They all got out of their vehicles. The night was cool, an advance scout for the coming fall. There were no clouds, and the new moon was surrounded by a faint hazy white halo.
"Why are we stopping here?" Mike asked.
Doug put a finger on his lips to tell the policeman to be quiet. "We have to walk the rest of the way. It's the only way we'll catch him. If he hears all those cars and trucks driving up the road, he'll be gone before we even get there."
Mike nodded. "All right, then. Lead the way."
They walked slowly across the bumpy ground, the policemen with their guns drawn, everyone nervously alert, on edge, listening for the smallest sound, looking for the smallest movement. They passed through a patch of sticker bushes, maneuvered through the giantmanzanita .
And then they heard it. The familiar rhythmic chanting that brought a chill to Doug's blood, raised goose bumps on his arms.
He looked back at Mike, who nodded for him to keep moving. They crept forward slowly, quietly, until they were at the edge of the field. Doug stopped.
The mailman was dancing, as Doug had known he would be, arms flailing with wild abandonment, legs kicking up in spontaneouscounterrhythm .
And the chant.
". . . rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail. . ."
The chill that had enveloped Doug increased as they approached. There were ten of them all together, he was not alone, but he felt as afraid as if he had been facing the mailman by himself.
The mailman continued to dance. He looked extraordinarily thin, and he seemed ghostly in the moonlight, his red hair fake.
"Okay," Mike whispered, gathering them around. "We'll spread out in a net, a half-circle. He can't go down the cliff, so he'll be trapped." The policeman looked at Doug, then back at his colleagues. "He's not armed, but he's dangerous. If he tries anything, shoot him."
The other policemen nodded.
"Let's go."
The grass and bushes rustled as the men spread out, but the noise was more than covered by the mailman's chanting. Doug, weaponless, stayed close to Mike.
When the policemen saw that they were all in place, he stepped forward. The others followed suit.
The mailman saw them but did not falter in his ritual, continuing to dance without pause, raising his arms toward the sliver of the moon.
"I am placing you under arrest," Mike announced.
The mailman laughed, changing the words to his chant: "Neither men nor women nor hail of bullets shall keep this mailman from his appointed rounds."
Mike stepped forward, Doug next to him. The half-circle began to close in.
The mailman danced away from them, across the rocky field toward the edge of the ridge.
"Stop right there," Mike ordered.
The mailman laughed, leapt, danced, chanted. "Nor dark of night. . ."
They followed as he led them toward the ridge's edge, closing in, tightening their trap until they were almost upon him.
The mailman stopped dancing. He was not sweating, not even breathing hard.
He grinned at Doug. "Billy is such a nice boy," he said. "Such a _nice_ boy."
"Put your hands above your head," Mike ordered.
"What for, Officer?"
"Put them up!"
"You have no proof."
"We have all the proof we need."
The mailman smiled as he looked around the semicircle. "Fuckers," he said quietly.
"Put your hands above your head," Mike repeated.
"Fuckers," the mailman said softly. He moved backward to the very edge of the cliff, darting agilely from rock to rock, movingsurefootedly across treacherous stretches of loosely packed dirt away from them.
Mike fired a warning shot in the air, and the mailman stopped. Mike aimed the pistol at him. "If you make one more move, I'll kill you. Do you understand?"
Doug was not sure whether Mike was serious or not, but the mailman thought he was, and he remained in place.
"Tim," Mike said, "cuff him."
Tim nodded, moved forward, open cuffs in hand. "Mr. Smith, you are under arrest for --"
He never finished the sentence. The mailman quickly reached out and, before Hibbard had a chance to react, grabbed the handcuffs and yanked them from the policeman's grip. Tim lunged for the cuffs, but the mailman stepped neatly aside and with a quick well-placed push sent the young policeman over the edge of the ridge. There was a raw scream of terror that was cut off almost immediately. Doug heard the sickening thump-crack of the body hitting rock and, for a second, a fault echo of the scream before the echo, too, was cut off.
The mailman grinned. "Next?"
It had happened in a matter of seconds, almost before Doug knew what was going on, but Lt. Jack Shipley was already in action, moving forward, pistol pointed directly at the mailman's midsection. The mailman's white hand darted out, reaching for the gun.
Jack shot.
The bullet hit the mailman full in the chest, blood spurting from the ragged hole. The mailman toppled backward from the force of the blast, but he managed to grab the gun anyway. With a quick yank, he pulled the policeman with him over the edge. Jack was too startled to scream or react in any way. The mailman fell over the cliff, clutching tightly to the policeman, and the two of them tumbled to the rocks below. In the second before he fell, Doug thought he saw a smile on the mailman's bloody lips.
The rest of them ran to the edge, looking down, but the ground below was dark. Several policemen switched on their flashlights.
The intersecting beams quickly found and illuminated Jack's broken unmoving form.
The beams crossed and crisscrossed, searching the rocky floor below, spotlighting inch by inch the ground surrounding the spot where Jack had fallen.
Tim lay nearby, arms twisted to the sides in impossible angles, head cracked open on a boulder. The lights lingered, then moved on, hitting trees, hitting bushes. Doug said nothing, and neither did any of the other men, but they were all thinking the same thing, and they were all scared shitless.
The beams continued to explore the terrain below the ridge, covering and recovering the same area.
But there were only two bodies on the ground.
The mailman was gone.
46
Doug sat on the porch and looked at his watch. It was after midnight already. He had been here for four hours, since leaving Trish at the hospital.
He had wanted to stay too, but the doctor on duty, not Dr. Maxwell, had said that only one parent would be allowed to spend the night.
Doug had driven home alone.
On the ridge, he had hitched a ride back with Jeff Brickman, the officer who had volunteered to return to the station and coordinate communication while the other men figured out how to bring up the bodies. Jeff was going to try to get through to the county sheriffs office or the state police, and Doug seriously hoped he succeeded. For now, the policemen were following Mike, but he could already see them falling into disarray with the regular chain of command broken. When he had left, they were almost to the drawing-straws level of assigning responsibilities. It frightened Doug to see how easily such a trained group of individuals, such a structured organization, could fall apart, and he was glad when he was once again in the Bronco and driving.
He wondered now what the police were doing.
He thought of calling, but decided against it.
He finished off the last swallow of his fifth beer and stared up at the stars. Far above, one of the lighter heavenly bodies was traveling west to east in a steady line. A satellite. Lower, he saw the blinking lights of an airplane pass by, though the airplane made no sound.