Doug shut off the television and walked down the hall to the bedroom, where Trish was already asleep and snoring.

Letters.

The connection was so damn obvious that even that doltish police chief would have to see the pattern. But, no, he remembered seeing news coverage of similar events, friends and neighbors uniformly repeating how they couldn’t believe the kind, considerate, normal person they knew could have committed such horrible acts. The man who suddenly went crazy and murdered innocent bystanders was becoming a regular feature of the nightly news; there was nothing really unusual about it anymore.

Of course, Doug himself was one of those people who could not imagine how Stockley could have done such a horrible thing. He had no doubt that the mailman was at the bottom of this, behind it all, but try as he might, he could not imagine anything written in a letter that could so completely send a person around the bend, that could make an ostensibly sane man start killing innocent individuals. Much as he hated to admit it, much as it hurt him to admit it, there probably had been something wrong with Stockley to begin with, some breaking point, some button the mailman had known how and when to push.

There was something even more frightening about that, for just as it was said that everyone had a price, everyone probably also had a breaking point.

Maybe he’d been wrong before. Maybe the mailman hadn’t killed Ronda and Bernie Rogers. Maybe they’d killed themselves because the mailman had known exactly what to do to set them off, to push them over the edge. Maybe the mailman knew what that point was for all of them, for everyone in Willis. For himself.

For Tritia.

For Billy.

It was long after midnight when Doug finally fell asleep, and his dreams were filled with white faces and red hair and envelopes.

The next day was hotter than usual, the sky clear, without a trace of cloud to offer the earth temporary shade from the hellish sun. Hobie dropped by just before lunch, dressed in his lifeguard uniform, though it was Wednesday and the pool was closed for cleaning. He came up on the porch, accepted Doug’s offer of iced tea. He seemed distracted and ill at ease, unable to concentrate. Doug talked to him about the murders, but though his friend nodded in all the right places, even volunteering an occasional comment or opinion, he seemed not to be listening, the conversation going in one ear and out the other.

Facing Hobie, Doug noticed food stains on the black swimming trunks, and this close he saw that his friend’s T-shirt was wrinkled and not as white as it should have been, as though he had been wearing it for days, sleeping in it.