Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

“Who’d that be?”

“That man who escaped tonight.”

“Oh, him. You know, Stan called the state police about that just ’fore he went out. He’s in Massachusetts.”

“Hrubek? In Massachusetts?”

“Yes’m.”

“You’re sure?”

“They tracked him to the state line then our boys had to call off the search. Handed it over to the Mass troopers. They’re top-notch at finding people even though they don’t have any sense of humor. That’s what Stan says.”

“Have they…? Have they found him?”

“I don’t know. The storm’ll hit there in an hour, hour and a half, so I don’t suppose a drugged-up psycho’s a real high priority but that’s me speaking not them. They might not take to madmen from out of state. Being so serious and all. You know, Mrs. Atcheson, been meaning to speak to you about that C-minus Amy got.”

“Could we talk about it next week, Peg?”

“Absolutely. It’s just that Irv coached her like a demon, and he reads all the time. Knows his literature, and I don’t mean just schlock either. He read Last of the Mohicans even before it was a movie.”

“Next week?”

“Absolutely. Good night to you, Mrs. Atcheson.”

She hung up and wandered out to Portia, who stood sipping a Coke on a small screened-in porch off the kitchen. They didn’t use the place much for entertaining. The sun never reached it, and the view of the yard and lake was all but cut off by a tall growth of juniper.

“This is pretty,” her sister commented, running her hand along an elaborate railing of mahogany, carved in the shapes of flowers, vines and leaves. The wind blew an aerated mist of icy rain toward the house and the women stepped back suddenly.

“That’s right, you haven’t seen it.”

Lis had noticed the balustrade at an upstate demolition site and knew at once that she had to have it. In one of her brashest moments she’d laid quick, cold dollars into the ponderous hands of the wrecking-crew captain. It was probably an illicit deal, for he turned his back as she dragged off the delicate sculpture, which she then spent another two thousand dollars incorporating into the railing here.

Friends wondered why such a beautiful piece of woodwork accented a dark, out-of-the-way porch like this. But the carving had one frequent admirer: Lis herself spent many nights here, bedded down in a chaise longue she’d commandeered for the times when the insomnia was particularly bad. The porch was open on three sides. If there was wind the breezes flowed over her as she lay beneath the blankets and if there was rain the sound was hypnotic. Even when Owen was away on business, she’d often come down here. She supposed it was risky, being alone and so exposed to the night. Yet the game of finding sleep is a crucible of trade-offs and an insomniac can’t afford the luxury of separating slumber and vulnerability.

“I heard,” Portia said. “No tow truck?”

“Nope.”

“Can we walk?”

“Two miles? In this rain and wind?” Lis laughed. “Rather not.”

“What about Hrubek?”

“Supposedly in Massachusetts.”

“So why don’t we just sit it out? Get a fire going and tell ghost stories?”

If only they’d left twenty minutes sooner… Angrily Lis remembered Kohler. If he hadn’t stopped by, they’d be at the Inn by now. She felt a chill thinking that it was as if Michael Hrubek had sent an agent to detain her.

Portia asked, “Well? We’re staying?”

Overhead the wind sliced through the treetops with a hissing sound-the noise electric trains make-of motion not propulsion. The rain pounded the soaked earth.

“No,” Lis said finally, “we’re leaving. Let’s get some shovels and dig out the car.”

Animals are far easier than humans to pursue for long distances, for three reasons: They eat whenever they’re hungry. They don’t control elimination of wastes. They have limited options for locomotion.

The world at large, Trenton Heck reflected, may have considered Michael Hrubek an animal but so far his journey west had all the trappings of a trip by a damn clever human being.

Heck was in despair. The driving rain had virtually erased all the airborne scent and he could find no other evidence of Hrubek’s trail. Emil had quartered again and again over the highway and surrounding fields for an hour and had found nothing.

But now, just outside of Cloverton, Heck found that the madman had lapsed momentarily. His animal’s impulse to eat had overcome his need for evasion.

At first Heck didn’t think anything of the Hostess doughnut box lying in the driveway of the old gas station. Then he noticed it wasn’t empty. This said to him that it couldn’t have been there more than a half hour. No self-respecting raccoon, he concluded, would let pastry sit uneaten for longer than that.

As Heck and Emil walked up to the box, the dog immediately tensed. Heck knew this had nothing to do with a canine fondness for sugar and grease, and he scanned the ground carefully. There! Hrubek’s boot prints, just visible on the concrete apron near the pumps. All right! His heart thudded at this good luck. Just west of the station Heck found a tread mark in the dirt beside the highway. For some reason Hrubek was now keeping to the shoulder and in the rain it was easy to follow the tread by sight. Heck and Emil returned to the truck and drove west. He saw that the track continued only for another hundred yards or so then cut suddenly across the highway, aiming directly for a long driveway or private road.

Heck stopped the truck and got Emil harnessed up, once again short-lined because of Heck’s fear of the traps. He picked up the scent immediately and together man and dog crashed through brush, the hound in heaven-his coat glistening with misty rain, his lungs filling with great gulps of cool air, his familiar master beside him, his simple dog’s mind and solid body doing what God had created them for.

As they ran, Heck remembered another dog who loved fields, Sally Dodgeson’s St. Anne-Emil’s predecessor.

Sal was a smarter dog than Emil and with a faster gait and lither step. Those last two qualities, however, had been her downfall; she developed the curse of large working dogs, hip dysplasia. Heck retired her early and spent the bulk of his-and Jill’s-sparse savings on operations. The surgery was not successful and it was a terrible thing to watch Sal, a young invalid, staring at the fields she’d loved to run through. Often she made pathetic attempts to escape and Heck would have to go retrieve the struggling animal, carrying her in his arms, his heart as broken as hers. The condition and the pain that accompanied it grew worse.

On the last visit to the vet Heck himself took the syringe from the doctor and injected the lethal dosage. Oh, it was a hard thing to do, and he wept, but Trenton Heck would let no stranger put down a dog of his.

When he returned home, Jill asked, too improvidently for his taste, “Would you cry for me that way?”

Heck was stung but he told her the truth and said of course he would. But the timing of his response was somehow off and Jill got huffy. She went out that night with her girlfriends, a batch of fun-loving waitresses, and he mourned alone, which was his preference anyway. The next morning at seven, Jill having returned just three hours before, Heck arose by himself and went to the breeder to talk about bloodhound pups.

Heck had used a classic dog-handler’s trick to pick Emil out of a litter of five mournful-looking, irresistibly adorable bloodhound puppies. The breeder set up a piece of quarter-inch plywood next to the pen where the young pups were playing. In the middle of the board was a tiny hole. Heck crept up to the wood sheet and, unseen by the litter, watched through the hole as they rolled and nipped and tried out their long legs. In a few minutes one of the puppies lifted his head with a spark of curiosity in his eyes-a glint clearly visible despite the folds of skin that nearly obscured them. He tilted his head back and looked around then stumbled toward the hole behind which was Trenton Heck’s right eye. The dog sniffed the alien scent for two minutes before becoming bored and returning to romp with his sorrowful-faced brothers and sisters.