Bentley Little - The Mailman

"That's not like him," she said. "Not unless he's changed an awful lot since we knew him."

"I don't think it's from Don."

"Do you --"

"I don't think the first one was either," he said, anticipating her question. "I don't think Don got a job in Phoenix, I don't think the Jennings are moving to Arizona, I don't think he wrote to me at all."

Tritia felt a tremor of fear pass through her. "That's an awful lot of trouble for someone to go through just to play a practical joke," she said.

"That first letter was so detailed. Whoever wrote it either knew Don or knew you, because there were things in there that a stranger couldn'tpossibly've known."

"It wasn't a joke," Doug said. "I don't know what it was, but it wasn't a joke." He held out his hand. "Let me see your letter."

She didn't really want him to read the letter, but she handed it to him anyway. She watched his eyes dart quickly from left to right as he scanned the words.

"That's what I thought."

They were silent for a moment. Tritia looked over at Billy, who was watching TV, pretending he hadn't heard what they were talking about. He'd heard, she knew. But she was glad he was pretending he hadn't. She didn't want to talk to him about this, didn't want to explain what she couldn't explain.

She turned away from Doug. She didn't want to talk about it to him either.

She didn't want to talk about it at all. She began unpacking groceries.

16

"That's a very interesting theory,"Stockley said. "Very interesting." He broke open a fortune cookie, reading his fortune, throwing the slip of paper away and slowly chewing the cookie as he mulled over what Doug had just told him.

A slovenly paunchy man in his mid-fifties, BenStockley looked like a stereotypical reporter. His pants were always black, his shirt always white, and both were always wrinkled. His hair was gray and thin, combed back over his scalp, and was slightly too long for both his age and contemporary fashion.

Stockley'sface was rough and leathery, with blunt Broderick Crawford features, and he always seemed to be sweating, no matter what the temperature. In his lower right desk drawer, the editor kept a box ofrisque fortune cookies he ordered directly from some company in New York. He bought the fortune cookies because he loved them and said he didn't want to have to pay for a whole meal just to get one, but he also enjoyed giving the cookies to unsuspecting visitors and watching the reactions on their faces as they read their usually obscene fortunes. He particularly liked giving the cookies to bashful young women and prim old ladies.

"Well, what do you think?" Doug asked.

"You going to blame the mailman for poisoning dogs, too?"

Doug slumped in his seat. "You don't believe me."

"I didn't say that."

Doug looked up at him hopefully.

The editor broke open another fortune cookie. "Have you gone to the police with any of this?"

"Well, I told them about the letters to shut off my phone, water, and electricity. I even gave them copies. But I haven't told them anything else."

"Maybe you should go to them."Stockley raised his hand. "I'm not saying I

believe you, but if you're right, this is definitely a matter for the police."

"I don't know if I'm right either. That's why I came to you. If I walk into the police station and tell them what I just told you, they'll probably think I'm crazy."

The editor chuckled. "You didn't want publicity, so you came to a newspaper. That's a good one." Doug started to protest, butStockley cut him off. "I understand. I know what you're trying to do, but the problem is that a newspaper deals with facts. If a story doesn't have the five Ws, I don't print it. I could do a feature on you, let you put forth your ideas, but everything would be attributed to you, and I don't think that's what you want."

"Actually, I'm not really looking for an article, although I think people probably do need to be warned. What I really came in for was confirmation. I mean, you know what goes on in this town. If someone stubs his toe or catches a cold, you're aware of it. I just thought that if anyone had noticed something unusual lately, it would be you. Am I right?"

Stockleywas silent, chewing.

"Just tell me what, if anything, is going on. What have you heard?"

The editor's gaze was troubled. "The relationship between a journalist and his source is very sacred," he said finally. "It's analogous to a lawyer/client relationship, a doctor/patient relationship, a priest/confessor relationship. I could pussyfoot around this, but I'll be honest. Yes, I have heard some talk.

Nothing specific, nothing like what you've told me, and nothing that anyone would admit to if questioned, but other people have noticed odd things occurring lately. And I think they'll notice even more after Bernie Roger's suicide. I should remain neutral, objective, and impartial, but I'll tell you the truth.

Yes, I think something strange is going on around here. And I think it's centered around the mailman."

Doug felt relief flood through him. He hadn't realized how good it would feel to have an ally, to hear someone, a third party, say that he was not crazy, that he was actually on to something. At the same time, it made everything that much more frightening. If all of this was true, the mailman was at the very least dangerously unbalanced and deranged.

Stockleywas right. He should go to the police and tell them everything.

The editor opened a drawer, drawing out a stack of mail. "Newspapers always get a lot of mail. A lot of weird mail. We get put on every crackpot mailing list imaginable. Nazis want us to give them free publicity, communists want us to cover their causes, religious fanatics want us to explain to people how the anti-Christ has infiltrated the government. For two weeks -- the two weeks after Ronda died -- we got nothing but good mail, like you said.

Subscriptions were up, letters of praise rolled in, even the chronic cranks stopped harassing us. That was weird enough in itself. Then, a few days ago, we began to get these." He picked up the top letter from his pile. "Here, read this."

Doug took the letter and quickly read it over. It described in detail the sexual torture and mutilation of someone named Cindy Howell. He grimaced. The description was so grisly and so disgusting that he could not finish reading it.

"Who is Cindy Howell?" he asked.

"My daughter,"Stockley replied.

Doug looked immediately up.

"She's fine. Nothing's happened to her. She lives in Chicago, and I called her right away. I called the Chicago police and told them, sent a photocopy of the letter to them, in fact. They're keeping a surveillance on her house as a favor."

"I didn't know you had a daughter."

"That's because I never told anyone in town. She was from my first marriage, and I never told anyone about that, either."

"How do you think the mailman found out?"

"I'm not sure it is the mailman. Read the postmark. It's from Chicago. It could be from enemies I made there or from some crazy who's after my daughter.

Or it could just be a harmless threat from some crank. Notice that it's written in the past tense. These are all thingsthat're supposed to have happened already."

"But you said you thought the mailman was --"

"I don't know. I'm not sure of anything." He hefted the pile of letters.

"These are all similar. They're postmarked from cities all over the country and involve people I've known throughout my life. They're not all sexually explicit like that one, but they're all equally sick. They could all be part of some organized effort to harass me, although I can't see a reason why; or they could all be part of some outrageously unlikely coincidence. I'm inclined to believe you about the mailman because I've noticed the same pattern in my mail as you have. And because other people have hinted about it to me as well. I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it does seem to be centered around the mail and it does seem to have started after this John Smith took over."