Heck then asked about Owen.
"There're men out looking for him. The sheriff and another deputy."
"I'm sure he'll be okay," Heck said. "He seems to know what he's about. Was in the service, I'll bet."
"Two tours of duty," Lis said distractedly, gazing outside.
Heck, paying no attention to the sisters, dropped to his knees and began drying the dog with paper towels in a wholly absorbed, methodical way, even blotting the inside of his collar and wiping the gaps between his stubby claws. He went through the same ritual as he dried his pistol. Watching this, Lis understood immediately that Trenton Heck was both simpler and sharper than she, and she resolved to take him more seriously than she'd been inclined to.
The deputy returned and squeegeed the water from his cheeks with thick fingers.
"Stanley tells me he notified the troopers about Owen's truck. They're passing that info along to some fellow in the state police named Haversham--"
"He's in charge of the search, sure. My old boss," Trenton Heck said. He seemed not to like this news. Because, Lis supposed, he was not keen on losing or sharing his reward. He added, "He'll probably send a Tactical Services squad--"
"What's that?" the deputy asked.
"Don't you know? Like SWAT."
"No fooling?" The deputy was impressed.
Heck continued, "They'll be here in forty minutes, I'd guess. Maybe a little longer."
"Why don't they send them by helicopter?"
"Helicopter?" Heck snorted.
Lis looked past the others for a moment as a sheet of lightning canopied the sky. She felt the thunder in her chest. The deputy was asking her something but she didn't hear a word of it and when she left the room she was running. Portia stepped after her and, alarmed, called, "Lis, are you all right? What is it?"
But Lis was by then taking the stairs two at a time.
In the bedroom she found the Colt Woodsman, a thin .22 automatic pistol that Owen kept beside the bed. He'd insisted that she learn to use it and had made her fire the pistol a dozen times into a paper target tacked to a pile of rotten wood behind the garage. She'd done so, dutiful and nervous, her hand jerking unartfully with every shot. She hadn't touched it since then, perhaps three or four years ago.
She hefted the gun now and noted that, unlike rose petals, the checkered grip and metal of this long pistol left strong sensations upon her callused hands.
The pistol disappeared into her pocket. She walked slowly to the window. The immense blackness outside it--lacking any reference point--hypnotized her and drew her forward. Like a sleepwalker she approached the glass, three feet, two, compelled to find something visible on the other side of the blue-green panes--a branch, an owl, a cloud, the verdigris Pegasus weather vane atop the garage, anything that would make the darkness less infinite and permanent. Lightning lit the flooded driveway. She recalled waving goodbye to her husband. She realized with a shock that that gesture might have been the last communication between them ever, and, worse, perhaps one that he had not even seen.
She gazed into the night. Where are you, Owen? Where? Lis knew he was near. For she'd by now realized that, injured or not, he was making his way back to the house, trying to get Hrubek onto their property and complete his mission--to kill him and make it look like self-defense. They could be a mile from the house, or fifty yards away. It was only a matter of time.
Another bolt of lightning streaked from the sky and hit nearby. Lis gasped, stepping back, as the thunder rattled the badly glazed eighteenth-century panes. The storm now came forward like a wave, a wall of indifferent water a thousand feet high. It sped frantically across the lake, whose surface was oddly illuminated as if the globules of rain emitted radiation when they collided with the dark water.
A huge growl of thunder enveloped the house, finishing with a sharp whipcrack. Lis hurried downstairs. She pulled her rain slicker from a hook and said, "I'm going outside. I'm going to find my husband."
27
On April 15, 1865, Doctor Samuel A. Mudd splinted John Wilkes Booth's leg and put him to bed in one of the cots that served as a small infirmary in his home office.
Dr. Mudd had an idea who his patient was and what he'd done the night before but the doctor chose not to ride to town and report Booth to the authorities because his wife was afraid to be left alone with the eerie, feverish man and begged him not to go. Mudd got arrested as part of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln and came one vote from being hanged. He was finally released from prison but he died a ruined man.
Michael Hrubek, now reflecting on Mudd's ordeal, thought: He had a woman to thank for that. Just goes to show.
