“No.” She looked up. “Why do you keep asking me that?”

“I told you. They got spooked enough to do something.”

“They weren’t the only ones who got spooked.”

“Wren?”

She nodded. “He knew. That he was being followed. He thought his phone was being bugged. He didn’t know whom to trust anymore.”

“He trusted you, though, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “He trusted me. He started to worry that something bad was going to happen to him.”

“He was right,” I said. “They killed him.”

She turned pale, went deathly quiet like she had over the phone.

“No,” she whispered. “No. He e-mailed me.…”

“Not Wren. He was buried out in the woods. I found his body.”

“They said no one would be hurt if I went along… I swear to God… you have to believe me… They promised me…”

“I believe you. You were told what you needed to be told. Be Wren’s pal. No one will get hurt. Ask him things. Tell us what he says. They lied.”

A car rolled by, playing the latest from Eminem: yoh… yoh.

“So what did Wren say?” I asked her. “Aside from being worried that something was about to fall on his head?”

“He didn’t tell me the details,” she said. “He said it was safer that way. He was doing a story on the flood. He said they’d covered up something-the government-a big accident that happened in the fifties. The flood was the least of it. He said you can keep a secret for only so long and then you can’t. He said my father helped make everything clear to him. That I should be proud of him. That he was going to break the story wide open. Even if something happened to him. Even then the story was protected.”

“Protected? What did he mean?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said the story was someplace they couldn’t get to it. That’s all. That it was protected. That sooner or later, someone would bring it into the light.”

“Into the light? That’s what he said?”

She nodded.

“Did he mention an army vet who’d wandered into town? Eddie Bronson?”

“No. Why?”

“Because he was the trigger. Because he set everything in motion. Because he was someone who should’ve died in the flood, but there he was-still alive. That’s when Wren started to dig into the history of Littleton Flats. Just like I did. Three years later.”

She looked genuinely perplexed. She was telling the truth; they’d told her only what they wanted her to know.

“When did they inform you that your services were needed again?” I asked her.

“The day before I ran into you.”

“But you didn’t just run into me.”

“No.”

I tried to calculate. My mind wasn’t what it used to be. The drugs had dulled the edges, loosened the coil wires.

Benjy had flown the coop. They knew he was headed here. They got scared. He’d seen his mom-he’d called the fucking sheriff’s office? Who else had he talked to?

“They gave you that stupid name. Do you know why?”

She shook her head.

“Come on, any idiot could see it. Any idiot except this one. Anna Graham. Anagram. They opened that AOL account for you. You really don’t know why?”

“No. I really don’t know why. Why did they want to make my name an anagram?”

“Because a doctor had fed me anagrams in a story two years ago. A story I made up. My reservoir of creativity might’ve been running a little dry at that point. I was down to borrowing the conventions of a thriller.”

She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

“That’s two of us. I think I’m beginning to, though. I am. You loosened my coil wire. You fixed my coil wire. You went out on two dates with me. But you didn’t know who I was? Tom Valle? My sordid past?”

“No.”

“Life is full of surprises. Did you ever meet anyone else? Besides the man with no face?”

“No. He found me three years ago. In Santa Monica. Rang my bell and said he needed to talk to me about my dad. Okay, I said, sure, come in. I made him coffee. This was before he threatened my kid. My mom. As calmly as someone discussing the weather. When I picked myself up off the floor, I told him to get out and go screw himself. I was going to go to the police, the FBI. He held the phone out for me. ‘Remember to spell my name right,’ he said. You understand, he was very clear about this-that he was unofficially official. That I was fucked. I did what I needed to. I didn’t know about Wren. Honest to God I didn’t.”

It was odd. Having someone beg me to believe them. If it wasn’t the definition of irony, it should’ve been.

“I believe you,” I said for the second time. “Did they tell you what to say to me? Fed you stuff to feed me? You didn’t just happen to mention that you lived on Fifth, near the promenade, did you?”

“No. Why was that was important?”

“They were hoping I’d take a stroll there. That I’d pursue you.” I felt myself blushing-the awkward 13-year-old picking someone for Seven Minutes in Heaven who didn’t want to be picked. Not by me. “I did pursue you-stupid me. Have you been to the theater lately? Maybe you saw that hysterical sex comedy that takes place on the Santa Monica Pier?”

“No. Why?”

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”

The foot traffic had thinned a bit. A slight breeze was swirling, lifting the mimosa petals on the sidewalk flowerpots, fluttering the edges of her thick, lovely hair.

It would’ve been nice, I thought. If she had really liked me. If she hadn’t been told to smile at me across the rec room of the nursing home. If she’d listened to my pathetic story and said I understand; I forgive you. I will love you anyway.

Now she looked up, those big brown eyes.

“I still don’t get it,” she said. “Why would they want me to tell you anything?”

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.