Deceit

FIFTY-FOUR

I still had a key to the Littleton Journal office.

I drove back into Littleton in the dead of night.

I parked in the strip mall and sat in my car until I was sure no one was around. No kids chugging beer out of paper bags, no Mr. Yang cooking up some Peking duck for tomorrow’s lunch crowd.

I let myself in and headed to the back.

That’s where the paper was paginated. It was all done by computer now, of course. Each page spit out as a separate unit, then brought over to the printing press on Yarrow Street where it was made whole.

The older issues were stored on microfilm, but everything from ten years ago and forward was hard-drived.

Once an issue was deemed finished-by Hinch, of course-you had to save it in a separate file, where it was organized by date. I’d done it myself; at the Littleton Journal we multitasked.

I logged in and scrolled back to three years ago. To the issue with the story about Eddie Bronson. The last issue Wren worked on before he disappeared.

Not to read it again; I pretty much knew it by heart.

I was looking for something.

When I found it, I’d know what it was.

I went back and forth and back-scroll, click, scroll, click. That issue, then on to the next, then back.

I skimmed the stories. “Who’s Eddie Bronson?” A review of a newly released DVD, four stars. The weather forecast-hot and dry, followed by hot and dry, then more hot and dry. A two-for-one deal at the DQ.

Call it peripheral vision. The thing you don’t really see, but it’s okay, your brain does. It’s paginated there for future reference.

The little number on the right-hand corner of page 1.

Every issue of the Littleton Journal has one-the computer automatically places it there. Every issue since its inception-an issue number. It marks time; it says we might not be a venerable paper, but we have a venerable history.

We have roots. We go back.

The issue with “Who’s Eddie Bronson?” was number 7,512.

I went forward to the next one.

Then back one more time to be sure.

“Okay,” I said out loud.

Got it.

I was back in my Littleton house.

I’d let myself in through the back door, just in case.

Someone had been there first.

I could’ve been in the cabin by the lake. The clutter was indistinguishable. One mess looks pretty much like another.

I went upstairs and stood under the shower spray for twenty solid minutes, trying to wash off the stultifying stink of incarceration. Trying to get my head straight. I wondered if craziness was catching. I’d noticed sudden tremors in my hands, fingers clenching and unclenching, as if they had something they urgently needed to pick up.

When I walked naked into my bedroom and opened up my underwear drawer, I said: “There’s the gun.”

Speaking it out loud, as if I were casually pointing this out to another person in the room.

He’d put it back nicely and neatly.

The gun that shot Nate the Skate. That put a bullet through Mr. Patjy’s head.

Guns don’t kill people. People do.

I pulled on some sweats and stuck the gun in the waistband, like a gangbanger might.

I was in a hurry.

If they’d planted the gun, it was so someone could find it. Preferably with me holding it.

That’s what I was doing as I held my breath and flicked on the downstairs light-holding the gun with my arm straight out like I’d seen in TV police procedurals, not putting it back into the waistband of my pants until I’d visually reconnoitered the room.

Empty.

I sat on the bottom step and stared, the class dullard desperately trying not to fail again. I rode herd on what little intelligence I had left. I was back in the Acropolis Diner; I was almost done. The check was due. We needed to leave.

You’re it, he’d said to me. You’re it… you’re it… you’re it.…

Yes, I know.

And now, finally, I understood why.

“Hey, man, where the fuck you been?”

The first words out of Seth’s mouth when I rung him up, still sitting on that basement step.

He seemed personally aggrieved that I’d taken off without telling him. People had been asking his take on things. The shooting. The missing gun. The sudden notoriety these things had pulled kicking and screaming into the light of day. In Littleton, the day could be long, hot, and brutal.

He’d had to lie a little. Act like he knew more than he actually did. As if he’d been in my confidence all along. I’d robbed him of the full pleasure of basking in infamy by association.

“Working on a obituary. Like I told you.”

“Yeah? You might want to start on yours while you’re at it.”

“Why’s that, Seth?”

“The sheriff came by and interviewed me.”

“Oh?”

“Oh? That’s all you’re gonna say? Oh? Shit, if I knew you were a desperado, I would’ve hung out with you more often.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you can’t bowl for shit. And the next pussy you get will be your first. How’s that?”

“Pretty accurate. Did the sheriff seem pleased with that?”

“I don’t think he has a sense of humor.”

“No.”

“So, you going to tell me what’s going on? Or do I have to wait to read it in the fucking Littleton Journal?”

“That all depends.”

“Oh yeah? On what?”

“If you can help me or not.”

“If I can help you do what?”

“Know what’s going on.”

“Huh? I’m a little buzzed right now, okay? You’re not making it any fucking easier.”

“You did some Sheetrock work for Wren a few years ago.”

“Sheetrock? Nope.”

“I saw the bill.”

“You saw the bill. Okay. Doesn’t mean I did the work.”

“Where did he want the work done?”

“Where? His basement.”

“Why? What was in the basement? Did he have damage down there?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah. There was a fucking hole in the wall. He wanted me to fix it.”

“For five hundred dollars?”

“Hey, that was my starting price-I would’ve negotiated down, man. Besides, he wanted the whole fucker fortified.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did he want the basement wall fortified?”

“I don’t know. He said the insulation was shitty. He said he needed protection against flooding.”

“Against flooding? In Littleton?”

“Hey, what’s with that tone? It’s my job to tell him he’s nuts? Didn’t he lock himself in your office one night or something?”

