Praying for Sleep (9 page)

The sheriff and Lis both looked at Owen, who because he was the largest person in the room and the most grave, seemed to be in charge. "What if he isn't?"

"Hell, he's on foot, Owen. The doctor said there's no way he can drive a car. And who's going to give him a ride, a big crazy like that?"

"I'm just asking you," Owen said, "what if he isn't going east. What if he changes his mind and comes here?"

"Here?" the sheriff asked and fell silent.

"I want you to put a man on the house."

"I'm sorry, Owen. No can do. We've got —"

"Stan, this is serious."

"— that storm coming up. It's supposed to be a whopper. And Fred Bertholder's in bed with the flu. Sick as a dog. Whole family has it."

"One man. Just until they catch him."

"Look, even the state boys're spread pretty thin. They're on highway detail mostly because of the —"

"Fucking storm," Owen spat out. He rarely swore in front of people he didn't know well; he considered it a sign of weakness. Lis was momentarily shocked at this lapse — not at the cussing itself but the anger that would be behind it.

"We got our priorities. Come on, don't go looking that way, Owen. I'll check in with Haversham every so often. If there's any change I'll be over here like greased lightning."

Owen walked to the window and looked out over the lake. He was either paralyzed with anger or deep in thought.

"Why don't you go to a hotel for the night?" the sheriff suggested with a cheerfulness that Lis found immensely irritating. "Hey, that way you'll get yourselves a good night's rest and not have to worry 'bout nothing."

"Good night's rest," Lis muttered. "Sure."

"Believe me, folks, you got nothing to worry about." He glanced out the window into the sky, perhaps hoping for a searing streak of lightning to justify his deployment of deputies this evening. "I'll stay on top of it, yessir." The sheriff offered a rueful smile as he stepped to the door.

Only Lis said good night.

Owen paced beside the window, gazing out to the lake. He said matter-of-factly, "I think we ought to do that. A hotel, I mean. We'll get a couple rooms at the Marsden Inn."

A quaint little bed-and-breakfast, lousy (Owen's word) with dried flowers, Shaker furniture, country wreaths and dreadfully sincere paintings of live horses, dead birds and glassy-eyed nineteenth-century children.

"Not exactly the best hideout from a crazy man, would you say?"

"It doesn't sound like he could even get halfway to Ridgeton, let alone find a hotel we're staying at... If he was inclined to find us in the first place. Besides, the Inn's only two miles from here. I don't want to have to go far tonight."

"We need to finish the dam and the taping."

Owen didn't speak for a moment. He asked in a distracted voice, "Where do you think he is?"

"I'm not leaving till we get that levee finished. The sandbags, the —"

Owen's eyes flashed. "Why are you arguing?"

Lis blinked. She'd learned to tolerate his temper. She knew it was usually misdirected. Her husband was angry now, yes, but not at her — at the sheriff. Most times she blustered right back at him. But tonight she didn't raise her voice. On the other hand she wasn't going to back down. "I'm not disagreeing. The hotel's fine. But I'm not leaving until we've got at least another foot's worth of sandbags."

His eyes again looked out onto the lake while Lis's dipped to the letter, resting on the butcher block. Lis smoothed it, then folded the paper. It made a crinkling sound and she thought for some reason of dried skin. She shivered and tossed it onto a stack of bills to be filed.

Lis pulled on her jacket. Was he going to argue, or agree? Unable to anticipate his reaction she felt her stomach twisting into a knot. Cautiously she said, "It shouldn't take more than an hour." Still he said nothing. "You think we can get enough bags piled up by then?"

Owen finally turned from the window and asked what she'd just said.

"Sandbags? Can we stack enough in an hour?"

"An hour? I'm sure we can." His serenity surprised her. "Anyway I don't think it's going to be as bad as they say. You know weathermen around here — they're always sounding false alarms."

The driver downshifted to the lowest of his thirteen gears and nudged the huge white tractor-trailer past the restaurant and into the parking area. He locked the brakes and shut off the diesel, then checked a map, spending more time than he thought normal for a smart man like himself to calculate that he'd be in Bangor by four the next afternoon.

A young man, the driver wore his Dolphins cap backwards and Nike Pumps on his feet. In the Blaupunkt was a grunge tape, backed up by a half dozen rap and hip-hop cassettes (a secret never to be shared with any blood relation). He climbed out of the cab, pausing long enough to glance in the side mirror with discouragement at the constellation of acne on his cheek, then dropped to the ground. He was halfway to the diner when the voice barked, "Hey, John Driver!"

