Praying for Sleep

by Deaver, Jeffrey

  What troubled Heck more than turning down Kohler’s offer was altogether different, maybe something more dangerous. If it was really his goal to catch Hrubek before he hurt someone, then why didn’t he just call Don Haversham and tell him that Hrubek had changed direction? Heck was in Gunderson now and would be coming up on Cloverton soon. Both towns had police departments and, despite the storm, probably a few men to spare for a roadblock. Calling Haversham, he thought, was the prudent thing to do, the proper procedure. It promised the least risk to everyone.

  But of course if the local police or troopers caught Hrubek, Adler would surely balk at paying Heck the ten thousand.

  So, steeped in guilt and uneasiness, Heck pressed the stiff accelerator with his left foot and continued after his prey, speeding west in secret and under cover of the night—just like, he laughed grimly, Michael Hrubek himself.

  He was twenty-two miles from Ridgeton when the idea of an automobile slipped into his mind and rooted there.

  A car’d be so much nicer than a bicycle, so much more fashionable. Hrubek had mastered pedaling and now found the bike a frustrating way to travel. It flicked sideways when it hit rocks and there were long stretches of inclines that required him to ride so slowly that he could have walked faster. His teeth ached from the air he sucked into his lungs with the effort of low-gear pedaling. When he hit a bump the heavy animal traps bounced and jabbed him in the kidney. But more than anger at the bike, Hrubek simply felt the desire for a car. He believed he had the confidence to drive. He’d fooled the orderlies and whipped the cops and tricked all the fucker conspirators who were after him.

  And now he wanted a car.

  He recalled the time he’d pumped a tank of gas for Dr. Anne when she’d driven Hrubek and several other patients to a bookstore in a mall near Trevor Hill Psychiatric Hospital. Knowing—and compulsively reciting—the statistics on auto fatalities on American highways, he was terrified at the thought of the drive but reluctantly agreed to go along. The psychiatrist asked him to sit in the front seat. When they stopped at the gas station, she asked, “Michael, will you help me fill up the tank?”

  “Noooo.”

  “Please?”

  “Not on your life. It’s not safe and it’s not fashionable.”

  “Let’s do it together.”

  “Who knows what comes out of those pumps?”

  “Come on, Michael. Get out of the car.”

  “Nice try.”

  But he did it—opening the tank door, unscrewing the lid, turning on the pump, squeezing the nozzle handle. Dr. Anne thanked Hrubek for his help and, glowing with pride, he climbed back into the front seat, snapping his belt on without her telling him to do so. On their next outing she let him drive the gray Mercedes through the hospital parking lot, arousing the envy of the patients and the amusement—and awe—of several doctors and nurses.

  Yep, he now decided, the bike’s got to go.

  He coasted to the bottom of a long hill, where he stopped at a darkened gas station, its windows spattered with mud and grease. What had caught his interest was an old lime-green Datsun parked beside the air pump. Hrubek climbed off the bicycle. The car’s door was unlocked. He sat in the driver’s seat, smelling oil and mold. He practiced driving. He was very tense at first then relaxed and gradually remembered what he knew about cars. He moved the steering wheel. He put the gearshift lever in D. He practiced pushing the accelerator and the brake.

  He looked down at the wheel pedestal and saw a key in the ignition. He turned it. Silence. He climbed out. He supposed the car might need a battery or maybe gasoline. He opened the hood and found that what the car needed, however, was an engine. Some fucker had stolen it, he observed, and slammed the hood closed.

  Can’t trust anybody.

  Hrubek walked to the front of the store and looked in. A soda machine, a snack machine, a wire tray holding boxes of doughnuts and pastries. Twinkies. He liked Twinkies. He muttered a line he had once heard on TV: “A wholesome snack.” Repeating this phrase over and over he walked to the back of the station. “Be smart,” he whispered. “Use the back door.” He hoped there was an engine lying around inside. Could he install it himself in the green car? he wondered. You probably just plugged them into the engine compartment. (Hrubek knew all about plugs; because the electrical appliances in his parents’ house contained listening devices or cameras, Michael had settled into the daily routine of unplugging them every morning. The VCR in the Hrubek household was perpetually flashing 12:00.)

