Praying for Sleep

by Deaver, Jeffrey

  His face was stern but Lis believed she heard pleasure in his voice. “Yes, Father.”

  “And don’t run through tall grass. Has our Jolande been careful with you? Broken legs can turn gangrenous very easily. Then off they come. Zip! How about the Reverend Dalcott? He going to snatch you up in a bag and turn you into little Episcopalians?”

  “Andrew.”

  “No, Daddy. He has yellow teeth and his shirt smells funny.”

  “Portia!”

  If he was in a good mood, Father might recite some Robert Burns or John Donne. “ ‘O my love’s like a red, red rose. . . .’ ”

  Lis harbored a secret belief that the bouquets she’d delivered to her mother had inspired her to build the greenhouse and to start tending roses all year round.

  Flowers were what Lis thought about too when her father’s mood grew dark and the inevitable willow whip descended on her exposed buttocks. The image of an orange hybrid seemed somehow to anesthetize much of the pain.

  Through the mottled windows she now gazed toward the very tree—a black willow—that had sacrificed hundreds of young shoots so that two daughters might grow into proper women. She could see only a vague form, like an image in a dream. It seemed to be just a lighter version of the darkness that filled the yard tonight.

  Lis squinted and gazed past the tree. It was then that she saw a curious shape in the water.

  What is that? she wondered.

  Walking outside, she looked again—at a portion of the shoreline a hundred yards from the house. It was a configuration of shapes she’d never noticed. Then she understood—the water had risen so far that it was ganging near the top of the old dam. What she was looking at was a white rowboat that had slipped its moorings and floated to the concrete rim. Half the rocky beach beside the dam was obscured. In thirty years, the water had never been this high. . . . The dam! The thought struck Lis like a slap. She’d forgotten completely about the dam. It was of course the lowest spot on the property. If the lake overflowed, the water would fill the low culvert behind it and flood the yard.

  Suddenly from her youth she recalled a sluice gate in the dam, operated by a large wheel. Opening this gate diverted the water to a creek that flowed into the Marsden River a mile or so downstream. She recalled her father’s opening the gate once many years ago after a sudden spring thaw. Was it still there? And, if so, did it still work?

  Lis walked closer to the house and called, “Portia!”

  A second-floor window opened.

  “I’m going to the dam.”

  The young woman nodded and looked up at the sky. “I just heard a bulletin. They’re calling it the storm of the decade.”

  Lis nearly joked that she’d picked a fine night for a visit but thought better of it. Portia eased the window shut and continued her methodical taping. Lis walked cautiously into the culvert that led to the dam and, plunging into darkness, picked her way along the rocky creek bed.

  The two Labs suddenly jerked into a frenzy. The trackers simultaneously drew their guns, Heck thumb-cocking his. The men exhaled long as the animal—a raccoon fat on village garbage—jogged away from them, the concentric rings of its tail vanishing into underbrush. The indignant animal reminded Heck of Jill’s father, who was a small-town mayor.

  Heck, lowering the prominent hammer of his old German pistol, downed Emil and waited while Charlie Fennel futilely scolded the Labs and then refreshed their memory with Hrubek’s shorts. As he waited Heck gazed around him at the seemingly endless fields. They’d come five miles from the shack where Hrubek had stolen the traps, and the dogs were still scenting on the asphalt. Heck had never pursued an escapee who stuck so persistently to the road. What seemed like blood-sure stupidity now looked pretty smart: by doing just the opposite of what everybody expected, Hrubek was making damn good time. Heck had a vague thought, which lasted merely a second or two, that somehow, they were making a very bad mistake about this fellow. This impression was punctuated by a shiver that dropped from his neck to his tailbone.

  Charlie Fennel’s dogs were soon back on the trail and the men hurried along the deserted strip of highway under a sky black as a hole. To stem his own uneasiness Heck leaned over and said, “Know what’s coming up this week?”

  Fennel grunted.

  “St. Hubert’s Day. And we’re going to be celebrating it.”

  Fennel hawked and spit in a long arc then said, “Who’s we?”

