And then came the days beyond counting, when the story went cold, as they sometimes do. At those times, I am prone to mischief and nobody loves me.

Early on a Sunday, I settled in against the wall at a back-corner table at the Pug. I intended to pass the morning sober, upright, and in what I rakishly imagined to be a European style: leisurely reading a full Sequoia’s worth of Sunday’s Chronicle while tucking into the Failey equivalent of crepes, a high and exquisitely fluffy stack of buckwheat pancakes. For the record, they were topped by Dot’s homemade blueberry sauce and accompanied by pot of coffee of my very own and a double rasher of the pepper bacon I had been saving room in my arteries for all week. Naomi, of course, had a way of confounding one’s intentions.

Maybe I would have seen her coming if I had not been engrossed in a review of Robert B. Parker’s latest. As it was, I was not aware of her presence until she stood glowering before me, blocking the window light and casting a rather large shadow across the page and my disposition.

She was dressed in a narrowly cut black suit over a white, silk blouse. There was no jewelry, but her makeup was heavier than the last time I’d seen her. Indeed, it was nearly at Little Sheba levels of depth and intensity.

The fact that she held rolled in one hand a copy of the Saturday edition of my paper gave me a pretty good idea what this was going to be about. In a small town, a reporter is never more than one public appearance away from reader feedback.

“Mrs. Crawford,” I said.

“I’m on my way to church.”

“Meaning this won’t take long?” I said, looking back at my paper.

“Meaning I saw you come into the restaurant.”

“That explains it,” I said.

“Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”

“Would you like me to?”

“You’re being difficult.”

“Indeed,” I said, looking back up at her. “Certainly, have a seat. I want you to be comfortable while I’m being difficult.”

At the edge of my awareness, I caught hushed clucking from a nearby table of widows and spinsters. Each week, they gathered in their dark-colored winter dresses, clacking gold jewelry, and purple clouds of floral perfume for breakfast before church. I’m sure they thought a drunk owed the mother of a murdered child more respect, just as I’m sure the show gave them a thrill.

Naomi, of course, was no less aware of the bit of excitement she’d stirred. A little louder than necessary, she said: “Maybe if you spent more time on your work and less time reading the competition, you wouldn’t run shit like this.”

She threw my paper across the table at me. It fell open to the front-page story I had written, the one about how the cops had gone weeks without coming up with anything, or at least, anything they would talk about.

The cops had had no luck tracking down either the kid or the guy he had been hanging with. They talked to the few friends Jake had left, his classmates, his teachers, his neighbors. Nothing. They had Florida cops try to locate Jake’s dad. They never did. They showed the kid’s photo around the Weeki Wachee mermaid show. Zero.

“That,” said Naomi, reaching across the table and stabbing the story with sharp, bright red fingernail, “is negative.”

“That,” said I, poking the story with a stubby, nail-bitten forefinger, “is factual.”

“You could be more positive. Like stories about the children. How the survivors are coping.”

I probably shouldn’t have, but I smiled.

“Mrs. Crawford, I’ve written about you and your son—twice—and the Russells won’t talk.”

“Maybe another story would make someone feel bad and come forward.”

“Or not, since they haven’t done it yet. Least not that we know of.”

“You aren’t even writing about this every day. You didn’t write anything for four days before you wrote this.”

“That’s because there was nothing to say. The cops don’t have anything new. And let me assure you, I ask them every day. Sometimes twice.”

“Maybe you aren’t asking them the right questions. Maybe you aren’t asking the right people.”

“Meaning?”

“Where is this Lotty person? Why are the police trying to hide her?”

“Excellent questions. Already been asked.”

“And?”

“Her friends and neighbors don’t know where she is, and the cops won’t tell me. They want to protect her safety.”

“Well, protect her from what? Why would anybody want to hurt her?”

“Cops don’t know.”

“Don’t they? How about if she hurt the children she kept? How about if she was dealing drugs or something out of that trailer?”

“Let’s take this one bombshell out at a time. What you mean ‘hurt’ children?”

“You know.”

“No. You tell me.”

“Abuse. Hitting them. Having sex with them.”

“Who’s saying that she did?”

“People.”

“Cops?”

“They won’t give me the autopsy report.”