  He strode to the back door of the gas station and knocked out the glass in the window then undid the dead bolt. He walked inside and perused the place. He found no ready-to-mount auto engines, which was an immense disappointment though this setback was largely mitigated by the doughnuts on the rack by the door. He immediately ate an entire package and put another in his backpack.

  Taste That Beats the Others Cold promised the torn and faded poster taped to the ancient Pepsi machine in the front of the store. He easily ripped open its door and pulled out two bottles of soda. He had forgotten all about glass containers—in mental hospitals you get soda in plastic cups or not at all. He popped the cap off with his teeth and, sitting down, he began to drink.

  In five minutes the parking lot outside turned silver, then white. This attracted Hrubek’s attention and he rose, walking to the greasy glass to determine the source of the light. A glistening metallic-blue 4x4 truck pulled into the driveway. The door opened and the driver climbed out. She was a pretty woman with frothy blond hair. To a phone pole beside the air pump she taped a poster advertising a church auction to be held tomorrow night.

  “Will they auction their memorabilia?” Hrubek whispered. “Will they sell their memory-labia? Will the priest stick his finger in your pussy?” He glanced inside the truck. The woman’s passenger was a teenage girl, her daughter, it seemed. He continued, speaking now in a conversational tone, addressing the girl. “Oh, you’re very beautiful. Do you like al-ge-bra? Are you wearing one over your tits? Did you know that ninety-nine percent of schizophrenics have big cocks? The cock crowed when Jesus got betrayed—just like Eve. Say, is the priest going to stick his snake in you? You may know that as a serpent.”

  The driver returned to the truck. Oh, she looks beautiful, Hrubek thought, and couldn’t decide whom he liked best, mother or daughter. The 4x4 turned back onto the highway and a moment later pulled into a driveway or side road a hundred yards west on Route 236. It vanished. He stood for a long moment at the window, then blew hot breath onto the cold glass in front of him, leaving a large white circle of condensation, in the center of which he drew a very good likeness of an apple, complete with leaves and stem and pierced by what appeared to be a wormhole.

  Their Maginot Line, four feet high, was starkly illuminated by another sudden flash of distant lightning.

  The women, both exhausted, stepped back from their handiwork as they waited for thunder that never sounded.

  Portia said, “We oughta break a bottle of champagne over it.” She leaned heavily on the shovel.

  “Might not hold.”

  “Fucking well better.” The water in the culvert leading to the dam was already six inches high.

  “Let’s finish taping the greenhouse and get out of here.”

  They stowed the tools and Lis pulled a battered tarp over the depleted pile of sand. She still felt hurt by Portia’s rebuff earlier but, as they strolled back to the house like two oil workers at day’s end, Lis nonetheless had a sudden urge to put her arm around her sister’s shoulders. Yet she hesitated. She could picture the contact but not the effect and that was enough to stop the gesture. Lis recalled bussing cheeks with relatives on holidays, she recalled handshakes, she recalled palms on buttocks.

  That was the extent of physical contact in the L’Auberget family.

  Lis heard a clatter not far away. The wind had pushed over a set of aluminum beach chairs beside the garage. She told her sister she was going to put them away and started down th
e hill. Portia headed up to the house.

  Pausing in the driveway, Lis felt a sharp gust of wind—an outrider of the storm. Ripples swept across the surface of the lake and a corner of the tarp covering the sand snapped like a gunshot. Then calm returned, as if the breeze were a shiver passing through a body.

  In the silence that followed she heard the car.