  “Emil and me. St. Hubert’s Day. He’s the patron saint of hunters. St. Hubert hounds—that’s what he bred—”

  “Who?”

  “St. Hubert. This is what I’m telling you. He was a monk or something. He bred the dogs that eventually became bloodhounds.” Heck nodded at Emil. “That boy goes farther back than I do. Part of St. Hubert’s Day is a blessing of the hounds. Aren’t you Irish, Charlie? How come you don’t know this stuff?”

  “Family’s from Londonderry.”

  “You’ve got those Labs there. We ought to get a priest to bless our dogs. What do you think about that, Charlie? How ’bout over at St. Mary’s. Think that priest’d do that for us?” Fennel didn’t answer and Heck continued, “You know bloodhounds go back to Mesopotamia?”

  “Where the hell’s that?”

  “Iraq.”

  “Now that,” Fennel said, “was a stupid little war.”

  “I think we should’ve kept going, tromp, tromp, tromp, all the way to Baghdad.”

  “I’ll second that.” Then Fennel laughed.

  Heck, grinning, asked, “What’s so funny?”

  “You’re a crazy man after a crazy man, Trenton.”

  “Say what you will, I think I’m going to find me a priest and get Emil blessed after this is over.”

  “If he catches the guy.”

  “No, I think I’ll just do it anyway.”

  The road down which they now pursued Hrubek was a dark country highway, which threaded through a string of small towns and unincorporated portions of the county. If Hrubek had Boston in mind he was taking the long route. But, Heck concluded, it was also the smarter way to travel. Along these roads there’d be hardly any local police, and the houses and traffic would be sparse.

  They followed the dogs, still short-lined because of the traps, only three miles east before Hrubek broke away and turned north, onto a small dirt lane. A hundred feet away they found a filthy roadside diner, which looked bleaker yet because of the sloppily taped X’s on the windows.

  Thinking that Hrubek might be inside, Fennel sent the Boy around back and he and Heck snuck up to the windows of the streamlined, aluminum-sided restaurant. Cautiously they lifted their heads and found themselves gazing straight into the eyes of the cook, waitress and two diners, who, forewarned by the baying Labradors, were staring out the windows.

  Heck and Fennel, feeling somewhat foolish, stepped through the door, bolstering their guns.

  “A posse,” the waitress exclaimed, drops of viscous gravy falling from the tilting plate she held.

  But, no, nobody here had seen Hrubek, even though to judge by Emil’s scenting he’d passed within feet of the window. Without an explanation, or a farewell, the men and the dogs vanished as quickly as they’d come. Emil picked up the scent once more and led them northeast along the dirt road.

  Not two hundred yards from the diner they found the spot where Hrubek had taken to the fields. “Hold up,” Heck whispered. They stood beside a small grass-filled path—an access road for mowing tractors. The drive darkened as it passed through a dense stand of trees.

  Fennel and Heck tied back the track lines until they were shorter than pet-store leads. They found, however, that they didn’t need the animals any longer; not more than fifty yards into the woods they heard Hrubek.

  Fennel gripped Heck’s arm and they stopped short. The Boy dropped to a crouch. They heard a mad moaning rising from the trees.

  Heck was so excited to have found Hrubek that he forgot he was a civilian. He began communicating to Fennel and the Boy with th
e hand signals law enforcers use when they silently close in on their quarry. Up went his finger to his lips and he pointed toward the source of the sound then motioned Fennel and the Boy forward. Heck bent low to Emil and whispered, “Sit,” then, “Down.” The dog eased to the ground, obedient but irritated that the game was over for him. Heck loose-tied him to a branch.

  “I’ll take over from here, you want,” Fennel whispered in a casual way but with enough timber to remind Heck who was in charge. Heck was of course willing to yield the role of commander, which was never his in the first place, but no way was he going to miss the hogtying party; he didn’t want any argument about the reward money. He nodded toward Fennel and unholstered his Walther.

  The Boy, who with his fiery eyes and a big automatic in his fingers didn’t look so boyish anymore, circled around to the side, north of the trees, as Fennel had indicated. Heck and Fennel went up the middle of the road. They moved very slowly; they couldn’t use their flashlights and the grove was darkly shadowed by the hemlocks, whose branches were dense and lay upon one another like ragged petticoats.

  The moaning grew louder. To a man, it chilled their hearts.

  When Heck saw the truck—a long semi, parked cockeyed in the shadows—he felt a burst of queasiness, thinking that the moaning was not Hrubek at all but the driver, whom the madman had attacked and gutted. Perhaps he was listening to a sucking chest wound. He and Fennel glanced at each other, exchanging this identical thought in silence, and continued their cautious approach.

  Then Heck saw him, an indistinct shape not far away.

  Michael Hrubek, so thick around the middle he seemed deformed.

  Moaning like a moon-crazed dog.

  He lay on the ground, trying to get up. Perhaps he’d fallen and hurt himself, or had been hit by the massive truck.

  Maybe he’d heard the Labs and was feigning injury, waiting for his pursuers to get close.

  Opposite Heck and Fennel, on the other side of the clearing, the Boy appeared in a crouch. Fennel held up three fingers. The young trooper responded by mimicking it. Then Fennel clicked the safety off his gun and lifted his hand above his head. One finger. Two fingers . . . Three . . . The men jumped into the clearing, three dark pistols pointed forward, three long flashlights pumping their dazzling halogen light onto the massive body of their quarry.

  10

  “Freeze!”

  “All right, don’t you move!”

  For the love of Mary, Trenton Heck thought, his legs weakening in shock, what’s happening here?

  The madman, lying on the ground in front of the three lawmen, was shrieking like a bluejay. He suddenly split clean in two, half of him leaping into the air, white as death.

  What is going on here? Heck trained the flashlight on the part of the madman that remained on the ground—the part that was now grasping about for something to pull over her ample breasts.

  “Shit, son of a bitch!” the man’s upper half shouted in an edgy tenor. “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

  The Boy started laughing first then Fennel joined in and, if Heck hadn’t been so upset at losing his reward money, he’d have laughed too. The sight of the skinny man, searching desperately for his shorts, the long condom whipping back and forth as it dangled from his quickly shrunk member . . . Well, it was the funniest thing Heck had seen for a month of Sundays.

  “Don’t hurt me,” the woman wailed.

  “Son of a bitch,” the skinny man growled once more. Heck’s humor returned and he whistled the “Dueling Banjos” tune from Deliverance.

  In a Kentucky-mountain voice Charlie Fennel said, “Naw, I want him. He’s a purty one.”

  “Sooo-eee,” Heck called. “Here, piggy, piggy, piggy!”

  The woman wailed again.

  “Oh, shit . . .” The young man fumbled with his pants.

  “Calm down now.” Fennel shone the light on his badge. “We’re state troopers.”

  “That wasn’t funny, I don’t care who y’all are. She wanted to do it. She picked me up at that diner up the road. It was her idea.”

  The woman had calmed in proportion to the amount of clothing she’d pulled on. “My idea? I’ll thank you not to make me sound cheap.”

  “I didn’t want—”

  “That’s your all’s business,” Fennel said, “but it’s our business you’ve had a hitchhiker on the back of your rig for the past ten miles. An escapee.”

  Heck too understood that this is what had happened and he was angry at himself for not thinking of it sooner. Hrubek had clung to the back bumper guard or loading platform of the truck. That was why the scent had been so weak, and why it had never wavered from the road.

  “Jesus, that fellow at the truck stop in Watertown? The big guy? Oh, my everloving Lord!”

  “You’re that truck driver?” Heck asked. “He asked you about going to Boston?”

  “Shitabrick, maybe he’s still on the rig!”

  But the Boy had already circled around and checked out the truck’s roof and undercarriage. “He’s not here, nope. And the back’s padlocked. He must’ve took off into the fields when the truck stopped.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” the driver whispered reverently, “he’s a killer, ain’t he? Oh, Jesus, Jesus . . .”

  The woman had started crying again. “This is the last time, I swear. Never again.”

  Fennel asked how long the driver had been there.

  “Fifteen minutes, I’d guess.”

  “You love bunnies hear anything?”

  “Nothing, not a single thing,” the driver said, eager to please.

  “I didn’t hear anything either,” the woman replied, sniffling, “and I don’t like your, you know, attitude.”

  “Uhn,” Fennel responded, then said to the young man, who was buttoning up his shirt, “Now I suggest you get back in that rig and take this lady home; and get on your way.”

  “Take her home? Forget about it.”

  “You prick,” she snapped. “You damn well better.”

  “I think you ought to do that, son,” Heck said.

  “Okay. If she don’t live too far from here. I’ve got a load of auto parts I got to get to Bangor by—”

  “You prick.”

  Fennel had checked the bushes around the semi. “No sign of him,” he called.

  “Well, with the sound these two were making,” Heck said, chuckling, “I’d run too. Well, let’s get on with it. He can’t be more than a half mile from here. We should—”

  The Boy said, “Uh, Trenton, I think there’s a problem.”

  Heck looked up to see the young trooper pointing at a small sign that in their silent approach they’d passed but not noticed. Its back was to Heck and Fennel. They strode to it, turned and read.

  Welcome to Massachusetts

  Heck looked at the scripty green letters and wondered why anybody’d waste a nicely painted sign here on this dim country road, home of madmen, horny truck drivers and loose waitresses. He sighed and looked at Fennel.

  “Sorry, Trenton.”

  “Come on, Charlie.”

  “We got no jurisdiction here.”

  “Why, he isn’t but a half mile away! He could be two hundred yards from us right now. Hell, he could be watching us from one of those trees over there.”

  “The law’s the law, Trenton. We need to get the Mass troopers in.”

  “I say let’s just go get him.”

  “We can’t cross the state line.”

  “Hot pursuit,” Heck said.

  “Won’t work. He ain’t a felon. Adler said that Hrubek didn’t kill that fellow was in the body bag. It was a suicide.”

  “Come on, Charlie.”

  “If he ain’t so crazy—and it looks like maybe he ain’t—and we nab him in Massachusetts, he might sue us for assault or kidnapping. And he could damn well win.”

  “Not if we get our stories straight.”

  “Lie, you’re saying.”

  Heck didn’t speak for a moment. “All w
e do is we find him and bring him back. That’d be that.”

  “Trenton, did you ever falsify a case report?”

  “No.”

  “You ever perjure yourself on the stand?”

  “You know I never did.”

  “Well, you’re not wearing a badge now and I know you feel different about those of us who are. But the fact is, we just can’t stroll over state lines.”

  Rising through Heck’s prominent anger now was a sudden understanding—that the interest Charlie Fennel and the young trooper had in the search was this: to do their job. Oh, they’d give the pursuit of Michael Hrubek 110 percent and they’d bust their balls and put in all sorts of god-awful overtime and even risk their life. But for that one purpose only: to do their job.

  Leaving the jurisdiction wasn’t their job.

  “I’m sorry, Trenton.”

  “Didn’t any of us notify the Mass troopers before,” Heck said. “It’ll take ’em a half hour to get the first cars here. Maybe more. If he hops another ride he’ll be long, long gone by then.”

  “Then that’s what’ll happen,” Fennel said. “That’s the way it is. . . . I know what the money means to you.”

  Heck stood with his hands on his narrow hips, looking at the sign for a few moments. Then he nodded slowly. “Let’s don’t have words over it. You gotta do what you think’s right, Charlie.”

  “I’m pretty sorry about this, Trenton.”

  “Okay. No hard feelings.” He walked back to Emil. “If you two’ll excuse us.”

  “No, Trenton,” Fennel said in a firm monotone.

  Heck ignored Fennel and continued walking to where Emil was loose-tied to a forsythia whip.

  “Trenton . . .”

  “What?” Heck’s voice bristled as he turned.

  “I can’t let you go by yourself either.”

  “Don’t ride me, Charlie. Just don’t do it.”

  “By yourself? You’re a civilian. You couldn’t argue hot pursuit even if he was a felon. You cross that line, it’s kidnapping for sure. You could get yourself into a real fix.”