“And you think that’s because there’s something in there they don’t want you to see. Understand, it’s an active investigation. That’s what cops do with an active investigation. They gather information. They rarely give it out.”

“You sound like you’re on their side, like you only write what they tell you to write.”

For once, I was mature enough to set aside that truly offensive insult, her being a grieving mother and the cluckers listening intently nearby. Instead, I said, “If somebody’s saying these things about Lottie, give me a name, so I can check it out.”

She looked away.

“Who says Lottie was dealing drugs?”

She shrugged again.

“Names, addresses, and phone numbers.”

She would only look at me.

“Okay,” I said, “here’s a name I’ll bet is saying that, probably the only one. Naomi Crawford. And she’s saying it not because it’s true but because nobody’s paid her any attention lately.” I pulled my notepad from my back pocket and my pen from my shirt. “Care to comment?”

“Put that away,” she said. “This is off the record.” She twitched her head dismissively. “All I’m saying is there’s got to be a reason why the police think that woman is in danger.”

“How about because they don’t know why someone would break into her home and commit those acts?”

“Yeah,” she said, getting up to leave. “How about that? The door was unlocked.”

So much for a quiet Sunday morning in a café in the Provence of the Midwest. The old women had missed the introit, hanging as they did on every word Naomi said. If people weren’t saying those things about Lotty Nusbaumer before this morning, they would be now.

I did not write the story that drew out Bobby Russell because of that, though. No, it was Marley.

One day, Marley slides forward on his elbows across his desk and says to me: “Go cover this play. Do a story on what it takes to put on a full-blown musical, with an orchestra and shit, at the junior high level.” Turns out, his kid’s in it.

I had just put the telephone to my ear to begin the first of my daily round of calls to the men and women of law enforcement. I was thus distracted.

“Pardon me?” I said, because I was pretty sure I had just heard the devil’s own voice murmuring to me from crime-reporter hell.

“You heard me,” says Marley. “Take a camera, too, get some art.”

I dropped the handset back onto the cradle.

“You’re serious.”

“Quoth the raven, nevermore so.”

“Well, that explains why you write headlines. You think either one of us ought to be making fun of Edgar? You know, him being a drunk and knowing how he died?”

“You’re not going to put me off, Clay. Get going.”

“Don’t you think this murder thing is more important?”

“Absolutely, but you done anything for me lately?”

“I can’t make stuff up.”

“You found me the Nusbaumer woman? You track down any of those wild-ass theories Campbell threw out?”

“Lottie’s become the object of your lust, journalistically speaking, hasn’t she?”

His head was cocked, and his gaze, the one he trotted out when he was confident and in repose, was mildly curious, like a Komodo dragon, only with a blond topknot in a sweater vest. He waited to see which way I would tilt, for he is the master motivator.

I leaned up close from my desk to his and said: “Next Meeting? I want to hear you address—out loud—the role of regret in the care and feeding our addictions.”

There is a row of notches along the interior edge of the paper’s front counter. A new notch appears whenever someone presents himself on the other side of that counter to complain too loudly about something that has been in the paper. Bob Marley is the samurai editor.

As instructed, I covered the school play. The day after, in a fit of pique, I wrote a story that began “Where in the world is Aunt Lotty Nusbaumer?” The lede was a play on the title of children’s TV show that was popular then, “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”, another of his kids’ passions that Marley indulged.

I know that because Marley can talk fairly endlessly about his children. It is in the nature of those of us drunks who have actually spent nights sleeping in gutters and nearly lost family as a result. He knew the first line was a shot at him.

The story said essentially that the last we saw her Lotty was being transferred from the local hospital to an intentionally secret site, then it identified by name those in the law enforcement community who should’ve known her whereabouts but denied they did. The story also raised questions about the need for secrecy and reported rumors circulated as theories about how and why Aunt Lotty had disappeared. One or two could have come from Naomi, but I assure you, based on my own personal research, by the time they went into my story they were in wide circulation in the area’s bars and diners.

Besides, the cops were given ample opportunity to deny the theories or provide information to dispute them. Crandall, however, was still trying to control the story, and he would only say: “No comment.” Which was the same as throwing gasoline on the sparks generated by the rumor mill.

