Owen Atcheson, lying half in and half out of the chill creek, slowly came to. He sat up, praying that he wouldn’t faint again.
After the Cherokee had stopped tumbling, Owen hadn’t waited for Hrubek to come leaping down the hill after him. He’d examined his left shoulder and felt the indentation where the bone ought to be. He’d made certain his pistol and ammunition were in his pocket and flung the bolt of the deer rifle far into the dark creek, exhaling at the astonishing pain caused by this slight effort.
Then he’d straggled to his feet and run clumsily through the stream, putting distance between himself and the truck.
Two hundred yards into the forest that surrounded downtown Ridgeton he’d stopped and rolled onto his back, lying against a flat rock softened by an old growth of moss. He’d slipped a length of oak branch into his mouth and chewed down hard, gripping his left biceps with his right hand. With excruciating concentration he had forced himself to relax and slowly, slowly manipulated the bone, eyes closed, breathing staccato bursts and sending his teeth deep into the wood. Suddenly, with a pop, the shoulder had reseated itself in the cuff. He cried out softly as the amazing pain made him vomit and then he fainted and slid into the creek.
Now, his eyes open, he crawled to the shore and lay on his side.
He allowed himself no more than five minutes of recuperation before standing up. He removed his belt and tightly bound his left arm to his side. The temporary sling increased the pain but would safeguard against a catastrophic jolt of agony that might make him faint again. He lifted his head and breathed deeply. The rain was falling steadily now and the wind whipped into his face. He threw his head back and inhaled the wet air. After a few moments he began to struggle through the woods, slowly making his way north, around downtown Ridgeton. He didn’t want Hrubek to find him of course but neither did he wish to be spotted by anyone else—least of all a meddling sheriff or deputy. After a torturous mile he came to the intersection of North Street and Cedar Swamp Road. He found a pay phone and lifted the receiver. He was not surprised to hear only silence.
Driving north on Cedar Swamp was the only way to reach their address. It was possible to approach the house from the opposite direction but only after driving around two hundred acres of state park and into a different township then back south once again. Hrubek had rammed him so hard the Subaru was surely useless; the psycho would now be on foot too. If the Atcheson property was his destination, he’d have to come this way.
Despite the delay to reset his shoulder Owen doubted that Hrubek had preceded him here. Unfamiliar with the area the man would first need to find a map. Then he’d have to orient himself and find the correct streets, many of which were not clearly marked.
Owen struggled into the intersection cautiously—a soldier on advance patrol, sighting out ambush and fire zones, high ground, backfields, perimeters. He saw a drainage ditch and a corrugated metal pipe, four feet wide. A good hidey-hole, he thought, falling easily into combat-speak. He pictured Hrubek loping cautiously down the middle of the road then Owen himself stepping out, silently, coming up behind with the pistol at his side.
The rain was cool and fragrant with the scents of a deep autumn. Owen inhaled this liquid air deeply then slipped down into the icy water that filled the ditch, guarding his damaged arm. But he was no longer faint and was able to ignore the worst of the pain. As he moved in his military crouch, he recited to himself the profile of kill areas: chest head abdomen groin, chest head abdomen groin. . . . He repeated this gruesome mantra again and again as around him the rain grew fiercer.
Lis Atcheson escorted the man into the kitchen and handed him a towel. She decided that in the baseball cap, with the curly hair dipping toward his shoulders, he looked very much like the backhoe operator who’d dug the trench for their new septic tank last year. He stood with one hip cocked in a stiff way that made her wonder if he had fallen and injured it. He looked mussed enough, she thought, to have taken a tumble recently.
“I’m from over in Hammond Creek? East of here?” Trenton Heck spoke as if no one had ever heard of Hammond Creek—a town with which she wasn’t in fact familiar.
Lis introduced Portia, who glanced at Heck in a dismissing way. With a juvenile grin Heck waited for an explanation of the exotic name. “Like the car,” he laughed. The young woman offered nothing but her hand, and that unsmilingly.
