Bones of Betrayal (Body Farm 4)

The first image showed the rear end of an antique-looking car — late 1930s, I guessed, by the black paint, bulbous fenders, and small windows. The trunk lid was raised, and a pale bundle filled the cargo space. The detail left a lot to be desired, but over the years I’d seen enough blanket-wrapped bodies in enough trunks to recognize one. The second image showed the bundle lying beside a shallow, circular hole that appeared to have been freshly dug. In the third and fourth pictures, the body — no longer wrapped in the blanket or sheet, and wearing what appeared to be dark clothes — lay in the center of the depression. It was this third exposure Rodney had printed as I’d looked over his shoulder in the darkroom. But the fifth and sixth prints were even more haunting, for they showed close-ups of the man’s head and his face, the vacant eyes staring at us across the gulf of time.

Emert laid aside the last of the close-ups. “The weird thing,” he said, “besides who the hell’s this dead guy and what the hell’s going on here, is why Novak would take the photos in the first place? And why would he go to such trouble to preserve the film all these years? And why would he leave the film undeveloped, for Christ’s sake, if he wanted to keep the images?”

“That’s a whole bunch of weird things,” I pointed out. “You’re a man of many questions.”

“That’s what my mom used to say when I was a kid,” he said. “Since that’s the way I am, might as well get some good out of it. The way I see it, you ask enough people enough questions, enough times, sooner or later you might get an answer that tells you something.”

I’d been wondering about the same weird things as Emert, plus a few others. “Maybe it’s not Novak the pictures incriminate,” I said. I thought of the crumpled note outside Novak’s front door. “Maybe it’s somebody else. Somebody whose secret he knew. Maybe Novak was blackmailing whoever the pictures incriminated.”

“He was a pretty lousy blackmailer if he threw away the blackmail note,” Emert pointed out.

“Maybe he was still getting the hang of it,” I said. “Maybe he considered sending the note, then had second thoughts.”

“Come on, Doc — he’d had that film on ice for a long damn time. If he were gonna put the screws to somebody, he’d have done it decades ago, while his target was still alive, and while Novak was young enough to enjoy the money. Besides, you saw his handwriting on that legal pad. It doesn’t match the note.”

The detective was right. Novak’s handwriting was small and precise. The lettering on the note was large and blocky. “Okay, I give,” I said. “You got any theories?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “All I can come up with is that maybe he wanted an insurance policy of some sort, leverage he could use if he needed to. But he wanted to reduce the risk somebody might just stumble across the pictures — the maid or the home-health nurse or whoever — so he left the film undeveloped. It’s not a great theory, but it’s all I’ve got so far.”

The last three pictures in the series were different. They showed tree trunks and thickets of foliage, and — off in the distance, through a gap in the trees — a small barn. Here’s the view from the grave, I thought, trying to think like Leonard Novak might have. Here’s how to find it again someday.

I’d brought two sets of prints with me. I left one with Emert, and took the other with me as I left the police department, crossed the parking lot, and unlocked my truck. I slipped behind the wheel and started the engine, but then I just sat, my mind spinning faster than the motor.

A story had unspooled from that roll of film. A strange tale from beyond the grave, told by a man whose own murder was the most bizarre I had ever encountered. I didn’t know what it meant yet, and maybe I never would, but I couldn’t wait for the next chapter.

I switched off the key and got out of the truck.

CHAPTER 17

I didn’t see her at the reference desk, and the Oak Ridge Room was locked and empty. Disappointed, I turned to go, figuring I’d stop at the circulation desk on my way out and ask what hours Isabella, the history-minded librarian, worked. As I approached the desk, I heard a voice at my elbow, from somewhere amid rows of bookshelves. “Dr. Brockton? Is that you?”

I spun. “Oh, hi,” I said. “I was just looking for you. I was afraid maybe you weren’t working this afternoon.”

“Till six,” she said, stepping out of the shadowy stacks. “What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if I could look through those Manhattan Project photo binders again?”

“Of course,” she said. She led me back to the glass-walled room and unlocked the door. “Anything in particular you’re looking for?”

“Seems like I remember there was a set of photos of houses and farms that were already here when the project started. Sort of the ‘before’ picture of Oak Ridge?”

She smiled. “You paid good attention,” she said. Pulling a fat binder from among the dozens filling the bookcase, she handed it to me. “Anything else I can help you with?”

I almost said that she could help me with my lack of a dinner companion, but that seemed a bit forward. “Just this, for now,” I said. “Thanks.”

“If you think of something later, let me know,” she said. She hesitated slightly before she turned and walked away. I didn’t know why, but that half second of hesitation made me hope that she’d somehow read my mind, and that maybe she liked what she read there.

The binder was three inches thick, its black-and-white prints tucked into clear plastic sleeves. Flipping through the pages, I saw weathered farmhouses, ramshackle barns, tobacco sheds, haywagons, general stores, one-room churches, mule-drawn plows. I knew the photos were from the early 1940s — early 1943, most of them, because construction of Oak Ridge and its three huge installations began in earnest that spring — but many of the pictures could have passed for images from the 1920s, or even the 1890s. What inconceivable change: to go from such a rural, sleepy area — a place the transplanted scientists referred to as “Dogpatch”—to a churning, teeming enterprise, one that pushed the limits of science, engineering, and human endeavor on a gargantuan scale. What must those displaced farmers have thought? How many of them had heard of John Hendrix and the wild-eyed vision he’d shared back at the dawn of the twentieth century?

The images were fascinating without being helpful. I had opened the notebook hoping one of the photos might show a barn like the one in Leonard Novak’s photos — a small barn tucked at the base of a wooded ridge, a silo at one end. Although the binder contained pictures of barns and silos and woods, none of those pictures combined all three elements: here was a photo of a barn with no silo; there was a photo of a silo with no barn; a few pages farther, a barn and silo but no hillside or woods.

I closed the binder and sighed.

Just then I heard a slight tap on the glass. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Isabella, and I stood up. She opened the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she said. “I was just about to take a break, and thought I’d ask if you need anything before I disappear.”

“Thanks for asking, but I think I’ve hit a dead end here,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is there anything other than a photograph that might tell you what you need to know?”

I smiled. “What I need to know? There’s no end to the things I need to know; just ask my colleagues or my secretary or my graduate assistant. But the thing I was hoping to find out just now? I’m not sure anything but a photograph would work.” She looked confused, and I didn’t blame her. “Here, I’ll show you, if you don’t mind,” I said. “But if you want to take your break instead, don’t let me keep you.”

“Show me,” she said.

I opened the manila envelope I’d brought with me, the prints of the Novak film. Reaching to the back of the sheaf of photos so as to keep the photos of the dead man tucked inside the envelope, I slid out the last few. “These are old, crummy pictures, taken somewhere near here — I think—in the 1940s. Maybe. Somewhere in the woods, apparently”—I used the end of

a pen to point to the trees, and she nodded—“but with a view of what appears to be a barn and a silo.” She bit her lip and bent low over the photo, her black hair hanging down and curtaining off her face. “Hard to tell much from these pictures, but I didn’t see any pictures in the notebook that looked like they could possibly be this barn.”

“And you’re trying to identify this particular barn?”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, not exactly. What I’m really trying to do, if you want to split hairs, is find the spot from which this photograph of this barn was taken.”

She puzzled over that a moment. “In other words, if you knew where this barn was, you could figure out where this photographer was standing when he or she took this picture?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Is there any hope?”

“Absolutely none,” she said. Seeing my face fall, she laughed. “I’m kidding. I’m not making any promises, but if you’ll let me scan a copy of this, I’ll do some research. This is a lot more interesting than most of the questions I get.”