Johnny walked up to the small post office at the center of town, having jumped out of the car before Bruce had even come to a complete stop. Bruce put the car into park, then leaped out, jogging to catch up with Johnny. For a guy that walked with a cane, he could move just as fast as everyone else when he had his mind set on something.
Johnny pushed open the glass door, and above him, a small bell chimed to announce his entrance. He passed the door off to Bruce and approached the counter, just as a portly, older woman walked out from the back room.
"Can I help you boys?" she asked in a friendly tone.
"I'm hoping you can," Johnny replied, putting the envelope down on the counter. "I'm hoping you can tell us how we can track down who sent this."
The woman took the envelope and looked it over briefly, then shook her head as she handed it back.
"There's no return address."
"I know," Johnny told her, holding the envelope out to her again. "Isn't there some other way to track it?"
"Unfortunately," the lady began with another shake of her head, "we don't keep track of individual letters like we do with packages and certified letters. We can't track letters like we do those."
"It's really important that we find out who sent this," Johnny told her, hoping the urgency in his voice would pursuade her to help them. He leaned forward on the counter, placing his hand on the cool surface, and immediately his senses were taken over with a vision.
He saw the outside of the post office as he walked down the stairs of the building across the street from it. Glancing down at himself, Johnny saw that the person was wearing a long, tan trench coat, and a brown business suit. He walked across the street to the post office, then followed the path Johnny and Bruce had taken only moments beforehand. Johnny walked into the post office and approached the same woman, only she was clothed differently.
"I'd like to mail this please,"Johnny said in a voice that wasn't his own, then handed the woman the plain white envelope that had been delivered to his door hours ago.
"Of course, sir," the lady replied. "That will be thirty-four cents for the stamp."
Johnny reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar, handing it to the woman. Johnny took note of the leathery appearance of the man's skin, and the vericose veins that ran across his hand. She looked at the envelope, and put a stamp on it, then looked back up at the gentleman.
"There's no return address, sir. Would you like to write one on there?" she asked.
"No," was his curt reply, and he turned to leave.
"Sir, your change!" she called to him, but the man just walked out the door without responding.
Johnny removed his hand from the counter and he was thrown back into the present conversation, only to find the woman staring at him with an uncertain look in her eyes.
"-said, I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing I can do," she was saying.
Johnny blinked a couple of times, then processed what she had been saying to him. "Oh, right. Thank you for your time."
Johnny walked out of the post office with Bruce following close behind him, and once they were outside, Bruce moved in front of Johnny, facing off with him.
"So what happened in there? You blanked out on us."
"He was here, Bruce," Johnny told him.
"Who was?"
"The guy that sent me this," he replied, waving the envelope in emphasis. "He sent it from this post office."
"If he was this close to your house, why didn't he just hand deliver it? Your house is maybe a ten minute walk from here," Bruce asked.
"He doesn't want me to know who he is, I guess," Johnny offered, unsure of why the man hadn't come to him himself. "He purposely left no return address. The woman asked him if he wanted to put one, and he said no."
"So who is the guy?"
"I don't know, I couldn't see his face," Johnny answered, then his eyes drifted to the building across the street. "But he went to the post office, from there. Maybe someone there will remember seeing him."
"But if you didn't see his face-" Bruce began.
"I saw what he was wearing, and I have an idea of what age he might be. Maybe that'll be enough to give us a start," Johnny said.
Johnny headed towards the building across the street, the public library, briefly glancing in both directions to check traffic before stepping off the curb. Bruce was about to follow, but he glanced as his watch, cursing silently to himself.
"Look Johnny," he said, "I would love to tag along with you, but I have other stuff to do today."
"It's okay, Bruce," Johnny said, walking backwards across the street, so he could talk to Bruce as he still made his way towards the library. "I'll let you know what I find."
"Okay, Johnny, but don't let this get to you. Maybe this person didn't want to be found."
"Why would they send me the picture if they didn't want me to do something with it?" Johnny retorted, and that question left Bruce without an answer.