The young officer was in the squad car, trying to get an update on Hrubek’s whereabouts.
“Mr. Heck—” Lis began.
“Trenton. Or Trent,” he said good-naturedly, laughing. “Mr. Heck, ha.”
“Would you like something?”
He declined a beer but guzzled a can of Coke in less than thirty seconds then leaned against the kitchen island, looking out the windows in an analytical, self-assured way that made Lis wonder if he was an undercover policeman. But, no, he explained, he was more of a consultant. When he told her how Hrubek had led the trackers astray then doubled back, Lis shook her head knowingly. “He’s no fool at all.”
“Nup.”
“I thought he was supposed to be crazy,” said Portia, who was rubbing the dog’s head with an enthusiasm the hound did not share.
“Well, he is that. But he’s a clever son of a gun is what he is too.”
Lis asked how he happened to come here.
“I met your husband over in Fredericks. We found this woman. Hrubek told her he was headed for Boyleston. So I went that way and your husband was going to keep on coming this way. The deputy tells me they think Hrubek drove him off the road.”
“We don’t know where he is. We don’t know where either of them are. Why’d you change your mind and come this way?”
It was something he just felt, Heck explained. He was halfway to Boyleston when he decided that Hrubek was leading them off track again. “He’d been too, you know, methodical about moving west and trying to throw us off or stop us. He even set out traps for Emil here.”
“No!”
“Surely did. I was thinking, he’s been clever up till now and there’s no reason for him to stop being clever.”
“But why didn’t you just call the police?”
He was suddenly awkward; she thought he was blushing. Eyes fixed on the window, he gave the women his account, which contained not a single period or comma, all about a reward and his being laid off and having been a state trooper for nearly but not quite ten years and a recession and a trailer that was about to be foreclosed on.
Heck then asked about Owen.
“There’re men out looking for him. The sheriff and another deputy.”
“I’m sure he’ll be okay,” Heck said. “He seems to know what he’s about. Was in the service, I’ll bet.”
“Two tours of duty,” Lis said distractedly, gazing outside.
Heck, paying no attention to the sisters, dropped to his knees and began drying the dog with paper towels in a wholly absorbed, methodical way, even blotting the inside of his collar and wiping the gaps between his stubby claws. He went through the same ritual as he dried his pistol. Watching this, Lis understood immediately that Trenton Heck was both simpler and sharper than she, and she resolved to take him more seriously than she’d been inclined to.
The deputy returned and squeegeed the water from his cheeks with thick fingers.
“Stanley tells me he notified the troopers about Owen’s truck. They’re passing that info along to some fellow in the state police named Haversham—”
“He’s in charge of the search, sure. My old boss,” Trenton Heck said. He seemed not to like this news. Because, Lis supposed, he was not keen on losing or sharing his reward. He added, “He’ll probably send a Tactical Services squad—”
“What’s that?” the deputy asked.
“Don’t you know? Like SWAT.”
“No fooling?” The deputy was impressed.
Heck continued, “They’ll be here in forty minutes, I’d guess. Maybe a little longer.”
“Why don’t they send
them by helicopter?”
“Helicopter?” Heck snorted.
Lis looked past the others for a moment as a sheet of lightning canopied the sky. She felt the thunder in her chest. The deputy was asking her something but she didn’t hear a word of it and when she left the room she was running. Portia stepped after her and, alarmed, called, “Lis, are you all right? What is it?”
But Lis was by then taking the stairs two at a time.
In the bedroom she found the Colt Woodsman, a thin .22 automatic pistol that Owen kept beside the bed. He’d insisted that she learn to use it and had made her fire the pistol a dozen times into a paper target tacked to a pile of rotten wood behind the garage. She’d done so, dutiful and nervous, her hand jerking unartfully with every shot. She hadn’t touched it since then, perhaps three or four years ago.
She hefted the gun now and noted that, unlike rose petals, the checkered grip and metal of this long pistol left strong sensations upon her callused hands.
