Scandal in the Secret City (22 page)

I
felt dreadful the next morning. Sleep had been elusive, fitful, haunted by frightening dreams that I could not remember except for the stark image of Irene’s body, strangled under the bleachers. Every time I awoke, I reminded myself that, for now, the Ottinger problem was out of my hands, the investigation into his possible involvement out of my control.

In the cold light of morning, though, I wondered if I’d get any answers no matter how well the authorities investigated. Would I ever be told about the conclusions they reached, the actions they’d taken? Probably not. That meant I’d have to find out more information about Ottinger and his whereabouts on Christmas night. That was dangerous territory. Making inquiries about a scientist of his caliber could be interpreted as digging for secrets about his work.

Maybe the Walking Molecules could figure something out at their regular meeting tonight. If not, I’d have all day Sunday to sort through the problems and decide who was the most likely to have had an affair with Irene, to have killed Irene. Was it Ottinger? Dr Bishop? Or someone else entirely?

As a scientist, I’d been trained to compartmentalize. I needed to use those skills now; my attention must be on the work at hand. I was engrossed until Gregg walked past my station, poked my side and said, ‘Looks like you’re needed,’ as he nodded towards the door.

There was Ann, hands on her hips, feet spread, a scowl on her face. Oh good heavens, what now? I did a quick check on the progress of the spectrograph; I had a few minutes to spare. I brushed past Ann and headed straight for the restroom. I leaned on the wall with my arms folded across my chest and waited for Ann. As soon as she opened the door, I said, ‘What now, Ann?’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I was running some tests when you interrupted me.’

‘Don’t be a smart aleck. You know what I mean. What are you and Dad up to? What is going on?’

‘Ann, you know I can’t answer those questions.’

‘Don’t pull that security line on me. Don’t tell me it has to do with your work. It’s something personal. I know it.’

‘Yes, in a way, it is. But your dad made me promise not to tell you.’

‘I thought we were friends, Libby. Whatever you’re doing is tearing my family apart.’

‘What are you talking about, Ann?’

‘Last night, after they thought I was asleep, my parents were arguing. I didn’t understand what they were saying. I even wondered if you and my dad were having an affair, but I just couldn’t believe that could be true.’

‘It’s not true, Ann.’

‘Well, then, what is it? Why were they arguing about you?’

‘Obviously, your mother didn’t want me to come to dinner last night.’

‘But why not, Libby? Why not? She’s been encouraging me to spend time with you and now she doesn’t want you around? What gives?’

‘Exactly what were your parents arguing about – what about me caused their disagreement?’

‘Mom said that you knew. She said that she was sure you knew. Knew what, Libby? What was she talking about?’

‘How did your father answer her?’

‘He said that he didn’t think so. He said that you were focused on Dr Ottinger now. Who’s Dr Ottinger? And what are you doing with him?’

‘What did your mother say when he said that?’

‘She said, “You’re wrong, Marc. I saw it in her eyes. You need to leave, now, before they start questioning you.” Who are “they”, Libby and what would they question him about?’

‘Ann, just tell me the whole conversation first and I’ll see if I can figure it all out.’

‘Then my dad said, “You know I did nothing to hurt that girl. You know I wasn’t there. You know it wasn’t me.” And Mom said, “It doesn’t matter what I know. If the truth comes out, it will be a scandal. But if you run off and hide somewhere until after the war, everyone will forget. Ann and I can live with my parents for the duration. You have to think of us first.” Dad left the house then. He slammed the door when he did. Dad never slams doors. I lay awake for hours waiting for him to come back, worrying that he had left for good. Then a little after three, I heard the door open and close and finally I could get to sleep. Libby, you have to tell me what’s going on. I’m scared. I’m confused.’

I gently placed my hands on Ann’s upper arms and looked straight into her eyes. ‘I am sorry for what you are going through, Ann. Right now, though, I don’t have any real answers. I’m confused, too. But I’m going to figure this out. One way or another, I will find answers. When I do, I will let you know. Just now, I feel like I’ve been turned upside down and shaken, and set back down with the ground shifting beneath my feet. I imagine you feel that way, too. But, please, trust me, for just a little bit longer.’

