ I bit my tongue to prevent my surrender to the sudden urge to emulate Aunt Dorothy’s housekeeper and spout a string of German invectives.

  ‘Miss Clark, you came in here on a serious matter. We had to take it seriously. We did find an open bottle of Jack Daniels in Miss Nance’s dormitory room. As you know, we are located in dry counties. We have to respect the local laws. All alcoholic beverages are illegal here.’

  Agitated, I rose from the chair and leaned across the desk. ‘What are you doing searching Ruth’s room? Why are you not out at the bleachers taking care of Irene?’

  ‘Please be seated, Miss Clark, and try to remain calm. We’ve been to the bleachers.’

  ‘OK. Then why all of these nonsensical questions? You saw Irene’s body. You know we didn’t imagine it. Why are you trying to make me think otherwise? Do you think I killed her?’

  ‘Miss Clark, we have been out to the bleachers. There is no body there.’

  ‘What?’ The ground no longer felt solid beneath my feet.

  ‘There is no body under the bleachers.’

  ‘What?’ I could not have heard him correctly.

  ‘There is no body anywhere near the high school.’

  I swallowed hard and took in several deep breaths, fighting to maintain my composure. ‘Captain, I did not imagine Irene’s body. It was there.’

  ‘Miss Clark, for now, we are going to assume that you two were mistaken.’

  ‘We were not mistaken.’

  ‘If you were not mistaken, then you were playing a prank – a serious one that could result in charges being brought against both of you for filing a false report.’

  ‘But that—’

  ‘That is the way it is. There is no body at the high school. You cannot prove that there ever was a body at the high school.’

  I bit my lower lip as I stared at him, looking for signs of deception in his eyes. His pupils did not shift, he did not blink. His expression was clear of malice. I didn’t know what to think. Something was happening here that made no sense at all.

  ‘Is this situation clear to you, now, Miss Clark?’

  It wasn’t at all clear. But I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ hoping I’d figure it all out with a little more time.

  A man’s voice boomed behind me, ‘I’ll take it from here, Captain.’

  I turned around. An attractive man who appeared to be in his early forties stood just inside the doorway. His hair was almost military short but not quite. His blue eyes were intense and humorless. He wore a navy blue suit, white shirt and a striped navy blue and white tie.

  After the captain left the room, the man said, ‘Miss Clark, I trust I do not need to remind you of your oath of secrecy.’

  ‘I do not see the connection between the death of Irene Nance and any of the work we are doing here; therefore, I do not understand why you would need to remind me. I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, sir.’

  His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile but could not remember how to make his mouth form the right shape. ‘Everything that happens inside these gates needs to stay inside these gates, Miss Clark.’

  ‘Yes. And all indications are that Irene Nance was killed inside these gates and I have come to the appropriate authority, inside these gates, to report that fact. Again, I do not understand your concern and I do not know who you are.’

  ‘You do not need to know who I am. And you don’t need to understand what happened this morning. All you need to know is that there is no body – not in the bleachers, not at the high school, not anywhere inside of our secured area.’

  He reminded me of a schoolyard bully who understood nothing but a show of force; however, I knew I could not overpower him. Maybe if I softened my stance, I’d get further. ‘Sir, even if I accept what you are saying as fact, that still does not explain where Ruth’s sister has gone. If Irene is not dead, then she is a missing person.’

  ‘Possibly. But until Monday when she is due to report to work, we have no reason to believe that there is a problem at all. It’s a holiday weekend. She could be simply out and about enjoying the festivities.’

  ‘Sir, Ruth is very concerned about her sister.’

  ‘I’ll leave word with the guards at the gate. They’ll let Miss Nance know if her sister is seen entering or leaving.’

  The remnants of my patience were as ragged as a hobo’s shoes. Before I said anything I’d regret, I needed to get out of here. ‘So that’s it?’ I asked.

  ‘Until Monday morning, yes it is.’

  I took a few steps towards the door, then stopped and turned around. ‘Where is Ruth? Did you leave her at the athletic field?’

  ‘No, of course not. She has had a shock, one of her own imagining, but a shock nonetheless. We wouldn’t just leave her there.’

  ‘Is she back at the dorm?’

  ‘No, Miss Clark. We took her to the hospital.’

  ‘Hospital? What did you do to her?’

