Praying for Sleep (27 page)

"Fifteen minutes, I'll be on my way," he announced! "Are you there yet?"

"We just got here. I'm at the gift store."

"Oh" — Owen laughed — "get me one of those little pine outhouses. I'll give it to Charlie for making me come in today."

She was irritated but agreed to, and they hung up. Lis went into the store to buy the souvenir. When she stepped outside a moment later and rejoined the others at the entrance to the park, she glanced over her shoulder. She believed she saw the man staring again, studying the five of them. She was so startled she dropped the wooden outhouse. When she picked it up and looked back again, whoever it might have been was gone.

Kohler asked her about the others on the picnic.

"Robert and Dorothy? We met them at the club about a year ago."

The foursome had coincidentally picked adjacent pool-side tables. They became friends by default, being about the only childless couples over thirty in the place. This mutual freedom broke the ice and they gradually got to know each other.

Owen and Lis were initially no match socially for their friends. Not yet inheritors of the L'Auberget fortune, the Atchesons lived in a small split-level in Hanbury, a grim industrial town ten miles west of Ridgeton. In fact the country-club membership itself, which Owen had insisted on so that he might court potential clients, was far too expensive for them, and many nights they'd eaten sandwiches or soup for dinner because they had virtually no cash in the bank. Robert, on the other hand, made buckets of money selling hotel communications systems.

Owen, a lawyer in a small firm with small clients, masked his chagrin under careful smiles but Lis could see bitter jealousy when the Gillespies pulled up in front of the Atchesons' tacky house in Robert's new forest-green Jag or Dorothy's Merc.

There was the matter of temperament too: Robert had lived in Pacific Heights and on Michigan Avenue, and spent several years in Europe. ("No, no, I kid you not! It was
Tourette sur Loup
. Ever hear of it? A medieval city in the mountains northwest of Nice, and what do we find in the town square? A cross-dressing festival. Really! Tell 'em, Dot!")

He seemed ten years younger than his forty-one and you couldn't help but feel the tug of his boyish enthusiasm. With Robert, all the world was a sales prospect and you willingly let yourself be hawked. Owen had more substance but he was quiet and had his temper too. He didn't like taking second place to a handsome, wealthy charmer who resembled JFK in both appearance and charisma.

But then last March, when Ruth died, the Atchesons became wealthy. This had little effect on Lis, who'd grown up with money, but it transformed Owen.

For her part Lis too had felt some reservations about the foursome. Her discomfort, though, lay mostly with Dorothy.

Dorothy, with the voice of a high-school cheerleader. With the perfect figure — and the clothes to showcase it. With a round, Middle Eastern face, and dark eyes always flawlessly made up.

Lis could honestly say though that she felt more pique than jealousy. It was mostly Dorothy's fawning that irritated her. The way she'd stop whatever she was doing to run errands for her husband, or errands she thought he'd want done. Robert seemed embarrassed by this excessive obeisance, which always seemed put-on, calculated, and Lis silently played the woman's game of spouse sniping, concluding that what Robert really needed in a mate was a partner, not this little geisha, even one decked out with world-class boobs.

Yet when it was clear that they'd never be close friends, the reservations Lis felt about the woman faded. She grew more tolerant and even asked for Dorothy's advice on makeup and clothes (about which she was a generous wellspring of data). They never became sisterly but Dorothy was someone to whom Lis could confide sins down to, say, the fourth level of hell.

It had been Dorothy, Lis recalled, who'd heard that the weather the next Sunday was supposed to be particularly beautiful and had suggested the picnic.

"And who was Claire?"

Eighteen years old, the girl had been in Lis's English class her sophomore year. She was intensely shy, with a pale, heart-shaped face. "She was somebody," Lis explained, "you hoped wouldn't become too beautiful because it seemed there was no way she could handle the attention."