Johnny turned on his heel and continued to the library, his cane clacking loudly against the marble stairs. He carefully scaled the slick stairs, then opened the large wooden doors that led inside. The door squealed in protest, its hinges rusting with age, but it relented and allowed him entrance. The main lobby of the library was had a high ceiling that echoed loudly as Johnny walked into the empty library. There was a girl in her mid-twenties perched on a stool behind the counter in the center of the room, and she was completely engrossed in the book placed before her. Johnny approached the counter, but she didn't look up until he cleared his throat to get her attention.
"Excuse me," he said when she finally tore herself away from her book. "I'm hoping you can help me. A friend of mine was in here a few days ago and I was wondering if you'd seen him."
"Well, I'm here every day," the girl replied, pushing her dark brown hair behind her ear. "What's he look like?"
"He's an older gentleman," Johnny told her, remembering the look of the man's hand in his vision. "About my height. He was wearing a long, tan trench coat and a brown business suit."
"Oh, the old, creepy guy," she said, nodding in recognition.
"You remember him?"
"How could I forget?" she replied. "He came in here about a week ago, came over to the counter, and when I looked up from my book, he was staring down at me with these really intense eyes. It was kind of creepy."
"Do you remember what he wanted?"
"He asked me to pull out some microfishe of some newspapers from about ten years ago."
"Could you pull those out for me?" Johnny asked her.
"Sure," she answered with a shrug, then jumped off her stool. She went into a door behind the counter, and about ten minutes later, she returned with several cards of microfiche in her hands. She walked back up to the counter and handed them to him, then pointed to some desks behind him.
"You can use the machines over there," the girl told him. "Give me a holler if you need help."
"Thanks," he said, taking the cards from her.
Johnny walked over to the desks, sitting down at the first one he came to. He leaned his cane against the table, making sure it wouldn't fall, then pulled the chair out and sat down in front of the magnifier. He flipped the switch in the front on, and it took a minute for the bulb to warm up before the lamp in the reader came on. Starting with the sheet on top, Johnny inserted it into the reader, then began going through the old newspaper articles.
He spent the next several hours flipping through old newspaper articles from early spring ten years earlier. Johnny glanced over at the counter but saw no sign of the girl that had helped him. He looked back at the screen in front of him, beginning to wonder if he was wasting his time. The articles had started blending together, making very little, if any, sense. He told himself that he was going to give up after the sheet he had just placed in the reader, not expecting to find anything. He was about to flip off the reader's lamp when he saw a familiar picture in the bottom left corner of the page.
Johnny leaned forward in his seat, recognizing the picture as the one that had been sent to his house, then his eyes carried further down the page, reading the article that surrounded the picture.
"Girl Institutionalized After Murdering Family," the title read in bold letters across the top.
Johnny read on in interest, wondering why this particular picture had been sent to him. He read through the article, and in typical empty fashion, the reporter told the story of the girl in the picture with no gruesome detail spared.
"Police responded to a very frantic phone call from a local resident late last night," the article began. "Mrs. Lillah Richardson dialed 911 at 11:11pm saying her daughter was 'going crazy.' Police responded as quickly as possible and tried to keep Mrs. Richardson on the phone, but before police could get there, the line went dead. What the police found once they arrived at the Richardson household was disturbing and gruesome."
The article continued down the page, detailing the blood bath that awaited police when they arrived. Apparently, eighteen-year-old Jessica Richardson had returned home that night and viciously murdered her parents inexplicably, stabbing them to death with a pair of scissors. The police described Jessica as being emotionally disturbed and paranoid when they arrived. She was said to be hovering over her parents' mangled bodies with the bloody weapon in her hand, waving it threateningly at police until they were able to restrain her.
The remaining portion of the article was about Jessica's mental health, and said the girl had been diagnosed as schizophrenic several years beforehand. She had been on drug therapy under the careful supervision of her psychiatrist.
