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Ella Davis didn’t think they made burgs like Cathcart anymore, even in dead-red central Kansas.

It’s a dusty one-stoplight town about forty miles north of Manitou.

There’s a Kwik Shop across from the rusty water tower (WELCOME TO CATHCART WHERE ALL LIVES MATTER is printed on the side).

Davis buys herself an RC, and grabs a Plains Truth from the rack by the cash register.

Danny Coughlin has made the front page, sandwiched between an ad for Royal Tires and one for the Discount Furniture Warehouse Where Every Day Is Sale Day.

The headline reads SUSPECT CLAIMS “IT WAS ALL A DREAM.”

Davis cranks up the AC in her car and reads the story before heading down Main Street.

It’s Peter Andersson’s byline (excepting local sports, Andersson seems to write all the Plains Truth stories), and Davis doesn’t think the New York Times will be calling him anytime soon.

If Andersson’s intent was irony, he fell far short, achieving only a kind of lumbering skepticism.

Perversely, it makes her want to believe Danny’s version.

She tosses the miserable excuse for a newspaper behind her.

Plains Truth is on the street-level floor of a white-frame building halfway down Main Street.

It’s squeezed between a Dollar Tree and a long defunct Western Auto.

It needs paint.

The boards are loose, the nails bleeding streaks of red rust.

The door is locked.

She cups her hands to peer through the window and sees one large cluttered room with an old desktop computer presiding over it like an ancient god.

The chair in front of the computer looks new, but the rest of the furniture looks like it was picked up either at a yard sale or on a dump-picking safari.

A long bulletin board is drifted deep with ad mock-ups and old copy, some of it yellowed and curling with age.

“Hello, hello, hello, are you Davis?”

She turns to behold a very tall young man, perhaps six-seven or -eight.

He’s as skinny as a playing card.

He’s also strikingly pale at a time of year when most Kansans have at least a touch of tan.

A Hitlerian forelock of black hair hangs over one eye.

He brushes it back and it flops back down.

“I am,” she says.

“Hold on, hold on, I’ll unlock.” He does so and they step in.

She smells air freshener and beneath it, a ghost aroma of pot.

“I was downstreet to see Ma.

She’s got the diabetes.

Lost a foot last year.

Would you like a cold drink? I think there’s some in the—”

She holds up her bottle of RC.

“Oh.

Right, right, okay, great.

As for snacks, I’m afraid the cupboard is bare.” He laughs—titters, actually—and brushes away the forelock.

It promptly falls back.

“I’m sorry it’s so warm in here.

The air conditioning’s on the fritz.

Always something, isn’t it? We roll the rock, Sisyphus and all that.”

Davis has no idea what he’s talking about, but she realizes he’s scared to death. Good.

“I didn’t come here for snacks.”

“No, of course not.

Coughlin, the story about Coughlin.”

“Two stories, it turns out.”

“Two, yes, right, okay.

As I said on the phone, I thought I was getting information from someone on the inside of the investigation.

A policeman.

In fact he said that.

KHP, he said.”

“Not KBI? The Kansas Bureau of Inves—”

“No, no, he was from the Highway Patrol, I’m sure, totally sure, positive.” The forelock flops.

Andersson brushes it back.

“He also gave you the information about the dream?”

“Yes, sure did, absolutely, even suggested I withhold that for my next issue.

He said I’d still be scooping the regular newspapers.

I thought that was a very good idea.”

“Do you usually take advice from anonymous tipsters, Mr.

Andersson?”

He gives the unsettling titter.

Davis could more easily envision this man killing Yvonne than Coughlin; in a TV show he would turn out to be a serial killer with some strange alias, like The Reporter.

“I rarely get tips, Ms.

Davis.

We’re basically an ad-based—”

“Inspector Davis,” she corrects, not because she’s in love with her title, but because she wants him to remember who has the hammer here.

“Asking again, did I print anything that wasn’t true, Inspector Davis?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, and it’s not the point.

Although what you did was so irresponsible that I’d have trouble believing it if I hadn’t read it myself.”

“Now, now, that’s a little—”

“I don’t suppose you have a recording of this mystery call, do you?” She doesn’t hold out much hope of that.

