Excerpt
Return to Sender
1
"Nobody smiles anymore."
"Excuse me?"
"Have you noticed? Nobody smiles anymore." Mike adjusted himself in the tiny postal Jeep, setting his back against the passenger-side door as he sat on the floor beside Dog so no one would see him in the September early morning light. "Remember when we were growing up how you were taught that when you walked down the street and you met a stranger, that you smiled or said hello?" He sighed, staring at the plethora of mail and packages in the back as if it were a weight he could no longer bear. "People don't do that anymore."
Mike Thurman, my late wife's cousin, was in a bad mood, but that didn't mean he didn't have a point.
Mike had been having a tough month, so I tried to distract him just a bit, thinking of something to say while surveying the interior of the utility vehicle. "So, why do they call this model Jeep DJs?"
He grunted, swiping off his Seattle Mariners ball cap and rubbing his shaved head, then reaching over and scruffing the fur behind sleeping Dog's ear. "Dispatch Jeep."
"Oh."
"Also, they're two-wheel drive-smart for Wyoming, right?"
"Was she driving one of these?"
"No, there's no way you could fit all that mail in a 307-mile route in something like this. She had a hopped-up '68 Travelall that she drove." He shook his head, putting his cap back on and folding his hands in his lap. "She probably used up her entire paycheck putting gas in the thing." He nodded to the right. "Turquoise and white with all those hippie stickers in the back window. I think it was an old ambulance or . . ."
"Or what?"
"A hearse."
Neither of us wanted to dwell on that.
"I think it's for sale at the used car lot about a quarter mile down the main drag on Foothill Boulevard. That piece of shit boyfriend of hers, Benny, sold all her stuff about a month after she went missing."
"Don't you have to wait sixty days?"
"His name was on the title."
"Sweetwater County process the vehicle?"
He studied me with a raised eyebrow. "I'm a postal inspector, not a criminal investigator."
I glanced down at the heavy file folder in my hands. "Jeez, Mike, haven't you seen those TV shows, anybody can do this stuff."
"Yeah, right."
I gave up on trying to distract him. "So, what is it exactly that you want me to do?"
"Find her."
"Well, I can tell you from experience that that's not likely to happen."
"Because of the amount of time?"
"That, and the size of the area she was lost in." I shook my head. "Is there any way to narrow the search area?"
"I wish there was but it's as if she disappeared off the face of the earth somewhere in the Red Desert."
"Did you talk with the Sweetwater County Sheriff's Department?"
He nodded. "The primary investigator, Jake Moline."
"Never heard of him."
"Uturd, I think."
"Uturd . . . ?"
"From Utah, that's what they call 'em down here."
"Nice."
"Hey, I live in Colorado and shudder to think what you guys call us."
I slid the map he'd printed for me from the file folder and looked at the gigantic loop surrounding the Red Desert in the south-central area of my state. "So, you want me to pretend I'm a contract laborer and follow her route?"
"And just see what pops up, yeah."
"Pops up?"
He took a sip from his travel mug of coffee. "You're the king of pop-ups, you see things other people don't."
"And you don't think anybody will suspect that I'm law enforcement?"
"Nah, we get all kinds of people as contract rural carriers, especially the long routes that nobody wants." He chuckled. "Besides, you've got the fake ID and that nifty mountain-man beard."
I scratched the offending fur and then thumbed through the folder again, looking at the photo of the missing woman in her fifties. "Why do you suppose she did?"
"Did what?"
"Take one of the especially long routes, evidently one of the longest in the country."
He sat up a bit, looking around at the empty post office parking lot. "You know, she told me once that she liked to drive because it helped her to forget."
I stared at the photo of the dark-haired woman with the silver streak down the middle, one eye slightly errant and half-smiling with a note of wiseacre. "Forget what?"
"She never said, and I didn't ask."
I closed the folder. "You know, she could've just walked away."
"Not her."
"Why?"
"She was kooky, but she took things very seriously, at least some things." He shook his head. "How does it go? In neither sleet nor snow . . ."