But beautiful she was. Seeing her on the first day of class, several years ago, Lis was struck immediately by the girl's ethereal face, still eyes and long, delicate fingers. Teachers peg students instantly, and Lis had felt an immediate fondness for Claire. She'd made an effort to stay in touch as the girl made her way through her junior then senior years. Lis rarely singled out any youngsters from school; only on one or two other occasions had she maintained relationships with students, or former students, outside of class. She generally kept her distance, aware of, the power she had over these young people. When she wore light-colored blouses she noticed boys' eyes lose control and dart across her chest while their cheeks grew red and their penises, she supposed, irrepressibly hard. The shy and unattractive girls worshipped her; those in the inner clique were disdaining and jealous — for no reason other than that Lis was a woman, and they were not quite. She handled all of these feelings with consummate dignity and care, and usually kept home and classroom absolutely separate.

But she made an exception for Claire. The girl's mother was a drunk and the woman's boyfriend had served time for sexual abuse of a stepchild in a prior marriage. When Lis learned Claire's history, she began letting the girl into her life in small ways — occasionally asking her to help in her greenhouse or to attend Sunday-afternoon brunches. Lis knew this attraction to the girl had an enigmatic, almost a dangerous, side — the time, for instance, that Claire had stayed after class to discuss a book report. Lis noticed a tangle in the girl's shimmery blond strands and with her own brush began working it out. Suddenly, she realized: teacher-student contact, with the door closed Lis virtually leapt from her chair, away from the startled girl, and vowed to be more circumspect.

Still, over the past two years, they'd seen each other often, and when Claire mentioned wistfully on the Friday before the picnic that her mother would be away all Sunday, Lis didn't hesitate to invite her along.

That May the picnickers set up camp on Rocky Point Beach. Portia left immediately for a run — an improvised 10K through the winding canyons. She runs marathons, Lis told Kohler.

"So do I," the doctor said.

Lis laughed, astonished, as ever, that people actually engaged in this sport for fun.

"We sat on the beach for a while, Dorothy, Robert, Claire and I. Watching the boats. You know, just chatting and drinking soda and beer."

They had been there for about a half hour when Dorothy and Robert began to argue.

Dorothy had left Lis's book in the truck. "
Hamlet
" she explained. She'd been preparing for final exams and had carted along a well-read and annotated volume. "I had my hands full with picnic things and Dorothy said she'd get the book. But it had slipped her mind." Lis had told her not to worry; she wasn't in the mood to work anyway. But Robert leapt up and said he'd get it. Then Dorothy made some sour comment about his doing anything for anybody in a skirt. It was supposed to be a joke, Lis supposed, but it fell flat — since she'd managed to insult both Lis and Robert at the same time.

"Robert asked her what she meant by that. Dorothy waved her hand and said, 'Just go get the fucking book, why don't you?' Something like that. Then she told him he ought to jog all the way to the parking lot. 'Work off some of that fat. Look, he's getting tits.'"

Lis was embarrassed for Claire's sake. Robert jogged off angrily and Dorothy sullenly returned to her magazine.

Lis had pulled off her shorts and unbuttoned her work-shirt, beneath which she wore a bikini. She lay back on a warm rock and closed her eyes, trying not to go to sleep (daytime naps are taboo for insomniacs). Claire, with whom Robert had struck up an immediate friendship en route to the beach, had seemed the most anxious of anyone for him to return. After he'd been gone a half hour, she stood and said she was going to look for him. Lis had watched the girl as she strolled toward the towering, weathered rocks. Repulsive and fascinating, the cliffs seemed hard as polished bone. They reminded her of the yellow skull sitting on the lab table in the school's biology classroom.

Lis noticed Claire standing in the mouth of the canyon about a quarter mile from the beach. Then she vanished.

"And I thought suddenly," Lis told Kohler, "where is everyone? What's going on? I felt very concerned. I picked up my purse and started toward the place where I'd seen Claire disappear." Then she saw a flash of color ahead of her. She believed it was yellow, the color of Claire's shorts, and leaving Dorothy behind she hurried into the canyon. Lis was perhaps a hundred yards into the ravine when she found the blood.

"Blood?"

It was right outside a cave. The entrance had been chained off at one time but the post holding the chain had been pulled out of the ground and flung aside. No way, she thought, was she going inside. But she knelt down and looked into the passageway. The air was chill and it smelled of wet stone and clay and mold.

Then she felt a shadow over her. A huge man appeared just feet away, standing behind her.

