The Messenger (2011 reformat) (6 page)

"The
alleged assailant, Marlene Troy, is said to have opened fire first in the
crowded lobby, trapping over a dozen residents and killing everyone in a matter
of minutes. Then Troy reloaded, swept the rest of the facility with gunfire,
and killed the remaining occupants, all postal employees. Danelleton police
responded shortly thereafter and gunned Troy down in one of the loading bays.
She was reported dead on arrival at South County General Hospital."

Jane Ryan
bowed her head, finally looking away from the television screen. Her expression
had gone from appalled to mystified. The brand-new office she sat in felt like
an isolation chamber. She was unable to believe what was happening just a few
miles away at the main branch.

"Marlene
was one of my best carriers," she said. "We worked together for five
years in Pasco County. She's always been one of the most stable people I've
known, not just a quality employee but a wonderful person."

Jane wiped a
tear from her eye, then snapped off the television with the remote. An older
man sitting at the side of the desk seemed to be commiserating: Buchanan, the
county postal superintendent.

"I know
how you must feel, Jane," he said. "When I got my first PM promotion
in California, I had a carrier walk off his route and kill four people in a
fast-food joint. Turns out he'd been cracking up for months over his wife
leaving him, then he got into cocaine. Nobody knew. I guess sometimes people
just snap. Doesn't matter why. Stress, mental illness, drug and alcohol
problems. No town is immune to it-it can happen anywhere."

The words
didn't allay her grief and confusion. Nothing could. It just didn't make sense.
Tragedies like this always happened somewhere else. All Jane could do was nod, repressing
the her sobs.

"Anyway,
we're all done here with the paperwork for now. If you need anything let me
know."

"Okay."

Buchanan was about
to leave, to carry on with his own arm of the investigation, but he stopped
just short of the door. "Oh, and there's a cop out here who'd like to talk
to you. One of the local ones. You feel up to talking to him? I'm sure you
probably don't but you're going to have to eventually."

Dread swept
over her, but she forced herself to straighten up. She wiped her nose with a
Kleenex, fixed her hair as best she could.

"I'm
fine. Go ahead and send him in."

Buchanan cast
her a last consoling glance, then quietly left the office. A few seconds later,
the door clicked back open, and a shadow crossed the floor.

"Ms.
Ryan?"

The man Jane
looked up at stood tall and lean, in dark slacks, white shirt, and a tie. He
looked far more like an engineer or computer executive than a police officer;
in fact, the only hint of his actual profession was the police badge clipped to
his belt. Jane guessed him to be in his early forties. Short sandy hair,
perennial Florida tan.

Something
about his eyes-intense and bright blue-seemed contrary: The hard-line cop was
either confused or damaged.

But damaged by
what?

"I'm
Steve Higgins, chief of Danelleton police," he announced. "I know this
is a bad time, Ms. Ryan, but I guess there never really is a good time for such
things."

Jane shook his
hand from behind her desk. "No, there isn't."

"I'm
sorry we have to meet under such unpleasant circumstances, but I need to ask
you some questions about Marlene Troy"

Simply hearing
the name in the context of this aftermath shocked her. It reminded her that
this was all real. An employee and a friend just went on a killing spree, she
had to keep telling herself. There's just been a mass murder in our town, and
the killer was someone from my post office...

"Had Ms.
Troy ever exhibited any... strange behavior in the past? Mood swings?
Outbursts? Things like that?"

"No, no.
I was just telling my district supervisor that Marlene was an exemplary carrier
as well as a very nice person."

"Any
disputes with other employees?"

"No.
Everybody liked her."

"Any problems
with the law that you know of? I mean, before working here? Her Florida
record's clean but are you aware of any infractions in the past? Anything she
might've mentioned, even just in passing, say, from her teens, early adulthood,
college? We're particularly interested in any history of drug use or
alcoholism."

Jane just
shook her head no.

"Do you
know anything about her religious beliefs, Ms. Ryan?"

Jane peered up
at him. What a strange question, but come to think of it, she didn't recall
ever hearing Marlene mention any spiritual beliefs. Odder than the question,
though, was the tone with which Steve had asked it. As though it were a loaded
question of some kind. "I'm totally unaware of any of Marlene's religious
beliefs," Jane finally answered after a bit more thought. "I can't
ever remember her saying anything about it. For all I know, she had no
religious beliefs."

Steve looked
puzzled, withdrawing a slip of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it, looked at
it a moment, then passed it to Jane.

"Does this
design mean anything to you, Ms. Ryan? Have you ever seen it in relation to
anything that might have to do with Marlene Troy?"

Jane gave the
paper a look of puzzlement. It was a drawing, a sketch in black ink, crudely
but deliberately formed, clearly not by an artistic hand. It looked like a cup
with a flanged edge, and hovering at the top of the cup was a single
asterisk-like star. The drawing, in fact, seemed manic, desperate.

"I don't
get it," Jane said. "A sketch of a cup."

"Sorry,
other way," and he quickly took the paper, turned it around, and gave it
back to her. "Not a cup, we don't think."

No, Jane saw.
Now that the sketch inverted, it was easier to guess what it was. "A
bell?"

"It would
seem so."

"A bell
with a star at the edge," she observed. "How strange. There's just
something about it..."

"Yes,
there is. Hard to say what, but I know what you mean."

It's just ...
creepy.

"Is that
design familiar to you in any way, Ms. Ryan?"

Jane snapped
out of a fog. "No, Chief Higgins. I've never seen anything like this
before in my life. What is it?"

