Michael Koryta - The Prophet

Adam sat quietly, letting her talk and write. This was good. She was telling him things that he did not know, telling him things that she would have learned from the police.

“The mailboxes out there,” he said when she fell silent, scribbling names, “are all bunched together at the end of the road. Correct? No mail goes to the actual cottages?”

“Correct. All of the boxes are together. We never used them except to send postcards or letters out, occasionally. It was a place to go with the children and get some sun and swim and fish. A place to relax. It was never any sort of home. And now…”

Yes. And now.

“So no one checks the mail?”

“No. Not even when I do go out there. There’s a box and an address, that’s all.”

There would also be a local carrier, and on a rural route like that, it would be a consistent carrier, most likely. The rare breed to whom a handful of letters might stand out, particularly when placed in an ancient box that had not seen mail before.

Eleanor Ruzich slid the notepad over to Adam, fifteen names written neatly in a column.

“I think that’s everyone,” she said. “I also think that it’s a waste of your time. I understand the need to, what did you say? To chase every possibility. I understand that, of course. I just think there have to be more fruitful possibilities.”

“I think so, too. But it’s good to have this one if I need it. I appreciate your cooperation.”

She nodded. “I will give that place away rather than set foot inside it again.”

“I understand that feeling. I’m sorry it happened there.”

“A pale concern in the grand scheme of the tragedy, but I’m sorry, too, Mr. Austin. I am, too.” She tilted her head, focusing on him again, and finally asked the question she should have asked before she let him through the door. “Who was it who hired you? The girl’s mother?”

He shook his head.

“So who sent you here?”

His stock answer, the one he’d been ready to offer at the start, was that his client’s identity was confidential. It didn’t come, though.

“I’m here on behalf of my sister,” he said, and then he got to his feet, thanked her again for her help, and left the house.

None of the names offered much potential. He ran them all through criminal records checks and got nothing more exciting than a speeding ticket. That wasn’t to say they were innocent—Rachel’s killer didn’t have to have a criminal history—but there were no scents that seemed promising enough to start a chase, either. For the most part, the names she’d provided belonged to people in their sixties or older. They lived nice lives in nice homes and did not intersect with the Jason Bonds or Penny Gootees of the world. Knowledge of the family seemed imperative. Only one was familiar to Adam: Duncan Werner, a local dentist and one of the football team’s prominent boosters.

That sent him back to the start then, but he willed down the frustration. You had to keep your motor running, had to pursue, pursue, pursue even if you weren’t having the opportunity to make plays. Those opportunities did not come to those who waited.

On Monday afternoon, he waited at Shadow Wood Lane for two hours until the mail carrier arrived.

“Minute I saw all those cars down here on Saturday, I was curious,” the man said. He was an older man with a gray mustache and hound dog jowls. “Trying to figure out which cottage it was, you know, because there are some problems down here in the summer, but the place is pretty much dead the rest of the year. I don’t deliver much of anything.”

“I’d imagine. You been delivering much of late?”

“Letters to 7330.”

Adam nodded. He was wearing sunglasses and jeans and a plain brown baseball cap and a matching jacket. No logo on any of them, but he knew that he looked like a cop, and he knew how to carry himself like one, too, and how to talk like one. From the postal worker’s cooperation, he was fairly certain that the man believed he was police, but that was safe, because he had not been misinformed. Adam had a recorder running in his jacket pocket, and if this became an issue, they would not be able to say he had identified himself as law enforcement.

“The last one, you remember when that was delivered?”

“Wednesday,” he said confidently. “Only thing that went in any of the boxes. Like I said, it stands out. This place is pretty well shut down after Labor Day.”

This is what Adam had counted on. He nodded, thinking that Wednesday would have given enough time for an immediate response by mail, but also that Rachel Bond had probably offered a cell phone number. Cell phone, e-mail, one of the fashions of communication preferred by a teenage girl, particularly one in a hurry. From Wednesday’s letter to Friday’s meeting, details could have been arranged quickly.

“When did they start?” he asked. “Or was that the only one?”

“Only one coming in.” The mail carrier had no hesitation. This was the great thing about rural routes: everything stood out. Adam couldn’t help feel some petty tug of pride that the man clearly hadn’t been interviewed by police yet.

“But there were some going out.”

“Yes, sir. Round about Labor Day, I think. I hadn’t put a damn thing in that box for a good while, and then the letters started coming, so it sticks in my mind, you know?”

“Sure. How many, would you say? How often?”

“Once a week, maybe twice. I’d say I picked up, oh, a half-dozen.”

“Any chance you remember the handwriting?”

“Typed.”

“Never saw anyone put them in the box?”

“Never saw a soul. I’d come out, flag was up, and that was that. Always surprised me. I’m in the habit of blowing right by here, you know.” He sighed and spread his hands. “I wish I had more to tell you, Officer.”

Adam let him go then, because he didn’t want to push the police impersonation any further, and he didn’t feel the man had anything left to offer. When the mail truck was gone, Adam walked back down to the cottages, watching the quiet pond ripple under the wind, sun-speckled and beautiful, and he wondered what it had been like when she arrived, tried to recall the weather on Friday afternoon. It had been colder then, and overcast. The pond would have been bathed in shadows and the decrepit cottages would have looked forlorn and ominous, and still she’d pulled in and gone to finish her task.

A brave girl, and a determined one.

“I’m working on it, Marie,” Adam whispered. “I’m working on it.”

It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he realized he’d meant to say Rachel.

What next? Where else to look? There was the prison, possibly, but he doubted that Jason Bond would be willing to see him, and knew without question that approaching the man would trigger police attention to Adam’s quest that would only slow him down. Likewise with any effort to interview Rachel’s friends. But maybe it was time. There were not many other options.

He turned and gazed around the cottages with frustration. He’d been sure this was the right way to start. The kill site had not been random. Everything about it worked too well, from the isolation to the opportunity to send the letters from an active address but a vacant home. It had been carefully selected, and that required knowledge of the place, but none of the names Eleanor Ruzich had given him seemed promising. Who else might have known about the cottage? There were the neighbors, of course. He hadn’t pursued them yet. It would be hard to determine which cottages had actually been used recently, they were all so run-down. Except for Eleanor Ruzich’s. She had not exaggerated when she said she was alone in her efforts to keep the place in good shape.