Was Wren sick? Was that why he’d gone off the deep end back in Littleton? Why he’d buried himself out here?

The attached workup was no longer attached.

I was looking for it when my cell phone rang.

“You there yet?” a voice said.

There where? I thought. It took me a second to realize it was Wren. He didn’t sound particularly friendly.

“Yes. I’m in your cabin. Where are you?”

“How long you been waiting?” he asked.

“A couple of hours, I guess.”

“Uh-huh. I had to go into Fishbein for supplies.”

Fishbein. I thought, where’s that?

“My truck broke down,” he said. “Can’t get it fixed till tomorrow.”

“You’re in Fishbein?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“I thought…”

“What?”

“I thought someone walked up to my car before. I must’ve been dreaming.”

“Uh-huh. So, you’re sitting in my cabin?”

I thought there was something lurking in his tone. “Yes. Nice fishing rods,” I said, attempting to deflect it.

There were three of them leaning against the wall.

I’d done a story on a trout-fishing contest in Vermont-a legitimate story, actually getting on a plane and traveling two hours down back roads to a roaring stream near the Canadian border. Professional fishermen were as protective of their rods as professional baseball players were of their Louisville Sluggers. The ones against the wall looked kind of expensive.

“They’re okay,” Wren answered.

I asked him what kind they were. Trout rods, he said. Then I asked him if he lived alone.

“That’s right,” he said. “Why?” When I didn’t respond, he said: “Oh, the voice mail.”

We’re out fishing, but if you’d like to leave a message, fine.

“Old habit,” he said. “Always pretend there’s more than one of you-if someone’s planning to rob you, it’ll make them think twice.”

I wondered who might want to rob a cabin in the middle of nowhere. A fishing-rod thief, maybe.

“Well,” I said, “are you coming back?”

“I told you. My truck broke down. I can’t get it fixed till tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

I’d traveled two days; Wren wasn’t here.

“Well, maybe I can come to you?” I asked.

“Sure. If you want to get lost, you could. Drive into the woods now and they won’t find you till next year.”

“That’s great. I drove a long way to see you. All the way from Littleton.”

“Boo hoo,” he said. “You came for my notes. I found them.”

Judging by the look of the place, that might’ve been more difficult than it sounded. There was stuff everywhere-newspapers, dirty clothes, ripped magazines, scribbled-on legal pads. Not to mention dire-sounding notes from laboratories in Michigan.

I heard him light a match, then the sound of him puffing away interrupted by a cough. Lung cancer?

“You know,” he said, “after the flood, they did a major investigation.”

“I know,” I said. “I read about it. They set up some kind of government commission.”

“Some kind, sure. They subpoenaed the construction company. Hired their own engineering experts to review the dam blueprints, check the requisition orders, the whole nine yards. One thing. The hearings were closed-door. Not open to the public.”

“Was that so unusual?”

“For a Public Works project, very. They said reputations were at stake. No one had been proven guilty of anything. Not yet. They didn’t want anyone’s name dragged through the mud.”

“That’s not unreasonable, is it? I mean, you could make a case for that.”

“You could make a case for anything.” He coughed again. “Let me ask you something. The first time you did it… any pangs of guilt?”

“Did what?”

“Lied. Did it prick your conscience or not?”

“Yes,” I said, “it pricked my conscience.”

“But you did it again.”

“Yes, I did it again.”

“Why?”

It was evidently the question of the week. First Anna, now him.

“What’s the difference? I did it. Pick any reason you’d like. Look, why don’t we stick to…”

“I read them.”

“What?”

“Your canon of deceit. You know, they’re still online, in that internal review your paper put out there to show the world how diligent it was being. I noticed something. How your stories got progressively wackier. You had a geometrically increasing suspension of disbelief. Nothing was too hard to swallow at first-but later on? Come on. That story about the abortion clinic-bombing pediatrician? Anagrams, secret meetings in deserted fields. It reads like a bad movie. I just wondered if accelerating the outrageousness was on purpose? Maybe you wanted to get caught.”

“I needed to feed the beast.” I said. “That’s all.”

The beast was frightening and ever-voracious, I could’ve added. After a while, I found myself in a game of Can You Top This, only I was playing against myself. It was ultimately exhausting.

I heard him take another puff-the muted background clink-clink of silverware scraping plates. A diner?

“Where was I?” he said.

“The closed-door commission.”

“Right, the commission. They took their testimony and made their report, and in the end they got their pound of flesh. Someone went to jail.”

“I didn’t know that. Who?”

“An engineer. Lloyd Steiner. Interesting guy-a borderline genius. One of those left-leaning, Lower-East-Side Communist summer camp kids-back in the thirties, when it was all the rage.”

“Was he guilty?”

“Of what? Being a liberal Jew? Sure.”

“Of building a dangerous dam?”

“I don’t know. He was the assistant to the assistant engineer. Hard to imagine he had enough control over anything to be guilty.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not sure.” Then he lowered his voice, making him sound nearly conspiratorial; evidently he didn’t want other diners to hear. “I can tell you he went to prison for ten years, and when he got out, his family had moved from a one-bedroom apartment in a government subdivision to a four-bedroom split-level adobe in La Jolla. I checked. He couldn’t get a job as an engineer, of course. Not anymore. He took auto-mechanic classes in jail-that’s what he ended up doing when he got out. Must’ve been excruciating for him. The boy-wonder engineer, fixing cars for a living. He must’ve had the only blue collar in the neighborhood.”

“You think he was paid off? That he was some kind of patsy?”

“I told you. I don’t know. Unlike your method of journalism, I can’t say if he was or he wasn’t. I can’t go put it in print. I’d need proof. It does make you wonder. Think about it-they could’ve hit him with all the Communist crap, summer camps where everyone wore red in color war. Remember, we’re talking 1954-McCarthy, bomb shelters, all that paranoia. And if he still felt like not playing ball? They entice him. A little payoff for his loved ones. The carrot and the stick. You do this, because if you don’t, we’ll bury you. But just to show our heart’s in the right place, we’ll let your family realize the American dream and get their house in the suburbs. I’ve seen the house in La Jolla -it’s some suburbs. I stopped there when I went to interview the girl. You remember her?”

“Space robots in the water.”

“Right.”

“Is he still alive? Lloyd Steiner?”

“Barely.”

“Did you try to speak with him?”

“Uh-huh. Let’s just say he’s not talking.”

“So you think Lloyd Steiner went to jail for ten years to appease the public and kept his mouth shut all that time?”

“It’s plausible. More plausible than a bomb-throwing pediatrician, don’t you think?”

Sticks and stones may break my bones…

“Is there anything else?”

“There’s always something else,” he said. “You just have to find it.”

He put the phone down; I heard him ask for the check. When he came back on, he nearly whispered: “I’m out of the game. Not you. They’ve let you back in. You said you want to repay the debt. Go ahead. Repay it. If you can.”