Steve paused,
almost as if he were hedging something. "It's best that I just say this
design pertains to the evidence on the scene."

"You
found this at the main post office?"

"No, no,
I mean secondary evidence. We found it at Marlene Troy's house after the
shooting."

Jane gasped, a
shock seizing her. "Her house...my God. I didn't even think of it until
now, but Marlene has a husband and a son in grade school," and then an
edgy despair set in. They'd have to be told right away, if they hadn't been
already. How do you deliver a message like that? It was always the same, she
supposed. A police officer would come to the house, grim-faced, and say
something like I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but to this, Jane could
relate quite well, forced to recall the time not so long ago when a state
trooper had come to her door. To notify her that her husband was dead.

"Have you
already notified her husband and son?" she asked.

Another pause
from Steve, and a discomfited look on his face. "That's what makes all
this even worse-no notification will be necessary. It appears that Marlene Troy
stabbed both her husband and son to death this morning before she left for
work. Both were mutilated." Steve closed his eyes for a moment. "It
looked like she'd painted the walls with their blood."

Jane felt numb
for the rest of the day; the shock was wearing off, replaced by a cold
disillusionment.

Details of the
case haunted her, the murders of Marlene's husband and, even more particularly,
the son, Jeff, who knew Jane's own children. A mass murder of adults was awful
enough, but the murder of a kid? It just made the worst thing seem that much
more insane.

When she
locked her office at the west branch, the rest of the building was grimly silent,
even though the crew in back was still working. She pulled out of her parking
spot and switched on the radio, hoping for some cheerful music but instead
got:"... the latest on today's horrific murders in a Danelleton, Florida,
post office, where an employee in good standing opened fire on a crowd of
customers with an automatic weapon, and then proceeded to kill everyone else in
the building-"

Jane changed
stations:"... thirty-six-year-old Marlene Troy, known to coworkers as a
friendly, diligent, and level-headed postal carrier, carried out the most
tragic one-day killing spree in Florida history... "

Jesus! Jane
punched another button:"... stabbed and mutilated her husband and young
son in their beds before killing twenty-six people with a machine gun..."

Jane snapped
the radio off, grinding her teeth.

She drove
through downtown, hoping it would clear her mind, but the peaceful city, and
its appearance of sheer normalcy, only reinforced the horror of the day. Things
were never as they seemed. People were never as they seemed. Danelleton seemed
like the most tranquil-and sane-town anyone could imagine. But look what
happened, she thought. Insanity could be the only explanation-and insanity was
undetectable in most cases.

In this case.

The street
along the pier, faced by its row of shops, looked abandoned. Only few passersby
could be seen strolling, but they were all sullen, hunched. This town is a
mask, Jane thought, just like any town could be.  Normal on the outside, but
who knew what was really on the inside? Anyone, any of these normal-looking
people, could snap, could go out of their minds the same way Marlene did.

She shoved the
thought away. Ordinarily she would've driven straight home to see her children,
who'd be home from the recreation center by now, but something unbidden steered
her away from the main road out. She was driving around the block, pulling in
and parking at the main branch post office ...

The EMTs were
gone, all the bodies had been carried off. Several police cars remained, along
with an evidence van. The long brick building looked monotonous, cold, even in
the blaze of sun, nothing like Jane's cheerful, brightly painted west branch
facility. Again, it was appearances that miffed her: true. The main post office
looked like a lot of federal facilities-rather somber-but it didn't look like
the site of a mass murder. Jane couldn't come to terms with what had happened here
this morning.

A uniformed
police officer stopped her, noticing her postal uniform. "Sorry, ma'am.
This is a restricted crime scene."

For a reason
she couldn't place, Jane felt that she needed to go inside. She'd worked at
this building for years but now, after what had happened, she felt she had to
go back inside. "I'm Jane Ryan," she said, distracted. "I'm the
postmaster at the west branch."

She showed the
cop her ID. "I knew a lot of the people who were killed. Could you let me
go in for just a minute, please?"

The cop
contemplated her request. "Sure, Ms. Ryan. But there are still a few
evidence people inside, so try to keep out of the way. And try to make it
quick, too. When they're done, they're going to seal the building."

"Thank
you."

He let her
pass the cordons, and then she was wandering into the lobby.

Dead silence
stared back at her when the doors swooshed closed. It was very cold; Jane
shivered as she walked disconcertedly past the stamp machines and the PO. box
coves. Then she heard voices.

The glass door
to the customer service area had been propped open. Jane began to smell
something that reminded her of disinfectant. Two men in blue utilities
meandered within, one holding a large plastic evidence bag heavy with spent
bullet cartridges, the other holding something that looked like a tackle box.

"Guess
that's it," one of the technicians said. "The cleanup crew did a hell
of a job with this place, huh? They should get a fuckin' trophy!"

"Shit,
all that blood?" the one with the cartridge bag replied. "I hope they
wore hip-waders."

A detached
laugh. "Better them than us."

"You got
that right. And it's hard to believe there was a pile of dead bodies in here
just a few hours ago. I've been working CES for ten years, six of 'em in Miami,
and I've never seen that many bodies in one place. They'll be working overtime
at the county morgue tonight, you can bet your ass."

"You see
the one chick they were hauling out of here-one of the last ones? It was one of
the employees working in back."

A grim dip in
the response. "Oh, the pregnant one..."

"Man, I
could shit my pants when I think about what this world is coming to. And this
one was a woman. How many times you see that-a chick on a shooting spree?"

"Never.
Chalk up another one to PMS."