Tritia pulled into the driveway. Doug looked away, toward the trees. He heard the muted clicking of the emergency brake being put on, the slam of the car door, followed by the sound of Trish's steps on the wooden porch. "I'm back," she announced.
When he did not respond, she walked over to him. "I said I'm back."
He looked up at her. "You want a medal?"
Her expression went from anger to hurt to a calm neutrality. He felt guilty and looked away. He didn't know why he was being so mean to her. She was only trying to be friendly. But there was something about her Pollyanna attitude, her pretending that everything was okay, that grated on him and made him mad. Made him want to hurt her.
He had been mad at her a lot lately, though he didn't really understand why. "We're having fish tonight," she said. "Barbecued trout. I'll let you set up the barbecue."
"Did you buy any charcoal or lighter fluid? We're all out."
She shook her head. "Forget it. I'll broil it, then."
He stood up. "No. I'll go buy some. I want to get away from the house for a while anyway."
Tritia put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"
He stared at the hand, surprised. It had been days since they'd touched each other. He looked into her eyes and his voice softened. He felt some of his hostility, some of his tenseness, dissipate. He knew she was trying hard not to fight with him. "Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."
"Okay." She opened the screen door. "Better put some gas in the car too.
We're almost out."
"Yeah."
As he walked down the porch steps and across the gravel to the Bronco, he heard the television shut off, heard Trish talking to Billy. The sound of her voice, used not in anger but in concern, was nice and familiarly comforting, like the voice of an old friend not heard in a while, and suddenly he felt much better.
The Bronco was nearly out of gas, the fuel gauge on empty, and the first thing he did was stop by the Circle K and put in five dollars' worth.
The second thing he did was drive to Howard's house.
He pulled to a stop in front of the low ranch-style home. It now looked definitely abandoned. The lawn was tan, even the weeds dried up and dead. Next door, a man was just getting out of his pickup and Doug quickly got out of the car and tried to wave him down. "Hey," he called.
The man took one look at him and hurried into his house.
Doug stopped walking. The whole damn town was acting squirrelly. He considered approaching Howard's neighbors on the other side, knocking on their door, asking if they'd seen the postmaster, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't get much cooperation from them. Or anyone else in the neighborhood.
He noticed that several other lawns were starting to look kind of ragged.
Knowing he would probably get no answer or response, he walked up Howard's driveway and knocked on the door. Pounded on the door. Yelled for Howard to come out. But his entreaties were met with no response. Again he checked the front door, the back door, the windows, but again everything was locked up tight. A
darker, more solid drape seemed to have been put up behind the original curtains because now nothing could be seen inside the house, not even a shadow.
He wondered if he should call the police. Howard's house now showed definite signs of abandonment, and since no one except the mailman could claim to have seen him at all within the past few weeks, there seemed to him good cause to break into the postmaster's house and see if he was all right.
But he knew calling the police would do no good. He had told them the same story last time, and they'd donezippity shit. Besides, they'd never even try to get a search warrant or break into Howard's house unless they saw the mailman run inside the door with the postmaster's bloody head in his hands.
Doug shook his head. If there was one thing he hated about Arizona, it was the almost fanatic worship of land and property common to nearly everyone in the state. Here, people still had an Old West mentality, a perverse worldview that placed possessions above people in importance. He remembered one time when he and Billy had gone hiking out toward Deer Valley. They had been walking through a drycreekbed , following its course, when they happened upon a cabin in the woods. They turned immediately around, but not before they heard a young boy's voice call out, "Intruders, Pa!" A minute or so later, they heard the thunderous echoing sound of a shotgun blast. He'd felt like he was in some sort of damn movie. The noise was not repeated, but he and Billy had run the rest of the way back to the car, keeping low to the ground. When he told the police what had happened, the desk sergeant had merely smiled tolerantly and told him he shouldn't have been trespassing, as though death would have been fair punishment for a person who had inadvertently stepped on someone else's land.
It was this attitude that a man should be allowed to do whatever he wanted, with no restraints, that led to situations such as this.
Still, he got back in the Bronco and drove to the police station. It couldn't hurt to try. The chief, fortunately, was not there, but unfortunately, neither was Mike, and Doug ended up telling his story to a young female clerk who took down his statement and promised to give it personally to the lieutenant assigned to that sector of town. Doug was nice to her, cooperative, smiled at her, thanked her for her help, and left knowing nothing would be done.
Hell, maybe he should break in there himself, take this into his own hands.
But, no, the chief would just have him arrested and thrown in jail.
He drove toBayless to pick up the charcoal and lighter fluid, aware that Trish was probably already starting to worry. He had gone to town to buy two items and had been gone for more than an hour.
He quickly went into the store, walked directly to the aisle containing nonfood items, and picked up a cheap bag of charcoal and a plastic container of store-brand lighter fluid. The express checkout lane was closed, and the three registers that were open had long lines of customers, so he picked the shortest one and got behind an elderly man carrying a handheld grocery basket piled with dairy products.
As he stood in line, Doug saw empty wire rack space formerly taken by the newspaper. The rack seemed sad and forlorn, if emotions could be ascribed to newsstands, and he found himself wondering what had happened to therisque fortune cookies in BenStockley's desk drawer. He could still see in his mind the editor sitting behind his desk, but that image was beginning to fade, replaced by that of the bullet-riddled body he had seen on TV. What had happened toStockley ? A lump formed in Doug's throat and he forced himself to look away from the rack to the impulse items next to it.
It had been nearly half a month that the town had been without a paper.
The _Weekly_ had been, for all intents and purposes, a one-man operation, and whenStockley died, the paper abruptly ceased publication. Doug had no doubt that it would eventually get back on its feet once everything was sorted out there were a few part-time reporters who could probably take over the editing duties, and the secretary pretty much knew how the business end of the operation worked -- but for now the press in Willis was effectively shut down, and Doug couldn't help feeling that that was exactly the way the mailman wanted it. No independent means of disseminating information. No official way to learn what was going on.
Of course, news still traveled through unofficial channels. And traveled quite well. Through overhearing several unconnected conversations the past few minutes, for example, he knew that several more dogs had been murdered, not poisoned this time but decapitated, their severed heads stolen.