Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

Adler grabbed the phone and made a call.

As he gazed out the window, Grimes considered Kohler’s scheme and he was both shocked and impressed. Kohler had used Michael Hrubek as a shining example of how his combination of drugs, delusion therapy and milieu resocialization treatment could produce dramatic improvements in chronic, dangerous schizophrenic patients. The Department of Mental Health had agreed to give Kohler a great deal of money and let him create a little fiefdom-carved out of Marsden hospital itself, at Adler’s expense no less. But of course if Hrubek wasn’t captured quietly, if he injured or killed someone, the DMH Board of Physicians would abort Kohler’s plan as unworkable and dangerous.

Still, it was an admirable scheme, Grimes thought, and he regretted playing a part in the downfall of a talented man, one who probably would’ve been a better choice to hitch his star to-if of course Kohler’s career had survived this evening. Which it surely would not.

The rain spattered the greasy windows. A huge wail of wind ended in a crash of plate glass from somewhere in the courtyard below. Several other patients had joined Patient 223-81 and a chorus of frightened wailing filled the halls. Grimes looked absently out the window and tried to avoid thinking about the effect on patients if a tornado touched down nearby.

Adler slammed down the phone and looked at him. “He’s not at the halfway house. Some son of a bitch tipped him off.”

“Who, Kohler?”

“He got a call a couple hours ago. He’s out there. He’s after Hrubek right now.”

“By himself?”

“He has to go by himself. He has to get Hrubek to come back like a quiet little lamb. Then he’ll claim he simply walked up to him and asked him to come home. And the son of a bitch will. After Kohler hits him with a taser or a tranquilizer gun… Shit! The break-in.”

“I’m sorry?” the assistant asked cautiously.

“Security said somebody broke into the pharmacy tonight.”

“Right. Well, they said it was a car accident, looked like. We won’t know till morning if anything’s missing.”

“Oh, something’s missing, you can bet on it. That son of a bitch lifted a tranquilizer gun. He’s going to…” Adler spat out, “Jesus, he’s going to make Hrubek look like the fucking little puppy I’ve said he is all along. Jesus Lord.”

Grimes impersonated a fish again, chewing water urgently, and wondered aloud what they might do next.

“I want to be ready to preempt the press. If this…” He tried out several words for size before saying, “If this situation becomes critical-”

“If it’s a worst case.”

“Yes, if it’s worst-case, we’ll have to go public immediately. I want a release. Write it up-”

“A press release?”

“What else would I mean? Can you draft one up? Subject, verb. Subject, verb. That too much for you? And let’s go over it, you and me. Say that, unbeknownst to staff, no, say unbeknownst to administrators and officials, a private physician with privileges here gave Hrubek access to all wards, which allowed him to escape. Say ‘with privileges’; don’t say ‘attending.’ Let’s confuse the morons. Then say that this was in defiance-”

“ Defiance?”

“-of clear instructions that any transfer of Section 403 patients must be approved by the office of the director before they go into any milieu, group, or off-ward therapy.”

Instructions, yes, well, his assistant stammered. But there were no instructions to that effect, were there? Oh, it made sense, yes. There probably should be, yes. But at the moment there were none.

“The memo,” Adler said impatiently. “Don’t you remember? The 1978 memo?”

Grimes glanced out the window. Adler was referring to a directive that required notice to the director’s office before criminally insane patients could be moved into medium- or low-security wings, even temporarily-if, for instance, the showers on E Ward weren’t working. While this was a rule, yes, it was observed only by the most (Grimes allowed himself the diagnosis) anal-retentive of the doctors at Marsden.

“This seems a little…” Now words evaded Assistant Grimes.

“And put a copy in here. What’s the matter?”

“I just… The issue isn’t really access, is it?”

“Well, what is the issue?” Adler said this with a sneer in his voice and Grimes had an urge to call him a schoolmarm, which certainly would have cost him his job faster than jokes about rape.

“Kohler doing delusion therapy. That’s what set Hrubek off. That’s what we can hang him with.”

This was, Adler reflected, a good point. Hrubek’s roaming the halls near the morgue was essentially the orderlies’ fault. They missed his medicine stockpile and they were careless with Callaghan’s body. But Kohler’s sin, as Grimes accurately pointed out, was far more serious. He had somehow awakened Hrubek’s desire to escape. The means were largely irrelevant. Those fantasies ought to have been tucked away inside Hrubek, tucked away very deeply-or, better yet, behaviorially conditioned out of him. Say what you might, electrodes and food could turns rats into quite model animals. Why, witness young Grimes…

Still, the hospital director assessed, Kohler’s errors would be tough to sell to the public-simple people who would want simple answers in the event that Hrubek knifed a trooper to death or raped a girl. He thanked Grimes for his insight and then added, “Let’s just lay the access issue at our friend’s feet, shall we? By the time it’s all sorted out, he’ll be everybody’s whipping boy, and no one’ll really care exactly what he did.”

And his assistant, pleased to have been patted on the head, nodded instantly.

“Don’t be too specific. We have to massage the facts. Say, because of his involvement in Kohler’s program Hrubek was free to get into the freezer, the morgue and the loading dock. None of the other Section 403 criminally insane have that access. That’s true, isn’t it?”

It was, Grimes confirmed.

“ But for his involvement in the program he never would’ve escaped. Sine qua non. ”

“You want me to say that?”

“Well, not ‘sine qua non,’ obviously. You know what I’m saying? You get the picture? And don’t use Kohler’s name. Not at first. Make it sound like we’re concerned about, you know…”

“His reputation?”

“Good. Yes, his reputation.”

The only mechanic answering the phone tonight was in Roenville, about fifteen miles west on Route 236. The man chuckled and answered that sure he had a truck but it’d be four or five hours before he could get somebody over to Ridgeton.

“Already got three roads out in this part of the county alone. And my men’re getting a wreck off Putnam Valley Highway. Injuries. Mess of ’em. Hell of a night. Just one hell of a night. So, you wanna go on the list?”

Lis said, “That’s okay,” and hung up. She then called the Ridgeton Sheriff ’s Department.

“Why, hello, Mrs. Atcheson,” the dispatcher answered respectfully. The woman’s daughter was in Lis’s class; parents tended to address her as formally as their children did. “How you weatherin’ the storm tonight? So to speak. Ha. It’s something, isn’t it?”

“We’re getting by. Say, Peg, is Stan around?”

“Nup, not a soul here. Everybody’s out. Even Fred Bertholder, and he’s got the flu like nobody oughta have. And they didn’t cancel that rock concert like they oughta’ve. Can you believe that? A lotta youngsters got stranded. What a mess.”

“Have you heard anything from Marsden hospital, about Hrubek?”