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds . . ." I watched as the first vehicle swept into the postal lot. "It's not official, you know."
"What?"
"The motto, it's not official."
He sipped his coffee some more. "The hell you say."
Stuffing the folder back in my satchel, I watched as a young woman got out of her vehicle in a Carhartt jacket and walked up the ramp to the back door of the facility, punching numbers into the keypad and then yanking the door open and going inside.
"That's Tess Anderson, she's the morning super and she'll be the one that shows you the ropes-she was pretty good friends with Blair."
"Was, huh?" I pulled the door handle and stepped out onto the smooth surface of the concrete, buttoning my old canvas hunting jacket and adjusting my hat. "When they built the James A. Farley post office in New York City, the architectural firm set the words in stone, and everybody assumed it was the creed of the postal service. Never adopted. It's from The Persian Wars by the Greek historian Herodotus. During the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, 500 to 449 BCE, the Persians had a mounted messenger service, a really impressive one-so impressive in fact that Herodotus used those words."
"Well I'll be damned."
I gestured toward the beast next to Mike. "You'll look after my dog while I'm gone?"
"Sure."
"Greenies."
He looked up in confusion. "Excuse me?"
"We Wyomingites-we call Coloradans 'greenies.'"
"Why 'greenies'?"
"Your license plates are green." I shut the door and started off toward the ramp and the door with the keypad.
It was late September, but the high plains were already letting us know what was coming. Fall was on its way, and autumn looked like it was intending on making an entrance, stage left. I had the crucial beginnings of a serious relationship on my hands and a missing family member of my own, and here I was in Rock Springs with a burgeoning, if not falsified, career in delivering the United States mail.
Ignoring the keypad, I thumped a fist on the heavy metal door and waited.
The blonde's face appeared in the small window, peering at me through the cross-grid of wire within the glass, her voice muffled but strong. "Help you?"
"I'm the new gun for hire."
She stared at me. "Let's see some ID."
Instead, I opened the folder, pulling out the vita that the postal inspector had provided me with, plastering it against the glass and waiting. After a moment, the lock buzzed, and I pushed the door open and stepped inside. "Thanks, it's chilly out there."
She said nothing, taking the sheet from me. "Word from the high-ups in Colorado, huh?" I looked around at the overladen carts filled with letters, packing envelopes, and packages as she read the page and then handed it back to me, looking me over from head to scuffed-up boots. "I guess we'll just have to call you the Jolly Greenie Giant, huh?"
I didn't say anything as she walked away, indicating that I should follow her toward a bank of lockers that stood near a time clock and a large calendar. "You can have number thirteen. You superstitious?"
"Not particularly." I stared at the locker next to the assigned one for myself, covered in stickers with the name mcgowan written on a weathered piece of tape. "That the woman that went missing?"
She side-eyed me. "You know about that?"
"It was in all the papers, even down in Colorado."
"Yeah, well then you know why we're a little on edge concerning security these days." She started off. "C'mon, I'll show you your hut."
She led me to a large cubby near another wired window with banks of metal compartments that had stenciled names, at least a couple hundred of them.
Handing me a small device, she gestured toward a large, orange bin full of mail. "Here's your MDD, just use it to ID the pumpkin and the DPS tray, but when you go OTR you'll have to reread the ones in the CBU." She handed me a set of keys with a stylized peace-sign keychain and gestured toward the huge bins. "It runs like a river, the mail."
She started to go, but I called after her. "Hey . . . ?"
She turned toward me.
I held up the device. "What's an MDD?"
She stared at me for a long moment. "Oh my God."
“She’s a beauty, huh?”
Standing before the vintage SUV made before there ever were SUVs, I watched as a potbellied individual in his shirtsleeves approached, straightening his cowboy hat and rubbing his hands together.
"The heater works, and that's a blessing on a morning like this."
I noticed the silver crucifix pin stuck in his hat. "You in the blessing business?"
We shook hands. "Mister, I am in the business of moving rolling stock, and you've picked a winner here."