He gives her a wide-eyed look and another unsettling titter.

“I record everything.”

She thinks she must have misheard.

“Everything? Really? Every phone-in?”

“I have to.

This is a shoestring operation, Ms….

Inspector.

I also work part-time at the lumberyard outside of town.

You must have passed it on your way in.

Wolf Lumber?”

She can’t remember if she did or not.

She was thinking about Jalbert.

She gestures for Andersson to go on.

“While I’m out at the yard or seeing to Ma—she takes a lot of seeing to—every call I get, most of them are about ads but some are from Hurd Conway, he does the sports, are recorded and zip directly up to the Cloud.”

“You don’t erase them?”

He titters.

“Why would I bother? Plenty of room on the Cloud.

Many mansions, as the Good Book says.

My soul hath elbow-room.

Shakespeare.

Our set-up might not work for a big city newspaper, but it’s fine for us.

Here, I’ll show you.”

Andersson wakes up his computer and types in a password.

Davis is far from a compulsive neatnik, but the desktop’s screen is so littered with icons that looking at it makes her eyes hurt.

Andersson mouses to the phone icon and pushes it.

A message blares from speakers on either side of the room.

He winces and turns down the volume.

“You have reached Plains Truth, the voice of central Kansas and the best buy for your ad dollar.

We are a free news and sports weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, that is given out free of charge in over six thousand locations in six counties.”

If that’s true, I’ll eat my shorts, Ella thinks.

“If you have news, press 5.

If you have a sports score, press 4.

If you want to report an accident, press 3.

If you want to place an ad, press 2.

If you have a question about rates, push 1.

That’s 5 for news, 4 for sports, 3 for an accident report, 2 to place an ad, 1 for rates.

And don’t worry about getting cut off!” There’s the titter she’s coming to know all too well.

“This is Plaaaiiiins Truth, where the truth matters!”

Andersson turns to her.

“It’s good, don’t you think? All the bells and whistles.

Bases covered.”

Under other circumstances Davis—curious by nature—might ask Andersson how much ad revenue Plains Truth generates.

But not under these.

“Can you find that anonymous call?”

“Yes, sure.

Tell me the date I’m searching for.”

She doesn’t know.

“Try between June 30th and July 4th.”

Andersson brings up a file.

“That’s a lot of incoming, but maybe…” He frowns.

The forelock flops.

“Some guy called in about a chimney fire, I think it was after that.

Pretty sure.”

Andersson clicks, listens, shakes his head, clicks some more.

At last he gets a drawly farmer type who says he seen a chimbly fahr out on Farm Road 17.

Andersson gives Davis a thumbs-up and goes to the next message.

She has drawn up a chair next to him.

“It sounds funny, because—”

“Shhh!”

Andersson draws a finger across his lips, zipping them shut.

It does sound funny, because the caller was using a voice-altering device, maybe a vocoder.

It sounds like a man, then a woman, then a man again.

“Hello, Plains Truth.

I’m with the Kansas Highway Patrol.

I’m not investigating the Yvonne Wicker murder but I’ve seen the reports.

Your readers might like to know the man who discovered the body is Daniel M.

Coughlin.

He’s a janitor at Wilder High School.

He lives in the Oak Grove Trailer Park—”

“I never printed the address,” Andersson says.

“I thought that would be—”

“Shhh! Go back.”

Andersson flinches and does something with his mouse.

“—Wilder High School.

He lives in the Oak Grove Trailer Park in the town of Manitou.

You should print that right away.” There’s a pause.

“He is KBI’s prime suspect because he claims he had a dream of where the body was.

The investigators don’t believe him.

You might want to save that for a follow-up.

Just a suggestion.” There’s another pause.

Then the vocoder voice says, “Fifteen. Goodbye.”

There’s a click, followed by someone who wants Plains Truth to know the July 4th festivities in Wilder County have been postponed until the 8th, very sorry.

Andersson kills the sound and looks at Davis.

“Are you okay, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she says.

She’s not.

She’s sick to her stomach.

“Play it again.”

She takes out her phone and hits record.