‘I don’t know how long I can stand this, Libby. I feel worse than when I was a little girl and the milkman ran over my puppy with his truck. I never thought I’d ever feel any worse than that, but I do.’

I wrapped my arms around her and gave her a hug. ‘I’m sorry, Ann. I’ll do everything I can to make the world right again for all of us. Right now, though, I need to get back to work and try to do what I can to end this war. You understand that, don’t you?’

Ann’s long face looked bleak. ‘Yeah, the war,’ she mumbled, ‘the war always comes first.’

As her slumped shoulders and weary shuffling feet left the restroom, I hustled back to my tests, regretting everything.

When chaos erupted in the Calutron area, I looked over at Charlie on the other side of the room. Without a word, we both raced out of the lab to find the source of the problem. The moment we reached the machinery, the situation was obvious.

A man was pinned to the racetrack, held there by a sheet of metal plate. He’d obviously gotten too close to the Calutron with the piece of metal in his hand. We’d all been warned about the proximity of anything that responded to magnetic pull. It was clearly a careless mistake.

Charlie shouted, ‘Why the hell did he bring that in here?’

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ engineer Mike DeVries shouted back. ‘Shut down the magnet!’

In moments, the cry of, ‘shut down the magnet,’ were coming from nearly everyone gathered in the vicinity.

‘I’m not going to do it,’ the foreman yelled. ‘Listen, people, there are three hundred people an hour being killed in this war. If I shut down a magnet, it could take us as long as a week to get it back up and stabilized and producing again. A week lost, more than two thousand dead. I will not do it.’

Charlie shouted over the noise, ‘We can’t just leave him there.’

‘It’s our job to stop the war.’ Pointing at the pinned man, he said, ‘It’s his job to stop the war. Right now, we all have to act as if we were the only people in the world with that responsibility. Any damage done to this man is already done. Shutting down the magnet won’t change that.’

The cries to shut down faded away. Clusters of people gathered in conversation. I felt so helpless. I tried to conjure up a solution but nothing was coming to mind. Was the man crying or moaning? It was impossible to hear above the clatter of the relentless racetrack spinning away.

DeVries ran up to the foreman, leaned into his ear. The foreman nodded and yelled, ‘Two by fours. We need some two by fours.’

A couple of men came running up with lumber. They shoved the boards under one side of the plate and put all their weight on it to leverage it away from the magnet. Their veins bulged, sweat appeared on their foreheads. Finally, their efforts paid off. The sheet of metal pulled away, and clanked to the floor. The man slumped to the ground. Men with a stretcher appeared out of nowhere, picked him up and hurried him away.

Like everyone else who’d witnessed the event in the Calutron room, Charlie and I both had trouble concentrating on our work. We frequently exchanged glances of concern across the room. Hours later, Charlie stood beside me and said, ‘He’s going to be all right.’

‘Really? Are you sure?’

‘Yes. He’s got bruises and a few cuts. But no internal bleeding. The doctor ordered bed rest for a couple of days and then he should be back at work. And, hopefully, more careful.’

The day had been emotionally draining. I just wanted to go home and curl up by the fire with a book. But I had a Walking Molecules meeting and a commitment to Ann and to Irene’s family. I pulled on my galoshes and trudged out the door to Joe’s.

W
hen I stepped outside, Teddy was standing on the sidewalk. I’d pressured him into agreeing not to meet me alone anywhere, any time, until the situation was resolved. But there he was.

‘Before you say anything, I have no excuse but now that I’m here, we might as well walk to the meeting together,’ he said.

I should refuse. I should chastise him. But, in all honesty, I was really glad to see him. ‘You’re right. Harm’s already done. Let’s go.’

As we walked up the boardwalk, Ottinger hurried toward us. One hand held his hat in place, the other waved wildly in the air. As he got closer, he shouted, ‘Clark! Elizabeth Clark!’