  The tires crunched on the glistening white stone chips that she and Owen had spread in the driveway last summer during a heat spell. She’d feared then for their hearts under the scalding sun and insisted that they finish the job after dusk. Lis Atcheson knew that the visitor tonight was driving over fragments of premium marble from a quarry somewhere in New England. But for some reason the thought came to her that the sound was of wheels on crushed bone and once there the horrid image would not leave.

  The car moved urgently through the stand of pines through which the serpentine driveway ran. It pulled into the parking area, paused then headed toward her. Blinded by the beams, she couldn’t identify the vehicle, which stopped a dozen yards away.

  Lis stood with arms crossed, her feet separated, frozen like a schoolgirl playing statue. For a long moment neither she nor the driver moved. She faced the car, whose engine was still running, lights on. Finally, before uneasiness became fear, she cleared her throat and walked forward into piercing shafts of white light.

  16

  “They haven’t caught him yet?”

  Lis motioned with her hand toward the back door and Richard Kohler preceded her into the kitchen.

  “No, I’m afraid not.” He stepped to the counter and set a small backpack on the butcher block. He seemed quite possessive about it. His thin face was alarmingly pale.

  “Lis, there’s a car—”

  Portia walked into the doorway and paused, glancing at Kohler.

  Lis introduced them.

  “Portia?” Kohler repeated. “Don’t hear that name much nowadays.”

  She shrugged and neither sister said a word about the burdens of being the daughter of a man utterly devoted to the business of fortified wine.

  “I’m going to tape the west windows. In the parlor. That’s where it’ll hit worst.”

  “You’re right. We forgot to do those. Thanks.”

  When she left, Lis turned to the doctor. “I don’t have much time. As soon as we’re finished here, we’re going to a hotel for the evening.” She added pointedly, “Because of Hrubek.”

  It was the moment when he’d tell her there was nothing to worry about, the moment when he’d laugh and say that his patient was harmless as a puppy. He didn’t.

  What he said was, “That’s probably not a bad idea.”

  On the other hand he didn’t seem particularly alarmed or suggest that they get the hell out of the house immediately and flee for safety.

  “Do they know where he is?”

  “Not exactly, no.”

  “But he is going away from here? East?”

  “I saw one of the men tracking him not too long ago. He’s still east of the hospital but it looks like he may have gone east and then turned around.”

  “He’s coming west?”

  “I’d say he’s more likely wandering in circles. He isn’t as disabled as some people are making him out to be, but I don’t think he’d be able to get this far.”

  “What exactly can I do for you, Doctor? I’d like to be out of here in twenty minutes or so.”

  “I’m worried about Michael. I’d like to find him before the police do. Not many people know how to handle a patient like him. He could hurt himself or somebody else if they try to arrest him like any other prisoner.”

  “Well, what can I do?”

  “I understand he sent you a letter not long ago.”

  “In September.”

  “It had to do with the . . . incident last May?”

  “It doesn’t seem to have to do with anything. It’s mostly gibberish.”

  Kohler lifted his eyes but not his head and stared directly at her. “Mrs. Atcheson, I need to know about Indian Leap. Will you help me?”

  Six large water spots were evident on the counter beside the sink. Lis lifted a sponge and rubbed them away.

  “You see, I’m Michael’s attending psychiatrist. But I frankly don’t have a clue about what’s going on in his mind tonight. What happened last May was very . . . significant in his life.”

  “Significant?” she repeated, appalled at the word.

  “I don’t mean to downplay the tragedy.”

  “Well, what exactly can I tell you?”

  “I’ve read some newspaper stories. I have a few files. But Marsden hospital’s practically broke. We have very sketchy records. I don’t even have a transcript of his trial.”

  This struck her as the epitome of bureaucratic nonsense, and she said so.

  “Transcripts cost two dollars a page,” he explained. “Michael’s would have cost six thousand dollars. The state can’t afford it.”

  “It seems to be just common sense to spend money like that.”

  He gestured in concession.

