TO SEE SOMETHING?” HERSHEY SAID a minute later as I pulled out of the Clarmont parking lot and headed north on High.
“More than that? I don’t think so.”
“That? That was nothing but a scrimmage. I’ll take you to a real game sometime.” He gave me instructions for our next destination.
“What are you going to do with that?” I said. “What Tillman just said?”
“Upload the audio, soon as I get home. Then I’ll mull it over. Believe it or not, PRE’s a family-friendly website. Might have to paraphrase.”
We drove in silence past the glowing windows of the block-long Grange Insurance building and started up the hill into downtown. The night had gotten cooler, and it was beginning to rain. We were passing the Justice Center at Mound when I glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “How’m I doing so far?”
“Doing?”
“The bodyguard shtick. You’re satisfied?”
“Expectations surpassed.”
“In what way?”
“Well, for starters, you resisted the powers of the P-O-D, who may be a nerd but has been known to paralyze battalions of hostile Republicans with that hypnotic voice of his. You had a powerful state senator gushing over what a nice couple you and Dr. Cooper make. To top it off, Justice Bryan was practically ready to invite you squirrel hunting. There’s people who’ve hung out on Capitol Square for thirty years who’d give their left nut for that kind of reception.”
“Good to hear.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because assuming you didn’t hire someone else to help you out, we’ve got company.”
“What?”
I gestured behind us without taking my eyes off the road.
“Who?”
“SUV, two cars back.”
“How can you tell?”
“Educated guess, plus I’m pretty sure I saw it pick us up after we left the restaurant. Can you make out the driver?”
He glanced back. “It’s raining too hard.”
“OK. Take out your phone.”
“I’m not calling the police.”
“I figured as much. So how about doing something useful for a change and get ready to take a picture of the license plate?”
“It’s too far back and there’s cars between us.”
“Not the front. The back.”
“How?”
“Hang on.”
I drove into downtown, past the Statehouse and up toward Broad. At the last second I swung into the left turn lane without signaling, entered the intersection and tapped the brakes. The driver immediately behind us saluted my efforts with an angry horn and shot through the light on my right side. The second car followed, then the tail.
“Now,” I said.
“Got it,” Hershey said.
I completed the left turn, turned again and parked on Wall, a sliver of street running north-south between High and Front.
“How’d you do?” I said.
“Shitty.” He showed me a smeared blur that might have passed for art but definitely not for evidence.
“Next time,” I said.
DESPITE THE RAIN, WE got out, ran around the corner, dashed across High and through the glass doors of a small, stone-paneled building on the corner of the Statehouse grounds with “Underground Parking” etched in its façade. I followed Hershey down a flight of steps. A few moments later we emerged in a nearly empty parking garage. We walked past dozens of squat green pillars and a random leftover car or two until we reached a revolving door on the far side. Hershey pulled a key card from his wallet, waved it in front of an electric reader, and entered the door as it began to move. I followed a moment afterward.
“What are we doing?” I said.
“Entering the Statehouse.”
“Believe it or not, I figured that out. I mean, where are we going?”
“Up,” he said. “Got a treat for you.”
Inside, we ascended a steep flight of stairs past the jagged flanks of the building’s foundation. At the top, we paused by a glass cabinet holding old Statehouse artifacts. Behind it sat a pile of bricks, commemorating what a placard said was a rodent-infested former state office building dubbed “Rat Row.” To the right of the cabinet a sturdy-looking gavel lay atop a gleaming pedestal.
“Fashioned from a two-hundred-year-old oak tree that got hit with lightning last summer in southern Ohio,” Hershey said, examining it. “Not far from Justice Bryan’s hometown, as a matter of fact. Supposedly a replica of the original Statehouse gavel.”
“Where’s Bryan from?”
“Little town called Paw Paw Bottoms.”
“There’s no such place.”
“Sure there is. You’re the Ohio farm boy, Woody. Look it up.”
Hershey reached out and patted the gavel’s head. “Hefty bugger. You should show this to Anne.”
“Why’s that?”
“Perfect weapon if zombies ever make it this far. OK, this way.”
I followed Hershey around the corner and into the middle of a large hall. “The Crypt,” he said, gesturing.
“The which?”
“What they call the lower level. It feels basement-y, even though it’s the ground floor. There’s no single space in this building that better epitomizes what goes on around here.”
“Oh?”
He pointed down at the floor of alternating mottled white and rust-red ceramic squares. “Below us, floor tiles lifted from the old state lunatic asylum.” He looked up. “Above us, a terrific example of a groin vault.”
I examined the white, curved ceiling of painted bricks, crisscrossed with sprinkler pipes, and made out interlocking arches that met at a point overhead. I glanced at Hershey, looking for more explanation.
“An architectural design. Where two vaults meet to form a ceiling,” Hershey said. “Lunatic asylum floor, a groin arch overhead. Perfect.”
“Because—?”
“Because all these crazy people pass through