Teddy stepped between me and the onrushing man. ‘What do you want?’

‘I need to talk to Miss Clark.’

‘About what?’ Teddy said, holding his ground.

Ottinger tried to push him aside. Teddy shifted his weight and held firm. ‘I think you’d better tell me what this is all about.’

Ottinger ignored him and said, ‘Miss Clark, I need to talk to you.’

Curious and feeling secure with Teddy by my side, I said, ‘Yes, what do you want?’

‘You need to stop this.’

‘Stop what, sir?’

‘You need to stop persecuting me. I didn’t do anything.’

‘Sir, I do not know what you are talking about.’

‘Irene. We’re talking about Irene.’

‘What about her?’ Teddy asked.

‘We had a little incident at the guest house and I have barely spoken to her since.’

‘I understand she slapped you in the face,’ I said.

‘Yes and she made me cut my lip on my tooth.’

‘And you were pretty angry about that, weren’t you?’

‘Well, wouldn’t you be?’

Teddy stepped forward, putting his face right up to the man’s. ‘You are Ottinger, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said, waving Teddy away as if the fact was insignificant. ‘Miss Clark, you’ve got to stop lying to the authorities about me.’

‘I think you’d better move along, sir,’ Teddy said.

‘Wait a minute, Teddy. Dr Ottinger, what makes you think I spoke to the authorities about you? Did they tell you that?’

‘No. They wouldn’t tell me a thing. But I asked around. I know you’ve been trying to find out who killed Irene. And I did not do it.’

‘I didn’t talk to authorities about you, Dr Ottinger,’ I said.

‘Well, if it wasn’t you, who did talk to them?’ he asked.

‘I can’t tell you that, Dr Ottinger.’

‘Do you know, Libby?’ Ted asked.

‘Not now, Teddy.’

‘I wasn’t even here at Christmas,’ Ottinger objected. ‘And now they’re going to talk to my wife. What is she going to think of me?’

‘Well, Dr Ottinger, you might have thought of that a long time ago.’

‘I admit I joked around with all the girls and took a couple of them out for a beer at Joe’s. I know my wife wouldn’t like that. But still, it’s not as if I were doing anything else.’

‘Oh, really, Dr Ottinger? What about the scandal at Columbia University?’

‘What scandal?’

‘You know, you and your students. And particularly the one student who was carrying your child.’

Ottinger’s hands flew to his head, knocking off his hat. He grasped the thinning hair on both sides of his head. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Oh, please, Dr Ottinger,’ I said with a sigh.

‘I swear to you. I only left the university to continue my work here. There wasn’t any scandal. Students? A pregnant student? You’re talking about adultery? I am a Catholic, Miss Clark! I would never … Who told you that? That is outrageous!’

‘If it’s not true, Dr Ottinger, I am sure it will be easy to find out,’ I said, not really believing what I said, but hoping to call his bluff.

‘So you’re going to keep persecuting me? Are you going to talk to my wife, too? My colleagues at the university? Asking insinuating questions? Those questions just don’t go away, Miss Clark. No one will back that story because it’s not true. But the suspicion will remain there. You will destroy me, my reputation, my work, my marriage.’ He lunged toward me and his nose collided with Teddy’s fist. Ottinger made a hard pratfall onto the boardwalk. He looked dazed. A tiny rivulet of blood trickled out of one nostril.

‘C’mon, Libby,’ Teddy said, grabbing my hand.

‘But, Teddy, he’s hurt,’ I objected.

‘Yeah, he is. So hurry while we still have time to get away from here.’

We ran hand in hand down the boardwalk. The darned galoshes limited my speed. The rubbery slap on the wood made me giggle. Then, Teddy joined in, laughing louder than I was. By the time we reached Joe’s, we were both laughing so hard that we could barely stand upright.

As we ran, I didn’t give a thought to my hand entwined with Teddy’s. Once we came to a stop and Teddy still held on firmly, I grew instantly self-conscious about the intimacy. ‘Uh, Teddy …’ I said, lifting our hands up high.

