What started out in my head as a promising slip up by Ben had now turned into a daunting task that my exhausted brain wasn’t at all interested in tackling. It then crossed my mind that my friend hadn’t actually slipped up. He probably already knew how overwhelming it would be.

Of course, even if the list had only been a dozen or so locations as I had hoped, I still had yet to figure out how I was going to determine which one actually was the scene of the homicide. Calling the numbers and asking if they’d recently had a murder in one of their rooms didn’t present itself as a terribly attractive or even productive option. Nor did driving to each one and hoping for a psychic impression to tell me when I’d arrived where I needed to be. Given the way my head already felt, I probably wouldn’t be aware of one if it happened anyway.

I still had an option though. Ben had told me they didn’t run a story in the paper, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed him. He could have been lying, which was something he was more than willing to do if he felt it was in the best interest of the person he was trying to protect, namely me.

If that was the case and it actually had been reported in the newspaper, maybe it would point me to the correct place. I knew that idea was full of if’s and maybe’s, but it was really my best option at this point. However, it was also something that wasn’t going to happen at this hour. It would have to wait until well after sunrise when I took my planned trip to the New Orleans Public Library because the paper I needed would be nearly a week old, and that would probably be the only place I could get my hands on it, if at all.

I actually felt my shoulders fall in a physical response to the realization. The growing weariness had been held at bay by sheer will, and that was now crumbling in the face of failure. The extra high dose of aspirin I had taken wasn’t helping either. While it was only doing a little to dull the edge on my headache, it was definitely going a long way toward enhancing my exhaustion. I caught myself yawning as I stood at the payphone and knew what little energy I had left was draining from me as if someone had just pulled a cork to let it out.