The huge man was suddenly next to him, hovering on legs like tree trunks. The driver stopped, astonished, as he looked up into the glistening round face, the spit-flecked grin, the eyes as excited as a kid's at a ball game.

"Howdy," the driver stammered.

The big man suddenly grew awkward and seemed to look for something to say. "That's quite a machine, it is," he offered though he didn't look toward the truck but kept his eyes fixed downward on the driver.

"Uhn, thanks. You excuse me, I'm pretty beat and I'm gonna get some chow."

"Chow, chow. Sure. It's lucky seven. See. One, two, three, four, five, six..." His arm was making a circuit of the vehicles in the parking lot. "Seven." The man adjusted the wool tweed cap that was perched on his bowling ball of a head. He seemed bald and the driver wondered if he was a Nazi skinhead.

He said, "Lucky," and laughed too loud.

"Uh-oh. That's eight." The fellow was pointing to another truck just pulling into the lot. His mouth twisted up in a smirking grin. "Always some fucker who ruins it."

"That does happen. You bet." The driver decided he could outrun this bozo but was as troubled by the thought of looking like a fool in front of fellow truckers as he was of getting stomped. "Well. Yessir. G' night now." He sidled toward the diner.

The big man's eyes flashed with concern. "Wait wait wait! Are you going east, John Driver?"

The young man looked up into the murky eyes. "That's not truly my name," he said cautiously.

"I'm going to Boston. That's the home of our country. I really have to get to Boston."

"I'm sorry but I can't give you a lift. I work for —"

"A lift?" the man asked with great curiosity. "A lift?"

"Uhn, I can't give you a ride You know what I'm saying? I work for a company and they'd fire me I was to do that."

"No such luck, huh? No such luck?"

"A rule, I'm saying."

"But what am I going to do?"

"They don't like it too much you try for rides in truck stops?" This wasn't a question but he was too frightened to offer the man a declarative sentence. "You might go up the road a spell and thumb?"

"Up the road and thumb."

"Somebody might pick you up."

"Up the road and thumb. I could do that. Can I get to Boston that way?"

"That intersection up there, see the light? That's 118, turn left, that'd be north. It'll get you to the Interstate and that'll put you in Boston in no time."

"Thank you, John Driver. God bless you. Up the road and thumb."

The big man started through the lot in a muscular, awkward lope. The driver said a short prayer of thanks — both for surviving this encounter and, equally important, for ending up with a good story to tell to his fellow truckers, one that needed hardly any embellishment at all.

Peter Grimes returned to the hospital director's office and sat in a desk chair. Adler asked casually, "He did what!" as if resuming a conversation recently interrupted.

"I'm sorry?"

Adler slapped a green file folder. "The nurses' duty report. "Hrubek was authorized to be in C Ward. He had access to the grounds. He just walked right into the morgue. That's how he got there. He just strolled into the freezer. Oh, Peter, Peter, Peter... This is not good."

Adler had conceded the dankness of his office and was now wearing a beige cardigan into whose bottom buttonhole he poked his little finger.

"And I found out why," Grimes announced. "He was part of Dick Kohler's program."

"Oh, for God's sake, not the halfway house?"

"No. Restricted to the grounds here. Milieu Suite and the work program. For some reason he had a job at the farm. Milking cows, or something, I suppose." The assistant gazed out the black window toward the part of the grounds where the hospital's nonprofit farm, operated by volunteers and staffed by patients, spread for some ten acres into the rocky hills.

"Why wasn't any of this in the file?" Adler slapped the folder once again, as if disciplining a puppy.

"I think there're some other files we don't have. I don't know what happened to them. Something funny's going on."

"Did the board recommend Hrubek for the program?" Adler, as member of the Marsden Board of Directors, prayed for one particular answer to this question.

"No," Grimes said.

"Ah."

"Maybe Dick Kohler slipped him in somehow."

"'Slipped him in'?" Adler pounced. "We have to be very buttoned up about this, my friend. Did you mean that: 'slipped him in'? Think now. Think carefully."

"Well, I don't know. Hrubek was always closely supervised. It's not quite clear who okayed it. The paperwork's sketchy."

"So maybe he wasn't," Adler reflected, "'slipped in' after all? Maybe some other idiot here dropped the ball."

