The man took one look at him and hurried into his house.
Doug stopped walking. The whole damn town was acting squirrelly. He considered approaching Howard's neighbors on the other side, knocking on their door, asking if they'd seen the postmaster, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't get much cooperation from them. Or anyone else in the neighborhood.
He noticed that several other lawns were starting to look kind of ragged.
Knowing he would probably get no answer or response, he walked up Howard's driveway and knocked on the door. Pounded on the door. Yelled for Howard to come out. But his entreaties were met with no response. Again he checked the front door, the back door, the windows, but again everything was locked up tight. A
darker, more solid drape seemed to have been put up behind the original curtains because now nothing could be seen inside the house, not even a shadow.
He wondered if he should call the police. Howard's house now showed definite signs of abandonment, and since no one except the mailman could claim to have seen him at all within the past few weeks, there seemed to him good cause to break into the postmaster's house and see if he was all right.
But he knew calling the police would do no good. He had told them the same story last time, and they'd donezippity shit. Besides, they'd never even try to get a search warrant or break into Howard's house unless they saw the mailman run inside the door with the postmaster's bloody head in his hands.
Doug shook his head. If there was one thing he hated about Arizona, it was the almost fanatic worship of land and property common to nearly everyone in the state. Here, people still had an Old West mentality, a perverse worldview that placed possessions above people in importance. He remembered one time when he and Billy had gone hiking out toward Deer Valley. They had been walking through a drycreekbed , following its course, when they happened upon a cabin in the woods. They turned immediately around, but not before they heard a young boy's voice call out, 'Intruders, Pa!' A minute or so later, they heard the thunderous echoing sound of a shotgun blast. He'd felt like he was in some sort of damn movie. The noise was not repeated, but he and Billy had run the rest of the way back to the car, keeping low to the ground. When he told the police what had happened, the desk sergeant had merely smiled tolerantly and told him he shouldn't have been trespassing, as though death would have been fair punishment for a person who had inadvertently stepped on someone else's land.
It was this attitude that a man should be allowed to do whatever he wanted, with no restraints, that led to situations such as this.
Still, he got back in the Bronco and drove to the police station. It couldn't hurt to try. The chief, fortunately, was not there, but unfortunately, neither was Mike, and Doug ended up telling his story to a young female clerk who took down his statement and promised to give it personally to the lieutenant assigned to that sector of town. Doug was nice to her, cooperative, smiled at her, thanked her for her help, and left knowing nothing would be done.
Hell, maybe he should break in there himself, take this into his own hands.
But, no, the chief would just have him arrested and thrown in jail.
He drove toBayless to pick up the charcoal and lighter fluid, aware that Trish was probably already starting to worry. He had gone to town to buy two items and had been gone for more than an hour.
He quickly went into the store, walked directly to the aisle containing nonfood items, and picked up a cheap bag of charcoal and a plastic container of store-brand lighter fluid. The express checkout lane was closed, and the three registers that were open had long lines of customers, so he picked the shortest one and got behind an elderly man carrying a handheld grocery basket piled with dairy products.
As he stood in line, Doug saw empty wire rack space formerly taken by the newspaper. The rack seemed sad and forlorn, if emotions could be ascribed to newsstands, and he found himself wondering what had happened to therisque fortune cookies in BenStockley's desk drawer. He could still see in his mind the editor sitting behind his desk, but that image was beginning to fade, replaced by that of the bullet-riddled body he had seen on TV. What had happened toStockley ? A lump formed in Doug's throat and he forced himself to look away from the rack to the impulse items next to it.
It had been nearly half a month that the town had been without a paper.
The _Weekly_ had been, for all intents and purposes, a one-man operation, and whenStockley died, the paper abruptly ceased publication. Doug had no doubt that it would eventually get back on its feet once everything was sorted out there were a few part-time reporters who could probably take over the editing duties, and the secretary pretty much knew how the business end of the operation worked -- but for now the press in Willis was effectively shut down, and Doug couldn't help feeling that that was exactly the way the mailman wanted it. No independent means of disseminating information. No official way to learn what was going on.
Of course, news still traveled through unofficial channels. And traveled quite well. Through overhearing several unconnected conversations the past few minutes, for example, he knew that several more dogs had been murdered, not poisoned this time but decapitated, their severed heads stolen.
Gossip might be reviled in certain quarters for being unreliable -- a children's party game of pass-the- message had been designed precisely to support that argument -- but Doug knew from past experience that word- of-mouth was not nearly as faulty a means of learning news as it was made out to be.
He looked up to see Giselle Brennan walk into the store.
She saw him at the same time and waved. 'Hi, Mr.Albin .' She walked through the turnstile and around the cash register to meet him.
She was wearing no bra, he noticed immediately, and the hard points of her nipples were visible through the thin material of her tight T-shirt. Her large breasts jiggled as she walked toward him. She was grown now, he knew. An adult, a woman, but in his mind he still thought of her as a young teenager, and he felt strange seeing her in such an obviously sexual light. It disturbed him somehow, bothered him. He smiled warily as she approached. 'Hi,' he said. 'How's it going?' He moved up in line.
'I got a job.'
'Really?' he said. He placed his items on the moving black top of the register counter, automatically inserting a rubber divider behind it. 'Where at?' She grinned widely. 'The post office. Can you believe it?'
The smile of congratulation froze on his face. Yes, he could believe it.
'I didn't know they were hiring,' he said carefully.
'Yeah, well, it's just temporary. I guess their sorting machine broke down and they were looking for someone to do it manually.'
Doug moved forward. 'Who hired you? Howard?'
'No, Mr. Crowell was sick. I guess that's one of the reasons they need an extra person. Mr. Smith hired me.'
Doug forced himself to smile. 'What do you think of Mr. Smith?'
Giselle's face clouded over for a second and he thought she was going to say something about the mailman, but instead she just shrugged. 'I don't know.'
The man in front of Doug paid for his groceries. Doug put a hand on Giselle's shoulder. She did not move away. 'I don't know if you should work there,' he said seriously.
She laughed. 'My mom said the same thing. Don't worry. I'll be all right.'
'Be careful,' Doug warned her.
She smiled and pulled away. 'Of course.' She wiggled her fingers at him as she headed toward the frozen foods. 'See you.'
He watched her walk away, saw the outline of her tight ass beneath her jeans, the material pulled provocatively in at the crack.
'Two-eighty-five.'
'What?' Doug turned around to face the cashier.
The young man smiled knowingly. 'Two-eighty-five.'
Doug took out his wallet.
In bed that night, Tritia snuggled next to him, laying an arm across his chest, holding him close in a way that she hadn't for quite some time. The dinner had been good and, more important, healthy. Trout and rice and asparagus stalks. She was back to her old nutrition-conscious self, and for some reason that made him feel more optimistic, less worried. Everything else might be going to hell, but at least they were going to be all right.
Her head shifted under the crook of his arm as she looked up at his face.
'Do you still love me?' she asked.
'What kind of question is that?'
