Jeffery Deaver - Praying for Sleep

I don’t want to die.

He hears footsteps. No, yes? Whose are they?

The ghosts of one woman and two troopers.

What’s that sound ›

Hah, they’re his own feet. Or perhaps not. He pictures the urinal. He turns toward it and begins to walk through the dim hall, and as he does a thought comes to mind: that Michael Hrubek’s escape tugs at everything he’s ever done wrong as a doctor. The escape is the crib sheets that accompanied him into organic-chemistry exams, it’s the charts he misplaced, the misprescribed medications, the aneurysms he forgot to inquire about before dispensing large dosages of Nardil. The madman’s escape is like lifting a twenty-pound line and watching rise from a murky pond some diseased fish snagged by your hook, bloated and near death-a prize you regret ever seeking, a token you wish would forever go away.

“Listen to me, you son of a bitch,” Haversham growled, after he hung up the telephone. His audience-the hospital director and a glazed-eyed Peter Grimes-stared at him numbly. A grating rain fell heavily on the windows of Adler’s office. The wind screamed.

“We just got ourselves another notice,” Haversham continued. “This one’s from Ridgeton. Seems there’s a report somebody crashed into a truck and drove it off the road. Both drivers disappeared into the woods. The truck got hit was registered to Owen Atcheson.”

“Owen-?”

“The husband of that woman testified against Hrubek. The fellow who was here before.”

So now, maybe four dead.

“They know for a fact it was Hrubek who did it?”

“They think. They don’t know. That’s what we need you for.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Adler muttered. He touched his eyes and pushed until he heard soft pops of pressure beneath the lids. “Four dead,” he whispered.

“It’s up to you, Doc. We need to know where to put our resources.”

What was he talking about? Resources?

“No cuddly-pup psychocrap. I want a straight answer. We’ve had two reports-Boyleston and Amtrak, or Ridgeton and that woman testified against him. Where’s he headed?”

Adler gazed at him blankly.

“I think they want to know where to send their men, sir,” Grimes explained delicately.

“That’s the problem, yeah. Two reports. They don’t jibe. Nobody knows jack shit for certain.”

Adler looked from his assistant to the tall cowboy of a trooper and thought: Sleep deprivation, that’s my problem. “Well, the Ridgeton sheriff has men he can send, doesn’t he?”

“Sure he does. Only they got but four in the whole of the department. They sent somebody out to the house so the woman’s safe. But I need to know where to deploy. We gotta catch this boy! I got four Tactical Services troopers ready to go. The rest of the men won’t be available for close to an hour. Where should I send the van? It’s your call.”

“ Me? I don’t know the facts,” Adler blurted. “I need facts. I mean, are they sure Hrubek hit Atcheson? Where did he get a car? Was he actually sighted on the motorcycle? We can’t decide anything until we know that. And-”

“You’ve got all the facts there are,” Haversham muttered, gazing steel-eyed at the doctor. “This boy’s been in your care here for four months. Whatever you know about him is all you got to go on.”

“Ask Dick Kohler. He’s Hrubek’s doctor.”

“We would. But we don’t know where he is and he ain’t answering his pager.”

Adler looked up as if to ask, Why me? He leaned forward and pressed his palms together. He chewed compulsively on a red index finger.

Boyleston…

The doctor’s finger left his mouth and traced along the same map on which earlier in the evening he had plotted Michael Hrubek’s capture and Richard Kohler’s downfall.

Ridgeton…

Suddenly his face began to bristle, and nothing in this mad universe was as important to Dr. Ronald Adler as capturing his errant patient. Capturing him alive if possible but if not then putting him on a slab with his meaty toe tagged for burial in potter’s field, lying cold and blue and still.

Oh, let this night be over, he prayed. Let me slip back home and lie against the hot breasts of my wife, let me find sleep under the thick comforters, let this night end with no more deaths.

Adler ripped open Hrubek’s file and leafed frantically through the sheets. They spun out and scattered on his desk. He began to read.

Hrubek, Adler considered, displays classic paranoid-schizophrenic symptoms-thought content illogical, flights of ideas, loose association, pressure of speech and increased motor activities typical of manic episodes, blunted and inappropriate affect…

“No, no, no!” Adler spat out in a whisper, garnering troubled glances from the two men nearby. What, he raged to himself, do these words mean ? What is Hrubek doing ? What is driving him?

Who is Michael Hrubek?

Adler spun his desk chair and gazed out the rain-spattered window.

Item: Hrubek suffers from auditory hallucinations and his speech is a typical schizophrenic’s word salad. He might have told that truck driver, “Boston,” meaning to say, “Boyleston.”

Item: Revenge, the purported reason for going to Ridgeton, is a common element of paranoid-schizophrenic delusions.

Item: A schizophrenic would shun the circuitous path of getting to Boyleston via Cloverton.

Item: Amtrak runs through Boyleston. Train travel has a far lower stress factor than air travel, and accordingly would be preferred by a psychotic.

Item: Despite being off Thorazine, he is driving a vehicle. Thus Hrubek has, through will or miracle, tamed his anxiety and might make the more arduous and complicated journey south to Boyleston rather than the logistically simpler trip to Ridgeton.

Item: With all his tricks tonight, his false clues and cleverness, Hrubek was displaying astonishing cognitive functionality. He could easily be setting up a feint to Ridgeton, intending all along to go to Boyleston.

Item: But on the other hand he might be so high-functioning that he was double-feinting-appearing to head for Ridgeton when that town was in fact his destination.

Item: He’s capable of unmotivated murder.

Item: Some of his delusions have to do with United States history, politics and government agencies. And several times in his therapy sessions he mentioned Washington, D.C.-a place he could get to via Amtrak.

Item: He has a hatred of women, and he has a rape conviction. He threatened the Atcheson woman several months ago.

Item: He has a fear of confrontation.

Item: He cheeked his medicine, in anticipation of this evening, indicating a long-thought-out plot.

Item… Item… Item…

A thousand facts cascaded though the doctor’s sumptuous mind. Dosages of Haldol and Stelazine, intake-interview observations, milieu-therapy encounters, verbatims of his delusional ramblings, psychopharmacologists’ and social workers’ reports… Adler spun back to confront the files, spearing some sheets of paper beneath his narrow fingers and clutching others randomly. He looked at a page of transcript but he saw instead Michael Hrubek’s face-eyes that revealed no ebullience or lethargy, no affection or contempt, no trust or doubt.

Adler sat very still for a moment. Suddenly, he looked up at the lined, exhausted face of the state trooper and spoke what he devoutly believed to be the truth. “Hrubek’s making for the train station. He’s going to Washington, D.C. Send your troopers to Boyleston. Now!”

The two sisters went about their tasks, combing the house, shutting out lights. They walked in silence, jumping at the noise when there was thunder and at the shadows when there was not. Finally, the house was lit only by ambient light from outside and a few blue up-lamps in the greenhouse, which Lis had left on for the comfort of the faint illumination; she reckoned they’d be invisible from the outside. Shadows fluttered on the walls and floors. Together, they returned to the kitchen and sat side by side on a bench, facing an army of pine and birch trees through the rain-swept backyard.