‘Right,’ Teddy said loosening his grip and slowly releasing my fingers. ‘Don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.’

Breathless we arrived at the table commandeered by the group. For a moment, no one said a word. Tom spoke first. ‘So you’re both breathless and your faces are red. Do you care to explain what you’ve been up to?’

We ran through a tag-team explanation of our encounter with Ottinger. ‘Do you believe him?’ Gregg asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Do any of us know anyone at Columbia?’

‘I have a cousin there but she’s an English major. I doubt she’d know anything about anyone in the science departments,’ Gregg said.

‘A scandal like that should have covered the campus,’ I suggested. ‘Could you check with her?’

‘I imagine I could get her phone number from my mother but how could I call her and ask about a scientist here when they’re listening in to all our phone calls?’

‘Get the number and call her from a pay phone in Knoxville,’ Teddy suggested.

‘I’d have to wait until Sunday to do that. I’ll try to get her tonight and keep my questions vague,’ Gregg said.

‘Before you go to all that trouble,’ Tom said, ‘we should know who made the allegations. That person might have an ulterior motive for spreading the rumor. Who told you about it, Libby?’

I paused, trying to find a good reason to not answer the question. When that failed, I said, ‘Dr Bishop.’

‘Bishop? You can’t be serious?’ Gregg said.

From there a discussion about Bishop divided the group. Those who knew him, thought he was a credible source. The other chemists were far more skeptical.

‘I think,’ Tom said, ‘that to determine his objectivity on a more logical basis, we need to ascertain his motivation. As I see it, there are two possibilities. Either Bishop is telling the truth or at least talking about something he believes is true, or he has concocted this story for some hidden purpose. If the latter is true, it points suspicion away from Ottinger and straight to Bishop.’

‘Hold on,’ Gregg said. ‘There is no way Bishop could kill anyone.’

‘How can you be so sure about that, Gregg?’ Tom asked. ‘You have an affair. The girl gets pregnant. You don’t want anyone to find out. Sounds like a strong motive to me. How well do you know this man, Libby?’

‘I’ve had dinner at his home a few times. He’s stood up for me and he’s given me other information.’

‘Come on, Libby. If he was having an affair with Irene and he killed her, wouldn’t he want you to think he was on your side?’

Did Tom make a logical point? I wasn’t sure but I nodded anyway.

‘Don’t we want to find out about Ottinger before jumping to that kind of conclusion?’ Gregg said.

‘I don’t see the two questions as mutually exclusive,’ Tom said. ‘Set your emotions aside, Libby. Think logically. Is it a plausible scenario?’

All eyes turned to me. I thought about my answer before saying it. ‘I have given this possibility some thought before tonight. At first, I could not imagine Dr Bishop having an affair with anyone. The more I considered it, though, I realized it was possible. However, no matter how I turn it over in my mind, I find great difficulty in thinking he could have killed Irene.’

That remark spawned another argument where one group of scientists was pitted against the others. When the speculative debate about Bishop started running in circles, Teddy interrupted the group. ‘We’re not going to agree on probability here. I think we just need to plan our next steps. To be thorough, we must investigate both Ottinger and Bishop. Gregg, you agreed to check out the Ottinger scandal with your cousin, right?’

Gregg nodded.

‘So what do we need to know about Bishop?’ Tom asked.

‘We need to know if he had any opportunity to return to Oak Ridge on Christmas night. I had dismissed him as a possible suspect right away because he didn’t have access to his car. Now I wonder if there was another way for him to get back here that night,’ I said.

‘How can we find that out?’ Teddy asked.

‘I’ll have to talk to Ann. Her father made me promise that I wouldn’t tell her anything but I don’t think I can keep my word on that any longer. Ann will know if there was any way for him to get back here.’

‘What if she tells her father? And he is the one responsible for Irene’s death? Won’t that put you at great risk?’ Teddy asked.

‘The whole world is at risk right now, Teddy. I can’t let that get in my way. I’ll talk to Ann and deal with the consequences if needed.’