Tritia swallowed heavily, feeling an ache of sadness in her breast as she looked at the frightened pitiful woman before her. A month ago, she would not have thought this possible. She would have said death, and only death, would be able to break Irene, and even then the old woman would go out kicking and fighting. But obviously the mailman had been able to do it just as well. She spoke softly to her friend. "Irene, what's happened?"
The old woman blanched visibly when Tritia spoke, cringing as though she were being yelled at, as though afraid of being hit. She suddenly cocked her head, listening to a noise that wasn't there, then dropped to her knees and righted one of the boxes on the floor, throwing in some of the small knickknacks that were lying on the carpet.
Tritia knelt down next to her. "Irene?" she said softly.
The old woman stopped picking up items off the ground and began to cry.
Her voice was thin and reedy, the powerful assured voice Tritia remembered long gone. Tritia reached out and hugged her friend. Irene stiffened noticeably at first, tensing as if preparing to be attacked, but she did not pull away, and gradually her muscles relaxed, giving in. She continued to sob, a seemingly endless flood of tears, and Tritia patiently held her, murmuring soothing noises in her ear.
When her crying finally stopped, she pulled away, wiped her eyes, and looked up at Tritia . "Come here," she said, standing up.
"What is it?"
"Come here."
Tritia followed Irene down the hall to her husband's den. She tried not to think of the toe, the severed toe, lying in the box, as Irene opened the door.
Tritia peeked over her friend's shoulder. The room was filled with boxes of all shapes and sizes. They had been thrown into the room and left where they'd landed, right side up, upside down, on their sides. All were wrapped in brown butcher paper.
Tritia stepped around Irene into the room.
"Don't touch them," Irene screamed.
Tritia jumped. She turned around. She hadn't been planning to touch anything. "What's in them?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.
"Jasper."
"Your husband?"
"The parts of his body."
Tritia felt suddenly cold, chilled to the bone. She backed away from the open door. "None of the boxes are open," she said. "Maybe you're wrong."
"I don't have to open them." Irene pointed toward a square box big enough to contain a stack of hardback books. "I think that's his head."
Tritia closed the den door, pulling her friend away. "You have to get out of here," she said. "Why don't you come home with me?"
, "No!" The old woman's voice was still capable of surprising sharpness.
"At least tell the police. Have them get these boxes out of here. You can't live like this."
Irene's face clouded over. "I'm sorry, I have no tea. You'll have to leave now." She jumped, crying out, and instantly looked at the floor behind her, but there was nothing there.
"Please," Tritia begged.
"It's my house. I want you out of here."
"I'm your friend."
"You _were_ my friend."
"I'll call the police and tell them what I've seen and they'll come in here anyway."
"You do what you have to do."
Tritia felt like crying with frustration. She yelled at her friend. "Can't you see what's happening here? Can't you see what the mailman's doing?"
"I see better than you. Please leave now."
Tritia allowed herself to be pushed out the doorway. She remained on the porch for several minutes after the door was slammed shut, after she heard the sounds of locks and latches being drawn. She thought about the boxes in the den.
The mailman might just be trying to scare her. They might not really contain body parts.
But they might.
What were they going to do? They couldn't just sit around until they were all knocked off or driven crazy. Something had to be done. But what? The police were no help. Apparently the higher-ups in the Postal Service weren't either.
Maybe someone should kill him.
The thought came, unbidden, but though she tried to push it away, tried to tell herself it was wrong and unmoral and illegal, the idea stayed with her.
And by the time she had driven home it was starting to sound pretty damn good.
39
The phone rang, and Doug was awake instantly. He reached over Tritia 's sleeping body and picked it up in the middle of the second ring. A feeling of heavy foreboding had awakened with him, and he glanced at the clock on the dresser as he brought the receiver to his ear, thinking with the fading vestiges of dream logic that he needed to remember the time of this call.
Two-fifteen.
"Hello?"Dpug said. His voice was tired, tinged with annoyance at being disturbed, but there was an edge in it as well as he prepared himself for bad news. No one called at two-fifteen in the morning if it wasn't bad news.
"Mr.Albin ?" It was Mike Trenton. Doug's throat felt constricted, his chest tight, and he had to force himself to swallow. The policeman sounded strange. Not exactly frightened, but something very close to it.
"What happened?" he asked.
"It's Mr. Beecham. He's, uh, he's dead."
Doug closed his eyes, letting his head fall onto the pillow, unwilling to make the effort anymore to keep it up.
"We found him on the floor of his cell," Mike continued. "His forehead is completely caved in, and there's blood all over the wall and floor. It's hard to tell, but it appears as though he butted his head against the wall until he smashed open his skull.
"We took away his clothes and shoelaces when we admitted him, but he didn't seem dangerous or self-destructive and we didn't think there was any need to restrain him or --"
Doug reached over Tritia 's body and hung up the phone. After a second's thought, he took it off the hook.
"What is it?" Tritia asked groggily.
Doug said nothing but simply stared into space, and a moment later she had again fallen asleep.
He did not sleep until morning.
40
The funeral was short and sparsely attended.HobieBeechain had not been the most popular man in Willis during the best of times, and the mailman's successfully slanderous framing of the auto-shop teacher had obviously taken its toll onHobie's already low popularity rating. As Doug stood next to the open grave, he found himself wondering if anyone would have shown up even if the murder hadn't occurred. The mailman's continued psychic assault on the town seemed to have drained a lot of the energy from people, had made them less social, angrier, less trustworthy. He wondered if even Bob Ronda could draw the crowd today he'd been able to draw a month ago.
That was a strange way of looking at it, to see a funeral as a popularity contest in which final judgment was passed on a man's life by the number of people who attended, by the size of the crowd. But it was also strangely appropriate since many people did judge the worth of others by the quantity of their social relationships. Particularly in a small town like Willis. A man could be rich, famous, successful, but if he lived in Willis and he wasn't married, if he stayed home alone on Friday nights instead of going out with friends or family, there was definitely something wrong with him.
And there had always been something wrong withHobie . He'd admitted it himself, many times. Making friends, as he was fond of saying, was not his major goal in life. Doug found himself smiling, though his eyes were moist.Hobie had been loud, obnoxious, iconoclastic, and fiercely independent. He was who he was, and if someone didn't like it, that was their problem.