Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

Heck then glanced at the deputy. “I’d say you stay closer to the house. Like a second line of defense. Somewhere near here.”

The deputy’s interest was rekindled. He’d done his duty and what more could he say to an ornery woman of the house? Now he had allies and might see some action and glory after all. “I’ll back the car into the bushes over there,” he said excitedly. “How’d that be? I can see the whole of the yard and he won’t catch a glimpse of me.”

Heck told him that was good idea then said to Lis, “I know your husband’s a hunter. Now, you might not feel too comfortable with sidearms but you think maybe you could turn one up for yourself?”

Lis took perverse glee in lifting the pistol from her pocket. She held it, muzzle down, finger outside the trigger guard-just as Owen had solemnly instructed her. Portia was appalled. The deputy guffawed. But Trenton Heck merely nodded with satisfaction as if one more item had been crossed off a checklist. “I’ll leave Emil with you here. Storm’s too fierce even for him. Keep him by you. He’s not an attack dog but he’s big and he’ll make a bushel of noise if someone was to come by uninvited.”

“I don’t have anything darker that’ll fit,” Lis said, nodding at the sou’westers.

“That’s okay. I’m pretty impervious to water. But I’ll take a Baggie for my gun. It’s an old German Walther and rusts easy.”

He slipped the pistol into a bag and tied the end closed, returning the gun to his cowboy holster. He gazed outside and stretched his leg out for a moment, wincing. She supposed that whatever was wrong with his thigh wouldn’t be helped by the rain. The pain seemed quite severe.

The deputy went outside to the car though not before he’d unsnapped the thong of his automatic and circled his fingers around the grip several times like a bad actor in a bad Western. Lis heard the car start. He backed into the bushes halfway between the garage and the house. He could turn on his spotlights and illuminate the entire backyard from where he was parked.

Trenton turned to her and spoke in a low voice. “You know how to use that weapon, I’ll bet, but I don’t suppose you ever did use it, not in a situation like this.” He didn’t wait for confirmation but continued, “What I’d like you to do is shut all the lights out in the house. Sit yourselves away from the windows. I’ll keep my eye on the property as best I can. Flick the lights if you need me and I’ll come running.”

Then without a word to either woman, or his dog, he vanished into the sheets of rain. Lis closed the door behind him.

“Jesus, Lis,” Portia whispered but there were so many things she might be shocked by that her sister had no idea to what she was referring.

Thoughts of his wife are long gone from Dr. Ronald Adler’s mind. The way she tastes, the arc of her thigh, her skin’s texture, the smell of her hair-memories that so occupied him earlier in the evening are wholly absent now.

For Captain Haversham called him not long ago with the news.

“Cloverton,” the trooper growled. “Hrubek just killed a woman. The lid’s off it now, Doc.”

“Oh, my God.” Adler closed his eyes and his heart seemed to fibrillate as he was lanced with the mad thought that Hrubek had committed this crime solely for the purpose of betraying him. He held the phone in quivering hands and heard the trooper explain with ill-concealed fury how Hrubek had murdered a woman and carved her up, then stolen a motorcycle to escape to Boyleston.

“A motorcycle. Carved her up?”

“Cut words on her boobs. And two cops in Gunderson are missing. They were cruising down Route 236 and called in with a report on him. Last we heard. We’re sure he’s killed ’em and dumped the bodies somewhere. Low-security? Harmless? Jesus Christ, man. What were you thinking of ? I’ll be in your office in a half hour.” The phone went dead.

Adler is now on his way back to his office from the hospital’s cafeteria, where he had taken Haversham’s dismaying call and where he had then sat, numb, for the next thirty minutes. But the doctor isn’t making very good progress.

Alone in the dark hallway he pauses and spends a moment considering the chain reaction of miraculous physiology that’s now causing his neck hair to stir, his eyes to water, and his genitals to contract alarmingly. And although he’s thinking about the vagus nerve and adrenaline release and synaptic uptake, what’s most salient in his mind is how fucking scared he is.

The corridor is 130 feet long. Twenty doors open off it and all but the last one-his-are closed and dark. Every other bulb in the overhead fixtures has been removed as an economy measure and of those remaining most are burnt out. Three corridors also lead off this one. They too are dark as graves.

Adler looks down the dark hallway and wonders, Why aren’t I walking?

He’s left the elevator alcove and he knows that Haversham is waiting impatiently in his office. Yet here the doctor stands frozen with fear. His arms are weak, his legs too. He squints away an unfunny apparition-a huge pale form that has stuck its head out of a corridor nearby and darted back into hiding.

The patient’s ghostly wailing is displaced by the howl of the wind. It reverberates in Adler’s chest, and he thinks, All right. Enough. Please.

Adler walks five paces. Again he stops-on the pretext of flipping through a file he carries.

It is at this moment that he is struck by the sudden awareness that Michael Hrubek has returned to kill him.

That there’s no logic to this mission doesn’t lessen Adler’s growing panic one bit. He gasps as the elevator, summoned from below, grinds downward. He hears a patient somewhere utter a guttural moan of infinite, inexpressible sorrow. As this sound strokes his neck, he places one foot before the other and doggedly starts walking.

No, no-Michael Hrubek has no need to kill him. Michael Hrubek doesn’t even know him personally. Michael Hrubek couldn’t have made the journey back to the hospital in this short time, even if he did feel like eviscerating the director.

Dr. Ronald Adler the veteran of the state mental-health-hospital system, Dr. Ronald Adler the fair-tomiddlin’ graduate of a provincial medical school-these Dr. Ronald Adlers believe that he’s probably safe.

Yet the man whose head was entwined between his wife’s fragrant legs earlier in the night, the man who mediates board-meeting conflicts far better than he cures madness, the man who now pads down this murky, stone hallway- these Ronald Adlers are paralyzed by the sound of his own gritty footsteps.

Please, don’t let me die.

His office now seems miles away, and he gazes at the white trapezoid of light falling onto the concrete from his open doorway. He continues on, passing one of the arterial corridors, and exhales a fast astonished laugh at his inability to turn and look down it. If he does he will see a Technicolor film clip of Michael Hrubek reaching into Adler’s mouth. The hospital director cannot purge from his thoughts the passages of Hrubek’s transcripts he read earlier in the evening. He recalls in particular detail the patient’s lively discussion of locating and rupturing a spleen.

Enough. Please!

Adler passes by the corridor safely but a new worry intrudes-that he’ll lose control of his bladder. He’s insanely furious at his wife-for gripping his cock earlier in the evening and unwittingly putting in mind the now-consuming fear of incontinence. He must urinate. He absolutely must. But the men’s room is a lengthy way down the corridor he now approaches. The restrooms are dark this time of night. He considers pissing against the wall.