"She was doing so well," the doctor said in an interview. "This is completely unexpected. Jessica showed no signs of regression or rejection of her medication. We're all shocked by this."
Johnny skimmed through the next few weeks of articles about the Richardsons. Jessica had been institutionalized at a Maine state hospital and was under twenty-four hour care. After a few weeks, the articles seemed to dwindle in number until they disappeared completely about two months after the incident, Jessica's picture being replaced with pictures of some other tragedy.
Johnny wrote down some information on a small piece of paper he found on the desk, then gathered up the microfishe and brought it back to the girl sitting at the desk. He thanked her briefly before heading to the door, his footsteps and cane echoing in the massive, empty room, just as they had when he entered.
He stepped outside into the cool air, pulling his coat closed around him to keep himself warm. He glanced at his watch, noticing he had spent most of the day in the library. He was about to walk down the slick stairs to the street when his cell phone rang.
Johnny reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone, briefly glancing at it before answering it.
"Hello?"
"Hey Johnny," Bruce said from the other end of the line. "How goes the search?"
"She has a name now," Johnny told him. "Jessica Richardson."
"Ring any bells?"
"Not really," the blonde replied. "I read about her, she was in the news about ten years ago. I remember the story a little bit, but nothing really significant."
"I've never even heard the name before," Bruce said. "Find anything else out about her?"
"She brutally murdered both of her parents about ten years ago," Johnny said, relaying the information he had just read. "She was a diagnosed schizophrenic, and they think she just went crazy. She was put in a hospital in Bangor."
"Man," Bruce whispered, taking it all in. "Any idea why someone would send you her picture?"
"Not a clue," Johnny answered, having asked himself that very question. "But I want to find out. Feel like taking a little road trip?"
"Sure," Bruce replied. "I can meet up with you in about an hour."
"Great, I'll meet you at my place," Johnny said, and after they said their goodbyes, he hung up his phone, heading home.
As he walked, Johnny thought more about what he had read, but nothing seemed to make sense as to why anyone would want to send him a ten year old picture of a girl. When he reached his door, Johnny had more questions, but less answers, hoping that he would be able to unravel this mystery.
Johnny pushed open the glass door, and above him, a small bell chimed to announce his entrance. He passed the door off to Bruce and approached the counter, just as a portly, older woman walked out from the back room.
"Can I help you boys?" she asked in a friendly tone.
"I'm hoping you can," Johnny replied, putting the envelope down on the counter. "I'm hoping you can tell us how we can track down who sent this."
The woman took the envelope and looked it over briefly, then shook her head as she handed it back.
"There's no return address."
"I know," Johnny told her, holding the envelope out to her again. "Isn't there some other way to track it?"
"Unfortunately," the lady began with another shake of her head, "we don't keep track of individual letters like we do with packages and certified letters. We can't track letters like we do those."
"It's really important that we find out who sent this," Johnny told her, hoping the urgency in his voice would pursuade her to help them. He leaned forward on the counter, placing his hand on the cool surface, and immediately his senses were taken over with a vision.
He saw the outside of the post office as he walked down the stairs of the building across the street from it. Glancing down at himself, Johnny saw that the person was wearing a long, tan trench coat, and a brown business suit. He walked across the street to the post office, then followed the path Johnny and Bruce had taken only moments beforehand. Johnny walked into the post office and approached the same woman, only she was clothed differently.
"I'd like to mail this please,"Johnny said in a voice that wasn't his own, then handed the woman the plain white envelope that had been delivered to his door hours ago.
"Of course, sir," the lady replied. "That will be thirty-four cents for the stamp."
Johnny reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar, handing it to the woman. Johnny took note of the leathery appearance of the man's skin, and the vericose veins that ran across his hand. She looked at the envelope, and put a stamp on it, then looked back up at the gentleman.
"There's no return address, sir. Would you like to write one on there?" she asked.
"No," was his curt reply, and he turned to leave.
"Sir, your change!" she called to him, but the man just walked out the door without responding.