I knew all that when I wrote the story. Marley knew all that when he edited it. We ran it anyway.

Bobby Russell appeared at the counter early the day after. He wasn’t dressed as a clown or a mourner; he was dressed like any other farmer who comes to the paper in December: jeans, a brown, grease-smeared canvas jacket over a plaid flannel shirt and a red billed cap advertising fertilizer. I did not remember him, and I was busy and frankly I didn’t pay much attention to him at first.

Russell leaned across the counter, grabbed the passing Anorexia by her dowel-sized arm and hissed: “Who’s the son of a bitch wrote this?” With his other hand, he was choking and shaking the previous day’s edition.

Marley and I looked at each other. Marley shook his head. Neither one of us knew who the guy was.

In matters of this sort, Marley takes the point. He rose from his desk. He took with him his pica stick, a metal ruler about 18 inches long, less than an inch wide, and no thicker than a knife blade. Before computers, editors used them to measure the length and width of type and art for layout. Marley wielded his now like the samurai editor that he is.

“May I help you?” he said, removing the man’s hand from Anorexia’s arm and shooing her on her way. All eyes had turned to the counter; we all knew from experience this could be entertaining.

“You write this?”

The man shoved the paper at Marley’s face.

“No,” said Marley, blocking the paper with his free hand and gently brushing it aside. He introduced himself by name and title. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m going to talk to who wrote this.”

The man again put the paper up in Marley’s face.

Marley smiled and again put his hand up to move the paper aside, this time using the hand holding the pica stick.

“What is your name?” Marley asked.

“Russell.”

“Bobby Russell?” I said, starting to rise.

Marley turned.

“Clay, sit down.”

“You’re Ambrose?” the man said, raising his voice and talking straight past Marley. “You cocksucker. You’re the son of bitch I’m talking to.”

Marley raised the pica stick over his head with one hand. The air sang as he sliced the stick down into the edge of the counter. He left it there, as he usually did, embedded and quivering at both ends, another notch in a row of thirty or so.

“Don’t cuss,” he barked. “You will talk to me.”

“Well,” Russell said, his eyes round. “Okay.”

Marley took Russell into the library and calmed him down. After several minutes, he invited me in. Mr. Russell, Marley said, wanted to dispute the rumors about Aunt Lotty. Marley raised his eyebrows and blinked once, his see-that’s-how-it’s-done look, and left.

Whatever head of steam Russell worked up coming to the paper, Marley had released. The man sat in one corner of the library. He looked smaller than he had when he appeared at the counter. He sat with his shoulders rounded and his head down so that I could not see his face, only the top of a buzz-cut, red head. In his lap, fingers thick as brats worked and worried the bill of his cap.

“Somebody told me you could heave a hay bale one-handed,” I said. “Pick it up by the strings, rear back, and pitch it like a baseball. That true?”

That was the kind of opening schmooze would’ve made Naomi melt. He didn’t.

“I don’t see that’s got a goddamned thing to do with it.”

He crushed the hat in his big hands.

“You son of a bitch, you shouldn’t have snuck into the funeral like that.”

But he just couldn’t quite work himself up again. He looked up at me with red, dry eyes and said in a much milder voice: “Wish you’d stopped asking about us.”

He would not talk to me about his children and what they had been like. He would not talk to me about his wife or how she or he felt or how she and he were coping. He would not offer any opinions about the Crawfords, other than how sorry he was for their loss. He said he was sure the police were giving the matter all their attention. He only wanted to say that whatever was being said about Lotty could not possibly be true, that she’d taken care of him and his wife when they were kids, and that if there’d been a way, he knew she would’ve done whatever she could to protect his children. No, he didn’t know where she was either, but if she read what he had to say, he hoped she would know that he didn’t blame her.

And that’s pretty much how I wrote it. I reported what he had to say and pointed out the things he wouldn’t say, and I described his manner. He looked me in the eye, he talked in a quiet, willfully even voice, and when he was done, he thanked me for my time, told me not to call him ever, and left.

Naomi called me the next day after the story ran to say she didn’t know how a newspaper could employ someone as biased as me.

