"Sorry. I don't think I have any help to give."

"Sure you do --"

"You want my opinion?"

The policeman nodded. "Of course."

"Don't wait for him to do something else. Get him now. Charge him with anything, charge him with everything. If nothing sticks, fine. But at least you'll have kept him off the streets for a while. And maybe by that time, with the hearings and jailing, the Postal Service will have appointed someone else to the job and we can get rid of him for good."

"That's your plan?"

Doug leaned forward. "He's a fake. I called the main post office in Phoenix, and they have no record of him. When you guys called, their computer was mysteriously down and my story couldn't be corroborated. But he's not a real mailman. If you can get a postal inspector up here, if you can get the federal authorities to charge him, I think we'll be safe. The problem is, you're not going to be able to get through by mail or phone. You're going to have to go to Phoenix in person."

"No gas," Mike reminded him.

"That's why you throw his ass in jail until you can get someone up here, put him out of commission for a while."

"I don't know," Mike said.

"Well, then, don't throw him in jail. But at least try to get a representative from the post office up here. He's not a real mailman, but he recognizes the authority of the Postal Service. Hell, it's the only authority he does recognize."

"What makes you think so?"

Gooseflesh cascaded down Doug's arms as he remembered the mailman dancing on the ridge. "I just know."

"I still want to stake him out."

"Then stake him out. Tail him. Follow him wherever he goes. Maybe you'll be able to catch him that way."

"But you don't think so?"

"I don't think so."

Mike stood up, picking up the photo album. "I'm on my own on this, you know. The department's not behind me. The chief would shit if he knew I was even talking to you."

"Why?"

"I don't know. But I do have a few others with me. Tim, of course. And Jack and Jeff. We all know what's going on."

"I think you should nab him now."

Mike walked to the door. "I'll think about it." He turned on the porch.

"It would mean my job, though."

"It may mean your life if you don't. Or mine."

"Maybe he'll just go away."

Doug smiled grimly. "No. That's what I was hoping, too. But that's the one thing he won't do: he won't go away."

Mike walked out to his car, got in, and backed up the drive, and Doug stood on the porch until the policeman's taillights were gone and the noise of his engine had faded into the sounds of the night.

43.

But Doug was wrong. The mailman did disappear. He was gone the next day, and when Doug drove by the post office in the afternoon, it was closed. At the police station, Mike said that SmithTegarden , the officer assigned to man the speed trap at the edge of town, had seen John Smith's car heading toward Phoenix.

The next day passed, and the next, and there was still no sign of him.

When the weekend rolled by and Monday arrived with the post office remaining closed, Doug began to relax.

It looked like it was over.

The mailman was gone.

44.

The morning dawned clear and cool and sunny, the first August merging of the disparate weather trends that would eventually crystallize into fall. Doug awoke early, showered, shaved, and went out to check the mailbox. He was gratified to find that it was empty.

By the time he'd walked back to the house, Tritia was up and making coffee. There was annoyance on her face as he said "Good morning" to her, and when he repeated the greeting, she refused to respond, unintelligibly grunting some sort of reply.

Doug turned on the television, and the familiar set of the NBC _News at Sunrise_ blinked into existence. There had been no problems with the electricity since the mailman left, and gas, water, and phone services had continued uninterrupted. Life, it seemed, was settling back into normalcy.

Billy was still asleep, but Tritia ordered Doug to wake him and make him come down for breakfast. She was making Spanishomelettes for each of them, using vegetables she had grown in the garden, and she refused to suspend her culinary efforts until Billy graciously decided that it was time for him to awaken. "Get him up now," she said.

They ate breakfast together, and Tritia announced that this morning they were going to go to the store and do some serious shopping. The cupboards were nearly bare, as were the refrigerator shelves, and she had a stack of coupons whose expiration dates had nearly arrived. She began making out a list of items they needed while Doug washed the dishes and Billy dried.

"Okay," she said finally. "Ready."

"I don't want to go," Billy said.

"You have to go."

"Why?"

Tritia looked at her son. He was mature for his age, intelligent, strong, but he had been forced to absorb far too much the past two months, had been expected to deal with things that most adults never had to deal with. She felt a strange sadness settle over her as she looked at his weary face. She hadalwaw wanted Billy to remain a child as long as possible and not grow up too fast.

Childhood was a magical special time and could only be experienced once. Yet at the same time, she did not believe in sheltering children from reality. Like it or not, they eventually had to live in the real world, and they could adjust to that world better if they were adequately prepared to deal with it.

This summer, however, had not been the real world. The horrific events of the past two months would not prepare Billy for things to come. Nothing like this would ever come again.

She stared at him, saw the pleading in his tired eyes. Her tone of voice softened. "Okay," she said. "You don't have to go."

Billy smiled, relieved, although there seemed to be something else in his eyes, something lurking just beyond the obvious emotions mirrored in his face.

This had probably scarred him more than she would ever know. "Thanks," he said.

"But," she warned, "you have to stay in the house. Keep all the doors locked and don't let anyone inside until we get back. Understand?"

He nodded.