  “I really don’t think there’s time.” She nodded outside. “My sister and I have hotel reservations. And the storm . . .”

  “It won’t take long.” He curled two fingers of his right hand around two fingers of his left, and Lis pictured the gangly teenage Richard Kohler asking a pretty girl to dance.

  “The fact is, I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Yes, of course . . .” Kohler hesitated and seemed to be examining her. “But you have to understand my perspective. It’s important that I find him quickly. If he wanders up to someone’s house . . . If he gets scared and panics. People could get hurt. Inadvertently.”

  Lis stood silent, looking down at the ruddy tile floor.

  “That’s what I’m concerned about, you see. Getting him back before there’s an . . . accident. And, I have to tell you, there is a chance he’s on his way here. Very slight, but it is a possibility. If you help me I might be able to prevent that.”

  After a long moment Lis said, “Cream and sugar?”

  Kohler blinked.

  “You’ve glanced at the coffeemaker three times in the last minute.”

  He laughed. “I’ve been trying my best to stay awake.”

  “I’ll give you twenty minutes, Doctor. Not a minute more.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said sincerely.

  She stepped to the cupboard.

  “Hope it’s no trouble.” His eyes were hungrily fixed to the can of Maxwell House.

  “Can I ask a question?”

  “Please.”

  “Could you fall asleep now?” Lis asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “If you were home now would you be able to fall asleep?”

  “At home? Yes. In my car, yes. On your front lawn. On your kitchen floor. Anytime, anyplace.”

  She wagged her head at this miracle and watched the pot fill with black liquid. Impulsively she decided to have a cup too. “I won’t be asleep before eleven tomorrow night, whatever happens tonight.”

  “Insomnia?” he asked.

  A condition on which she was an expert, she explained. Warm milk, hot baths, cold showers, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, valerian roots, biofeedback, medication. “You name it, I’ve tried it.”

  “In my practice I work with patients’ dreams a lot. But I’ve never done much with sleep disorders.”

  She doctored her coffee with milk. Kohler took his black. “Let’s go in here,” she said.

  With their thin mugs of steaming coffee in hand they walked into the greenhouse, at the far end of which was an alcove. As they sat in the deep wrought-iron chairs, the doctor looked about the room and offered a compliment, which because it had to do only with square footage and neatness meant he knew nothing of, and cared little for, flowers. He sat with his legs together, body forward, making his thin form that much thinner. He took loud sips, and she knew he was a man accustomed to dining quickly a
nd alone. Then he set the cup down and took a pad and gold pen from his jacket pocket.

  Lis asked, “Then you have no idea where he’s going tonight?”

  “No. He may not either, not consciously. That’s the thing about Michael—you can’t take him literally. To understand him you have to look behind what he says. That note he sent you, for instance; were certain letters capitalized?”

  “Yes. That was one of the eeriest things about it.”

  “Michael does that. He sees relationships between things that to us don’t exist. Could I see it?”

  She found it in the kitchen and returned to the greenhouse. Kohler was standing, holding a small ceramic picture frame.

  “Your father?”

  “I’m told there’s a resemblance.”

  “Some, yes. Eyes and chin. He was, I’d guess . . . a professor?”

  “More of a closet scholar.” The picture had been taken two days after he’d returned from Jerez, and Andrew L’Auberget was shown here climbing into the front seat of the Cadillac for the drive back to the airport. Young Lis had clicked the shutter as she stood shaded by her mother’s protruding belly, inside of which her sister floated oblivious to the tearful farewell. “He was a businessman but he really wanted to teach. He talked about it many times. He would’ve made a brilliant scholar.”

  “Are you a professor?”

  “Teacher. Sophomore English. And you?” she asked. “I understand medicine runs in the genes.”

  “Oh, it does. My father was a doctor.” Kohler laughed. “Of course he wanted me to be an art historian. That was his dream. Then he grudgingly consented to medical school. On condition that I study surgery.”