None of my reportage helped Wood much. When I reported that the cops had leads and later that the leads went nowhere, the commissioners called Wood in to find out what was taking so long. Didn’t Sheriff Modine understand, asked the one who was up for re-election that year, watching me all the while to make sure I wrote it down. Didn’t he know that the people of Austin County required swift and sure justice to be safe in their homes? Yes, he understood, Wood said, looking at me as well before he scorched each of the three commissioners with a glare and told them he did not intend to discuss a pending investigation in public, particularly in front of me.

Late one afternoon, I happened to see Moze come out of the jail in uniform and pull away in a squad. Since every other cop seemed to be angry with me and since I had not seen Moze for days, maybe weeks, I thought I’d follow him, say hello, and maybe pump him for a little information.

He gave no indication that he knew I was behind him until we were well out of town, maybe a mile from Wood’s farm. He goosed the squad, then yanked it into a power slide so that it came to rest across both lanes of the narrow, gravel road. I nearly T-boned him.

He flipped on the flashers and came charging out of the car at me like a linebacker, crouched and low. Just as I got out of my car, he spun me around and pushed my head onto the roof of my car and held it there, while he patted me down.

I was confused, probably a little angry, but it seemed like a situation best approached calmly.

“Moze,” I said, muffled somewhat by the pressure of my mouth against the foul-tasting, torn vinyl roof. “Moze, you know me. I don’t carry.”

“Maybe you got a recorder,” he said and gave me a rather rough pat in the crotch, the kind that grazed the scrotum and made me a little nauseous.

“You know, as a rule, I don’t carry that either.”

I’d had about enough and tried to straighten up. Moze’s center of gravity is lower than mine and he had a foot hooked around my ankle and probably he was a little pissed about things himself. He kicked my foot out from under me and rode me down to the gravel. He used a very firm grip on my neck to plow a furrow through stones and lime with my face. In the only piece of paper filed after the incident, Moze wrote that I resisted him and he directed me to the ground.

“Wouldn’t fight him, I were you,” I heard Wood say.

I was able to turn my head to see that Wood had pulled his squad up close behind my car.

“He radio you before he battered me?” I asked Wood.

“Word I had, one of my deputies was being followed closely by a person or persons unknown, thereby endangering his safety. The deputy reported he intended to stop the vehicle and needed backup. Ask anybody with a scanner.”

“This isn’t your style, Wood. Crandall put you up to this?”

Wood let that question linger in the chilly early evening air for a moment before he told Moze to let me up. I rolled over and held up a hand to Moze for assistance, but he looked away. I pulled myself up with the door handle and started to brush the lime off my face and clothes.

“Before I go hog fucking wild, maybe you can give me a reason not to,” I said to Wood.

“Don’t follow us around. Don’t come to my place,” Wood said.

“What’s going on at your place?”

“Nothing. We’re feeding the stock.”

“Exactly how many people does it take to feed a few cows?”

I was trying to keep my voice from rising, but it sounded kind of loud.

“And why is one of them”—I jerked my head at Moze, who was tucking in the tail of uniform shirt—“apparently feeding your cows on county time?”

“Clay, here’s how it is.” Wood stepped in close and spoke in the quiet, even manner he uses when he’s really pissed. “Follow one of us again, come to my place, you’ll be cuffed and stuffed. Clear?”

He waited until I nodded before he turned toward his car.

Moze put it even more succinctly and directly. He poked a sharp index finger deep into the thick flesh above my heart.

“Stay the fuck away.”

Dill, the oracle poet, once said that in moments like these a reporter’s curiosity should ring in beauty like a bell choir. At that moment, mine sounded like drunk sailors and drug addicts in withdrawal.

I knew something I’d done other than reporting had provoked the response, but over the noise in my head I could not then pull it together to figure out what and I certainly did not feel like confronting Wood or Moze again soon to find out. So there I stood, like any other mugging victim, alone and confounded in the middle of nowhere, sucking air and massaging my chest.

Janelle S. called every few days at random times and random numbers—work, the apartment, my cell—to remind me I’m an asshole. That’s all she’d say. She’d identify herself, call me an asshole, and hang up before I could engage her in small talk. In terms of keeping me clean and sober, it worked nearly as well as a Meeting. But in terms of making me vocationally humble, the calls had no such effect. I knew from reading her stuff she didn’t know any more than I did. I liked to think that was why she called.