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eBook Category: Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: Meet Calvin Beach, a disturbed postal clerk with a grudge against illegal immigrants. A man who plans to keep postal inspectors busy with homemade bombs. He will succeed, too, because he has a patsy chained in an abandoned Titan missile base in the desert. But Calvin is also being watched by a rookie postal inspector named Victor Kazy--the one person who suspects the police are looking for the wrong man. When Victor finally uncovers the truth about the abduction of his partner Maria, watch Calvin go "postal."

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: 1996
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2004

2 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.5 MB], eReader (PDB) [297 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [288 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [258 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [298 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [301 KB], hiebook (KML) [674 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [341 KB], iSilo (PDB) [239 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [296 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [356 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [378 KB]
Words: 84767
Reading time: 242-339 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"A class performance, powerful and accomplished ... mystery at its best."--Clive Cussler

Calvin folded the afternoon's Tucson Citizen, and sighed. Another loser, he thought. What was next? He pushed the paper back across his kitchen table, and picked up his own postal I.D.:

United States Postal Service, Tucson Arizona 85726.

Calvin Beach, Data Kee 1A-84937.

His face in the photo was humorless, the expression of a man who'd just been to a funeral. And he had. His father's on that go around. His thick black hair had been shorter then. In the photo, he was squinting. That was before he started wearing sunglasses inside ... before he'd started growing more and more sensitive to light, a side effect of the diabetes which had also left him impotent. Surprisingly, the photo showed him wearing a Madras shirt--a shirt he no longer owned because he wore mostly fatigues now. His usual clothes were Army surplus, and fit his short, stocky frame better than most of the K-Mart or men's store clothes he'd tried. He still had the white shirt he'd worn to his mother's funeral the day after he'd graduated from Rincon High, but he hadn't worn that lately. He wondered if it even fit him, now. He didn't look fat. He was just wider these days. Fireplug, they called him at work, mostly behind his back.

Calvin went to the closet and slid open the door for a peek. Yes, the shirt in back was still white, but not quite as white as it was twenty years ago. Not as white as he remembered it. He might have worn one like it to his father's funeral, he realized, except that one wasn't much of an affair. No one had showed up then, not even Crockey, his dad's fellow postal contract driver during those couple of years when his old man wasn't driving coast-to-coast for Rodeway. They didn't care. None of them. No more than they'd cared about Randall Thompson, whatever his problems were.

He closed the closet door, looking up at the horned bull skull over his dresser. Which is worse, Dad? he thought. Disease, accident, or suicide? Marlboros and alcohol had ended Ralph Beach's forgotten life eight years ago, although it took thirty years to do it. And a bus on a wide turn ended his mother's twelve years before that. A bus that had casually squeezed her Valiant into a telephone pole at forty-five miles per hour, leaving him and his dad with no one but each other.

He went back to the breakfast table, and picked up the letter he'd written the night before. He read it again, one last time.

Hi Dad,

Last week I went to the postal doctor about my eyes. He told me to see an ophthalmologist about my sensitivity. I'm fine otherwise. Good thing I still don't need insulin. My allergies aren't as bad because the pollen count is finally down, too. Spring is almost over and the wind has died down, so I won't have to put up with all those plants the Snowbirds bring back from Michigan or wherever the hell they come from in the fall. Only bad thing now is the heat. Got them to fix my air conditioning the other day, and it works fine except for the wheezing sound. It was supposed to be hundred degrees today. Yesterday it was ninety-four. Not quite a record for mid-May, but damn close. Gonna be a long hot summer, and hot as hell, Dad. Humidity's at 10 percent, though. It's a dry heat, they say. But who are they, right? At least I got no problems sleeping.

My new motorcycle is running great. Did I tell you? Do you know? Goes anywhere--even out into the desert hills where I can explore all those old ghost towns around here, maybe find that silver vein near some mine great-grandfather wrote about before the Apaches got him. Cost eight grand, dad, and I paid cash. Can you believe it? I know you want me to buy a house, and I will someday, I promise. Right now, though, I just don't need a lot of space, see. This duplex apartment is fine. I like it that there's nobody above me moving furniture at 3 A.M.. Got a thick wall between me and that retired guy next door who plays golf a lot at Randolph but collects Social Security disability on the side. I've learned my lesson about apartments, and people.

Anyway, at work, funny thing, they had a meeting about a postal shooting in Phoenix. Said this carrier got fired by his lady boss, then came back and killed five people, wounded three, and shot himself. Sounds like old times, doesn't it? 'Course management talked about stress reduction, guns and white powder, reporting anything suspicious. The usual BS. Thing I wonder, though, is why didn't this guy didn't use his imagination. Dummy didn't use his head. Guess he had to be there, to see it happen. What do you think, Dad?

Later,

Calvin

Calvin folded the letter, put it in an envelope, and sealed it. Then he went to the end table in the corner of his living room, and kneeled in front of it. He lit a candle, breathed a prayer, and placed the letter in the copper tray there.

For a moment he stared at the picture behind the tray. It was old, and faded. In the photo his mother stood in the kitchen of their apartment on East Irvington. The smile she wore was one of endurance, of hope. It had been Thanksgiving Day, but on that bleak and overcast Thursday afternoon she held up a homemade pumpkin pie and tried to smile that fragile smile for her only son and her mostly missing husband, who was always on the road.

Calvin picked up the letter and wrote IN CARE OF MARY BEACH on the envelope. Then he laid it back in the tray and lit his match. As the letter burned he smiled and stared at the candle until it was the only light in the room.

Soon it was time to go to work.