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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.”