Johnny removed his hand from the counter and he was thrown back into the present conversation, only to find the woman staring at him with an uncertain look in her eyes.
"-said, I'm sorry, sir, but there's nothing I can do," she was saying.
Johnny blinked a couple of times, then processed what she had been saying to him. "Oh, right. Thank you for your time."
Johnny walked out of the post office with Bruce following close behind him, and once they were outside, Bruce moved in front of Johnny, facing off with him.
"So what happened in there? You blanked out on us."
"He was here, Bruce," Johnny told him.
"Who was?"
"The guy that sent me this," he replied, waving the envelope in emphasis. "He sent it from this post office."
"If he was this close to your house, why didn't he just hand deliver it? Your house is maybe a ten minute walk from here," Bruce asked.
"He doesn't want me to know who he is, I guess," Johnny offered, unsure of why the man hadn't come to him himself. "He purposely left no return address. The woman asked him if he wanted to put one, and he said no."
"So who is the guy?"
"I don't know, I couldn't see his face," Johnny answered, then his eyes drifted to the building across the street. "But he went to the post office, from there. Maybe someone there will remember seeing him."
"But if you didn't see his face-" Bruce began.
"I saw what he was wearing, and I have an idea of what age he might be. Maybe that'll be enough to give us a start," Johnny said.
Johnny headed towards the building across the street, the public library, briefly glancing in both directions to check traffic before stepping off the curb. Bruce was about to follow, but he glanced as his watch, cursing silently to himself.
"Look Johnny," he said, "I would love to tag along with you, but I have other stuff to do today."
"It's okay, Bruce," Johnny said, walking backwards across the street, so he could talk to Bruce as he still made his way towards the library. "I'll let you know what I find."
"Okay, Johnny, but don't let this get to you. Maybe this person didn't want to be found."
"Why would they send me the picture if they didn't want me to do something with it?" Johnny retorted, and that question left Bruce without an answer.
Johnny turned on his heel and continued to the library, his cane clacking loudly against the marble stairs. He carefully scaled the slick stairs, then opened the large wooden doors that led inside. The door squealed in protest, its hinges rusting with age, but it relented and allowed him entrance. The main lobby of the library was had a high ceiling that echoed loudly as Johnny walked into the empty library. There was a girl in her mid-twenties perched on a stool behind the counter in the center of the room, and she was completely engrossed in the book placed before her. Johnny approached the counter, but she didn't look up until he cleared his throat to get her attention.
"Excuse me," he said when she finally tore herself away from her book. "I'm hoping you can help me. A friend of mine was in here a few days ago and I was wondering if you'd seen him."
"Well, I'm here every day," the girl replied, pushing her dark brown hair behind her ear. "What's he look like?"
"He's an older gentleman," Johnny told her, remembering the look of the man's hand in his vision. "About my height. He was wearing a long, tan trench coat and a brown business suit."
"Oh, the old, creepy guy," she said, nodding in recognition.
"You remember him?"
"How could I forget?" she replied. "He came in here about a week ago, came over to the counter, and when I looked up from my book, he was staring down at me with these really intense eyes. It was kind of creepy."
"Do you remember what he wanted?"
"He asked me to pull out some microfishe of some newspapers from about ten years ago."
"Could you pull those out for me?" Johnny asked her.
"Sure," she answered with a shrug, then jumped off her stool. She went into a door behind the counter, and about ten minutes later, she returned with several cards of microfiche in her hands. She walked back up to the counter and handed them to him, then pointed to some desks behind him.
"You can use the machines over there," the girl told him. "Give me a holler if you need help."
"Thanks," he said, taking the cards from her.
Johnny walked over to the desks, sitting down at the first one he came to. He leaned his cane against the table, making sure it wouldn't fall, then pulled the chair out and sat down in front of the magnifier. He flipped the switch in the front on, and it took a minute for the bulb to warm up before the lamp in the reader came on. Starting with the sheet on top, Johnny inserted it into the reader, then began going through the old newspaper articles.
