Doug clenched his fist and held it up above the counter. “You can stop the innocent act. There’s no one here but me and you, and we both know you broke into my house last night.”

“I did no such thing. I was at home all evening with Mr. Crowell.” The look on the mailman’s face was an obvious parody of bruised innocence.

“And where is Mr. Crowell?”

The mailman grinned. “Unfortunately, he’s sick today.”

“I want you to stop it,” Doug said.

“Stop what?”

“This. Everything. Just get the hell out of Willis, or I swear to God I’ll make you get out.”

The mailman laughed, and this time there was a harshness under the false nicety. His eyes, hard and blue and dead, bored into Doug’s, and his voice, when it came out, had none of its usual calculated blandness. “You can’t make me do anything,” he said, and his tone made Doug’s blood run cold.

Doug backed up a step. He realized that for the first time he was seeing the true face of the mailman, and he had to resist the instinctive impulse to flee. The fact that he had been able to goad the mailman into dropping his cover scared him much more than he ever would have thought. He shouldn’t have come here alone. He should have brought Mike or Tim or another cop. But he refused to let the mailman sense his fear. He held his ground. “Why are you harassing my family?” he asked, and his voice came out strong, assured. “Why are you picking on me?”

“Because you know,” the mailman said.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Because you complained.”

“A lot of people have complained.”

“Because I feel like it,” the mailman said, and the random callousness of that admission, the utter lack of reason, struck Doug as the truth. He stared into those cold eyes and saw nothing. No passion, no feeling, nothing. Evil was not hatred, he thought. Evil was this.

The mailman smiled, and his voice was filled with an ugly undercurrent of threatening sexuality. “How’s the little woman, little man?”

“You bastard!” Doug struck out at the mailman, but the mailman stepped easily back, avoiding the blow. Doug, thrown off-balance, fell against the counter.

The mailman chuckled, then his usual benign mask fell into place. “I’m sorry, Mr. Albin. The post office is not open yet, but if you’d like to buy a book of stamps—”

“Just leave us alone,” Doug said, standing straight.

“It’s my job to deliver the mail, and I will continue to perform my duties to the best of my ability.”

“Why? No one reads it anyway.”

“Everyone reads their mail.”

“I don’t. I stopped reading it weeks ago.”

The mailman stared at him, blinked. “You have to read your mail.”