I reached Vanessa, pointed at her wild face as I passed. “Stay here. You hear me?”
She tried to catch up. “Patrick?” She grasped her hip, wincing, kept trying to run.
“Stay here!” I screamed it, could hear the echoes of desperation in my voice as I ran forward with my torso twisted back toward her.
“No. What’re you-”
“Don’t take another fucking step!” I tossed her bag so that it exploded all over the pavement in front of her and she followed the bounce and slide of her money clip. She bent by it and I turned my torso forward, willed myself to run even faster.
I slowed, though, as I neared the tunnel, felt something build in my chest, rise up my esophagus, and catch there, burning, even before I saw him.
Clarence wobbled out of the darkness toward me, his normally sad dog eyes now confused and afraid.
“Here, boy,” I said softly, and dropped to my knees, felt the liquid burning in my throat find my eyes.
He took another four steps on quaking legs and then sat back on his haunches. He stared at me through drooping eyelids. He seemed to be trying to ask me something.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Hey, guy. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
I willed myself not to look away from the bewildered pain in his face, that searching question.
He lowered his head slowly and vomited a stream of pure black.
“Oh, Jesus.” It came out of me in a hoarse whisper.
I crawled over to him, and when I touched his head, I felt the fire there, the scorch of fever. He rolled over and lay on his side and panted. I turned on my side with him and he looked up at me as I caressed his trembling rib cage and sweaty, feverish brow.
“Hey,” I whispered as his eyes rolled up to whites. “Hey, you’re not alone, Clarence. Okay? You’re not alone.”
His mouth opened wide as if he were about to yawn and a racking shudder thrust its way through his body from his back paws to his burning head.
“Goddammit,” I said when he died. “Goddammit.”
28
“I want to burn him alive,” I said to Angie over the cell phone. “I want to kneecap the sick prick.”
“Calm down.”
I sat in the waiting room of the veterinarian’s office where Vanessa had demanded we take Clarence. I’d carried the soft corpse in and laid it on a cold metal table. Then I’d seen a request that I leave in Vanessa’s eyes and I’d followed it back out into the waiting room.
“I want to cut off his fucking head and piss down his neck.”
“Now you sound like Bubba.”
“I feel like Bubba. I want him dead, Ange. I want him gone. I want this to stop now.”
“Then think ,” she said. “Don’t go caveman on me. Think. Where is he? How do we find him? I checked the houses on the list. He’s not-”
“He’s a mailman,” I said.
“What?”
“He’s a mailman,” I repeated. “Right here in the city. Back Bay.”
“You’re not kidding,” she said.
“Nope. Wetterau lived in Back Bay. Karen was always at his place, according to her roommate, only came home to pick up clothes and mail.”
“So you think she sent her mail…” Angie said.
“From Wetterau’s. In Back Bay. Dr. Dawe makes all his drops to Back Bay mailboxes. The destinations don’t matter because the mail is intercepted before it even gets there. Vanessa lives in Back Bay. Suddenly her mail’s not getting through. We’ve been giving this douchebag too much credit. He’s not running around all over creation with crack timing to fuck with people’s mail. He’s stealing it at the source.”
“A goddamn mailman,” Angie said.
The door to the vet’s office opened, and I saw Vanessa lean against the doorjamb, listen to something the doctor said.
“I gotta go,” I told Angie. “See you in a bit.”
Vanessa’s bruised face was blank, her steps stiff as she walked out into the waiting room.
“Strychnine,” she said as I approached. “Injected into chunks of prime rib. That’s how they think he killed my dog.”
I placed a tentative hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.
“Strychnine,” she said again and walked toward the exit. “He killed my dog with poison.”
“I’m close,” I said as we stepped outside. “I’m going to get him.”
She stood on the stone steps, looked up at me with a ghost’s smile-weightless and floating. “Good for you, Patrick, because I got nothing left for him to take. Mention that to him the next time you two chat, would you? I got nothing left.”
“A mailman,” Bubba said.
“Think about it,” I said. “We give him credit for being practically omnipotent, but he’s actually limited. Files he had access to through Diane Bourne and Miles Lovell only, and the correspondence of people who lived in Back Bay. He fucked with Karen’s mail and Vanessa’s and made sure the money drops went through Back Bay mailboxes. That means he’s either Central Post Office in the sorting department-in which case he’s gotta sort through a few hundred thousand pieces of mail a night to find the right ones, or-”
“It’s his route,” Bubba said.
I shook my head. “No. He’d have to stand around in public going through the mail. That doesn’t work.”
“He drives the pickup route,” Angie said.
I nodded. “Drives around in a truck, empties the blue mailboxes, fills the green ones. Yup. That’s our boy.”
“I hate mailmen,” Bubba said.
“That’s because they hate your dogs,” Angie said.
“Maybe it’s time to teach the dogs to hate ’em back,” I said.
Bubba shook his head. “He poisoned the fucking dog?”
I nodded. “I’ve seen humans die, and it still got to me.”
“Humans don’t love like dogs,” Bubba said. “Shit. Dogs?” His voice was as close to tender as I’d ever heard it. “All they know how to do if they’re treated right is love you.”
Angie reached out and patted his hand and he gave her that soft, disarming smile of his.
Then he looked at me and the smile turned mean and he chuckled. “Oh boy oh boy oh boy. How many ways we gonna fuck Wesley up, my brutha?” He held up his hand.
I high-fived him. “Couple thousand,” I said. “For starters.”