Stockleynodded. 'Tell him.' He sighed and leaned forward, withdrawing another fortune cookie from his desk. 'I shouldn't be getting involved in this.
I'm supposed to report stories, not be part of them, but to be honest you've scared the hell out of me.'
Doug smiled wanly. 'I've been scaring the hell out of myself for a week.'
'It's time to do something about it,' the editor said. He bit into his fortune cookie.
Doug sat on the lowNaugahyde couch in the waiting room of the police station. Behind the counter, uniformed clerks and officers answered phones and completed paperwork. He felt old. Three of the five employees in the office had been his students at one time or another. That wasn't unusual. In a town as small as Willis, he was always running into ex-students. But seeing ex-students in positions of authority, their young faces hardened into adulthood, made him feel hopelessly old.
Mike Trenton emerged from one of the back rooms, smiling broadly. His hair was shorter than it had been in high school, but aside from that, he had hardly changed at all. His face was still openly honest, naive, and even in his dark blue uniform, he seemed young. 'Long time no see, Mr.Albin .'
'Call me Doug.'
'Doug.' He shook his head. 'It feels weird calling a teacher by his first name.' He chuckled. 'Anyway, what can I do for you?'
Doug glanced around the crowded office. 'It's kind of busy in here. Is there someplace we can talk that's more private?'
'If this is about your case, you'd have to talk to Lt. Shipley. He's trying to track down those letters --'
'Well, it's related to that, but not exactly.' He motioned with his head toward the hall. 'Can we talk in your office or something?'
'I don't have an office, but I suppose we can use the interrogation room.'
He waved to one of the clerks. 'I'll be in the exam room,' he announced.
The clerk nodded, and the two of them passed through a small security gate and into the hall. Doug followed Mike into the interrogation room, a small cubicle with barely enough room for two chairs and a table.
Now that he was here, Doug did not know where to begin. The chronology he had developed, the arguments he had worked out in his mind, withered in the just-the-facts environment of the police station. He had no proof, not really, only some strange occurrences and tentative connections. Connections that, it was obvious now, required great leaps of faith. The confidence he had felt while talking toStockley in the newspaper office had vanished entirely. He had not been expecting to get from the police the type of reception the editor had given his ideas, but he still had not been prepared for the lack of belief he now knew would greet his story. He had been stupid to come here at all.
Still, as he looked across the bare table at Mike Trenton, be saw not cynicism and disinterest in the young officer's eyes but an open willingness to hear him out.
This had better be good.
He started at the beginning, with Ronda's unlikely suicide and his initial impression of the new mailman at the funeral. He had an impulse to speed his story up, to relate it in the shorthand manner in which he'd seen witnesses talk on television, but he forced himself to take his time, to carefully go over every small detail, every emotional impression, believing that it would lend verisimilitude to his theory.
Mike stopped him before he was halfway through. 'I'm sorry, Mr.Albin . No offense, but this has been a pretty hectic week around here. This isn't a big city police department. We have twelve cops working in two shifts. There's been a series of dog poisonings, a suicide we're still investigating, and the usual fights in the cowboy bars. We're seriously undermanned at the moment. I know we've been having a lot of trouble with the mail, but to be honest, you should be talking to Howard Crowell --'
'Look, you may think I'm crazy --'
'I don't think you're crazy, Mr.Albin .'
'Doug.'
'Doug.'
'I don't know exactly what's going on around here, but it seems to me that John Smith, if that is his real name, has the ability to . . . to somehow channel the mail in the way he wants it to go. He can separate letters from bills, good letters from bad. He can redirect a letter from its intended recipient to the person the letter is about. We got a note from Howard the other day that was supposed to be for Ellen Ronda. But the envelope was addressed to us. And this has happened to other people.'
'So you're saying that Mr. Smith somehow opens all these envelopes, reads all these letters, and redirects them as some sort of perverse practical joke?'
'I don't know what I'm saying.'
'Assuming that he would want to, do you know how long it would take for one man to do such a thing, even in a town this small?'
'I'm not sure he sleeps. Hell, I'm not sure he's even human.'
'You lost me, Mr.Albin . I respect you and all, and I admit that strange things have been happening to the mail lately, but this sounds a little off the deep end.'
Doug smiled wryly. 'You haven't heard it all. I also think he's connected with Bernie Rogers' death and Bob Ronda's.'
'This is a joke, right?'
'No joke. Just hear me out.' He went on to explain his discovery at the creek and the increasingly bizarre nature of the mail both he and the newspaper had been receiving.
Mike frowned. 'How come Ben didn't tell me this himself?'
'He didn't even want me to tell you.'
'So what about Ronda and Rogers?'
Doug explained their connections to the post office and the unlikely nature of their suicides.
'We have been wondering how Rogers tied that rope,' Mike admitted.
'So, what was written on the note pinned to Bernie's chest?'
The policeman shook his head. 'Sorry. Confidential.'
'But you don't think I'm totally crazy?'
Mike looked at him silently for a moment. 'No, I don't,' he said finally.
'God knows why, but I don't. I don't entirely believe you, but I don't disbelieve you either.'
'Good enough for now. I know there's no proof against the mailman. There's no way you can haul him in. Yet. But I just want you to keep your eyes and ears open. Be on the lookout. Just be prepared.'
The young officer shook his head, grinning ruefully. 'If anyone else finds out about this, I'm dead meat. But okay.'
Doug stood up, pushing his chair back. He looked at the policeman curiously. 'You got something, didn't you?' he asked. 'In the mail?'
Mike stared up at him, then nodded slowly.
'I could tell. You dropped that cop routine pretty fast and hopped aboard the bandwagon, no questions asked.'
'I got a letter from my fiancй in Phoenix, telling me she wanted to break up. I called her, but her phone was out of service. So I took a sick day and drove down to ASU. She'd never sent me the letter. Her phone had been left off the hook accidentally on the day I tried to call.' He scratched his nose. 'Maybe I'm just looking for an easy excuse, but I think there might be something to what you say. I think there's something going on with the mailman. I still don't entirely believe you, and I hope we're not turning Mr. Smith into a scapegoat for our problems, but I'll keep a watch out.'
'That's all I ask. I'll let you know if anything comes up.'
'And we'll let you know if anything happens with your water and power and phone letters.'
Doug thanked Mike and returned down the hall. The young policeman let him through the security gate into the lobby, and walking out to the car, Doug felt better than he had in quite a while. It was nice to be able to share some of the burden.
He got in the Bronco and took off.
On the way home, he passed the mailman, unloading mail from the box in front of Circle K, sorting the
