Another letter delivered.

He knew he should jump up and confront the mailman, rush outside and beat the crap out of the scrawnyfaggoty bastard, but he was afraid to so much as acknowledge his presence. He shut his eyes, muscles tense, trembling within, until he heard the sound of retreating footsteps, the purring sound of a fading engine.

He sat there until dawn, afraid to return to bed, afraid to look into the mailbox, afraid to move, and it was only the sound of his alarm ringing at six o'clock that forced him to finally leave the couch.

22.

Doug sat in the hard-backed chair, glaring at the police chief. "I saw it!"

"Okay, let's assume that the mailman was dancing in the dark. So what?

It's not against the law to dance. Dancing is considered a legitimate form of self-expression."

"Don't play games with me. There're some weird fucking things going on in this town, and you're giving me thispiddly -ass bullshit."

The chief eyed him coolly. "The law is not 'piddly-ass bullshit,' Mr.

Albin. I am well aware of your opinions on this subject, and I'll be honest and tell you that we are pursuing all avenues in our investigations."

Mike Trenton, next to the chief, stared silently down at the table.

"Don't patronize me with that Jack Webb crap. You know as well as I do that something strange is going on here."

"I don't tell you how to teach; don't you tell me how to do my job." The chief stood up. "I would appreciate it if you would stay out of police business.

We are fully capable of handling --"

" 'Fully capable?' "

"That is all, Mr.Albin ." The chief put his hands on the table and leaned forward. "I've wasted enough of my morning talking to you and listening to your theories. Please do not harass this department again or you'll find yourself charged with obstruction of justice. Do I make myself understood?"

Doug looked across at Mike, but the young cop was still looking down at the table, refusing to meet his gaze. "Perfectly," he said.

Doug spent the rest of the day the way he'd wanted to spend the entire summer -- sitting on the porch, reading. But try as he might, he could not relax and enjoy himself. He knew he had screwed things up royally at the police station, and the knowledge that he might have lent the mailman legitimacy in the eyes of the police gnawed at him. He should have known better. He should have been more cautious, should have at least maintained the appearance of calm rationality. Instead, he had ranted and raved like a fanatic.

He put down his book and stared out at the trees. Was it possible that he was reading into events interpretations that weren't there? That he really was suffering from some sort of obsessive delusion?

No.

He had seen the proof with his own eyes.

A bluebird flitted from tree to tree, searching for food, and he watched it impassively. Many of his fellow teachers, he knew, lived in little academic worlds of their own, completely disassociated from the life around them. He could not do that. It would be nice if he could, but fortunately, or unfortunately, he lived in the real world. He was affected by politics, by economics, by the weather.

By the mailman.

That was one thing he'd learned the past two weeks: how much he was affected by the mail, how much the mail intruded on all aspects of his life.

"Doug!"

He looked up. Trish was standing in the doorway, holding open the screen.

"You want to have lunch on the porch or inside?"

He shrugged noncommittally and picked up the book from his lap.

A moment later, he felt Trish's hand on his arm. "Why don't we go to Sedona for the day, get away from all this? We're both letting it affect us far too much."

He nodded slowly. "You're right."

"It would do us good to get away."

"Yeah. We can go up Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff. They have a real post office there. Maybe I can talk to --"

"No," she said firmly. "I mean, get away from _this_. All this craziness.

It seems like the mail's the only thing we think about or talk about anymore.

Let's just take Billy and go to Sedona and have a nice day's vacation, like we used to. We'll eat, shop, and be typical tourists. How does that sound?"

"It sounds good," he admitted.

"Are you willing to give it a try?"

He nodded.

"So, do you want to eat inside or on the porch?"

"On the porch."

She headed back toward the open door. "Food's on its way."

They left early the next morning, stopping first by the bakery for donuts, coffee, and chocolate milk. Trish was right, Doug thought as he drove out of town. Maybe they needed a short vacation, needed to get away in order to gain some perspective. The trees sailed by as he kept pace with the speed limit.

Already he felt easier, happier, more relaxed than he had in weeks. It was as if the mantle of responsibility he had placed upon himself had been left behind at the town limits. Although he knew it would be waiting for him when he got back, he was grateful to be rid of it even temporarily and was determined to enjoy the day. The forest grew thicker as they headed north. The narrow highway wound between cliffs and into gorges, following the lay of the land.Subforests of small saplings grew in the shade of huge ponderosas. Low bushes covered all available space. Here and there, they could see the stark leafless skeletons of trees hit by lightning, bare branches contrasting sharply with the surrounding lushness. Once, near a small pond in a grassy meadow, they saw a deer, frozen in place by the terror of seeing their car.