The pistol disappeared into her pocket. She walked slowly to the window. The immense blackness outside it—lacking any reference point—hypnotized her and drew her forward. Like a sleepwalker she approached the glass, three feet, two, compelled to find something visible on the other side of the blue-green panes—a branch, an owl, a cloud, the verdigris Pegasus weather vane atop the garage, anything that would make the darkness less infinite and permanent. Lightning lit the flooded driveway. She recalled waving goodbye to her husband. She realized with a shock that that gesture might have been the last communication between them ever, and, worse, perhaps one that he had not even seen.
She gazed into the night. Where are you, Owen? Where? Lis knew he was near. For she’d by now realized that, injured or not, he was making his way back to the house, trying to get Hrubek onto their property and complete his mission—to kill him and make it look like self-defense. They could be a mile from the house, or fifty yards away. It was only a matter of time.
Another bolt of lightning streaked from the sky and hit nearby. Lis gasped, stepping back, as the thunder rattled the badly glazed eighteenth-century panes. The storm now came forward like a wave, a wall of indifferent water a thousand feet high. It sped frantically across the lake, whose surface was oddly illuminated as if the globules of rain emitted radiation when they collided with the dark water.
A huge growl of thunder enveloped the house, finishing with a sharp whipcrack. Lis hurried downstairs. She pulled her rain slicker from a hook and said, “I’m going outside. I’m going to find my husband.”
27
On April 15, 1865, Doctor Samuel A. Mudd splinted John Wilkes Booth’s leg and put him to bed in one of the cots that served as a small infirmary in his home office.
Dr. Mudd had an idea who his patient was and what he’d done the night before but the doctor chose not to ride to town and report Booth to the authorities because his wife was afraid to be left alone with the eerie, feverish man and begged him not to go. Mudd got arrested as part of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln and came one vote from being hanged. He was finally released from prison but he died a ruined man.
Michael Hrubek, now reflecting on Mudd’s ordeal, thought: He had a woman to thank for that. Just goes to show.
He also thought a doctor might not be a bad idea right at the moment. His wrist burned wildly; it had slammed into the steering wheel when he drove his car into the conspirator’s truck. It didn’t hurt much but the forearm was glossy, swollen nearly double. From fingers to elbow it was a log of flesh.
As he walked through the rain, however, he grew too excited to worry about his injuries.
For Michael Hrubek was in Oz.
The town of Ridgeton was magical to him. It was the end of his quest. It was the Promised Land and he looked at every strip of pale November grass and every rain-spattered parking meter and mailbox with respect. The storm had darkened most of downtown and the only lights were battery-driven exit and emergency signs. The red rectangles of light added to the mythic quality of the place.
Standing in a booth, he flipped through a soggy phone book and found what he sought. He recited a prayer of gratitude then turned to the map in the front of the book and located Cedar Swamp Road.
Stepping back into the rain Michael hurried north. He passed darkened businesses—a liquor store, a toy store, a pizza restaurant, a Christian Science reading room. Wait. A scientific Jesus Our Lord bless us? Jesus Cry-ist was a physic-ist. Cry-ist was a chem-ist. He laughed at this thought then moved on, catching ghostly images of himself in the plate-glass windows. Some of them were protected by wrinkled sheets of amber plastic. Some were painted black and were undoubtedly used for surveillance. (Michael knew all about one-way mirrors, which could be purchased for $49.95 from Redding Science Supply Company, plus shipping, no COD orders please.)
“‘Good night, ladies,’” he sang as he splashed through a torrent of water in the gutters. “ ‘Good night, ladies . . .’ ”
The street ended at a three-way intersection. Michael stopped cold and his heart suddenly began to crawl with panic.
Oh, God, which way? Right or left? Cedar Swamp is one way but it is not the other. Which? Left or right?
“Which way ?” he bellowed.
Michael understood that if he turned one direction he would get to 43 Cedar Swamp Road and if he turned the other he would not. He looked at the signpost and blinked. And in the very small portion of a second it took to close and open his eyelids, his rational mind seized like an overheated engine. It simply stopped.
