LITMIR.BIZ

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noise, and a man’s voice, loud and insistent. I tried unsuccessfully to open my eyes. It felt as if someone had glued them shut, thought better of it, and stapled them instead.

      “Sir,” the voice said. “Open the door.”

      I tried my eyes again, and made some progress. Glanced to my left. A uniformed Columbus cop was standing outside my van, flashlight in hand. I opened the door. And nearly fell out.

      “How much did you have to drink tonight?” the officer asked a minute later, after I righted myself.

      “Couple beers.”

      “Just a couple?”

      “That’s right.”

      “Know how many times I’ve been told that?”

      “A couple?”

      An ache was building in the back of my head, the kind I knew wasn’t going to go away with an aspirin or two. My mouth was dry and tasted like metal, and my eyes were still battling my lids. After a couple of false starts, I dug out my phone and looked at the screen. One-thirty in the morning. I had four missed calls, all from Hershey, followed by two text messages. The first one, at 10:01, said, Are you coming or not? The second one said, Well, geez, tell Anne I said hi, accompanied by a winking emoticon.

      “Asshole,” I muttered.

      “What was that?” the officer asked.

      “Sorry. Someone I was supposed to meet. He can be kind of a jerk.”

      “You’re sure you only had two beers.”

      “I’m sure. They’ll vouch for me. Inside. My friend Roy will, too.” The words coming slowly, like coins pulled out of a pocket and examined one at a time.

      A sergeant joined our merry band. My name broadcast over police frequencies has that effect.

      “How many beers did you have?” he asked. We repeated the drill.

      “Why are you here?” I said, my head starting to clear. “I wasn’t driving.”

      “We got a call from a concerned citizen.”

      “Concerned I was passed out? That’s nice.”

      “Concerned you don’t have a residential parking permit for that space.”

      The night air was cool, and I took a series of deep breaths. The hour at the bar was starting to come back to me. Roy’s financial problems. Theresa, the ex–human trafficking victim. The C. S. Lewis trilogy. And something else, a nagging suspicion about what might have happened to me.

      It took another twenty minutes or so, but the cops let me go after warning me not to drive. I didn’t need persuading. I locked up my van with a promise from the police they wouldn’t have it towed, leaned against it, and dialed Hershey’s number. It went immediately to voicemail. I left a brief message of apology, then texted him, tapping out the letters as quickly as my fuzzy brain allowed. Really sorry. Call when you can. Then I stumbled home. My decision to drink before working was starting to feel like a bad idea. A really bad idea. I wasn’t used to disappointing paying clients, even a guy my girlfriend appeared to have a small crush on. When I arrived home fifteen minutes later, I threw Hopalong into the yard, brushed my teeth, drank a tall glass of water, collected the dog from the yard, drank another glass of water and collapsed into bed, fully dressed.

      I WAS AWAKENED BY music. I tried to lift my head from the pillow and just as quickly lowered it. I felt as if someone had massaged my cranium with a pair of wood-handled ball-peen hammers. I lay there and tried to identify the song crashing against my skull. Who the hell would play something so loud, so early, so close to my bed? It came to me a couple of moments later. “Jump,” by Van Halen. My new cell phone ring tone. I fumbled at my nightstand.

      “Yeah,” I answered, finally.

      “This Andy Hayes?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Lieutenant Mike Hummel, State Highway Patrol. You know a Lee Hershey?”

      “Yeah.”

      “When was the last time you saw him?”

      I struggled to think. “Two nights ago,” I said after a long pause.

      “Did you text him early this morning?”

      I forced brain cells to grind together, to form synapses and produce thought. “Yeah,” I said.

      “How soon can you be at the Statehouse?”

      “Why?”

      “We need to have a little chat.”

      “About what?”

      “About Hershey. He’s dead.”

       14

      I GOT OUT OF BED, STUMBLED INTO THE kitchen, and forced myself to drink a glass of water. Swallowing felt like someone was opening a burlap bag of marbles over my head. I drank to the bottom anyway. And had another. I made coffee and poured it into a chipped Capital University mug and drank it in the shower under water as hot as I could bear, waiting until the warm ran out and it turned icy and so cold I thought I might vomit. Then I vomited. I got out, shaved, got dressed, and poured another cup of coffee. Starting to think a little straighter, I called and left a message for Burke, telling him about Hershey. And me. And my suspicions about what had happened at the bar.

      I walked up the street, retrieved my van—the promise not to tow apparently hadn’t included a promise not to ticket—and arrived downtown a few minutes later. I circled the Statehouse in vain; all the underground garage entrances were closed. I saw trucks for Channels 4, 7, and 10 parked in front of the Third Street entrance. A knot of reporters clustered around a trooper on the steps. I kept driving, found a space in a surface lot off Main, tucked a five-dollar bill into the parking slot, and walked back. It wasn’t even nine.

      The press briefing had broken up by the time I got there. It was a hot day and the flags in front of the Capitol—U.S., Ohio pennant, and POW—hung limply from their poles. I pulled my Columbus Clippers cap down tight over my head and strode with as much purpose as I could muster toward the entrance. I’d made it to the first step leading to the Third Street doors when Suzanne Gregory from Channel 7 intercepted me.

      “What are you doing here?” she said.

      I stopped and looked at her. I realized I was having troubling focusing. It occurred to me I probably shouldn’t have driven. I said, slowly, “I can never remember whether Warren G. Harding was the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth president. Figured someone inside might know.”

      “Twenty-eighth, as you know, given how many goddamn times you quizzed me on Ohio presidents. Why were you working for Lee?”

      “You look fetching today,” I said, stalling. And she did: a sleeveless peach summer dress with a necklace of paste stones and bracelet to match.

      “As much as I hate to say this, don’t change the subject.” She softened her voice a bit. “You look like shit, by the way. Are you OK?”

      “Not really.”

      “What about my outfit?” Kevin Harding said, walking up.

      “Very Front Page, without the suit, shined shoes, and fedora,” I told the Columbus Dispatch reporter, trying not to slur my words. Harding was with a thin, brown-haired woman I didn’t know. The look on her face, which included red, swollen eyes, warned me off any sartorial observations. A couple other reporters headed our way.

      “Why were you working for Lee?” Suzanne repeated.

      “No comment.”

      “That’s a bullshit response.”

      She was right. Right as a reporter, and right as my ex-fiancée, who more than any other journalist in town deserved a better answer.

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