Praying for Sleep (34 page)

"Goddamn him," Adler interjected with such vehemence that Grimes was afraid to stop reading.

"A preliminary budget of 1.7 million dollars covering the first year's financial needs for your program has provisionally approved. As agreed, funding will come from existing allocations to the state mental-health hospital system, in order to bypass the necessity of a public referendum."

But stop he did when Adler muttered "bypass" as if it were an obscenity and snatched away the sheet to read the final paragraph himself. "'This is to confirm that your proposal is conditioned upon approval by the Board of Physicians of the State Department of Mental Health, following your final presentation of the six case studies and verbatim upon which your proposal was based (Allenton, Hrubek, McMillan, Green, Yvenesky). A representative of the Board will contact you directly regarding times for presentations of those case studies...'"

Adler slammed the paper to the desk and Grimes decided that, while his fingerprint paranoia was perhaps misplaced, the hospital director should be somewhat more careful. If Kohler noticed damaged pages he might complain of suspected theft — to which, Grimes was painfully aware, there'd been a witness. A half hour before, the assistant had summoned an irritable Slavic janitor to open the door Kohler's office. Not a seasoned burglar, Grimes had neglected to send him away and had failed to notice that the squat man planted himself on the threshold to watch with amusement the young doctor's heist from start to finish.

"Our money. He's getting our money, on top of everything else! And, look at this. Look at it, Grimes. He's using our patients to fuck us! He's selling us out — our patients, our money — for his program."

Adler grabbed the phone and made a call.

As he gazed out the window, Grimes considered Kohler's scheme and he was both shocked and impressed. Kohler had used Michael Hrubek as a shining example of how his combination of drugs, delusion therapy and milieu resocialization treatment could produce dramatic improvements in chronic, dangerous schizophrenic patients. The Department of Mental Health had agreed to give Kohler a great deal of money and let him create a little fiefdom — out of Marsden hospital itself, at Adler's expense no less. But of course if Hrubek wasn't captured quietly, if {injured or killed someone, the DMH Board of Physicians would abort Kohler's plan as unworkable and dangerous. Still, it was an admirable scheme, Grimes thought, and regretted playing a part in the downfall of a talented one who probably would've been a better choice to hitch his star to — if of course Kohler's career had survived this evening. Which it surely would not.

The rain spattered the greasy windows. A huge wail of wind ended in a crash of plate glass from somewhere in the courtyard below. Several other patients had joined Patient 223-81 and a chorus of frightened wailing filled the halls. Grimes looked absently out the window and tried to avoid thinking about the effect on patients if a tornado touched down nearby.

Adler slammed down the phone and looked at him. "He's not at the halfway house. Some son of a bitch tipped him off."

"Who, Kohler?"

"He got a call a couple hours ago. He's out there. He's after Hrubek right now."

"By himself?"

"He has to go by himself. He has to get Hrubek to come like a quiet little lamb. Then he'll claim he simply walked up to him and asked him to come home. And the son of a bitch will. After Kohler hits him with a taser or a tranquilizer gun... Shit! The break-in."

"I'm sorry?" the assistant asked cautiously.

"Security said somebody broke into the pharmacy tonight."

"Right. Well, they said it was a car accident, looked like. We won't know till morning if anything's missing."

"Oh, something's missing, you can bet on it. That son of a bitch lifted a tranquilizer gun. He's going to..." Adler spat out, "Jesus, he's going to make Hrubek look like the fucking little puppy I've said he is all along. Lord."

Grimes impersonated a fish again, chewing water gently, and wondered aloud what they might do next.

"I want to be ready to pre-empt the press. If this ... He tried out several words for size before saying, "If this situation becomes critical —"

"If it's a worst case."

"Yes, if it's worst-case, we'll have to go public immediately. I want a release. Write it up —"

"A press release?"

"What else would I mean? Can you draft one up? Subject, verb. Subject, verb. That too much for you? And lets go over it, you and me. Say that, unbeknownst to staff, no say unbeknownst to administrators and officials, a private physician with privileges here gave Hrubek access to all wards, which allowed him to escape. Say 'with privileges'; don't say 'attending.' Let's confuse the morons. Then that this was in defiance —"

"Defiance?"