Explosions of fear surged through him, so intense that they were visible: black and yellow and orange sparks popped through the streets, caroming off the windows and wet sidewalks. He began a fearful keening and his jaw shook. He sank to his knees, pummeled by voices—the voices of old Abe, of the dying soldiers, of the conspirators. . . .
“Dr. Anne,” he moaned, “why did you leave me? Dr. Anne! I’m so afraid. I don’t know what to do! What should I do?”
Michael hugs the signpost as if it’s his only source of blood and oxygen and he cries in panic, searching his pockets for the pistol. He must kill himself. He has no choice. The panic is too great. Unbearable terror cascades over him. One bullet in the head, like old Abe, and it’ll all be over. He no longer cares about his quest, about betrayal, about Eve, about Lis-bone and revenge. He must end this terrible fear. The gun is here, he can feel its weight, but his hand is shaking too badly to reach into his pocket.
Finally he rips the wool and slips his hand inside the rent cloth, feeling the harsh grip of the pistol.
“I . . . can’t . . . STAND . . . IT! OH, PLEASE!”
He cocks the gun.
The brilliant light swept across his closed eyes, filling his vision with bloody illumination. A voice was speaking, saying words he couldn’t hear. He relaxed his grip on the gun. His head jerked upright and Michael realized that someone was talking to him, not Dr. Anne or the deceased president of the United States or conspirators or good Dr. Mudd.
The voice was that of a scrawny man in his late fifties, sticking his face out of a car window not three feet from where Michael huddled. He apparently hadn’t seen the gun, which Michael now slipped back into his pocket.
“Say, you all right, young man?”
“I . . .”
“You hurt yourself?”
“My car,” he mumbled. “My car . . .”
The gray and skinny man was driving a battered old Jeep with a scabby canvas top and vinyl sheets for windows. “You had an accident? And you couldn’t find a phone that worked. Sure, sure. They’re mostly all out. ’Causa the storm. How bad you hurt?”
Michael breathed deeply several times. The panic diminished. “Not bad but my car’s in a state. She wasn’t that good. Not like the old Cadillac.”
“No. Well. Come on, I’ll ride you over to the hospital. You should get looked at.”
“No, no, I’m fine. But I’m turned around. You know where Cedar Swamp is? Cedar Swamp Road, I mean.�
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“Sure I do. You live there?”
“People I’m supposed to see. I’m late. And they’ll be worried.”
“Well, I’ll drive you over.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“I think I ought to be taking you to the emergency room what with that wrist of yours.”
“No, just get me to my friends. There’s a doctor there. Dr. Mudd, you know him?”
“Don’t believe I do, no.”
“He’s a good doctor.”
“Well, that’s good. Because that wrist is pretty surely broken.”
“Give me a ride”—Michael stood up slowly—“and I’ll be your friend till your dying day.”
The man hesitated for an uncomfortable moment, then said, “Uh-huh . . . Well, hop in. Only mind the door. You’re a tall one.”
“Owen’s trying to make it back here to the house,” Lis explained. “I’m sure of it. And I think Hrubek’s chasing him.”
“Why wouldn’t he just go to the station house?” the deputy asked.
“He’s worried about us being here, I’m sure,” Lis said. She said nothing about the real reason that Owen wouldn’t go to the police.
“I don’t know,” the deputy said. “I mean, Stan told me—”
“Look, there’s nothing to talk about,” Lis said. “I’m going out there.”
The deputy objected uneasily, “Well, Lis . . .”
Portia again echoed his thoughts. “Lis, there’s nothing you can do.”
Heck took off his pitiful baseball cap and scratched his head. When he replaced the hat, he left a forelock of curly hair dipping toward his right eye. He was studying her. “You testified at his trial?”
Lis looked back at him. “I was the chief prosecution witness.”
He was nodding slowly. Finally he said, “I arrested me a fair number of men and testified at their trials. None of them ever came after me.”
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