He spent the next several hours flipping through old newspaper articles from early spring ten years earlier. Johnny glanced over at the counter but saw no sign of the girl that had helped him. He looked back at the screen in front of him, beginning to wonder if he was wasting his time. The articles had started blending together, making very little, if any, sense. He told himself that he was going to give up after the sheet he had just placed in the reader, not expecting to find anything. He was about to flip off the reader's lamp when he saw a familiar picture in the bottom left corner of the page.
Johnny leaned forward in his seat, recognizing the picture as the one that had been sent to his house, then his eyes carried further down the page, reading the article that surrounded the picture.
"Girl Institutionalized After Murdering Family," the title read in bold letters across the top.
Johnny read on in interest, wondering why this particular picture had been sent to him. He read through the article, and in typical empty fashion, the reporter told the story of the girl in the picture with no gruesome detail spared.
"Police responded to a very frantic phone call from a local resident late last night," the article began. "Mrs. Lillah Richardson dialed 911 at 11:11pm saying her daughter was 'going crazy.' Police responded as quickly as possible and tried to keep Mrs. Richardson on the phone, but before police could get there, the line went dead. What the police found once they arrived at the Richardson household was disturbing and gruesome."
The article continued down the page, detailing the blood bath that awaited police when they arrived. Apparently, eighteen-year-old Jessica Richardson had returned home that night and viciously murdered her parents inexplicably, stabbing them to death with a pair of scissors. The police described Jessica as being emotionally disturbed and paranoid when they arrived. She was said to be hovering over her parents' mangled bodies with the bloody weapon in her hand, waving it threateningly at police until they were able to restrain her.
The remaining portion of the article was about Jessica's mental health, and said the girl had been diagnosed as schizophrenic several years beforehand. She had been on drug therapy under the careful supervision of her psychiatrist.
"She was doing so well," the doctor said in an interview. "This is completely unexpected. Jessica showed no signs of regression or rejection of her medication. We're all shocked by this."
Johnny skimmed through the next few weeks of articles about the Richardsons. Jessica had been institutionalized at a Maine state hospital and was under twenty-four hour care. After a few weeks, the articles seemed to dwindle in number until they disappeared completely about two months after the incident, Jessica's picture being replaced with pictures of some other tragedy.
Johnny wrote down some information on a small piece of paper he found on the desk, then gathered up the microfishe and brought it back to the girl sitting at the desk. He thanked her briefly before heading to the door, his footsteps and cane echoing in the massive, empty room, just as they had when he entered.
He stepped outside into the cool air, pulling his coat closed around him to keep himself warm. He glanced at his watch, noticing he had spent most of the day in the library. He was about to walk down the slick stairs to the street when his cell phone rang.
Johnny reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone, briefly glancing at it before answering it.
"Hello?"
"Hey Johnny," Bruce said from the other end of the line. "How goes the search?"
"She has a name now," Johnny told him. "Jessica Richardson."
"Ring any bells?"
"Not really," the blonde replied. "I read about her, she was in the news about ten years ago. I remember the story a little bit, but nothing really significant."
"I've never even heard the name before," Bruce said. "Find anything else out about her?"
"She brutally murdered both of her parents about ten years ago," Johnny said, relaying the information he had just read. "She was a diagnosed schizophrenic, and they think she just went crazy. She was put in a hospital in Bangor."
"Man," Bruce whispered, taking it all in. "Any idea why someone would send you her picture?"
"Not a clue," Johnny answered, having asked himself that very question. "But I want to find out. Feel like taking a little road trip?"
"Sure," Bruce replied. "I can meet up with you in about an hour."
"Great, I'll meet you at my place," Johnny said, and after they said their goodbyes, he hung up his phone, heading home.
As he walked, Johnny thought more about what he had read, but nothing seemed to make sense as to why anyone would want to send him a ten year old picture of a girl. When he reached his door, Johnny had more questions, but less answers, hoping that he would be able to unravel this mystery.