"— of clear instructions that any transfer of Section 403 patients must be approved by the office of the director before they go into any milieu, group, or off-ward therapy."

Instructions, yes, well, his assistant stammered. But there were no instructions to that effect, were there? Oh, it made sense, yes. There probably should be, yes. But at the moment there were none.

"The memo," Adler said impatiently. "Don't you member? The 1978 memo?"

Grimes glanced out the window. Adler was referring to a directive that required notice to the director's office of criminally insane patients could be moved into medium-or low-security wings, even temporarily — if, for instance, the showers on E Ward weren't working. While this was a rule, yes, it was observed only by the most (Grimes allowed himself the diagnosis) anal-retentive of the doctors at Marsden.

"This seems a little..." Now words evaded Assistant Grimes.

"And put a copy in here. What's the matter?"

"I just... The issue isn't really access, is it?"

"Well, what is the issue?" Adler said this with a sneer in his voice and Grimes had an urge to call him a schoolmarm, which certainly would have cost him his job faster than jokes about rape.

"Kohler doing delusion therapy. That's what set Hrubek off. That's what we can hang him with."

This was, Adler reflected, a good point. Hrubek's roaming halls near the morgue was essentially the orderlies' fault. They missed his medicine stockpile and they were careless with Callaghan's body. But Kohler's sin, as Grimes accurately pointed out, was far more serious. He had somehow awakened Hrubek's desire to escape. The means were largely irrelevant. Those fantasies ought to have been tucked away inside Hrubek, tucked away very deeply — or, better yet, behaviorially conditioned out of him. Say what you might, electrodes and food could turns rats into quite model animals. Why, witness young Grimes...

Still, the hospital director assessed, Kohler's errors would be tough to sell to the public — simple people who would want simple answers in the event that Hrubek knifed a trooper to death or raped a girl. He thanked Grimes for his insight and then added, "Let's just lay the access issue at our friend's feet, shall we? By the time it's all sorted out, he'll be everybody's whipping boy, and no one'll really care exactly what he did."

And his assistant, pleased to have been patted on the head, nodded instantly. "Don't be too specific. We have to massage the facts. Say, because of his involvement in Kohler's program Hrubek was free to get into the freezer, the morgue and the loading dock. None of the other Section 403 criminally insane have that access. That's true, isn't it?"

It was, Grimes confirmed.

"But for his involvement in the program he never would've escaped.
Sine qua non
."

"You want me to say that?"

"Well, not '
sine qua non
,' obviously. You know what I'm saying? You get the picture? And don't use Kohler's name. Not at first. Make it sound like we're concerned about, you know..."

"His reputation?"

"Good. Yes, his reputation."

The only mechanic answering the phone tonight was Roenville, about fifteen miles west on Route 236. The man chuckled and answered that sure he had a truck but it'd be four or five hours before he could get somebody over to Ridgeton.

"Already got three roads out in this part of the county alone. And my men're getting a wreck off Putnam Valley Highway. Injuries. Mess of 'em. Hell of a night. Just one hell of a night. So, you wanna go on the list?"

Lis said, "That's okay," and hung up. She then called the Ridgeton Sheriff's Department.

"Why, hello, Mrs. Atcheson," the dispatcher answered respectfully. The woman's daughter was in Lis's class; parents tended to address her as formally as their children did. "How you weatherin' the storm tonight? So to speak. It's something, isn't it?"

"We're getting by. Say, Peg, is Stan around?"

"Nup, not a soul here. Everybody's out. Even Fred Bertholder, and he's got the flu like nobody oughta have, they didn't cancel that rock concert like they oughta'. Can you believe that? A lotta youngsters got strand What a mess."

"Have you heard anything from Marsden hospital, about Hrubek?"

"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 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 off the delicate sculpture, which she then spent another 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, 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 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 hunted. 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 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 but 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 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 carefully. There! Hrubek's bootprints, 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.