Wildbury

Wildbury is the setting for the postal exchange through which Burke Devore tries to reach Hauck Exman when he cannot find him directly. Its post office and mailbox serve first as the departure point for a carefully disguised fake job letter and then as the place where Burke retrieves Exman’s response. The repeated journeys give this otherwise practical location a charged role: the correspondence may help Burke advance his plan, but it also threatens the anonymity on which that plan depends.

Post Office and Postal Address

Burke drives to Wildbury to use the mailbox outside the post office. The letter is presented as coming from B. D. Industrial Papers, with the address P. O. Box 2900, Wildbury, CT 06899. The exact address makes Wildbury more than a passing name: it is the postal identity Burke uses to make the fictitious employer appear established enough to attract a job seeker.

The letter itself has been prepared to look convincing. Burke cuts letterheads from extra-heavy paper with a straight-edge and razor blade, then glues them onto the envelopes as address labels. He worries that this maneuver may leave a trail, a risk at odds with his earlier efforts to keep himself separate and unidentifiable. Nevertheless, unable to use his gun or locate Exman, he drives to Wildbury and mails the letter, frightened by the exposure but unwilling to abandon the attempt.

The Letter to Hauck Exman

Dated June 11, 1997, the letter is addressed to Hauck Exman and bears the false B. D. Industrial Papers identity. Burke’s immediate objective is to draw Exman within reach by offering the prospect of employment. In his calculations, Exman stands between him and Upton “Ralph” Fallon, the next intended target; the correspondence is therefore a practical step in a larger sequence of planned killings, not an ordinary employment inquiry.

The postal device depends on Burke’s control of appearances. The fabricated letterhead and carefully assembled envelopes are meant to make the offer credible while concealing its real purpose. Yet the need to send a physical letter creates the possibility that someone could trace the address or examine the materials. Wildbury’s post office is consequently both an instrument of Burke’s plan and the point at which that plan becomes materially exposed.

Return and Repeated Visits

On Tuesday, June 17, Burke sits in the Voyager in front of the Wildbury post office with Exman’s response in hand. The letter has come back quickly, and Exman has filled in the form rather than retaining the main body and returning only the portion requested. Burke had worried that Exman might keep the letter, and possibly give it to the police; instead, Exman has responded to the bait. Burke’s image of the letter as having orbited back underscores the exchange’s closed circuit: a message sent to draw a stranger in has returned bearing evidence of his interest.

Wildbury recurs as Burke makes further postal trips. After mailing seventeen copies of his own résumé to paper mills he had previously contacted, as well as to Arcadia Processing, he drives to Wildbury to look for Exman’s answer. The two acts sit uneasily together: Burke renews his genuine-looking search for work while also pursuing the scheme intended to bring Exman within reach. He calculates that sending the résumés a week or two before Fallon’s death should help prevent suspicion, linking routine job-seeking to the timing of his violence.

Narrative Significance

The post office gives Burke’s plan a specific, repeatable geography: he sends the letter from Wildbury, returns to check for its answer, and waits there with the response. The sequence turns an apparently ordinary public service into a site of suspense, where the success of the deception and the danger of being discovered meet. Each visit advances the plot through an object—the letter—whose passage between sender and recipient carries more risk than Burke can fully control.

Wildbury also marks the limits of Burke’s self-imposed separation. He has taken pains to conceal the origin of the correspondence, but the return trip requires him to revisit the same place and handle the answer himself. The post office does not reveal a broader character or history of the location; its significance lies in this narrow, consequential use. It is where Burke’s manufactured employment opportunity begins to work, and where his effort to remain unseen acquires a tangible paper trail.