Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

“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 the 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.

“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.