John Feinstein - Change-up - Mystery at the World Series

“You need a taxi, young man?” said a man leaning against the first cab in line.

“Yes, I do,” Stevie said. “Can you take me to the courthouse? The address is-”

The cabbie waved him off. “Son, there’s only one courthouse in Lynchburg. You don’t need to tell me the address. Hop in.”

Stevie took his backpack off and shoved it into the backseat ahead of him. He had brought The Great Gatsby , a reporter’s notebook, his phone, and his computer, which he thought he might need to do some writing on Gatsby , or perhaps something more interesting, on the way home.

“So why in the world do you need to go to the courthouse?” the cabbie wondered aloud as he pulled away from the station.

“Doing some research on my family,” Stevie said as Kelleher had suggested he say in case anyone asked. “It’s for a paper at school.”

“Interesting,” the cabbie said. “Where are you from?”

“ Washington,” Stevie said, just in case the cabbie knew his train had come in from there.

“And you came down here today with the World Series going on up there?”

“Um, it got me out of school for the day,” Stevie said.

The cabbie laughed. “Good point,” he answered.

The trip to the courthouse took under ten minutes. When Stevie paid the fare, the cabbie handed him the receipt with a card. “When you’re ready to go back to the station, give me a call,” he said. “That’s my cell number at the bottom. If I can’t come get you, I’ll send someone for you.”

“Thanks,” Stevie said, noting the cabbie’s name on his card. “Thanks, Miles, I’m Steve. I’ll give you a call later.”

They shook hands, and Stevie got out and found himself at the bottom of the steps leading to the Lynchburg courthouse. It was quite big, Stevie thought, for a small town and looked to be quite old. As he made his way up the steps, he saw that he wasn’t wrong: “Opened Sept. 15th, 1932,” a small plaque read just outside the door.

He pulled open a heavy door and was relieved that the first person he saw was a smiling middle-aged woman behind a desk labeled Information.

He explained to her that he was looking for a police report from an automobile accident that had taken place twelve years earlier. If the request sounded strange to her, she didn’t show it. “Do you know if there were any charges filed?” she asked.

“I don’t honestly know,” Stevie said. That was a question he certainly wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking Doyle at breakfast.

“Start with Automobile Records, on the second floor,” she said, pointing up a long staircase behind her. “If they haven’t got it, that means it will be in the Criminal Records section.”

Stevie thanked her and made his way up the steps. The third door he came to said Automobile Records on it. He walked in and found an older man and a young woman ahead of him on line. There was only one clerk working. He quickly learned that automobile records didn’t just mean records of accidents. This was also the place where people came to get license plates and vehicle registration. That’s what the two people in front of him were doing.

Stevie waited while the clerk walked them through what forms they needed to fill out and answered their various questions. He decided this would be a good time to let Kelleher know he’d made it to Lynchburg and to the courthouse. He had punched two numbers when he heard the clerk’s voice. “Excuse me, sir?” she said, and pointed to a sign next to the desk that said No Cell Phone Usage in the Courthouse.

“Sorry,” Stevie said, snapping the phone shut, hoping his phone faux pas wouldn’t turn the clerk against him.

It took about fifteen minutes for the people in front of him to clear up their various problems, but it felt like an hour to Stevie. When he got to the desk, the clerk was giving him a funny look. Stevie figured she spent most of her time dealing with people who had issues with their cars, and Stevie clearly didn’t look like he had a driver’s license. He wished Susan Carol were with him, because she was so good at finessing situations like this.

“What can I help you with?” the clerk asked.

“Oh yes, thanks,” Stevie said, suddenly tongue-tied after rehearsing what he was going to say about a hundred times. “I’m looking for a police report on an accident…”

“Were you involved in an accident?” the clerk asked.

“No, no, not me,” Stevie said. “It’s an accident that happened in August of 1997, but I don’t know the exact date.”

“Can you give me any more information?” the clerk said.

Remembering what Kelleher had told him to ask for, Stevie nodded. “Yes. It was a fatal accident, two cars. The victim’s name was Analise Doyle.”

The clerk nodded. “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard to find. Fortunately, we don’t have that many fatals around here. Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll have to go back into the archives, so it will take me a few minutes,” she said.

“Thanks,” Stevie said.

Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. A man came in and looked at Stevie inquisitively. “Where’s Mabel?” he asked. Stevie guessed Mabel was the clerk. “Um, she’s in the back looking for something,” Stevie said, wondering if Mabel’s search was going to be interrupted.

“Okay, I’ll come back in a while,” he said, and left, much to Stevie’s relief.

Mabel finally returned a few minutes later, carrying a file. “Sorry,” she said as Stevie stood up and walked back to the counter. “Took me a while for a couple reasons. To begin with, this wasn’t a two-car accident, it was a one-car. Second, someone had the file out already this morning, and it wasn’t put back in the right place.”

Stevie stared at her for a second, trying to digest the information she had just casually passed on to him. One-car accident? That made no sense. And who’d had the file out already today? Was another reporter onto the story?

“Do you still want the file?” Mabel said after Stevie said nothing in response to her explanation.

“Oh yes, sorry,” Stevie said.

She pushed it across the desk in his direction. “You need to sign the sheet on the inside of the folder,” she said. “You can look at it in the room right next door for as long as you want. When you’re done, just bring it back to me.”

“Can I make a copy of it?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s a legal document. Unless you have a court order or can show that you represent someone involved in the case, you can’t copy it.”

“Even though it was twelve years ago?”

“Even if it was a hundred years ago. There’s not much to it, as you’ll see. You can take notes on any information you need.”

She opened the file to the sheet she had been talking about. “Sign your name there, and I’ll keep the sheet until you return the file. And I’ll need to see some ID. I don’t imagine you have a driver’s license, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Stevie said. “But I’ve got my high school ID and a passport.”

“Either one will do.”

He reached into his wallet and handed her his ID. She took it and printed his name, the date, and the time on the sheet right below the only other name on the sheet-the person who had been there just this morning! She turned the sheet over to Stevie. “Just sign next to where I printed your name and it’s all yours,” she said.

Stevie nodded. He wrote his name slowly so he could study the name above it. The signature was scrawled and unreadable, but the printed name was clear: Donald Walsh.

“Ma’am, do you remember what Mr. Walsh looked like?” Stevie asked.

She shook her head. “There’s two of us that work in here. Janice must have pulled this for him. That’s why I didn’t know where it was.”