Praying for Sleep (5 page)

"You're Pinkerton agents, you fuckers."

"No, it's me. It's Frank. You remember me, Michael. From the hospital. And you know Stu here. We're the fuckin'-A orderlies from E Ward. You know us, man. Hey..." He laughed good-naturedly. "What are you doing without any clothes on?"

"What are you doing hiding in yours, fucker?" Hrubek retorted with a sneer.

Suddenly the reality of their mission struck Lowe with a jolt. My God, they weren't in the hospital. They weren't surrounded by fellow staffers. There was no telephone here, no psychiatric nurses nearby with two hundred milligrams of phenobarb. He grew weak with fear and when Hrubek gave a shout and fled up the valley, Jessup not far behind, Lowe remained where he was.

"Frank, hold up!" Lowe called. But Jessup didn't wait, and reluctantly Lowe too started after the huge blue-white monster, who was leaping along the trail. Hrubek's voice echoed in the damp valley, begging not to be shot or tortured. Lowe caught up with Jessup and they ran side by side.

The orderlies crashed through the undergrowth, swinging their truncheons like machetes. Jessup panted, "Jesus, on these rocks! How can he ran on these rocks?" A memory suddenly came to Lowe — the image of Hrubek standing behind the hospital's main building, his shoes around his neck, walking barefoot on gravel, over and over, muttering as if speaking to his feet and encouraging them to toughen up. That had been just last week.

"Frank," Lowe wheezed, "there's something funny about this. We oughta —"

And then they were flying.

Sailing through the black air. Trees and rocks tumbling upside down, over and over. With identical screams they plunged into the ravine that Hrubek had easily leapt over.

The orderlies smacked against the rocks and branches on their way down and their spinning bodies slammed into the ground with vicious jolts. An icy cold began to radiate through Lowe's thigh and arm. They lay motionless in the gray ooze of the mud.

Jessup tasted blood. Lowe examined his bent fingers, attention to which flagged when he wiped the mud from his forearm and found that it wasn't mud at all but a wide, foot-long scrape where skin used to be. "Cocksucker," he wailed, "I'm gonna hurt that asshole bad, it's the last thing I do. Oh, shit. I'm bleeding to death. Oh, shit..." Lowe rolled into a sitting position and pressed the scrape, feeling in horror his own hot, torn flesh. Jessup was content to lie unmoving in the methane-scented mud and breathe a few cubic centimeters of air, the most his stunned lungs would accept. He gasped wetly. After a moment he was able to whisper, "I think —"

Lowe never found out what was on Jessup's mind because at that moment Hrubek strode into the middle of the ravine. He casually bent down, pushing Stuart Lowe aside, and plucked the men's tear-gas canisters from their belts, flinging them deep into the woods. He turned abruptly back to Lowe, who looked up into Hrubek's leering face and began to scream.

"Stop that!" Hrubek screamed in return. "Stop that noise!"

Lowe did, and using the advantage of Hrubek's own panic scrabbled away. Jessup's eyes closed and he began muttering incoherently. Lowe lifted the truncheon.

"You're from Pinkerton," Hrubek barked. "Pink-er-ton. I'm in the pink, Mr. Fuckin'-A Orderly. Your arm looks pretty pink and tend-er. Nice try, but you shouldn't've come after me — I've got a death to at-tend to."

The rubber stick in Lowe's hand remained poised for a moment then with a gushing sound landed in the mud at his feet. He took off, running blindly through the woods, his courage suddenly as flimsy as the grass and saplings that bent beneath his pounding feet.

"Oh, don't leave me, Stu," Jessup cried into the mud at his lips. "I don't want to die alone."

Hrubek watched the disappearing form of Stuart Lowe then knelt on top of Jessup, pushing his head further into the ground. The orderly tasted dirt and grass, the flavor of which reminded him of his childhood. He began to cry.

"You dumb fucker," Hrubek said. Then he raged, "And I can't wear your clothes either." He poked sharply at the stitched label, Marsden State Mental Health Facility, on Jessup's jumpsuit. "What good are you?" He began to sing, "'Good night, ladies, good night, ladies, I'm going to see you cry...'"

"Will you let me go, please, Michael?"

"You found me out, and what I'm doing has to be a surprise. 'Good night, laaaaaaadies, I'm going to see you die!'"

