“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.