He also thought a doctor might not be a bad idea right at the moment. His wrist burned wildly; it had slammed into the steering wheel when he drove his car into the conspirator's truck. It didn't hurt much but the forearm was glossy, swollen nearly double. From fingers to elbow it was a log of flesh.
As he walked through the rain, however, he grew too excited to worry about his injuries.
For Michael Hrubek was in Oz.
The town of Ridgeton was magical to him. It was the end of his quest. It was the Promised Land and he looked at every strip of pale November grass and every rain-spattered parking meter and mailbox with respect. The storm had darkened most of downtown and the only lights were battery-driven exit and emergency signs. The red rectangles of light added to the mythic quality of the place.
Standing in a booth, he flipped through a soggy phone book and found what he sought. He recited a prayer of gratitude then turned to the map in the front of the book and located Cedar Swamp Road.
Stepping back into the rain Michael hurried north. He passed darkened businesses--a liquor store, a toy store, a pizza restaurant, a Christian Science reading room. Wait. A scientific Jesus Our Lord bless us? Jesus Cry-ist was a physic-ist. Cry-ist was a chemist. He laughed at this thought then moved on, catching ghostly images of himself in the plate-glass windows. Some of them were protected by wrinkled sheets of amber plastic. Some were painted black and were undoubtedly used for surveillance. (Michael knew all about one-way mirrors, which could be purchased for $49.95 from Redding Science Supply Company, plus shipping, no COD orders please.)
"'Good night, ladies,'" he sang as he splashed through a torrent of water in the gutters. " 'Good night, ladies . . .' "
The street ended at a three-way intersection. Michael stopped cold and his heart suddenly began to crawl with panic.
Oh, God, which way? Right or left? Cedar Swamp is one way but it is not the other. Which? Left or right?
"Which way ?" he bellowed.
Michael understood that if he turned one direction he would get to 43 Cedar Swamp Road and if he turned the other he would not. He looked at the signpost and blinked. And in the very small portion of a second it took to close and open his eyelids, his rational mind seized like an overheated engine. It simply stopped.
Explosions of fear surged through him, so intense that they were visible: black and yellow and orange sparks popped through the streets, caroming off the windows and wet sidewalks. He began a fearful keening and his jaw shook. He sank to his knees, pummeled by voices--the voices of old Abe, of the dying soldiers, of the conspirators. . . .
"Dr. Anne," he moaned, "why did you leave me? Dr. Anne! I'm so afraid. I don't know what to do! What should I do?"
Michael hugs the signpost as if it's his only source of blood and oxygen and he cries in panic, searching his pockets for the pistol. He must kill himself. He has no choice. The panic is too great. Unbearable terror cascades over him. One bullet in the head, like old Abe, and it'll all be over. He no longer cares about his quest, about betrayal, about Eve, about Lis-bone and revenge. He must end this terrible fear. The gun is here, he can feel its weight, but his hand is shaking too badly to reach into his pocket.
Finally he rips the wool and slips his hand inside the rent cloth, feeling the harsh grip of the pistol.
"I . . . can't . . . STAND . . .
IT! OH, PLEASE!"
He cocks the gun.
The brilliant light swept across his closed eyes, filling his vision with bloody illumination. A voice was speaking, saying words he couldn't hear. He relaxed his grip on the gun. His head jerked upright and Michael realized that someone was talking to him, not Dr. Anne or the deceased president of the United States or conspirators or good Dr. Mudd.
The voice was that of a scrawny man in his late fifties, sticking his face out of a car window not three feet from where Michael huddled. He apparently hadn't seen the gun, which Michael now slipped back into his pocket.
"Say, you all right, young man?"
"I . . ."
"You hurt yourself?"
"My car," he mumbled. "My car . . ."
The gray and skinny man was driving a battered old Jeep with a scabby canvas top and vinyl sheets for windows. "You had an accident? And you couldn't find a phone that worked. Sure, sure. They're mostly all out. 'Causa the storm. How bad you hurt?"
Michael breathed deeply several times. The panic diminished. "Not bad but my car's in a state. She wasn't that good. Not like the old Cadillac."
