"You lost me, Mr.Albin . I respect you and all, and I admit that strange things have been happening to the mail lately, but this sounds a little off the deep end."
Doug smiled wryly. "You haven't heard it all. I also think he's connected with Bernie Rogers' death and Bob Ronda's."
"This is a joke, right?"
"No joke. Just hear me out." He went on to explain his discovery at the creek and the increasingly bizarre nature of the mail both he and the newspaper had been receiving.
Mike frowned. "How come Ben didn't tell me this himself?"
"He didn't even want me to tell you."
"So what about Ronda and Rogers?"
Doug explained their connections to the post office and the unlikely nature of their suicides.
"We have been wondering how Rogers tied that rope," Mike admitted.
"So, what was written on the note pinned to Bernie's chest?"
The policeman shook his head. "Sorry. Confidential."
"But you don't think I'm totally crazy?"
Mike looked at him silently for a moment. "No, I don't," he said finally.
"God knows why, but I don't. I don't entirely believe you, but I don't disbelieve you either."
"Good enough for now. I know there's no proof against the mailman. There's no way you can haul him in. Yet. But I just want you to keep your eyes and ears open. Be on the lookout. Just be prepared."
The young officer shook his head, grinning ruefully. "If anyone else finds out about this, I'm dead meat. But okay."
Doug stood up, pushing his chair back. He looked at the policeman curiously. "You got something, didn't you?" he asked. "In the mail?"
Mike stared up at him, then nodded slowly.
"I could tell. You dropped that cop routine pretty fast and hopped aboard the bandwagon, no questions asked."
"I got a letter from my fiancй in Phoenix, telling me she wanted to break up. I called her, but her phone was out of service. So I took a sick day and drove down to ASU. She'd never sent me the letter. Her phone had been left off the hook accidentally on the day I tried to call." He scratched his nose. "Maybe I'm just looking for an easy excuse, but I think there might be something to what you say. I think there's something going on with the mailman. I still don't entirely believe you, and I hope we're not turning Mr. Smith into a scapegoat for our problems, but I'll keep a watch out."
"That's all I ask. I'll let you know if anything comes up."
"And we'll let you know if anything happens with your water and power and phone letters."
Doug thanked Mike and returned down the hall. The young policeman let him through the security gate into the lobby, and walking out to the car, Doug felt better than he had in quite a while. It was nice to be able to share some of the burden.
He got in the Bronco and took off.
On the way home, he passed the mailman, unloading mail from the box in front of Circle K, sorting the envelopes, carefully putting some into his plastic tray, shoving the others into a brown paper sack.
He waved as Doug drove by.
17
The next day the mail was normal. It had still been delivered at some odd hour before they woke up, but the mail itself was neither unnaturally good nor unnaturally bad. There was a subscription notice from _Newsweek_, a Visa bill, some junk mail. Nothing out of the ordinary, though that itself was out of the ordinary.
Doug tried to callStockley at the paper, but the secretary said he was not taking any calls. He told her to give the editor his name, and after a great deal of convincing she agreed to do so, but when she came back on the line, she informed him that it was paste-up day and that the editor refused to be interrupted by anyone. She said he'd call Doug back when he got the opportunity.
The mail was normal the next day as well, and Doug began to think that maybe he had jumped to conclusions, that he had overreacted, that he had been wrong. Tritia said nothing, but he could tell that she was thinking the same thing, and he could tell that she was relieved.
The next morning the mailbox was filled with letters. Doug went out to the mailbox before breakfast, while Billy was still asleep and Trish was watering her garden. There were ten envelopes all together, and the sheer bulk of them in the mailbox was somehow ominously threatening. Glancing quickly at their faces, he saw that few of the envelopes bore familiar addresses, and he stuffed them down the back of his pants, letting his shirt hang over the top half of the stack. Inside the house, he tore up the envelopes one by one, without looking at their contents, shoving the pieces in an empty milk carton in the garbage.
Trish walked in just as he closed the top of the carton. "Any mail?" she asked, wiping her wet hands on her jeans.
"None," he lied.
The next day there were no letters at all, nor any the day after that. It was almost as if he was being punished for tearing up the mail when it had arrived, as if he had rejected an offering and was to receive no more as punishment.
But that was crazy thinking.
Still, the absence of mail was somehow just as perturbing as its presence, and it made him feel strangely on edge. He had probably seen too many movies and read too many books, but he could not help ascribing a malevolent intent to this temporary respite. It felt to him like the calm before the storm, and he kept waiting for the storm to hit. He tried to finish the first wall of the storage shed, but he could not seem to concentrate and he gave it up after only an hour's work.
At the store that afternoon, he noticed that many of the people with whom he came in contact seemed tense and testy. Todd Gold, owner of the deli next door toBayless , did not even acknowledge his greeting. When Doug waved and called out "Hi," Gold turned curtly away and retreated into his store.
But he told Trish none of this. She seemed to be much happier since the mail had stopped coming, and though this out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality was not typical for her, was indeed entirely out of character, he did not want to drag her into what might simply be his own delusion. After all, perhaps there had been nothing strange going on, nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps his imagination had overreacted to a bizarre series of seemingly interconnected occurrences that had really had nothing to do with one another.
Perhaps.
But he didn't think so.
18
Tritia felt a little better today. For the third day in a row they had received no mail, and for some reason that cheered her up. The old no-news-is good-news theory. Besides, she was going to see Irene Hill, and a visit with the old woman never failed to lift her spirits.
She turned off the highway and drove down Pine Street. She passed the Willis Women's Club and sped by the brick building guiltily. She had made a commitment to attend Weight Watchers meetings there every afternoon for six months but had not shown up since the third meeting. She had adhered to the strict diet for the first two weeks and had lost five pounds, half of her goal, but the pressure had been too much. The weigh-ins, the pep talks, the lectures, the journals, the propaganda, had all made her feel too constrained. Besides, although she could afford to lose a little on the thighs, she still had a shapely figure and she knew she looked a hell of a lot better than some of the women in town who had not signed up for Weight Watchers at all.
She saw one of those women now, Beth Johnson, pulling out of the post office parking lot. Beth waved at her, a false plastic smile on her face, and Tritia waved back.
She continued down Pine, then turned off on the dirt road just before the golf course. She continued around the small hill until she came to the small .cluster of homes adjacent to the old ranger station.
She pulled into Irene's driveway. She had first met Irene Hill when they had both worked as volunteers for the annual library book sale a few years back.