Grimes wondered if he was being insulted.

The hospital director breathed slowly. "Wait a moment. Kohler's not on staff. Does he have an office here?"

Grimes was surprised Adler didn't know. "Yes, he does. It's part of the arrangement with Framington. We supply facilities for the attendings."

"He's not an attending," Adler snapped.

"In a manner of speaking, he is." With the trooper absent, Grimes inexplicably felt bolder.

"I want to find out what the hell is going on here and I want to know in the next hour. Who's the E Ward resident on call?"

"I'm not exactly sure. I think —"

"Peter, you've got to get on top of this," Adler snapped. "Find out who it is and tell him to go home. Tell him to take the evening off."

"Yes. Go home. Are you sure?"

"And tell him not to talk to anyone... I'm curious about this woman..." Adler looked for a scrap of paper, found it and handed it to Grimes. "Did Hrubek ever mention her? Anybody ever mention her?"

Grimes read the name. "Mrs. Owen Atcheson? No. Who's she?"

"She was at Indian Leap. She testified against Hrubek at the trial. She claims she got a threatening letter from him last September when our little boy was playing with blocks at Gloucester. The sheriff says her husband thinks Hrubek's after her."

"Ridgeton," Grimes mused. "Forty miles west of here. Not a problem."

"Oh?" Adler turned his red eyes on the young doctor. "Good. I'm so relieved. Now tell me why you think it's quote not a problem."

Grimes swallowed and said, "Because most schizophrenics couldn't get three miles on their own, let alone forty."

"Ah," Adler said, sounding like a crotchety old Oxford don. "And with what little qualifiers, dear Grimes, did you shore up your substandard assessment?"

Grimes surrendered. He fell silent and fluffed his crinkly hair.

"A, what if he isn't on his own, doctor?" Adler barked. "What if there are co-conspirators, witting or un? And B, what if Hrubek isn't like most schizophrenics? How 'bout them apples, doctor? Now, get on it. Find out exactly how the son of a bitch got out."

Grimes had not grown so bold that he failed to say, "Yes, sir." And he said it very quickly.

"If this... Hold up a minute there. If this —" Adler gestured, unable or unwilling to give a name to the potential tragedy. "If this becomes a problem..."

"How's that?"

"Get Lowe on the phone. I need to have another little talk with him. Oh, and where's Kohler?"

"Kohler? He'll be at the halfway house tonight. He sleeps over on Sunday."

"You think he'll be in for rounds tonight?"

"No. He was here at four-thirty this morning. And after evaluations he went right to the halfway house. And he was dead on his feet then. I'm sure he's in bed now."

"Good."

"Should I call him?"

"Call him?" Adler stared at Grimes. "Doctor, really. He's the last one we want to know about this. Don't say a word to him. Not... a... word."

"I just thought —"

"No, you didn't just think. You weren't thinking at all. I mean, for God's sake, do you call up the fucking lamb and say, 'Guess what? Tomorrow's Easter'?"

7

The steam rising from the plastic cup of coffee left a foggy ellipse on the inside of the windshield.

Dr. Richard Kohler, slouching in the front seat of his fifteen-year-old BMW, yawned painfully and lifted the cup. He sipped the bitter liquid and replaced the carton on the dash slightly to the right of where it had been. He vacantly watched a new oval paint itself on the glass, overlapping the one that was now fading.

He was parked in the staff lot of Marsden State Mental Health Facility. The chunky car, half hidden under an anemic hemlock, was pointed at a small, one-story building near the hospital's main structure.

The duty nurse on E Ward, a friend and woman he used to date, had called the halfway house twenty minutes ago. She'd told Kohler about Michael's escape and warned him that Adler was stonewalling. Kohler had flushed his face with icy water, filled a thermos with coffee then run groggily to his car and driven here. He'd pulled into the parking lot and chosen this spot for his stakeout.

He now looked up at the gothic facade of the asylum and saw several lights. One of them, he supposed, was burning in the office of good Dr. Adler. The wittier orderlies called the two doctors Hatfield and McCoy and that pretty accurately described their relationship. Still, Kohler had some sympathy for the hospital director. In his five years as head of Marsden, Adler had been lighting a losing political and budgetary battle. Most of the mental hospitals had been closed, replaced by small, community-based treatment centers. But there remained a need for places to house the criminally insane as well as indigent and homeless patients.