Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

Stepping back into the rain Michael hurried north. He passed darkened businesses-a liquor store, a toy store, a pizza restaurant, a Christian Science reading room. Wait. A scientific Jesus Our Lord bless us? Jesus Cry-ist was a physic-ist. Cry-ist was a chem-ist. He laughed at this thought then moved on, catching ghostly images of himself in the plate-glass windows. Some of them were protected by wrinkled sheets of amber plastic. Some were painted black and were undoubtedly used for surveillance. (Michael knew all about one-way mirrors, which could be purchased for $49.95 from Redding Science Supply Company, plus shipping, no COD orders please.)

“‘Good night, ladies,’” he sang as he splashed through a torrent of water in the gutters. “ ‘Good night, ladies…’ ”

The street ended at a three-way intersection. Michael stopped cold and his heart suddenly began to crawl with panic.

Oh, God, which way? Right or left? Cedar Swamp is one way but it is not the other. Which? Left or right?

“Which way ?” he bellowed.

Michael understood that if he turned one direction he would get to 43 Cedar Swamp Road and if he turned the other he would not. He looked at the signpost and blinked. And in the very small portion of a second it took to close and open his eyelids, his rational mind seized like an overheated engine. It simply stopped.

Explosions of fear surged through him, so intense that they were visible: black and yellow and orange sparks popped through the streets, caroming off the windows and wet sidewalks. He began a fearful keening and his jaw shook. He sank to his knees, pummeled by voices-the voices of old Abe, of the dying soldiers, of the conspirators…

“Dr. Anne,” he moaned, “why did you leave me? Dr. Anne! I’m so afraid. I don’t know what to do! What should I do?”

Michael hugs the signpost as if it’s his only source of blood and oxygen and he cries in panic, searching his pockets for the pistol. He must kill himself. He has no choice. The panic is too great. Unbearable terror cascades over him. One bullet in the head, like old Abe, and it’ll all be over. He no longer cares about his quest, about betrayal, about Eve, about Lis-bone and revenge. He must end this terrible fear. The gun is here, he can feel its weight, but his hand is shaking too badly to reach into his pocket.

Finally he rips the wool and slips his hand inside the rent cloth, feeling the harsh grip of the pistol.

“I… can’t… STAND… IT! OH, PLEASE!”

He cocks the gun.

The brilliant light swept across his closed eyes, filling his vision with bloody illumination. A voice was speaking, saying words he couldn’t hear. He relaxed his grip on the gun. His head jerked upright and Michael realized that someone was talking to him, not Dr. Anne or the deceased president of the United States or conspirators or good Dr. Mudd.

The voice was that of a scrawny man in his late fifties, sticking his face out of a car window not three feet from where Michael huddled. He apparently hadn’t seen the gun, which Michael now slipped back into his pocket.

“Say, you all right, young man?”

“I…”

“You hurt yourself?”

“My car,” he mumbled. “My car…”

The gray and skinny man was driving a battered old Jeep with a scabby canvas top and vinyl sheets for windows. “You had an accident? And you couldn’t find a phone that worked. Sure, sure. They’re mostly all out. ’Causa the storm. How bad you hurt?”

Michael breathed deeply several times. The panic diminished. “Not bad but my car’s in a state. She wasn’t that good. Not like the old Cadillac.”

“No. Well. Come on, I’ll ride you over to the hospital. You should get looked at.”

“No, no, I’m fine. But I’m turned around. You know where Cedar Swamp is? Cedar Swamp Road, I mean.”

“Sure I do. You live there?”

“People I’m supposed to see. I’m late. And they’ll be worried.”

“Well, I’ll drive you over.”

“You’d do that for me?”

“I think I ought to be taking you to the emergency room what with that wrist of yours.”

“No, just get me to my friends. There’s a doctor there. Dr. Mudd, you know him?”

“Don’t believe I do, no.”

“He’s a good doctor.”

“Well, that’s good. Because that wrist is pretty surely broken.”

“Give me a ride”-Michael stood up slowly-“and I’ll be your friend till your dying day.”

The man hesitated for an uncomfortable moment, then said, “Uh-huh… Well, hop in. Only mind the door. You’re a tall one.”

“Owen’s trying to make it back here to the house,” Lis explained. “I’m sure of it. And I think Hrubek’s chasing him.”

“Why wouldn’t he just go to the station house?” the deputy asked.

“He’s worried about us being here, I’m sure,” Lis said. She said nothing about the real reason that Owen wouldn’t go to the police.

“I don’t know,” the deputy said. “I mean, Stan told me-”

“Look, there’s nothing to talk about,” Lis said. “I’m going out there.”

The deputy objected uneasily, “Well, Lis…”

Portia again echoed his thoughts. “Lis, there’s nothing you can do.”

Heck took off his pitiful baseball cap and scratched his head. When he replaced the hat, he left a forelock of curly hair dipping toward his right eye. He was studying her. “You testified at his trial?”

Lis looked back at him. “I was the chief prosecution witness.”

He was nodding slowly. Finally he said, “I arrested me a fair number of men and testified at their trials. None of them ever came after me.”

Lis looked into Heck’s eyes, which immediately fled to an old Shaker chair. She said, “You were lucky, then, weren’t you?”

“That I was. But it’s pretty, you know, rare for an escapee to come after somebody. Usually they just hightail it out of the state.”

He seemed to want a response but she gave none other than, “Well, Michael Hrubek probably isn’t your typical escapee.”

“No argument from me there.” Heck didn’t continue his line of thought.

Lifting the bright rain slicker from the hook by the door Lis said to her sister, “You stay here. If Owen gets back before I do, honk the horn.”

Portia nodded.

“Uhn, ma’am?”

Lis glanced at Heck.

“That might make you a bit, you know, obvious, don’t you think?”

“How’s that?”

“The, uhn, yellow.”

“Oh, I didn’t think about that.”

Heck lifted away the sou’wester and hung it up. Lis reached for her dark bomber jacket but Heck held up a hand. “Tell you what. I’m thinking let’s don’t any of us go tripping over our own tails here. I know how you feel and everything, him being your husband and all. But I’m speaking as somebody’s done this sort of thing before. I get paid to track people. Let me go out there by myself. No, let me finish. I’ll go out and look for your husband and if he’s anywhere nearby I’ll stand a chance of finding him. Probably a sight better than you. And not only, if you’re wandering around out there too, it’ll just distract me.” His voice was taut, anticipating Lis’s protest.

She guessed his essential motive was the reward. Yet what he said was true. And even if Lis happened to find her husband, she wondered how persuasive she would be in urging him to give up the hunt for Hrubek and return home. He hadn’t listened to her before; why would he now?

“Okay, Trenton,” Lis said.

“What I think we should do is I’ll go out in the woods, toward the front gate. He could climb the fence, of course, but I’ll risk that. He won’t be swimming the lake, not in this wind. That’s for sure.”