Then the trees tapered off, segueing from forest to high desert, and after another hour, the road hit Black Canyon Highway.

"Burger King," Billy said as they passed a sign that said it was forty miles to Sedona. "Let's eat at Burger King."

It was the most interest he'd shown in anything all day, and Doug was about to say okay, but Tritia said firmly, "No, we're going to eat at Tlaquepaque."

"Not that place again," Billy groaned.

"We haven't been there in over a year," his mother told him.

"Not long enough."

"You be quiet."

They were all silent after that, listening to the hum of the Bronco's wheels and the sounds of static and country music from the station in Flagstaff.

Fifteen minutes after they passed the turnoff for Montezuma's Castle, Doug pulled off Black Canyon Highway and headed down the two-lane road that led to Sedona. Of the three approaches to the town, this was the most spectacular.

There was no gradual shift in the color of the rocks as there was coming in from Camp Verde, and there were no obscuring plants and trees as there were along the road through Oak Creek Canyon. The land here was tailor-made for western movies: great open expanses strategically broken by the dramatic shapes of the red rock cliffs. The colors were vivid: blue sky, white clouds, green trees, red rocks, sharp contrasts that could not be captured by any camera.

They drove past Bell Rock and past Frank Lloyd Wright's Church of the Holy Cross, the road gradually hugging closer to the creek and the cliffs as the first shops and resorts appeared.

They went directly to Tlaquepaque, a Spanish-styled complex of galleries, shops, and boutiques located in a wooded spot at the edge of Oak Creek. They strolled through the shops, taking their time. Billy soon grew bored and ran ahead, checking out the tiled fountains that seemed to be in every courtyard and counting the coins in the water while surreptitiously examining the bathing suited mannequins in the clothes store windows. Tritia fell in love with a Dan Naminghaprint she saw in one of the galleries, and while she and Billy continued on ahead, Doug doubled back on the pretext of going to the bathroom and bought the print, hiding it under a blanket in back of the car.

As Tritia had promised, they ate lunch in the outdoor patio of the small Mexican restaurant, listening to the burble of the creek. Their view was limited by the trees and the courtyard, but they could still see hills of red rock, the color made more brilliant in contrast with the green foliage.

It was a relaxing lunch, and for a moment Doug was almost able to forget about the mail, to forget about everything that had happened recently in Willis.

Then a blue-suited postal carrier, brown bag slung over his shoulder, stopped off and handed a stack of envelopes to the girl behind the cash register. The mailman smiled at the girl, seemingly normal and friendly, but for Doug the mood was spoiled, and as he ate his chilirelleno , he watched the mailman make the rounds of all the shops.

The trip home was uneventful. Billy slept in the back seat while he and Trish stared out at the passing scenery and listened to an old Emerson, Lake & Palmer tape. They passed the green sign that announced the Willis town limit a little after four, and Doug drove past Henry's Garage and the Ponderosa Realty office, but just beyond the Texaco station, the road was blocked by two police cars with flashing lights. A single policeman stood next to each car, along with a crowd of motorists who had not been allowed to pass the barrier. Several local residents milled around nearby. Doug saw at the edge of the crowd the brown uniform of a member of the sheriffs posse.

Hepulled'to a stop in back of a battered jeep and told Trish and Billy to wait in the car as he got out to investigate. As he approached the makeshift blockade, he realized that one of the policemen was Mike Trenton. He strode up to the young cop. "Mike, what happened?"

"Please stay back, Mr.Albin . We can't let you through."

"What happened?"

"BenStockley went crazy. He took a pistol into the bank about an hour ago and started shooting."

"Oh my God," Doug breathed: "Was anyone hurt?"

The police officer's face was pale, tense. "Fourteen people are dead, Mr.

Albin."

23.

