On the street, the neighbors were talking loudly and animatedly about what they thought had happened inside Hobie’s trailer. One squat ugly woman with huge curlers in her hair insisted that she’d known for years the auto teacher was a practicing satanist.

Doug walked slowly back to his car. He wanted to run, he was so pumped up with adrenaline, but he forced himself to move deliberately, trying to keep under control the conflicting emotions raging through him. There was a lot to do. He had to find a lawyer, a good lawyer, get Hobie’s stuff together, find out what Hobie’s rights were, what could be done for him, whether he was going to be kept in Willis, taken to the county jail, or put in the state prison in Florence. But nothing could be done until morning.

He started the Bronco and backed up. He had not accomplished anything by coming over, he realized, had not helped his friend in any way, although perhaps he had succeeded in getting Hobie to keep quiet until he had legal counsel. What he really needed to do was to nail the mailman, to prove that the mailman had really committed the murder. But that was going to be impossible. There had been no witnesses, and Hobie himself was too far gone to be believable to anyone.

He turned the corner and saw the mailman’s car on the next street over. He watched as the mailman’s pale hand opened the mailbox in front of a house and inserted a stack of letters.

The hand rose up above the roof of the car and waved once, lazily.

Doug turned in the opposite direction, toward home.

37

Yard Stevens, the lawyer Doug retained for Hobie, was a southern gentleman of the old school who had emigrated to Arizona late in life and still retained many of the mannerisms of the Deep South. He lived and practiced in Phoenix but had a vacation home in Willis, where he spent the summers to escape the heat. He was well-known for both accepting and winning garish tabloid murder cases, and when Doug described to him Hobie’s situation, he agreed to take it, even though it meant cutting his vacation short. Stevens’ fees were so astronomical as to be unbelievable, but Doug was assured by a school-district representative that Hobie’s insurance would cover the cost.

“You know,” the lawyer drawled as they drove over to the police station in a huge white Lincoln, “I’ve been having trouble with the mail myself this summer. I have tried several times to speak to the postmaster about this, but he never seems to be in when I call.”