"Michael?" Kohler asked.

Lis nodded.

Hrubek started howling like an animal. Holding a bloody rock, he looked right at her and screamed, "
Sic semper tyrannis!
"

Richard Kohler held up a thin hand, indicating for her to wait. He made his first notation of the evening.

"You didn't think of going to find a park ranger?" Kohler asked.

Lis suddenly grew angry. Why had he asked her this? It was the sort of question the lawyers had asked, and the police. Did I think of looking for a ranger? Well, for God's sake, wouldn't we always do it differently if we could? Wouldn't we recast our whole lives! That's why time doesn't reverse, of course — to keep us sane.

"I thought about it, yes. But I don't know, I just panicked. I ran into the cave."

Inside, it wasn't completely dark. Thirty, forty feet above her, shafts of pale light streamed inside.

The walls rose straight up to an arched roof full of stalactites. Lis, breathless and frightened, leaned against a wall to steady herself. A high-pitched moaning of some sort filled the air. It was like wind over a reed, like someone imitating an oboe. Terrible! She looked at the trail at her feet and saw more blood.

Then Hrubek slipped through the cave opening. Lis turned and raced down the path. No idea where she was going, not really thinking, she simply ran. Once out of the main chamber she fled down a long corridor, about eight feet high. Hrubek was somewhere behind her. As she ran she noticed the tunnel was growing smaller. By now it had shrunk to six feet, and the sides were closing in. Once she slammed into a rock, cutting her forehead and leaving a scar that still remained. By then the chamber had narrowed down to five feet and she was running crouched over. Then, four feet. Soon she was crawling.

Ahead of her the tunnel grew even smaller though on the other side of a very narrow opening it seemed to widen and grow brighter. But escaping that way would mean crawling through a tunnel that was no more than twelve or so inches high. With Hrubek right behind her.

"The thought of being, well, exposed to him like that. I mean, wearing just my swimsuit... I couldn't do it. I turned to my left and crawled through a larger entrance."

It was black, completely black, but she felt cool air circulating and assumed it was a large space. She climbed inside, feeling her way along the smooth floor. Looking back she could see the entrance — it was slightly lighter than the surrounding walls. Slowly it darkened then grew less dark again, and she heard a hissing sound. He was in this small cave with her. She lay flat on the ground and bit a finger to keep silent while she sobbed.

"You have no idea what noise is until you've been in a place like that. I was sure my heartbeat or the sound of blood in my ears would give me away. I think I could hear my own tears falling on the floor of the cave."

All the while Hrubek was shuffling around her. He passed her, no more than five feet away. Then he paused and sniffed the air and muttered, "There's a woman in here.. I can smell her pussy."

Lis ran. She couldn't bear it any longer. "I scrambled to the opening and turned back down the narrow corridor, the way I'd come. That is, I thought I did. But somehow I took a wrong turn."

In one sense it was lucky. The light was better here and the roof of the cave high. She saw discarded cigarettes and beer cans — which led her to believe she was heading toward an exit. She kept moving toward the light.

"Then I felt a breeze stirring and way up ahead I heard running water. I ran toward it as fast as I could. Then I turned the corner. That's where I found the body." She gazed through the misty windows into the yard, now filled with a blustery wind. "I didn't recognize it at first. There was too much blood."

17

Robert Gillespie lay on the cave floor.

"He was twisted like a rag doll and had a huge gash in his head. But he wasn't dead."

She'd taken Robert's hand and leaned close, urging him to keep breathing. She'd get help, she said. But then she heard footsteps. Ten feet away Hrubek stood staring at them. He was smiling cynically, muttering.

"He was talking," Lis told Kohler, "about conspirators."

Stumbling backwards Lis landed on her purse. Inside, she felt a knife. She'd packed it for the picnic, she explained, wrapping it in a paper towel and placing it in her bag so no one would reach blindly into the picnic basket and cut themselves. She pulled it out now and ripped her towel away from the blade — it was very sharp, a Chicago Cutlery, nine inches long. She pointed it at Hrubek and toll him to keep back. But he just kept walking at her, saying "
Sic semper tyrannis!
" again and again. Her nerve broke. She dropped the knife and ran.