"Sixty-seven?"
He turned to introduce the vehicle like a long-lost lover. "This here is a 1968 International Travelall, panel model-has the big V-8 and the automatic transmission."
"Hearse or ambulance?"
He made a face. "Neither. She was used to deliver mail most recently. Heck, I know the fellow that bought her originally down in Salt Lake City back in '68."
"Who owned it more recently?"
He leaned in close, his breath cloaking the truth between us. "I'm not supposed to say because it gives a lot of people the willies, but you don't look like a Willy to me." He slapped my shoulder and then squeezed the muscle there. "No, not a Willy at all." He leaned in even closer. "It belonged to that mail lady that disappeared a couple of months back. Her boyfriend brought this fine vehicle in and sold her cheap. Seemed odd to me, but maybe he was just trying to get rid of all her stuff."
I walked around to the rear and read all the stickers: woodstock, the grateful dead, make love not war, various peace and love signs, stay groovy, the doors, flower power, jefferson airplane, the age of aquarius. "What was he like?"
"The boyfriend? Oh, I'd rather not say." He looked back at the Travelall. "Are you in need of wheels, my good man?"
"How many miles?"
"About a quarter million, but she's rebuilt and a baby like this'll run an easy half million starting fresh." I gave him a look and he chuckled. "Well, maybe a third of a million miles?"
"How much, and don't say anything near a million."
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and considered the International. "An even five thousand?"
I looked at the glossy surface of the paint, and the good tread of the tires. "Four?"
He smiled and then walked around me to the front and lifted the hood, revealing a pristine engine compartment. "She's been well taken care of."
"Maybe, but she's a little on the high end of her lifespan."
He patted the fender. "Like fine wine."
"Forty-five hundred."
He fluttered his lips with an exhale. "I'll need to talk to my manager."
"You got the keys?"
He reached into his pocket and tossed them to me as he headed back toward the trailer at the center of the lot. "I'll be right back."
Opening the door, I climbed in and sat, slipping the key into the ignition and hitting the starter as the motor sprang to life and purred like a contented kitten. I gave a pat to the dash, then reached over and flipped down the glove box, but it was empty except for a folder and receipt for what were practically new tires. There were side pockets in the doors, but before I could get a look in them the car salesman was coming back.
He hung in the open window. "He's holding at five; the motor and transmission were rebuilt no more than a year ago and the tires are brand new."
I reached down and turned on the heat, splaying my fingers over the vent as the engine began heating up and exhaling warm air. Turning in the seat, I could see the slide-out cargo tray. "You're sure she wasn't either a hearse or an ambulance at one point in her lengthy career?"
"Positive. The mail carrier put that in herself."
"Did you know her?"
He looked puzzled. "Who?"
"The postal worker who owned it?"
He shook his head. "No, but I know the guy that did all the work; Sal Salvucci's shop over on the north side."
"You want to slap some dealer tags on it, and I'll go visit him?" He started to speak again but I'd already pulled out a wad of bills big enough to choke a horse, peeling off five grand and handing it to him. "Get the title and paperwork ready and I'll go over and talk to Sal."
He took the money, smiling. "Friend, you have yourself a deal."
The city of Rock Springs began its life split asunder by the railroad, the Lincoln Highway, and finally by I-80. Named for an actual rock spring, it’s claim to fame was coal, commemorated in a vibrant illuminated red sign that welcomed all visitors near the railyard that used to straddle the highway itself.
Taking a right on my way to the mechanic's shop and under the highway, I spotted what I was looking for next door-one of those all-purpose fly-by-night electronics stores-and pulled in and parked at Flaming Gorge Vape.
The kid behind the counter with black hair and a number of piercings and tattoos looked up. "Help you?"
"Yep." I took a deep breath. "I, uh . . . I need to buy a phone."
The kid didn't seem to think it was a big deal, even if it was for me, and he gestured toward the case underneath him. "Are you looking for something with internet access, games, HD camera, social media, 4G, 5G?"