"No. Well. Come on, I'll ride you over to the hospital. You should get looked at."
"No, no, I'm fine. But I'm turned around. You know where Cedar Swamp is? Cedar Swamp Road, I mean."
"Sure I do. You live there?"
"People I'm supposed to see. I'm late. And they'll be worried."
"Well, I'll drive you over."
"You'd do that for me?"
"I think I ought to be taking you to the emergency room what with that wrist of yours."
"No, just get me to my friends. There's a doctor there. Dr. Mudd, you know him?"
"Don't believe I do, no."
"He's a good doctor."
"Well, that's good. Because that wrist is pretty surely broken."
"Give me a ride"--Michael stood up slowly--"and I'll be your friend till your dying day."
The man hesitated for an uncomfortable moment, then said, "Uh-huh . . . Well, hop in. Only mind the door. You're a tall one."
"Owen's trying to make it back here to the house," Lis explained. "I'm sure of it. And I think Hrubek's chasing him."
"Why wouldn't he just go to the station house?" the deputy asked.
"He's worried about us being here, I'm sure," Lis said. She said nothing about the real reason that Owen wouldn't go to the police.
"I don't know," the deputy said. "I mean, Stan told me--"
"Look, there's nothing to talk about," Lis said. "I'm going out there."
The deputy objected uneasily, "Well, Lis . . ."
Portia again echoed his thoughts. "Lis, there's nothing you can do."
Heck took off his pitiful baseball cap and scratched his head. When he replaced the hat, he left a forelock of curly hair dipping toward his right eye. He was studying her. "You testified at his trial?"
Lis looked back at him. "I was the chief prosecution witness."
He was nodding slowly. Finally he said, "I arrested me a fair number of men and testified at their trials. None of them ever came after me."
Lis looked into Heck's eyes, which immediately fled to an old Shaker chair. She said, "You were lucky, then, weren't you?"
"That I was. But it's pretty, you know, rare for an escapee to come after somebody. Usually they just hightail it out of the state."
He seemed to want a response but she gave none other than, "Well, Michael Hrubek probably isn't your typical escapee."
"No argument from me there." Heck didn't continue his line of thought.
Lifting the bright rain slicker from the hook by the door Lis said to her sister, "You stay here. If Owen gets back before I do, honk the horn."
Portia nodded.
"Uhn, ma'am?"
Lis glanced at Heck.
"That might make you a bit, you know, obvious, don't you think?"
"How's that?"
"The, uhn, yellow."
"Oh, I didn't think about that."
Heck lifted away the sou'wester and hung it up. Lis reached for her dark bomber jacket but Heck held up a hand. "Tell you what. I'm thinking let's don't any of us go tripping over our own tails here. I know how you feel and everything, him being your husband and all. But I'm speaking as somebody's done this sort of thing before. I get paid to track people. Let me go out there by myself. No, let me finish. I'll go out and look for your husband and if he's anywhere nearby I'll stand a chance of finding him. Probably a sight better than you. And not only, if you're wandering around out there too, it'll just distract me." His voice was taut, anticipating Lis's protest.
She guessed his essential motive was the reward. Yet what he said was true. And even if Lis happened to find her husband, she wondered how persuasive she would be in urging him to give up the hunt for Hrubek and return home. He hadn't listened to her before; why would he now?
"Okay, Trenton," Lis said.
"What I think we should do is I'll go out in the woods, toward the front gate. He could climb the fence, of course, but I'll risk that. He won't be swimming the lake, not in this wind. That's for sure."
Heck then glanced at the deputy. "I'd say you stay closer to the house. Like a second line of defense. Somewhere near here."
The deputy's interest was rekindled. He'd done his duty and what more could he say to an ornery woman of the house? Now he had allies and might see some action and glory after all. "I'll back the car into the bushes over there," he said excitedly. "How'd that be? I can see the whole of the yard and he won't catch a glimpse of me."
Heck told him that was good idea then said to Lis, "I know your husband's a hunter. Now, you might not feel too comfortable with sidearms but you think maybe you could turn one up for yourself?"
