“You may be right,” Mike said slowly. “We got a report this morning over the radio, from the DPS, that there was a single-vehicle accident out on Black Canyon toward Camp Verde. There’re no details, but it could be him; the car was headed in the right direction. The vehicle and driver were so badly burned that they were unrecognizable, but we’ll know soon enough. Even if we can’t find dental records, an examination of the car should show if it was his make and model, and we can go on from there. We should know in a few days.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Doug said.

“It doesn’t matter? You don’t seem too concerned about this.”

“He’s gone. Can’t you feel it? I don’t know whether we drove him out or he accomplished what he wanted to accomplish or he died or whatever. But he’s gone. He’s not here. He’s not coming back.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am right.”

“Wait a minute.” There were muffled voices on the other end of the line as Mike put his hand over the receiver. “You still there?” Mike asked.

“Still here.”

“I just got a note from Jeff that a postal inspector called. He’s coming up later this week.”

Doug smiled. “A little late, isn’t he?”

The policeman chuckled. “A little.”

They were silent for a moment, and Doug realized that for the first time in over a month the two of them had nothing to say to each other. “Well, I’ll let you go,” he said. “But I’ll be by later. We’ll talk.”

“Okay.”

“It is over, Mike.”

“I believe you.”

Doug laughed. “Now you believe me.”

“Get out of here.”

“Later,” Doug said. He hung up the phone. What had the mailman been after, he wondered, and had he found it or done it or completed it? He had arrived in Willis two months ago and had left the town a shambles. Had that been what he wanted? Or had it been something else, something more? Perhaps they had thwarted him before he could finish what he had started. Or perhaps he had really had no motive.

Unbidden, Doug thought of the letter of resignation William Faulkner had tendered after working for a short time for the Postal Service: “I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.”

Perhaps it had been a motive as simple as that.

But they would never know, he realized. They would never know what the mailman had wanted, or whether he had failed or succeeded.

It didn’t matter, though.

None of it mattered now.

It was over. It was finished.