  ‘She was hysterical, Miss Clark. The doctor administered a sedative to calm her down. We wanted to keep an eye on her for a couple of days.’

  �
��I’ll bet you did,’ I said, walking away as quickly as I could. I was frightened but I could not give a name to my fear. It was more a primitive, visceral response to unanswered questions lurking in some impenetrable fog of the unknown than it was a reaction to a real, tactile threat. I followed the boardwalks to the hospital.

  A military guard stood beside Ruth’s room. When I approached, he stepped sideways in front of it and came to attention. ‘Sorry, miss, doctor’s orders. No one to disturb the patient while she’s sleeping. Doc gave her some medicine and said she’d probably sleep until the next morning. Meanwhile, no visitors.’

  I wanted to force my way past him but that was another battle I couldn’t win, so I left and walked back to the athletic field at the high school. I needed to find something to confirm that what I saw was true. There had to be some small scrap of evidence that Irene had been there or some subtle indication of what happened to her body.

  I walked up to the spot where Irene had lain lifeless such a short time ago, close enough to peer at the flattened grass. A lot of it looked trampled. Someone – a lot of them – had been out here. It must have been the people charged with taking her body away, but who and where was her body now?

  I circled the bleachers making a progressively wider arc with each orbit. I spotted discarded cigarette butts, broken pencils and small scraps of paper. Then I saw an odd shape nestled in the blades of grass. I squatted down beside it. It looked like a woman’s lapel pin with a broken clasp. I picked it up and turned it over in my palm: a little, pale blue, ceramic fawn with white spots and pink Lucite ears.

  It looked familiar. Was this the pin Irene been wearing when she came by the house on Christmas night? I closed my eyes and tried to remember. There had been of a spot of color on Irene’s lapel – was it this? Maybe. I just wasn’t sure.

  I slipped it into a pocket, planning to show it to Ruth. I completed a few more circuits of the field and, finding nothing else, returned home.

  I had seen Irene’s body. I hadn’t imagined the scarf cinched too tight around her neck. Irene was dead; there was no possibility that she simply got up and walked away. What happened to Irene on that football field? And what happened to Ruth while I was at the police station?

  I lay awake in bed in my little bungalow that night, thinking I’d never get to sleep. To push my thoughts of the current ugly predicament out of my mind, I forced myself to recall the surprising turn of events that had brought me here into my new home.

  THANKSGIVING 1943

  ‘Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one bit of living is lost.’

  Betty Smith

  Author of the 1943 best-seller

  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

  SEVEN

  My current housing situation was a direct result of the problems in Y-12. Nothing was going as smoothly as the planners had expected. The first fourteen-ton racetrack magnets wrapped with silver windings tested at the end of October were leaking electricity and shorting out the coils. The engineers first suspected moisture. I was dubious about that because the heat of operation should have evaporated it all away. They brought everything to a halt to manually dry off the magnets. When they were certain all of them were completely dry, they started the system up again but it still shorted out. I kept turning the problem over in my mind, trying to figure out the reason and find a solution.

  It would help if I could ask the right questions but I wasn’t sure what they were. I ran a sample of product from the alpha lab through the spectrometer recording the distances different substances traveled from the filter. The contaminants I found were not found in the ore and I doubted if the chemists added it during processing. I took the discovery to my supervisor. ‘Charlie, I’ve found copper and plain old dirt in the sample from alpha. I suspect it came from the processing in the Calutron but I can’t be sure without taking samples directly from there and running tests.’

  ‘What samples will you want to test?’

  ‘I’d start with the ore, run it through an acid bath and see what shows up there. Then, I’d want to test the end product before it goes to alpha. And finally, I’d just like to look around and see what other substances are introduced during the procedure that could be sources of contamination and test those as well.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll find anything to explain why the line is shorting out?’

  ‘I don’t think the spectrometer analysis will answer that question but who knows what else I’ll find. There could be some misapplied physics the engineers aren’t recognizing within the mechanical design. I could check that out as well.’

  ‘You won’t be able to do that while it’s in operation and I doubt if I can get them to shut down the line for one of my people to crawl around on their equipment. How would you feel about coming up here on Thanksgiving – they’ll be shutting the line down for the holiday. But I wouldn’t be able to help you with it. I’m taking my family over to Virginia to visit my wife’s relatives.’