Lis took perverse glee in lifting the pistol from her pocket. She held it, muzzle down, finger outside the trigger guard--just as Owen had solemnly instructed her. Portia was appalled. The deputy guffawed. But Trenton Heck merely nodded with satisfaction as if one more item had been crossed off a checklist. "I'll leave Emil with you here. Storm's too fierce even for him. Keep him by you. He's not an attack dog but he's big and he'll make a bushel of noise if someone was to come by uninvited."
"I don't have anything darker that'll fit," Lis said, nodding at the sou'westers.
"That's okay. I'm pretty impervious to water. But I'll take a Baggie for my gun. It's an old German Walther and rusts easy."
He slipped the pistol into a bag and tied the end closed, returning the gun to his cowboy holster. He gazed outside and stretched his leg out for a moment, wincing. She supposed that whatever was wrong with his thigh wouldn't be helped by the rain. The pain seemed quite severe.
The deputy went outside to the car though not before he'd unsnapped the thong of his automatic and circled his fingers around the grip several times like a bad actor in a bad Western. Lis heard the car start. He backed into the bushes halfway between the garage and the house. He could turn on his spotlights and illuminate the entire backyard from where he was parked.
Trenton turned to her and spoke in a low voice. "You know how to use that weapon, I'll bet, but I don't suppose you ever did use it, not in a situation like this." He didn't wait for confirmation but continued, "What I'd like you to do is shut all the lights out in the house. Sit yourselves away from the windows. I'll keep my eye on the property as best I can. Flick the lights if you need me and I'll come running."
Then without a word to either woman, or his dog, he vanished into the sheets of rain. Lis closed the door behind him.
"Jesus, Lis," Portia whispered but there were so many things she might be shocked by that her sister had no idea to what she was referring.
Thoughts of his wife are long gone from Dr. Ronald Adler's mind. The way she tastes, the arc of her thigh, her skin's texture, the smell of her hair--memories that so occupied him earlier in the evening are wholly absent now.
For Captain Haversham called him not long ago with the news.
&nb
sp; "Cloverton," the trooper growled. "Hrubek just killed a woman. The lid's off it now, Doc."
"Oh, my God." Adler closed his eyes and his heart seemed to fibrillate as he was lanced with the mad thought that Hrubek had committed this crime solely for the purpose of betraying him. He held the phone in quivering hands and heard the trooper explain with ill-concealed fury how Hrubek had murdered a woman and carved her up, then stolen a motorcycle to escape to Boyleston.
"A motorcycle. Carved her up?"
"Cut words on her boobs. And two cops in Gunderson are missing. They were cruising down Route 236 and called in with a report on him. Last we heard. We're sure he's killed 'em and dumped the bodies somewhere. Low-security? Harmless? Jesus Christ, man. What were you thinking of? I'll be in your office in a half hour." The phone went dead.
Adler is now on his way back to his office from the hospital's cafeteria, where he had taken Haversham's dismaying call and where he had then sat, numb, for the next thirty minutes. But the doctor isn't making very good progress.
Alone in the dark hallway he pauses and spends a moment considering the chain reaction of miraculous physiology that's now causing his neck hair to stir, his eyes to water, and his genitals to contract alarmingly. And although he's thinking about the vagus nerve and adrenaline release and synaptic uptake, what's most salient in his mind is how fucking scared he is.
The corridor is 130 feet long. Twenty doors open off it and all but the last one--his--are closed and dark. Every other bulb in the overhead fixtures has been removed as an economy measure and of those remaining most are burnt out. Three corridors also lead off this one. They too are dark as graves.
Adler looks down the dark hallway and wonders, Why aren't I walking?
He's left the elevator alcove and he knows that Haversham is waiting impatiently in his office. Yet here the doctor stands frozen with fear. His arms are weak, his legs too. He squints away an unfunny apparition--a huge pale form that has stuck its head out of a corridor nearby and darted back into hiding.
The patient's ghostly wailing is displaced by the howl of the wind. It reverberates in Adler's chest, and he thinks, All right. Enough. Please.