“Or something. That’s what he said to you. His words? ‘I need protection against flooding’?”

“Yep.”

“You never did the work?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What’s that mean?”

“I mean I don’t know. It means I forget.”

“When did he ask you to do this work? Was it around the time he locked himself in the office-around then?”

“Yeah.”

“So when were you supposed to start?”

Seth sighed. “He said he might be taking off. If I didn’t hear from him in two weeks, I should just go ahead and do it.”

“So he paid you? In advance?”

Believe it or not, it’s possible to hear someone squirm over the phone.

“Uh… yeah.”

“And you didn’t hear from him for more than two weeks? You didn’t hear from him again, ever?”

“No, guess not.”

“But you didn’t do the work? Why’s that?”

“I must’ve forgot.”

“Sure. You forgot. You were already spending the money-so why do the work? He was nuts; who was to know.”

“Sue me. I’m human.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, ever hear about throwing stones, amigo?”

It was here all along.

I’d stared right at it.

That day I came down here and retraced the plumber’s steps.

I’d moved a book aside and seen that hole in the wall.

The book with plaster dust on its jacket.

Hiroshima.

I’d thought the plumber was the one who’d smashed the wall in. It wasn’t the plumber.

It was Wren.

The night before he left. Before he headed off to the lake.

But not before he protected the story.

I’d peeked into that hole and saw what you usually see on the other side of Sheetrock in these parts. The same thing the plumber must’ve seen, then dismissed like I had.

Newspaper insulation. It’s abundant and cheap, and since you don’t exactly have to worry about blizzards in the middle of the California desert, it does the job.

Only this newspaper wasn’t cheap. It was ridiculously expensive.

It cost Wren his life.

I moved the books aside.

I stuck my hand inside the hole and gently, slowly, carefully pulled the crinkled newspaper out of the hole.

A front page of the Littleton Journal.

Lots and lots of front pages. The wall was stuffed with them.

The issue number still clearly legible in the right-hand corner.

7,513.

The one missing in the files.

The issue with “Who’s Eddie Bronson?” was 7,512.

The next issue, featuring a movie review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and a recap of the latest meeting of the local DAR Society, had been 7,514.

One issue number skipped.

What I’d discovered as I scrolled back and forth and back.

How does that happen?

Easy.

One issue went to press the night Wren locked himself in the office. One front page. This one. That’s what he’d been doing in there that night. Not breaking down. Not howling at the moon. Howling at the injustice. Trying to get the story out. Before he disappeared into the void.

He hadn’t had time to save it. But the computer automatically gave it an issue number, and when the next one went to press, it was one number higher than it should’ve been. No one would have noticed-no one was keeping count.

America’s Unknown Nuclear Disaster

The headline of the issue that never ran.

Three-inch type.

All in red.

And something more. It came complete with illustrations.

A schematic drawing. A diagram.

A fucking blueprint.

Faded, crisscrossed with lines, even a layman able to discern the shape and function of the thing being built.

The core. The fuel rods. The shell.

A real blueprint. As opposed to fake ones they’d trotted out at Lloyd Steiner’s trial.

Yes, Anna, your father did give something to Wren.

Something he must’ve held on to all those years. Hid away-a kind of legacy. For you, maybe. So you’d know who he really was. That he might’ve gone to jail, but he was never guilty. Not really. No guiltier than anyone else who’d helped build a nuclear reactor out in the desert and kept their mouth shut after it blew sky-high.

Wren’s Rule Number One.

Back up your notes for protection.

He had.

Sooner or later, he’d told Anna, someone would bring it into the light.

Literally.

Unfortunately, he’d made one mistake.

He’d anointed Seth Bishop the protector.

Seth Bishop, who, hearing neither hide nor hair of Wren for two weeks, was supposed to rip two hundred front pages of the Littleton Journal out of a wall and, even with his limited intellectual curiosity, understand that someone needed to see them. That its three-inch headlines were screaming bloody murder.

Only Seth adhered to the credo of the dedicated stoner. No need to do the work if you’ve already got the cash-no doubt already blown on some primo Panama Red and six-packs of Coors Light.

On my way out of Littleton, I heard a siren going in the opposite direction.

The sheriff on his way to make the climactic arrest, I supposed. Perpetrator and gun, nabbed red-handed.

He’d find an empty house with an empty drawer.

I made one stop before I pulled onto Highway 45.

Mrs. Weitz opened the door, then continued to stand there-all three hundred or so pounds of her.

“Is Sam home?” I asked her.

She appeared to be on the verge of lying to me, but then Sam yelled from the kitchen, asking her where the damn Yodels were, so she had no choice but to let me in.

“It’s okay,” I told her, as she moved aside, barely, to let me through. “I won’t be staying long.”

Sam was more hospitable than his wife. Though he did surreptitiously peek through both study windows before pulling the shades, wondering, I imagine, if there was about to be a major guns-drawn bust in his front yard.

“Jesus.” Sam’s first word to me. “You have no idea what they’ve been saying about you.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Is any of it true?”

“Not much.”

“Okay-good enough for me. Anything for a bowling team member. You need some help?”

“Just a little.”

“Shoot.” Then he blushed and said, “Poor choice of words.” He’d noticed the gun peeking out of my waistband.

“How long have you been trying to sell me some insurance, Sam?”

“What? Wait, come on. You mean to tell me you came all the way here for insurance?”

“Yeah. Exactly.”