"Okay." She looked over at Doug and saw his slight smile of approval. It never hurt to be careful.

Billy got dressed and stood on the porch as his parents got in the car and backed up the drive. "Lock the door," his dad called.

"I will."

He went back into the house and locked the door. His eyes were drawn to the piece ofplyboard still covering the broken window. He hoped the guy was going to come and fix the window soon. The board helped television viewing in the afternoon, virtually eliminating the glare from the sun, but it also made the house seem far too dark.

He didn't like darkness.

He wasn't sure what he was going to do today after his parents got back.

He thought of calling the twins, but then decided he really didn't want to see them. What he really wanted was to do something with Lane, but he was afraid to call his old friend. With the mailman gone and everything over, Lane might be back to normal. But then again, he might not, and Billy wasn't brave enough to find out.

Right now, he had to go to the bathroom, and he walked through the kitchen to the hall. He went into the bathroom, already unbuckling his belt. He froze.

An envelope was perched on the edge of the sink.

Another lay atop the closed lid of the toilet.

He wanted to scream, but he knew no one would hear him. His cries would only alert whoever the mailman? -- was out there.

Or in here.

He backed into his parents' bedroom. He saw one sealed letter on the dresser, another on the bed.

The house seemed suddenly much scarier, much more frightening. He walked slowly, silently toward the front room. The board over the window cut off an awful lot of light, he noticed, throwing nearly half of the room into darkness, creating pools and boxes of shadow within which a figure could hide. He saw a trail of envelopes leading upstairs to the loft, to his bedroom.

He carefully picked up the phone next to the TV. It was dead.

He heard a rustling noise upstairs.

He had to get out of here. But where could he go? There were not many homes nearby. He certainly couldn't stay at the Nelsons'. He couldn't go to Lane's house.

The Fort.

Yes, The Fort. He could go to The Fort and wait there until his parents came home. He and Lane had purposely built the structure sturdily in order to withstand outside attack, and he would be able to hide safely in there.

As quietly as possible, he opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch. The boards creaked beneath his feet and he stood still, unmoving, listening for any reaction upstairs, ready to run at the slightest sound, but he heard nothing.

He had never realized before how noisy the porch really was, and it seemed like a squeaking creaking eternity before he reached the steps and hurried down.

Beneath his feet, the gravel crunched with thunderous volume, but he ignored it and ran as fast as he could down the path toward The Fort. He leapt over familiar rocks and logs, skirted known sticker bushes. With one leap and expert footwork, he was on top of the camouflaged structure's roof, and then he was dropping inside, closing and locking the trapdoor.

He lay panting on the floor for a moment, trying to catch his breath, listening for any sounds that he had been followed, but the only noise he heard was the obnoxious cawing of a blue jay in a far-off tree.

He was safe.

He stood up, praying that his parents would come home soon. Praying that when they did come, he would be able to hear the noise of their car. He listened again for foreign sounds, alien noises, but the woods were clean.

He looked around the Big Room. The Fort seemed different with Lane gone, abandoned. The other time he had come in here without Lane, it had felt strange, but it had still been _their_ Fort. Now he wasn't sure whose it was. The structure was in the green belt by his house, but the materials had come from Lane's father and they had done all the work in tandem. He walked slowly through the room like a stranger, touching objects which had once been familiar to him but from which he now felt impossibly distanced. Everything seemed weird, as though it had once been his but was his no longer.

He supposed this was what a house must feel like to people who got a divorce.

Every so often, he stopped in his tracks, unmoving, listening to hear if there were any sounds outside, but always there was nothing.

He walked into the HQ, looking down at the pile of magazines on the floor.

Even the _Playboys_ no longer seemed as though they belonged to him, although they did not seem as though they belonged to Lane either. They were caught in some timeless netherworld in-between, ownerless. He picked one up. The page opened to the spread of "Women in Uniform," and he saw the naked body of the female postal carrier.

"BillyAlbin ."

He stopped moving, holding his breath, trying not to make any sound. His heart was trip-hammering wildly.

"BillyAlbin ."

The mailman was just outside The Fort. He had tracked him somehow and had found him. Billy was too terrified to move. He tried to exhale silently, unable to hold his breath any longer, but the noise sounded like a hurricane in the silence. Outside, the feet stopped moving.

"Billy."

He did not move.

"Billy."

Now the voice came from the other side, although he had heard no scuffling feet, no rustling leaves, no sound of any kind.

"Billy."

The voice came again, a low insistent whispering. He wanted to scream, to cry out, but he dared not. The mailman obviously knew he was here, but Billy did not want to confirm his presence. Maybe if he pretended that he wasn't here, if he just laid low and waited it out, the mailman would go away.

"Billy."

No. He wasn't going to go away.

Billy stood stock-still, only his mind moving, his brain trying desperately to think of something he could do. There was only one entrance to The Fort, no way to get out without the mailman seeing him. He and Lane had often talked about making an escape hatch, an emergency exit, building an escape tunnel under the dirt, but they never had. Now, he considered his choices. Or his choice. He had only one, really. If he could make it up to the roof, through the trapdoor, without the mailman seeing or hearing him "Billy."