Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

It was an extremely agitated Michael Hrubek who, upon this damp night in November, bicycled doggedly down Route 236 at twenty miles an hour, lost in these hard memories-which was why he didn’t hear the police car, dark and silent, until it was within ten feet of the bike’s rear wheel. The lights and siren burst to life.

“Oh God oh God oh God!” Hrubek screamed. Panic exploded throughout his body.

A voice came over the loudspeaker, jarring as a firecracker. “You there! Stop that bicycle and get off.” A spotlight was trained on the back of Hrubek’s head.

John Cops! he thought. Agents! FBI! Hrubek coasted to a stop and the deputies stepped from their squad car.

“Just climb off that, young man.”

Hrubek swung awkwardly off the bike. The men cautiously approached. One whispered, “He’s a mountain. He’s huge.”

“All right there. Could we see some identification?”

Fucking fucker conspirators, Hrubek thought. Politely he asked, “Are you federal agents?”

“Agents?” One of them chuckled. “No, we’re just police officers. From Gunderson.”

“Step over here, sir. You have a driver’s license?”

Hrubek sat down, his back to the officers, and bowed his head.

The policemen looked at each other, wondering how they might deal with this. Hrubek upped the ante by crying out, “I’m soooo upset! He took everything. He hit me on the head with a rock. Look at my hand.” He held up his scraped palm. “I’ve been look -ing for help.”

They continued forward but stopped a safe distance away. “Somebody attacked you, you say? Are you hurt? If you could just let us see some ID.”

“Is it him?” one asked.

“We just want to see some identification, sir. A driver’s license. Anything.”

“He took my wallet. He took everything.”

“You’ve been robbed?”

“There were several of them. Took my wallet and my watch. That watch,” Hrubek reported solemnly, “was a present from my mother. If you’d watched the roads better, you might’ve prevented a serious crime.”

“I’m sorry if you’ve had some misfortune, sir. Could you give us your name and address…”

“John W. Booth is my name.”

“Didn’t think it was that,” one cop said to the other, as if speaking in front of an infant.

“Don’t recall. The notice said he’s harmless.”

“May be, but he’s big.”

One cop walked closer to Hrubek, who rocked and moaned in mournful tears. “We’d appreciate you standing up, Johnnie, just coming over to the car. People at the hospital’re worried about you. We want to take you back there.” In a singsong voice he added, “Wouldn’t you like to go home? Get some pie and milk maybe? Some nice apple pie?” He stood behind Hrubek, training his flashlight on the man’s empty hands then shining it again on the back of the glossy and somewhat blue head.

“Thank you, sir. You know, I would like to be getting back, now that you mention it. I miss the place.” Hrubek turned and grinned amiably as he reached up very slowly to shake the officer’s hand. The policeman too smiled-in curiosity at the young man’s sincere gesture-and gripped Hrubek’s meaty fist, realizing too late that the madman was intending to break his wrist. The bone snapped and, shrieking, the officer dropped to his knees, the flashlight falling onto the ground beside him. His partner reached for his gun but Hrubek had already trained the stolen Colt on him.

“Nice try,” he announced with damp lips that pulled into a wry smile. “Drop that, drop that!”

The cop did. “Oh, Jesus.”

Hrubek took the injured cop’s gun from his holster and tossed it away. The man huddled on the ground, cradling his wrist.

“Look, fellow,” his partner pled, “you’re going to get in nothing but trouble over this.”

Hrubek chewed on a fingernail then he looked down at the cops. “You can’t stop me. I can do it. I’m going to do it, and I’m going to do it quickly!” These words rose like a mad battle cry. He shook a fist above his head.

“Please, young man, put that gun down.” The injured policeman’s voice broke and his eyes and nose dripped pitifully. “Nothing serious’s happened. Nobody’s been really hurt yet.”

Hrubek turned a triumphant eye on him. He spat out, “Oh, nice try, John Cop. But that’s where you’re wrong. Everybody’s been hurt. Everybody, everybody, everybody! And it’s not over yet.”

Owen Atcheson parked his truck along Route 236 next to a large, freshly turned field about seven miles west of the high rock overlook where he’d located Hrubek’s nest. As anticipated, he’d found deep indentations of footsteps, indicating Hrubek was moving parallel to the road. From the depth and spacing of the toe prints it was clear he was moving fast, running.

Owen stopped at a closed gas station and used the pay phone to call the Marsden Inn. The clerk told him that Mrs. Atcheson and her sister had called and said they’d be delayed some. They hadn’t checked in yet.

“Delayed? Did they say why?”

“No, sir, they didn’t. Is there any message?”

Owen debated. He thought of trying to encode a message for her: Tell her the visitor’s heading west but she’s not to call anyone about it… But there was too much risk that the clerk would be suspicious or get the message wrong.

Owen said, “No, I’ll try them at home.”

But there was no answer at the house. Just missed them, he thought. He’d call them at the Inn later.

The night was very dark now, the cloud cover complete, the air growing colder, compressing around him. He used his flashlight sparingly, only when he thought he saw a clue and even then lowering the light almost to the ground before clicking it on, to limit the radiation of the light. He then moved on-but slowly, very slowly. Every soldier knows-as between the hunter and the hunted, the prey has the vastly greater advantage.

Owen fell several times, catching his boot on a fence wire or forsythia tendril. He went down hard, always rolling and absorbing the impact with his shoulder and sides, never risking breaking a finger or wrist. He saw no more traps. Only at one point did Owen despair. The trail vanished completely. This happened in a vast grassy field, twenty acres square and bordered on all sides with dense woods. Owen was two hundred yards from Route 236. He stood in the center of this field and looked around him. The field extended through a break in the long line of rocky hills and offered an easy route south toward train tracks and more populated parts of the county. Freight trains came through here regularly and it was conceivable that Hrubek had leapt onto one. Or maybe he’d simply continued through the notch in the hills south toward Boyleston, a town that had both Amtrak and Greyhound stations.

Losing hope, Owen moved aimlessly through the grass, pausing to listen for footsteps, and hearing only owls or distant truck horns or the eerie white noise of an expansive autumn night. After ten minutes of meandering he noticed a glint coming from a line of trees west of him. He headed instinctively toward it. At the grove of maples he went into a crouch and moved slowly through a cluster of saplings until he came to a break in the foliage. With his gun he pushed aside a bough of dew-soaked hemlock, inhaling in surprise as drops of water fell with chill pinpricks on his neck and face.

Walking in slow circles around the old MG, Owen studied the ground. He kicked aside a white animal skull. He recognized it instantly as a ferret’s. There were dozens of footprints and tire prints covering the asphalt and the shoulder. Some seemed to be Hrubek’s but they were largely obliterated by people who had been here after him. He saw dog prints too and wondered momentarily if the trackers had learned that Hrubek was going west. But there was evidence of only one animal, not the three that he’d seen pursuing Hrubek from the site of his escape.