CHAPTER 44
Okay, here’s what we’ve been able to piece together so far,” said Thornton. “Alvin and Theresa Morgan were young American missionaries who went to Japan in 1935, right after their marriage. By virtue of some incredibly bad luck, they settled in Nagasaki. In August 1945, Theresa was eight months pregnant. She was badly injured by the bomb. The doctors couldn’t save her, but they did manage to save the baby. Newspaper stories in Japan called him ‘the Nagasaki miracle.’ That baby was Isabella’s father, Jacob Morgan.”
“That’s a hell of a beginning,” I said. “What next?”
“He was adopted by another missionary couple. Raised in Japan. Married another Nagasaki survivor — a young woman who was the daughter of a Japanese nurse and an Italian physician. He took his wife’s family name, which was Arakawa.”
“So Isabella was only one-quarter Asian,” I said. That was why, despite her dark, exotic beauty, she didn’t look Japanese. “But why turn killer? Lots of people lost parents or grandparents in the bombings without becoming murderous.”
“Isabella’s mother died of bone cancer when Isabella was ten. Her father was treated for prostate cancer in his fifties. I’m sure she blamed the bomb for their cancer as well as her grandmother’s death. I suppose, for someone looking to avenge a Nagasaki family’s suffering, the guy responsible for the success of the plutonium reactors seemed a logical target.”
Miranda shook her head sadly. “Three generations of fallout from Nagasaki,” she said. “Gives a sad twist to the term ‘radioactive daughter product,’ doesn’t it?” Nobody smiled at the grim pun. “But if Isabella’s Japanese heritage mattered so much, why’d she change her name from Arakawa — that was the name on her master’s-degree thesis — to Morgan?”
“Two reasons, I suspect,” said Thornton. “First, in memory of her grandmother, the one who was killed by the Nagasaki bomb. Second, to make her connection to her father and to Japan harder to trace, once she set the wheels in motion.”
“Say some more about her father’s part in all this,” I said.
Thornton nodded. “Remember, Jacob Arakawa lost his mother and his wife and maybe his prostate to the bomb,” he said. “So it’s possible he raised his daughter on hatred. But that’s just speculation. What we do know is this. Four weeks ago, he retired from Pipeline Services, Inc., on the eve of the company’s financial collapse. Three weeks ago, according to credit-card transactions at gas stations, he drove from New Iberia to Oak Ridge. The very next day, he turned around and drove home again.”
“So he made the trip just to bring the radiography camera he’d stolen,” said Emert.
“Looks that way,” said Thornton. “Shortly after he got back to Louisiana, he showed up at a hospital ER in New Orleans. Two days ago, just as we were closing in on him, he died of acute radiation sickness.”
“From removing and handling the iridium source,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Thornton. “We’ll probably never know which one of them put it into the vitamin capsule Novak swallowed, or how they got the capsule into Novak’s pill bottle. From the burn you saw on Isabella’s hand, she must have handled it at some point — probably longer than Miranda did, but not as long as Dr. Garcia.” Miranda shot me a look of pain, and I knew she was grieving for Garcia’s hands.
“So,” I said to Emert, “where’s Isabella now?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “It’s like she’s evaporated. She never showed up at her house, never came back for her car. Every officer in Oak Ridge has her picture committed to memory. If she surfaces here, we’ll nab her. But I think she’s gone. She knew we were onto her, Doc. She was about to skip out when you showed up at the library.”
I turned to Thornton. “What about you guys? What are y’all doing?”
“We’ve frozen her bank account,” he said, “we’ve tagged her credit cards, and her picture’s at every international airport and border crossing in the country. We’re also talking to everybody she worked with here and down at Tulane during graduate school. So far, we’ve got nothing. An elusive woman and her dead father. If she could find a way to get there,” he went on, “she might try for Japan. Her whole sense of identity seems to revolve around Nagasaki. Turns out she’s been there five times in the past ten years. But I don’t see how she’d get out of the country now.”
The memory of her hands, and how she’d cried out when I’d pried her fingers from the gun, stabbed at me.
Miranda shifted in her chair. “I hate to be the one to bring this up,” she said, “but is there a chance she’s still underground? Still somewhere in the sewer system?”
“Come on,” said Emert. “It’s been a week. Surely you don’t think she’s been hiding out down there in the dark for a week?”
“No,” she said quietly. “That’s not exactly what I was thinking.” She glanced in my direction, saw the pain in my eyes, and looked away.
“Ah,” said Emert awkwardly. “Well, we haven’t been able to search all the tunnels yet. Some of the pipes are fairly small, and the folks who work on the sewers all seem to be fairly stocky guys.” He seemed to have something more to say, but he stopped. Nobody else seemed to want to say it, either.
“You might want to call Roy Ferguson,” I finally said. “And Cherokee.” The room was silent except for the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights. I stared at the table, and at my hands, which rested on it, the fingers spread slightly. “If there’s scent from…human remains…in one of the tunnels…” I had to pause; I took a breath, and then another. “The scent would spool downstream with the water. The dog should be able to detect it at the outfall near the library.” I focused on the right index finger on the table and willed it to move. The finger lifted slightly, yet still it seemed not quite my own. “Excuse me,” I whispered.
I left the room and turned down a dim inner hallway, heading for a rectangle of light — a glass door to the outside world. Just as I reached it, I heard a voice behind me. “Dr. B.?” I turned, and saw Miranda running toward me. She stopped a foot away. In the light pouring through the glass, her eyes shone with such kindness and compassion, I wondered what I could possibly have done to deserve them. Maybe nothing; maybe — like grace or mercy — they were unearned yet freely given, dropping as the gentle rain from heaven. I started to speak, but she held up a hand to stop me. “I need to say something to you,” she began, “and it’s really hard for me to say, because I know it will be hard for you to hear. I’m sorry about Isabella — that’s the truth, but that’s not what’s hard, because the fact is, you barely knew Isabella. But you did know Jess, and you did love Jess, and deep down, I think you’re still not over Jess’s murder. Not by a long shot. I think you’re lost in a maze of love and grief — more lost than you know — and you’re having a tough time finding your way out. It’s not just my fingertips or Eddie’s hands or some old scientist’s guts that are in tatters, Dr. B.; it’s your heart. And it’s not the storm sewers of Oak Ridge that are the labyrinth; it’s your life.” Miranda’s words shocked me — shocked me with the force of pure, blindsiding truth. “If you can work your way out of the maze, fine,” she went on. “Work as if your life depends on it, because it does. But if work isn’t the way out, then find another way instead. Talk to a therapist, take a sabbatical, get a dog, go on a pilgrimage. Whatever it takes to heal, do it. Do it for those of us who love you. Do it for Jess. Do it for yourself.”