Tritia ran inside and took the receiver from his grasp. "Hello?"
"He's here again!"
Tritia recognized the voice. Ellen Ronda. She had not called since the time Tritia had been alone at the house, and she sounded much worse now.
Hysteria had not merely crept into her voice, it had transformed it completely, until she no longer sounded even remotely like herself. The woman on the other end of the line was not someone who could have ever been referred to as The Rock. This was a woman firmly in the grip of madness, a gibbering fool, a babbling idiot.
"What is it?" Tritia demanded.
"He's coming after me," Ellen screamed. "With a baseball bat!"
"Calm down," Tritia told her. "Just --"
And then she heard the sound of glass breaking.
The sound of a baseball bat hitting a wall.
"Get over here!" Ellen screamed. "Bring the police! He's --"
There was a loud crack as the line went dead.
Tritia dropped the phone and grabbed Doug's hand. "Let's go," she said.
"What's happening?"
"Ellen's being attacked! Right now!"
"Let's call the --"
"There's no time!" Tritia pushed open the door. "You stay here," she yelled at Billy. "Lock the doors! Stay inside!" She pulled Doug across the porch toward the car. "Let's go. Now!"
Doug drove as quickly as he could, but theRondas ' house was on the other side of town and there was no shortcut. The Bronco bumped along, splashing through the creek crossing, bottoming out in the ruts. As they sped through town twenty miles over the speed limit, Doug hoped that a cop would see them and chase them, but the street seemed to be deserted. He glanced quickly over at the post office as they sped past it. The parking lot was empty. Even the mailman's car was gone.
The front door of theRondas ' house was wide open. Doug pulled to a quick stop in the driveway, then ran inside the house without waiting for Tritia . He had nothing in his hand and cursed himself for not taking out a tire iron or something that could be used as a weapon.
He ran through the wrecked living room, through the trashed family room.
Ellen was lying on the floor of the kitchen, naked. Dead. A knife was clutched in one hand; her other hand was clawed into the linoleum. She had died with her mouth open, screaming or trying to scream, and her face was frozen in a rictusof terror.
But it was not the upper half of her body that commanded Doug's attention.
He stared down at Ellen's body as Tritia came up behind him. The old woman's legs were broken and spread wide apart, the ankles jutting out at impossible angles. Whatever had been used to assault her vagina had left behind a huge gaping hole from which hung small clinging pieces of flesh. The skin up to her navel had been split, and blood was everywhere, covering her legs, the floor, the kitchen table, thickly, darkly red.
"Oh, God," Tritia said. "Oh, my God." She rushed outside and promptly threw up.
Trying to keep his own lunch down, Doug called the police.
They were seated in theRondas ' living room, listening to the sounds of the police and the coroner working in the kitchen. Doug found his eyes fixating on a photograph of Ronda, his wife, and both boys displayed on the mantel above the rock fireplace. Next to him Tritia sat silently. He held her hand, periodically giving it a small squeeze, but she said nothing and her hand did not react back. He heard a noise behind him as someone emerged from the kitchen.
"We'll get him," Mike said. "We'll get him now."
"Kind of late, don't you think?" Doug stood up, turning to face the policeman, but the anger within him dissipated as he saw the look of devastation on the young officer's face.
Mike closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath. "Yes it is," he said.
"Way too late."
The coroner emerged from the doorway behind him. A sharp hawk-nosed man with the lean look of a meaner Harry Dean Stanton, he alone seemed unfazed by what he had seen. He handed Mike a clipboard and several forms.
"What caused it?" Doug asked.
The coroner looked at him. "Her death? The official story will be that she was raped and murdered."
"What is the unofficial story? The real story?"
"The real story? You saw for yourself. She was raped to death. She was raped and sodomized with a large blunt object, approximately the size of a baseball bat. Her intestines are ruptured, her liver and kidneys smashed, and her gall bladder has been completely torn apart. I'll have to conduct an autopsy and examine her more thoroughly before I can determine the exact extent of the damage and the precise organ stoppage that caused her death."
Mike looked over the forms, signed the top one, then handed the clipboard back to the coroner, who went back into the kitchen. Mike followed. Through the doorway, Doug saw two white-suited men unrolling a plastic body bag.
Doug sat back down on the couch, grasping Tritia 's limp hand. A moment later, Mike emerged from the kitchen with ChiefCatfield .
"Mr.Albin ," the chief said, nodding in acknowledgment.
Doug glared at him, pointing toward the kitchen. "So, tell me, Chief, did she kill herself too?"
"That's not funny, Mr.Albin ."
"You're damn right it's not funny. I told you assholes about the mailman weeks ago. I told you something like this would happen. I warned you. Are you happy now? Now do you believe me?" He slammed his palm angrily against the table in front of him. "Shit!"
"For what it's worth, I believe you, Mr.Albin . But it's not as simple as you seem to think it is. Of course, we're going to question Mr. Smith. But unless we find some prints or threads of clothing or other physical evidence, or unless we can find a witness who can place him at the scene of the crime, there's no way in hell we'll be able to detain him for more than an afternoon."
"Ellen told my wife this was going to happen! She said the mailman was going to kill her! Isn't that proof enough? Doesn't that count for something?"
The chief turned toward Tritia . "What exactly did she say, Mrs.Albin ?"
Tritia stared at him dazedly for a moment, then shook her head as if to clear it. Her voice, when it came out, was rational, lucid, and completely normal. She looked from Doug to Mike to the chief. "Actually, she did not say the name of the man who was after her. She just said 'he,' although I knew immediately who she was talking about."
Doug ran an exasperated hand through his hair. "Can't you get the federal authorities involved here?"
"How?" Mike said. "This doesn't involve interstate commerce, international terrorism, or anything else the feds would ordinarily investigate."
"It involves the mail."
"Easier said than proven," the chief said.
"What about the state police?"
"We'd prefer to tackle this on our own,"Catfield explained. "This is a local matter, and I think we can handle it better without any outside interference."
"Yeah, I can tell. You're doing a hell of a job."
"For your information, Mr.Albin , even if we did want to get the help of an outside agency, the state authorities require more than just a phone call before they get involved in a matter that clearly should be under local jurisdiction. Documentation must be provided, forms must be completed --"
"All of which are sent through the mail," Mike said.
"Shit!" Doug stood up. "There has to be something we can do."
The chief turned back toward the kitchen. "We'll do what we can."
The electricity was on, and Billy was upstairs watching his usual Thursday-night shows. The television was off downstairs, and both Doug and Tritia were reading -- he an old JohnFowles novel, she a new JosephWambaugh book. They'd told Billy what had happened, in simplenongruesome terms, but they had not spoken of the afternoon since then, and dinner had been marked by long silences and irrelevant conversation.