"I won't tell nobody, Michael. Please let me go. Oh, please. I got a wife."

"Oh, is she pret-ty? Do you fuck her often? Do you fuck her in unpleasant ways? Say, what's her address?"

"Please, Michael..."

"Sorry," Hrubek whispered and leaned down. The orderly's scream was very loud and very brief.

To Michael Hrubek's unbounded pleasure, it set in flight an exquisite owl, curiously golden in the ravine's blue light, which soared from a nearby oak tree and passed not five feet from the huge man's astounded face.

... repeating, the National Weather Service has issued an emergency storm warning for residents of Marsden, Cooper and Mahican counties. Winds in excess of eighty miles an hour, tornadoes and severe flooding in low-lying areas are expected. The Marsden River is already at flood level and expected to rise at least three more feet, cresting around one or two a.m. We'll bring you bulletins as more information is available..."

Portia found them in the den, leaning over the teak stereo cabinet, both grim.

Classical music resumed and Owen shut the radio off.

Portia asked what the problem was.

"Storm." He turned to look out the window. "The Marsden — it's one of the rivers that feed the lake."

"We were getting estimates on building up the shoreline," Lis said. "But we didn't think there'd be any flooding till the spring."

Lis left the den and walked into the large greenhouse, looking up at the sky, murky but still placid.

Her sister saw her troubled face and glanced at Owen.

"There's no foundation," he explained to her. "The greenhouse. Your parents built it right on the ground. If the yard floods —"

"It'll be the first to go," Lis said. Not to mention, she thought, what the fifty-foot oak tree, hovering overhead, might do to the thin glass panes of the greenhouse roof. She glanced at the brick wall beside her and absently straightened a stone gargoyle, who grinned mischievously as he stuck out his long, curly tongue. "Damn," she whispered.

"Are you sure it'll flood?" Portia asked. She sounded irritated — because, Lis supposed, her escape from the L'Auberget manse tonight was looking complicated.

"If it goes up three feet," Lis said, "it'll flood. It'll come right into the yard. It happened in the sixties, remember? Washed away the old porch. That was right here. Where we're standing."

Portia said she didn't recall.

Lis looked at the windows again, wishing they had time to put plywood on the roof and sides. They'd be lucky to build up the lakefront by two feet and tape half the windows before the storm hit. "So," she said, sighing, "we tape and sandbag."

Owen nodded.

Lis turned to her sister. "Portia, could I ask you to stay?"

The young woman said nothing. She seemed less irritated than daunted by a conspiracy to keep her there.

"We could really use your help."

Owen looked from one sister to the other, frowning.

"Weren't you going to stay for a few days?"

"I'm really supposed to get back tonight."

Supposed? Lis wondered. And who had dictated that? The hard-times boyfriend? "I'll take you to the station tomorrow. First thing. You won't miss more than an hour of work."

Portia nodded. "Okay."

"Listen," Lis said sincerely, "I appreciate this."

She hurried outside to the garage, giving a short, silent prayer of thanks for the weather that would keep her sister here at least for the night. Suddenly, however, this benediction struck Lis as a token of bad luck and superstitiously she retracted it. She then went to work assembling shovels tape and burlap bags.

4

"Three in two years." The tall man in the smart gray uniform rubbed his matching gray mustache and added, "They run away from you all here lickety-split."

Dr. Ronald Adler fiddled with his waistband. With a monumental sigh meant to put himself on the offensive he said, "Aren't there more valuable ways to use this time, Captain? Don? I'll bet there are."

The state trooper chuckled. "How come you didn't report it?"

"We reported Callaghan's, uhm, death," Adler said.

"You know what I'm saying, doctor."

"I thought we could get him back without any fuss."

"How exactly? By one orderly getting his arm exorcised around backwards and the other one crapping in his jumpsuit?"

"He is not essentially a dangerous man," Peter Grimes offered, incidentally reminding both Adler and the state trooper that he was in the room, a fact they had forgotten.

"Any competent staff member would've handled it differently. They were playing cowboy. They fell off the cliff and were injured."

"Fell. Uhm. You boys here tried a cover-up and that don't sit well with me."

"There's nothing to cover up. I don't call you every time Joe Patient wanders off the grounds."

"Don't go scratching me between the ears, Adler."

"We almost got him."

"Butcha didn't. Now what's he look like?"