The murders made national news. All three of Phoenix's network affiliates sent vans and reporters to Willis, and their stories were picked up for the national nightly newscasts. Channel 12 seemed to have the best coverage, and before going to bed Doug watched again as the cameraman's telephoto lens caught the white flash ofStockley's gun behind the smoked bank window at the precise moment that the editor killed himself. The suicide had happened live during the five-o'clock broadcast, and even the reporter had stopped talking as the sound of the shot echoed with a grim finality. Doug had known then thatStockley was dead, that he was not merely wounded or injured, and he'd watched with increasingly blurred vision as the remaining hostages ran out of the building and the police swarmed in.

By the time the commercial came on, he was openly crying.

He andStockley had not exactly been friends, but they were closer than acquaintances, and the man's death had affected him strongly. He had respected the editor. And he had liked him. It was strange watching it all on TV, seeing places he knew and people he knew in such a distanced and depersonalized form, and somehow it made him feel more depressed.

In an update, over a shot ofStockley's covered body being wheeled across the bank parking lot to an ambulance, the anchor said that a series of letters had been found in the editor's desk that police believed would give them a clue as to why he had suddenly gone on the killing rampage.

_Letters_.

Doug shut off the television and walked down the hall to the bedroom, where Trish was already asleep and snoring.

_Letters_.

The connection was so damn obvious that even that doltish police chief would have to see the pattern. But, no, he remembered seeing news coverage of similar events, friends and neighbors uniformly repeating how they couldn't believe the kind, considerate, normal person they knew could have committed such horrible acts. The man who suddenly went crazy and murdered innocent bystanders was becoming a regular feature of the nightly news; there was nothing really unusual about it anymore.

Of course, Doug himself was one of those people who could not imagine how Stockleycould have done such a horrible thing. He had no doubt that the mailman was at the bottom of this, behind it all, but try as he might, he could not imagine anything written in a letter that could so completely send 'a person around the bend, that could make an ostensibly sane man start killing innocent individuals. Much as he hated to admit it, much as it hurt him to admit it, there probably had been something wrong withStockley to begin with, some breaking point, some button the mailman had known how and when to push.

There was something even more frightening about that, for just as it was said that everyone had a price, everyone probably also had a breaking point.

Maybe he'd been wrong before. Maybe the mailman hadn't killed Ronda and Bernie Rogers. Maybe they'd killed themselves because the mailman had known exactly what to do to set them off, to push them over the edge. Maybe the mailman knew what that point was for all of them, for everyone in Willis. For himself.

For Tritia .

For Billy.

It was long after midnight when Doug finally fell asleep, and his dreams were filled with white faces and red hair and envelopes.

The next day was hotter than usual; the sky clear, without a trace of cloud to offer the earth temporary shade from the hellish sun.Hobie dropped by just before lunch, dressed in his lifeguard uniform, though it was Wednesday and the pool was closed for cleaning. He came up on the porch, accepted Doug's offer of iced tea. He seemed distracted and ill at ease, unable to concentrate. Doug talked to him about the murders, but though his friend nodded in all the right places, even volunteering an occasional comment or opinion, he seemed not to be listening, the conversation going in one ear and out the other.

FacingHobie , Doug noticed food stains on the black swimming trunks, and this close he saw that his friend's T-shirt was wrinkled and not as white as it should have been, as though he had been wearing it for days, sleeping in it.

Even Tritia must have noticed something odd aboutHobie , for she was not as hostile to him as she usually was. Indeed, as the three of them ate Italian sandwiches on the porch, she seemed downright sympathetic toward him, going out of her way to bring him into the conversation, and for the first time that day he relaxed a little, though he was by no means his usual talkative overbearing self. After lunch, Tritia returned indoors, and the two men remained on the porch. "So, whatever happened with your books?"Hobie asked, belching loudly.

"Ever get an official no from the district?"

Doug nodded. "I sent them a letter back, though, complaining."

"What'd they say?"

"Nothing." Doug smiled wryly. "I guess their reply got lost in the mail."

"Willard Young. Shit, he's nothing but a dick with feet."

"Wrong side of the body. I'd call him an asshole."

"That too."

They were silent for a moment. From inside came the muffled clink of china as Tritia washed their plates.

"Something's happening in this town,"Hobie said finally. His voice was low, serious, totally unlike his usual loud bluster, and Doug realized that for the first time he was hearing the sound of fear in his friend's voice.

The emotion had to be transferable, he thought, for he could feel the cold prickling of peach-fuzz hair on his own arms and neck. "What is it?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral.