Praying for Sleep

by Deaver, Jeffrey

  Five minutes later Michael opened the door and stepped out into the living room, wearing his mother’s nightgown. “Hello,” he said, trooping up to the guests. “I tried to buy the fucking store. I’m sorry.” Mr. Abernathy or Monroe stopped speaking in midsentence. His wife raised a protective hand to her mouth to stop herself from blurting something regrettable.

  But his own mother . . . Why, she was smiling! Michael was astonished. Though her masked eyes were cold she was smiling at him. “Well, here’s our pretty little soldier boy,” she whispered. “Doesn’t Michael look fashionable?”

  “I found it behind the door.”

  “Did you now?” she asked, shaking her head.

  Michael smiled. Fashionable. He felt pleased with himself and repeated his apology, laughing harshly. “I tried to buy the fucking store!”

  The guests, holding the cups that contained tea not coffee and lemon not milk, avoided each other’s eyes. Michael’s mother rose. “I’ve changed my mind, Michael. You look so nice why don’t you go out and play?”

  “Outside?” His smile faded.

  “Come along. I want you outside.”

  “I’d feel funny going outside wearing—”

  “No, Michael. Outside.”

  “But they might see me.” He began to cry. “Somebody might see me.”

  “Now!” she screeched. “Get the fuck outside.”

  Then she escorted him by the hand, thrusting him out the front door. Two of the neighborhood girls stared at him as he stood on the doorstep in the pale-blue nightgown. They smiled at first but when he began to stare back, muttering to himself, they grew uncomfortable and went inside. Michael turned back to his own front door. He heard the lock click. He looked obliquely through the dirty glass window and saw his mother’s face, turning away. Michael walked to the willow tree in the backyard and for the rest of the afternoon huddled by himself in a nest of grass similar to the one in which he sat tonight. Looking for snipers and staring at the car.

  As he listened to the rustle of this grass, feeling it caress his skin as it had so long ago, Michael Hrubek remembered much of that day. He didn’t, however, remember it with perfect clarity for the very reason that made it so significant in his life—it was his first break with reality, his first psychotic episode. The images of those few hours were altered by his mind and by the intervening years, and were buried beneath other memories, many of which were just as haunting and sorrowful. Tonight, moved by the smell and feel of the grass, he might have delved deeper into that event—as Dr. Richard had been encouraging him to do—but he’d grown so agitated by now that he could wait no longer. Snipers or no, he had to act. He rose and made his way to the road.

  The sports car had apparently broken down earlier in the evening. The hood was up and the windows and doors were locked. A red triangular marker sat in the road near the rear fender. Hrubek wondered if its purpose was to help snipers sight on their target. He sailed it into the brush like a Frisbee.

  “MG,” he whispered, reading the emblem on the hood. He concluded this meant “My God.” Paying no attention to the inside of the car he walked directly to the trunk. A gift! Look at this. A gift from My God! The rack was locked but he simply grabbed the mountain bicycle in both hands and pulled it free. Bits of metal and plastic from the mountings cascaded around him. He set the bicycle on the ground and caressed the tubes and leather and gears and cables. He felt a chill from the metal and enjoyed this sensation very much. He lowered his head to the handlebar and rubbed his cheek on the chrome.

  He took a marker from his pocket and wrote on his forearm: Oh, strANGE aRe the works of GOD. Thank YOU GOD for thIs beautIFul gIFt. Next to these words he drew a picture of a serpent and one of an apple and wrote the name EVE. He licked the name and stepped back, studying his new means of transportation with an uneasy but grateful gaze.

  Richard Kohler found himself in an alien world.

  He was wearing a wool-blend suit, a silk tie, red-and-green Argyles and a single penny loafer—what other proof did he need, he reflected, that he was no outdoors-man?

  Bending forward as far as he dared he pulled his other shoe out of a pool of soupy, methane-laced mud and wiped it on the grass beside him. He stepped back into the wet loafer and continued his journey westward.

  Curiously this forest invoked in him a claustrophobia that he’d never felt anywhere else—even in his dark tiny office, where he would often spend fifteen straight hours. His pulse was high, his limbs itched from this fear of confinement and he was having trouble breathing. He also heard noises where no noises should be and his sense of direction was terrible. He was on the verge of admitting to himself that, yes, he was lost. His points of reference—trees, signposts, bushes—were vague and shifty. More often than not, as he walked toward them, they simply vanished; sometimes they turned into grotesque creatures or faces in the process.

  Over his shoulder was his ruddy backpack, containing the syringe and drugs, and on his arm was a black London Fog raincoat. He was too hot to wear it and he wondered why on earth he’d brought the coat with him. The radio updates about the impending storm suggested that a helmet and armor would be better protection than gabardine.

  Kohler had parked his BMW up the road, a half mile from here, and had made his way through a field into this forest, making slow progress. His leather soles slipped off the damp rocks and he’d fallen twice onto the hard ground. The second time he’d landed on his wrist, nearly spraining it. The vicious thorns of a wild rosebush hooked his pant leg and it took five painful minutes to free himself.

  Kohler recognized, though, that he’d been lucky. The nurse who’d alerted him to the escape reported that the young man had run from the hearse in Stinson and had apparently gotten as far as Watertown.

  As Kohler had sped in that direction down Route 236, he was certain that he’d sighted Michael in a clearing. The doctor raced to the turnoff, climbed from the car and searched the area. He’d called his patient’s name, pleaded with him to show himself, but received no response. Then the doctor had driven off once more. But he hadn’t gone far. He pulled off onto a side road and waited. Ten minutes later he believed that he’d seen the same figure hurrying on once more.

  Kohler had found no sign of Michael since. Hoping he might stumble across him by chance, the psychiatrist had taken to the wilderness again, heading in the direction in which Michael seemed to be headed—west.

  Where are you, Michael?

  And why are you out here tonight?

  Oh, I’ve tried so hard to look into your mind. But it’s as dark as it ever was. It’s as dark as the sky.

  He tripped again, on a strand of wire this time, and tore his slacks on a sharp rock, gouging his thigh. He wondered if there was a danger of tetanus. This thought discouraged him—not the risk of disease but the reminder of how much basic medicine he’d forgotten. He wondered if his knowledge of the human brain compensated for the long-forgotten facts of physiology and organic chemistry he once had learned and recited so easily. Then these thoughts faded, for he found the sports car.

  There was nothing remarkable about the vehicle itself. He didn’t for a minute think that Michael had lifted the hood and tried to hot-wire it. His patient would be far too frightened at the thought of driving a car to steal one. No, Kohler was intrigued by something else—a small object resting on the ground behind the rear bumper.

  The tiny white skull ironically was the exact shade of the car itself. He stepped closer and picked it up, looking carefully at the delicate bones. A tiny fracture ran through the cheek. Trigeminal, he thought spontaneously, recalling the name of the fifth pair of cranial nerves.

  Then the skull teetered on the tips of his fingers for an instant and tumbled with a soft crack onto the trunk of the car, rolling into the dust of the shoulder. Kohler remained completely still as the muzzle of the pistol slid along his skin from his temple to his ear, while a fiercely strong hand reached out and fastened itself to his shoulder.

&nb
sp; 13

  Trenton Heck pointed the Walther up at the turbulent clouds and eased the ribbed hammer down. He put the safety on and slipped the gun back into his holster.

  He handed the wallet back to the skinny man, whose hospital identification card and driver’s license seemed on the up-and-up. The poor fellow wasn’t quite as pale as when Heck had tapped the muzzle to his head a few minutes before.

  But he wasn’t any less angry.

  Richard Kohler dropped to his knees and unzipped the backpack Heck had tossed onto the grass before frisking him.

  “Sorry, sir,” Heck said. “Couldn’t tell whether you were him or not. Too dark to get a good look, with you crouched down and all.”

  “You come up on Michael Hrubek that way and he’ll panic,” Kohler snapped. “I guarantee it.” He rummaged inside the pack. Whatever was so precious inside—just a couple of bottles, it looked like—didn’t seem to be damaged. Heck wondered if he’d caught himself a tippler.

  “And I’ll tell you something else.” The doctor turned, examining Heck. “Even if you’d shot him, he’d’ve turned around and broken your neck before he died.” Kohler snapped his fingers.

  Heck gave a brief laugh. “With a head wound? I don’t know about that.”

  “There’s apparently a lot you don’t know about him.” The doctor rezipped the pack.

  Heck supposed he couldn’t blame the man for being pissed off but he didn’t feel too bad about the ambush. Kohler, it turned out, had been padding down the same path Hrubek must’ve taken earlier in the evening. In the dark, how was Heck to know the difference? True, the doctor was undoubtedly a lot punier. But then so are all suspects after they turn out not to be suspects.

  “What’s your interest here exactly, sir?” Heck asked.

  Kohler eyed his civvy clothes. “You a cop, or what?”

  “Sort of a special deputy.” Though this was untrue and he had no more police powers than an average citizen. Still he sensed he needed some authority with this wiry fellow, who looked like he was in the mood to make trouble. Heck repeated his question.

  “I’m Michael’s doctor.”

  “Quite a house call you’re making tonight.” Heck looked over the doctor’s suit and penny loafers. “You did some fine tracking to get yourself all the way here, considering you haven’t got dogs.”

  “I spotted him up the road, headed in this direction. But he got away.”

  “So he’s nearby?”

  “I saw him a half hour ago. He can’t’ve gotten that far.”

  Heck nodded at Emil, whose head was up. “Well, for some reason the scent’s vanished. That’s got me worried and Emil antsy. We’re going to quarter around here, see if we can pick it up.”

  The tone was meant to discourage company, as was the pace that Heck set. But Kohler kept up with man and dog as they zigzagged across the road and along the fields surrounding it, their feet crunching loudly on leaves and gravel. Heck felt the stiffening of his leg muscles, a warning to go slow. The temperature was still unseasonable but it had dropped in the last half hour and the air was wet with the approaching storm; when he was tired and hadn’t slept his leg was prone to seize into agonizing cramps.

  “Now that I think about it,” Heck said, “you were probably better off tracking him without dogs. He fooled our search party damn good. Led us all in the opposite direction he ended up taking.”

  Kohler once again—for the fourth time, by Heck’s count—glanced at the Walther automatic. The doctor asked, “Led you off? What do you mean?”

  Heck explained about the false clue—dropping the clipping that contained the map of Boston.

  The doctor was frowning. “I saw Michael in the hospital library yesterday. Tearing clippings out of old newspapers. He’d been reading all morning. He was very absorbed in something.”

  “That a fact?” Heck muttered, discouraged once again at Hrubek’s brainy talents. He continued, “Then he pulled a trick I’ve only heard about. He pissed on a truck.”

  “He what?”

  “Yep. Took a leak on a tire. Left his scent on it. The truck took off for Maine and the dogs followed it ’stead of going after his footsteps. Not many people’d know about that, let alone psychos.”

  “That’s not exactly,” Kohler said coolly, “a word we use.”

  “My apologies to him,” Heck responded with a sour laugh. “Funny thing: I was just falling asleep—you know how this happens sometimes?—and I heard a truck horn. It just come to me—what he’d done. Emil’s good but following airborne scent of a man hanging on to a tractor-trailer? Naw, that didn’t seem right. For that many miles? I drove back to the truck stop and sure enough picked up his backtrack. That’s a trick of the pros. Just like he hid that clipping in the grass. See, I wouldn’t’ve believed it, it’d been lying out in the open. He’s clever. He’s fooled dogs before, I’ll bet.”

  “No. Impossible. He’s never escaped from anything in his life. Not a calculated escape.”

  Heck looked at Kohler to see if he could spot the lie. But the doctor seemed sincere, and Heck added, “That’s not what I heard.”

  “From who?”

  “From my old boss at the state police. Don Haversham. He’s the one called me about the search. He said something ’bout seven hospitals your boy’d hightailed it outta.”

  Kohler was laughing. “Sure. But ask Michael which ones. He’ll tell you they were prison hospitals. And when he escaped he was on horseback, dodging musket balls. See what I mean?”

  Heck wasn’t quite sure that he did. “Musket balls. Heh. We’ve gotta head through this brush here.”

  They plunged down a steep dirt path into a valley below. Kohler was soon winded by the arduous trek. When they reached flat ground, he caught his breath and said, “Of course you don’t know for certain that he isn’t headed for Boston.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, if he was smart enough,” the doctor pointed out, “to fool you into thinking he was going east, maybe now he’s fooling you into thinking he’s going west. Double bluff.”

  Well. This was something Heck hadn’t thought about. Sure, why couldn’t Hrubek just do the same thing all over again and turn east? Maybe he did have Boston in mind. But he thought for a minute and then told Kohler the truth: “That might be but I can’t search the whole of the Northeast. All I can do is follow my dog’s nose.”

  Though he was painfully aware that this particular nose presently had no notion of where his prey was.

  “Just something to think about,” the doctor said.

  They followed the path through a valley beside an old quarry. Heck remembered in his youth, a solitary boy, he’d taken an interest in geology. He’d spent many hours pounding with a hammer in a quarry similar to this one, snitching honest quartz, mica and granite rocks for his collection. Tonight, he found himself staring at the tall cliffs, scarred and chopped—the way bone was gouged by a doctor’s metal tools. He thought of the X-rays of his shattered leg, showing where the bullet cracked his femur. Why, he’d wondered at the time, as he wondered now, had the goddamn doctor shown him that artwork?

  The hound turned abruptly several times, paused then turned again.

  “Has he got the track?” Kohler asked, whispering.

  “Nope,” Heck replied in a conversational voice. “We’ll know when he does.”

  They walked behind Emil as he snaked along the base of the tall yellow-white cliffs around pools of brackish water.

  They emerged from the rocky valley and climbed slowly. They found themselves once again back at the disabled MG. Heck was grimacing. “Hell, back to square one.”

  “Why’re you out here by yourself?” Kohler asked, breathing heavily.

  “Just am.”

  “There’s a reward for him.”

  Heck looped the track line for a moment. Finally he said, “How’d you know that?”

  “I didn’t. But it explains why you’re out here by yourself.”

  “And how ’bo
ut you, Doc? If you spotted him, how come you didn’t call out the Marines?”

  “He panics easily. I can get him back without anybody getting hurt. He knows me. He trusts me.”

  Emil suddenly stiffened and turned to the forest, tensing. In an instant Heck drew and cocked his pistol. The underbrush shook.

  “No!” Kohler shouted, glancing at the gun. He started forward into the bush.

  But Heck gripped him by the arm and whispered, “I’d be quiet there, sir. Let’s don’t give our position away.”

  There was silence for a moment. Then the muscular doe bounded in a gray-brown arc over a low hedge and vanished.

  Heck put the gun away. “You oughta be a little more careful. You’re kinda trusting, you know what I mean?” He looked south along the road, where the gray asphalt disappeared into the hills. Emil’d shown no interest in that direction but Heck thought they ought to try it nonetheless. He started to hold the plastic bag containing Hrubek’s shorts down to the dog once more. But Kohler stopped his arm.

  “How much?” the doctor asked.

  “How’s that, sir?” Heck stood.

  “How much is the reward?”

  Emil was aware that a scent article was dangling over his head and he shivered. Heck closed the bag up again to keep the dog from growing too skittish. He said to the doctor, “That’s sort of between me and the people paying it, sir.”

  “Is that Adler?”

  Heck nodded slowly.

  “Well,” Kohler continued, “he’s a colleague. We work together.”

  “If he’s a buddy then how come you don’t know ’bout it? The reward?”

  Kohler asked, “How much, Mr. Heck?”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “I’ll give you twelve.”

  For a moment Heck watched Emil rock back and forth, eager to run. He said to Kohler, “You’re joshing.”