Mort closed his eyes, and when he opened them again it was because another voice was clamoring. This one belonged to the alarm clock. The fog had cleared, the sun had come out, and it was time to go to the post office.
43
On the way, he became suddenly sure that Federal Express would have come and gone … and Juliet would stand there at the window with her bare face hanging out and shake her head and tell him there was nothing for him, sorry. And his proof? It would be gone like smoke. This feeling was irrational – Herb was a cautious man, one who did not make promises that couldn’t be kept – but it was almost too strong to deny.
He had to force himself out of the car, and the walk from the door of the post office to the window where Juliet Stoker stood sorting mail seemed at least a thousand miles long.
When he got there, he tried to speak and no words came out. His lips moved, but his throat was too dry to make the sounds. Juliet looked up at him, then took a step back. She looked alarmed. Not, however, as alarmed as Amy and Ted had looked when he opened the motel-room door and pointed the gun at them.
‘Mr Rainey? Are you all right?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Sorry, Juliet. My throat kind of double-clutched on me for a second.’
‘You’re very pale,’ she said, and he could hear in her voice that tone so many of the Tashmore residents used when they spoke to him – it was a sort of pride, but it held an undertaste of irritation and condescension, as though he was a child prodigy who needed special care and feeding.
‘Something I ate last night, I guess,’ he said. ‘Did Federal Express leave anything for me?’
‘No, not a thing.’
He gripped the underside of the counter desperately, and for a moment thought he would faint, although he had understood almost immediately that that was not what she had said.
‘Pardon me?’
She had already turned away; her sturdy country bum was presented to him as she shuffled through some packages on the floor.
‘Just the one thing, I said,’ she replied, and then turned around and slid the package across the counter to him. He saw the return address was EQMM in Pennsylvania, and Pelt relief course through him. It felt like cool water pouring down a dry throat.
‘Thank you.’
‘Welcome. You know, the post office would have a cow if they knew we handle that Federal Express man’s mail.’
‘Well, I certainly appreciate it,’ Mort said. Now that he had the magazine, he felt a need to get away, to get back to the house. This need was so strong it was almost elemental. He didn’t know why – it was an hour and a quarter until noon -but it was there. In his distress and confusion, he actually thought of giving Juliet a tip to shut her up … and that would have caused her soul, Yankee to its roots, to rise up in a clamor.
‘You won’t tell them, will you?’ she asked archly.
‘No way,’ he said, managing a grin.
‘Good,’ Juliet Stoker said, and smiled. ‘Because I saw what you did.’
He stopped by the door. ‘Pardon me?’
‘I said they’d shoot me if you did,’ she said, and looked closely at his face. ‘You ought to go home and lie down, Mr Rainey. You really don’t look well at all.’
I feel like I spent the last three days lying down, Juliet – the time I didn’t spend hitting things, that is.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe that’s not such a bad idea. I still feel weak.’
‘There’s a virus going around. You probably caught it.’
Then the two women from Camp Wigmore – the ones everybody in town suspected of being lesbians, albeit discreet ones – came in, and Mort made good his escape. He sat in the Buick with the blue package on his lap, not liking the way everybody kept saying he looked sick, liking the way his mind had been working even less.
It doesn’t matter. It’s almost over.
He started to pull the envelope open, and then the ladies from Camp Wigmore came back out and looked at him. They put their heads together. One of them smiled. The other laughed out loud. And Mort suddenly decided he would wait until he got back home.
44
He parked the Buick around the side of the house, in its customary place, turned off the ignition … and then a soft grayness came over his vision. When it drew back, he felt strange and frightened. Was something wrong with him, then? Something physical?
No – he was just under strain, he decided.
He heard something – or thought he did – and looked around quickly.
Nothing there. Get hold of your nerves, he told himself shakily. That’s really all you have to do -just get hold of your motherfucking nerves.
And then he thought: I did have a gun. That day. But it was unloaded. I told them that, later. Amy believed me. I don’t know about Milner, but Amy did, and
Was it, Mort? Was it really unloaded?
He thought of the crack in the window-wall again, senseless silver lightning-bolt zig-zagging right up through the middle of things. That’s how it happens, he thought. That’s how it happens in a person’s life.
Then he looked down at the Federal Express package again. This was what he should be thinking about, not Amy and Mr Ted Kiss-My-Ass from Shooter’s Knob, Tennessee, but this.
The flap was already half-open – everyone was careless these days. He pulled it up and shook the magazine out into his lap. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the logo said in bright red letters. Beneath that, in much smaller type, June, 1980. And below that, the names of some of the writers featured in the issue. Edward D.
Hoch. Ruth Rendell. Ed McBain. Patricia Highsmith. Lawrence Block.
His name wasn’t on the cover.
Well, of course not. He was scarcely known as a writer at all then, and certainly not as a writer of mystery stories; ‘Sowing Season’ had been a oner. His name would have meant nothing to regular readers of the magazine, so the editors would not have put it on. He turned the cover back.
There was no contents page beneath.
The contents page had been cut out.
He thumbed frantically through the magazine, dropping it once and then picking it up with a little cry. He didn’t find the excision the first time, but on the second pass, he realized that pages 83 to 97 were gone.
‘You cut it out!’ he screamed. He screamed so loudly that his eyeballs bulged from their sockets. He began to bring his fists down on the steering wheel of the Buick, again and again and again. The horn burped and blared. ‘You cut it out, you son of a bitch! How did you do that? You cut it out! You cut it out! You cut it out!’
45
He was halfway to the house before the deadly little voice again wondered how Shooter could have done that. The envelope had come Federal Express from Pennsylvania, and Juliet had taken possession of it, so how, how in God’s name
He stopped.
Good, Juliet had said. Good, because I saw what you did.
That was it; that explained it. Juliet was in on it. Except –
Except Juliet had been in Tashmore since forever.
Except that hadn’t been what she said. That had only been his mind. A little paranoid flatulence.
‘He’s doing it, though,’ Mort said. He went into the house and once he was inside the door, he threw the magazine as hard as he could. It flew like a startled bird, pages riffling, and landed on the floor with a slap.
‘Oh yeah, you bet, you bet your fucking ass, he’s doing it. But I don’t have to wait around for him.! -‘
He saw Shooter’s hat. Shooter’s hat was lying on the floor in front of the door to his study.
Mort stood where he was for a moment, heart thundering in his ears, and then walked over to the stove in great cartoon tippy-toe steps. He pulled the poker from the little clutch of tools, wincing when the poker’s tip clanged softly against the ash-shovel. He took the poker and walked carefully back to the closed door again, holding the poker as he had held it before crashing into the bathroom. He had to skirt the magazine he’d thrown on the way.
He reached the door and stood in front of it.
‘Shooter?’
There was no answer.
‘Shooter, you better come out under your own power! If I have to come in and get you, you’ll never walk out of anyplace under your own power again !’