Jeffery Deaver: Praying for Sleep

“So basically, he’s fucked.” Portia laughed. She held up her glass. “Good job, Attorney.”

Owen tapped his glass to hers.

Portia drained her champagne and let Owen pour her more. To her sister she said, “I wouldn’t get on this boy’s bad side, Lis. He might do to you what he does unto others.”

Owen’s stony façade slipped and he laughed briefly.

Lis said, “I guess I just feel insulted. I didn’t even know the school was getting any money in the will. I mean, can you imagine Father even talking to me about it? Undue influence? I say let them sue.”

“Well, I say let our lawyer handle it.” With her working-girl hair rimmed by the black lace headband Portia seemed miraculously transported back to six or seven-the age at which it first was clear that the sisters would be such different people. This process seemed to continue, by inches and miles, Lis sensed, even tonight.

Owen poured more Moët. “Never would’ve been a problem if your father’d kept his money to himself and his mouth shut. That’s the moral: no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Your services expensive, Owen?” Portia asked wryly.

“Never. At least not for beautiful women. It’s in my retainer agreement.”

Lis stepped between these two people, bound to her one by blood and one by law, and put her arms around Owen. “See why he’s such a rainmaker?”

“Can’t make much rain if he doesn’t charge.”

“I didn’t say I’m free.” Owen looked at Portia. “I just said I’m not expensive. You always have to pay for quality.”

Lis walked to the stairway. “Portia, come here. I want to show you something.”

The sisters left Owen stacking the papers and climbed upstairs. The silence again grew thick and Lis realized that it was her husband’s presence that had made conversation possible between the sisters.

“Here we go.” She stepped in front of Portia and then pushed open the door to a small bedroom, sweeping on the overhead light. “Voilà.”

Portia was nodding as she studied the recently decorated room. Lis had spent a month on the place, making dozens of trips to Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley for fabrics and wallpaper, to antique stores for furniture. She’d managed to find an old canopy bed that was virtually identical to the one that had been Portia’s when this was her room years ago.

“What do you think?”

“Taking up interior decorating, are we?”

“That’s the same curtain material. Amazing that I found it. Maybe a little yellower is all. Remember when we helped Mother sew them? I was, what, fourteen? You were nine.”

“I don’t remember. Probably.”

Lis looked at the woman’s eyes.

“What a job,” Portia offered, walking in a slow circle on the oval braided rug. “Incredible. Last time I was here it looked like an old closet. Mother’d just let it go to hell.”

Then why don’t you like it? Lis wondered silently.

She asked, “Remember Pooh?” and nodded at a mangy Steiff bear, whose glassy eyes stared vacantly at the corner of the room, where a shimmery cobweb had emerged since Lis had last cleaned the place, twenty-four hours ago.

Portia touched the bear’s nose then stepped back to the door and crossed her arms.

“What’s the matter?” Lis asked.

“It’s just that I’m not sure I can stay.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t really planning on it.”

“You’re talking about tonight ? Portia, really… It’s too late to go.”

“There’re trains all night.”

Lis’s face grew hot. “I thought you’d be here for a couple of days.”

“I know we talked about it. I… I guess I’d really rather just get the train back. I should’ve told you.”

“You don’t even call and say you’ll be late. You don’t even tell us you’ve gotten a ride. You just show up, get your money and leave?”

“Lis.”

“But you can’t just sit on a train for two hours and then turn around and go back. It’s crazy.” Lis walked to the bed. She reached for the bear then thought better of it. She sat on the chenille spread. “Portia, we haven’t spoken in months. We’ve hardly said a damn word since last summer.”

Portia finished her champagne and put the flute on the dresser. A questioning look started to cross her face.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Lis said.

“Right now’s tough for me to be away. Lee and I’re going through a hard time.”

“When’ll be a good time?”

Portia waved her hands at the room. “I’m sorry you went to all this work. Maybe next week. A couple weeks. I’ll come out earlier. Spend the day.”

The silence was suddenly broken by Owen’s voice, calling sharply for Lis. Startled, she looked toward the door then back to her lap and found that she’d picked up the bear after all. She stood abruptly, setting the toy back on the pillow.

“Lis,” came Owen’s urgent voice, “come down here.”

“Coming.” Then Lis turned to her sister. She said,

“Let’s talk about it,” and before Portia could open her mouth to protest, walked out of the room.

“This smells of being whipped.”

“Well, I’d guess.”

Before the two men lay a sharp valley that rose fifty feet above them, filled with black rocks and tangles of vine and barkless branches, many dead and rotten. Moisture glittered on undergrowth like a million snake scales, and the dew stained their jumpsuits the same dark blue the uniforms turned when they worked the Piss ’n’ Shit Ward.

“Look at that. How d’we even know it’s his footprint?”

“Because it’s size fourteen and he’s barefoot. Who the hell’s do you think it is? Now shut up.”

The moon was fading behind clouds and in the growing darkness each man thought the scene before him was straight out of a horror film.

“Say, meaning to ask-you bumping uglies with Psaltz?”

“Adler’s secretary?” Stuart Lowe snickered. “Like that’d be a real smart thing to do. I’m really thinking we should’ve bitched more. Didn’t either of us have to come. We ain’t cops.”

The men were large-both muscular and tall-and sported crew cuts. Lowe, a blond. Frank Jessup was dark. They were easygoing and had neither hatred nor love for the troubled men and women under their care. Their job was a job and they were pleased to be paid decent money in an area that had little money for any work.

They were not, however, pleased about this assignment tonight.

“Was a honest mistake,” Lowe muttered. “Who’d’ve guessed he’d do what he done?”

Jessup leaned against a pine tree and his nostrils flared at the aroma of turpentine. “How ’bout Mona? You fucking her? ”

“Who?”

“Mona Cabrill. Mona the Moaner. The nurse. From D Ward.”

“Oh. Right. No. Are you?”

“Not yet,” Jessup said. “I myself’d slip her a dose of thiopental and jump her bones the minute she conked out.”

Lowe grunted disagreeably. “Let’s stay focused here, Frank.”

“We’d hear him. Big fellow like that can’t walk past without knocking something down. She didn’t wear a bra last week. Tuesday. The head nurse sent her home to get one. But it was Tit City for a while.”

There was a faint scent of campfire or woodstove smoke in the damp air. Lowe pressed a thick palm into each of his eye sockets while he examined exactly how scared he was. “My point is, they pay cops for this kind of stuff.”

“Shhh,” Jessup hissed abruptly. Lowe jumped, then-at the bark of laughter-hit his partner very hard on the arm. “You son of a bitch.” They sparred for a moment, rougher than they meant to be because they were bleeding off tension. Then they started up the valley once more. The men were spooked, true, but it was more the setting than the escapee; both men knew Michael Hrubek. Lowe had supervised him for most of the four months the patient had been incarcerated at Marsden State hospital. Hrubek could be a real son of a bitch-sarcastic, picky, irritating-but he hadn’t seemed particularly violent. Still, Lowe added, “I’m thinking we deep-six it and call the cops.”