  Would I have to give up a homemade Thanksgiving meal to find the answers? My stomach churned in rebellion over that possibility. Maybe I could do both. ‘I’m supposed to have dinner with the Bishops but I can come up here early and see what I can find. I might get lucky. Meanwhile, I’ll run what samples I can before then.’

  ‘See what you can do, Libby, but don’t ruin your holiday plans.’

  ‘I guess that means you don’t think I have much chance of success.’

  Charlie sighed. ‘It’s not that I don’t think you can find an answer, Libby. I’m just not sure there is an answer.’

  Now, that was a challenge. Intriguing enough to miss out on Thanksgiving dinner? Maybe. I could only hope that it would not come to that. The invitation to spend the holiday with the Bishops came after I met Dr Bishop’s daughter. By the time the last month ended, Eastman Kodak had 4,800 employees on the site – and they were only just one of a number of employers on site. They’d all hired a lot of women but none of them were working as professionals in the labs in Y-12. Somehow, they all seemed to know I was a scientist and nearly every day, one of them sidled up to me with a question about what we were doing and where was it leading. And I wouldn’t – couldn’t – answer even the most innocuous questions. That certainly didn’t make me popular with the women in the building.

  Dr Marc Bishop’s daughter, Ann, was an exception, probably because of the way we met. She was secretary to the managers of the Y-12 facility. Both of us thought we were the only person using the women’s restroom in our section until I walked in one day and heard her crying in a stall. At first, I wondered how a Calutron girl had got past security to find this lavatory. The anguish in the unseen woman’s voice, however, pushed that concern out of my mind.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, raising my voice to be heard over her wailing. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’m way past help.’

  ‘What happened?’ I shouted through the door.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Your boyfriend? Your husband?’

  ‘Noooo. I knew him all my life.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Noooo. My favorite cousin. He was like a brother to me.’

  ‘Did he die in combat?’

  All I got in response to that question was a deep moan.

  ‘If you come out,’ I urged, ‘it would be easier to talk. I lost a close cousin at Pearl Harbor.’

  Sniffles followed by the loud honk of a blowing nose leaked out of the cubicle, followed by the sound of rushing water when the toilet flushed. Then the door creaked open.

  To my surprise, instead of the neck to ankle overalls that the Calutron girls wore, she was dressed in a brown-and-white checked dirndl skirt and a tucked front white blouse with a lace collar. ‘Where did you come from?’ I asked.

  ‘In there,’ she sniffed and pointed back to the stall.

  ‘No, I mean, do you work here? And where do you work?’

  ‘Oh.
I’m a secretary for a bunch of scientists,’ she said and paused to blow her nose again into a piece of toilet tissue. ‘My dad got me the job. I’m Ann Bishop. He’s Dr Bishop. Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I work for Dr Bishop, indirectly anyway. My supervisor works under him. I’m Libby Clark. How long have you been here?’

  ‘About a month. Are you new?’ Ann asked. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’ve been here about a month, too. I’m a chemist.’

  ‘A chemist? But you’re a woman.’

  ‘Yes, I am, that’s why I’m using the ladies’ room.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any lady scientists here. That’s really swell.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any women in Y-12 except for the Calutron girls.’

  ‘I think I’d go loco working over there. All that time sitting and staring at dials with a bunch of girls. No thank you.’ Without warning, she burst into tears again.

  I put my arm around her. ‘There, there, I know how much it hurts. It gets better with time. It still makes me sad and sometimes makes me angry that my cousin died so far from home but it doesn’t hurt quite so much now. How did your cousin die?’

  ‘His plane crashed in the Mediterranean somewhere,’ she said with a sniff.

  ‘Was he a pilot?’

  ‘No, he was a gunner. They said he went down firing,’ she choked on her words and sobbed. ‘Like that did him a lot of good. And they won’t even tell us how it happened or who shot him down or anything.’

  I patted gently on her shoulder. ‘I know, I know. My cousin died in Pearl Harbor but I don’t know how. And was he on a pier? On a ship? Walking down the road? I have no idea.’

  I suppose it was our shared loss that broke down the barriers and formed a bond that strengthened as we went to lunch together a few times each week. Ann didn’t particularly understand me but was clearly fascinated by my different outlook. One day at lunch she said, ‘I never considered doing anything but finding a husband, getting married and having babies. Whatever made you even imagine doing something else?’