"He's big," Grimes began before his voice froze in fear of careless adjectives.

"How the hell big? Come on, gemmuns. Time's awasting."

Adler gave the description then added, "He shaved his head and dyed his face blue. Don't ask, he just did. He has brown eyes, a wide face, dirty teeth, and he's twenty-seven years old."

Captain Don Haversham, a man twice Hrubek's age, jotted notes in even script. "Okay, we got a couple cars headed up to Stinson. I see that doesn't appeal to you, Adler, but it's gotta be done. Now tell me, how dangerous? Will he come jumping outta trees?"

"No, no," the director said, glancing at Grimes, who poked into his mushroom crown of black hair. Adler continued, "Hrubek, he's like — what would you say? — a big lovable dog. This escape, he's playing a game."

"Woof, woof," the captain said. "Seem to recall he was the one involved in that Indian Leap thing. That's not lovable, and that's not a dog."

Then why, Adler inquired, did the captain ask his opinion if the trooper'd already diagnosed Hrubek?

"I want to know if he's still dangerous after he's been in the care of you sawbones all these four months. I'd guess he is, though, what with that fellow you got on the slab tonight. Tell me, Hrubek, he taking his pills like a good boy?"

"Yes, he is," Adler said quickly. "But wait a minute. Callaghan was probably a suicide."

"Suicide?"

Grimes again looked toward his boss and tried to match round words and square facts.

"The coroner'll tell us for sure," Adler continued.

"I'm sure he will," Haversham said cheerfully. "Kind of a coincidence though, wouldn't you say? This Callaghan kills himself then your cuddle puppy Hrubek ske-daddles in his body bag?"

"Uhm." Adler pictured locking Haversham into the old hose room with Billie Lind Prescott, who would, off his Stelazine, masturbate while howling at the top of his lungs for hour after hour after hour.

Grimes said, "The thing is..." and, as both men turned to him, stopped speaking.

Adler filled the void, "Young Peter was going to say that in the months Hrubek's been with us he's been a model patient. He sits quietly, doesn't bother anyone."

"He's like a vegetable."

A wet laugh burst from Haversham's throat. He said to Grimes, "Vegetable? Was a dog a minute ago. Must be getting worse. Tell me now, what kind of crazy is he exactly?"

"He's a paranoid schizophrenic."

"Schizo? Split personality? I seen that flick."

"No, not multiple personalities. Schizophrenic. It means he has delusions and can't cope with anxiety and stress."

"He stupid? A retard?"

The professional in Adler bristled at the word but he remained placid. "No. He's got a medium to high IQ. But he's not calculating."

The captain snickered. "He'd have to be kinda sorta calculating, wouldn't you think? To get clean away from a hospital for the criminally insane."

Adler's lips vanished momentarily as he turned them inward in contemplation. The taste of his wife returned and he wondered if he'd get an erection. He didn't, and he said to Haversham, "The escape was the fault of the orderlies. They'll be disciplined."

"Seems to me, they have been. At least the one with the broken arm."

"Listen, Don, can we do this one quietly?"

The captain grinned. "Why, scared of a little publicity, Mr. Three in Two Years?"

Adler paused then spoke in a low voice that barely broke above the ghostly wail that still rilled the halls. "Now, listen to me, Captain. You quit jerking my chain. I've got close to a thousand of the most unfortunate people in the Northeast in my care and money to treat about one-quarter of 'em. I can —"

"All right now."

"— I can make some of their lives better and I can protect the general populace from them. I'm doing the fucking best I can with the fucking money I've got. Don't tell me that you haven't had troopers cut back too."

"Well, I have. That's a fact."

"If this escape becomes a big deal some prick of a reporter's going to run with it and then maybe there goes more money or maybe the state'll even look into closing down this place."

Adler's arm swept toward the wards filled with his hapless charges — some asleep, some plotting, some howling, some floating through nightmares of madness or perhaps even dreaming dreams of sanity. "If that happens then half those people'll be wandering around outside and they're going to be your problem, not mine."

"Simmer down now, doc." Haversham, whose law-enforcement career like most senior officers' was informed more by his skills at self-preservation than detection, said, "Tell me the God's truth. You say a low-security patient wandered away, that's what I'll go with. But you tell me he's dangerous, it'll be a whole different ball game. What's it gonna be?"