Adler walks five paces. Again he stops--on the pretext of flipping through a file he carries.
It is at this moment that he is struck by the sudden awareness that Michael Hrubek has returned to kill him.
That there's no logic to this mission doesn't lessen Adler's growing panic one bit. He gasps as the elevator, summoned from below, grinds downward. He hears a patient somewhere utter a guttural moan of infinite, inexpressible sorrow. As this sound strokes his neck, he places one foot before the other and doggedly starts walking.
No, no--Michael Hrubek has no need to kill him. Michael Hrubek doesn't even know him personally. Michael Hrubek couldn't have made the journey back to the hospital in this short time, even if he did feel like eviscerating the director.
Dr. Ronald Adler the veteran of the state mental-health-hospital system, Dr. Ronald Adler the fair-tomiddlin' graduate of a provincial medical school--these Dr. Ronald Adlers believe that he's probably safe.
Yet the man whose head was entwined between his wife's fragrant legs earlier in the night, the man who mediates board-meeting conflicts far better than he cures madness, the man who now pads down this murky, stone hallway--these Ronald Adlers are paralyzed by the sound of his own gritty footsteps.
Please, don't let me die.
His office now seems miles away, and he gazes at the white trapezoid of light falling onto the concrete from his open doorway. He continues on, passing one of the arterial corridors, and exhales a fast astonished laugh at his inability to turn and look down it. If he does he will see a Technicolor film clip of Michael Hrubek reaching into Adler's mouth. The hospital director cannot purge from his thoughts the passages of Hrubek's transcripts he read earlier in the evening. He recalls in particular detail the patient's lively discussion of locating and rupturing a spleen.
Enough. Please!
Adler passes by the corridor safely but a new worry intrudes--that he'll lose control of his bladder. He's insanely furious at his wife--for gripping his cock earlier in the evening and unwittingly putting in mind the now-consuming fear of incontinence. He must urinate. He absolutely must. But the men's room is a lengthy way down the corridor he now approaches. The restrooms are dark this time of night. He considers pissing against the wall.
I don't want to die.
He hears footsteps. No, yes? Whose are they?
The ghosts of one woman and two troopers.
What's that sound>
Hah, they're his own feet. Or perhaps not. He pictures the urinal. He turns toward it and begins to walk through the dim hall, and as he does a thought comes to mind: that Michael Hrubek's escape tugs at everything he's ever done wrong as a doctor. The escape is the crib sheets that accompanied him into organic-chemistry exams, it's the charts he misplaced, the misprescribed medications, the aneurysms he forgot to inquire about before dispensing large dosages of Nardil. The madman's escape is like lifting a twenty-pound line and watching rise from a murky pond some diseased fish snagged by your hook, bloated and near death--a prize you regret ever seeking, a token you wish would forever go away.
"Listen to me, you son of a bitch," Haversham growled, after he hung up the telephone. His audience--the hospital director and a glazed-eyed Peter Grimes--stared at him numbly. A grating rain fell heavily on the windows of Adler's office. The wind screamed.
"We just got ourselves another notice," Haversham continued. "This one's from Ridgeton. Seems there's a report somebody crashed into a truck and drove it off the road. Both drivers disappeared into the woods. The truck got hit was registered to Owen Atcheson."
"Owen--?"
"The husband of that woman testified against Hrubek. The fellow who was here before."
So now, maybe four dead.
"They know for a fact it was Hrubek who did it?"
"They think. They don't know. That's what we need you for."
"Oh, Jesus," Adler muttered. He touched his eyes and pushed until he heard soft pops of pressure beneath the lids. "Four dead," he whispered.
"It's up to you, Doc. We need to know where to put our resources."
What was he talking about? Resources?
"No cuddly-pup psychocrap. I want a straight answer. We've had two reports--Boyleston and Amtrak, or Ridgeton and that woman testified against him. Where's he headed?"
Adler gazed at him blankly.
"I think they want to know where to send their men, sir," Grimes explained delicately.
"That's the problem, yeah. Two reports. They don't jibe. Nobody knows jack shit for certain."
Adler looked from his assistant to the tall cowboy of a trooper and thought: Sleep deprivation, that's my problem. "Well, the Ridgeton sheriff has men he can send, doesn't he?"
"Sure he does. Only they got but four in the whole of the department. They sent somebody out to the house so the woman's safe. But I need to know where to deploy. We gotta catch this boy! I got four Tactical Services troopers ready to go. The rest of the men won't be available for close to an hour. Where should I send the van? It's your call."
"Me? I don't know the facts," Adler blurted. "I need facts. I mean, are they sure Hrubek hit Atcheson? Where did he get a car? Was he actually sighted on the motorcycle? We can't decide anything until we know that. And--"
"You've got all the facts there are," Haversham muttered, gazing steel-eyed at the doctor. "This boy's been in your care here for four months. Whatever you know about him is all you got to go on."
"Ask Dick Kohler. He's Hrubek's doctor."
"We would. But we don't know where he is and he ain't answering his pager."
Adler looked up as if to ask, Why me? He leaned forward and pressed his palms together. He chewed compulsively on a red index finger.
Boyleston . . .
The doctor's finger left his mouth and traced along the same map on which earlier in the evening he had plotted Michael Hrubek's capture and Richard Kohler's downfall.
Ridgeton . . .
Suddenly his face began to bristle, and nothing in this mad universe was as important to Dr. Ronald Adler as capturing his errant patient. Capturing him alive if possible but if not then putting him on a slab with his meaty toe tagged for burial in potter's field, lying cold and blue and still.
Oh, let this night be over, he prayed. Let me slip back home and lie against the hot breasts of my wife, let me find sleep under the thick comforters, let this night end with no more deaths.
Adler ripped open Hrubek's file and leafed frantically through the sheets. They spun out and scattered on his desk. He began to read.
Hrubek, Adler considered, displays classic paranoid-schizophrenic symptoms--thought content illogical, flights of ideas, loose association, pressure of speech and increased motor activities typical of manic episodes, blunted and inappropriate affect. . . .
"No, no, no!" Adler spat out in a whisper, garnering troubled glances from the two men nearby. What, he raged to himself, do these words mean? What is Hrubek doing ? What is driving him?
Who is Michael Hrubek?
Adler spun his desk chair and gazed out the rain-spattered window.
Item: Hrubek suffers from auditory hallucinations and his speech is a typical schizophrenic's word salad. He might have told that truck driver, "Boston," meaning to say, "Boyleston."
Item: Revenge, the purported reason for going to Ridgeton, is a common element of paranoid-schizophrenic delusions.
Item: A schizophrenic would shun the circuitous path of getting to Boyleston via Cloverton.
Item: Amtrak runs through Boyleston. Train travel has a far lower stress factor than air travel, and accordingly would be preferred by a psychotic.
Item: Despite being off Thorazine, he is driving a vehicle. Thus Hrubek has, through will or miracle, tamed his anxiety and might make the more arduous and complicated journey south to Boyleston rather than the logistically simpler trip to Ridgeton.
Item: With all his tricks tonight, his false clues and cleverness, Hrubek was displaying astonishing cognitive functionality. H
e could easily be setting up a feint to Ridgeton, intending all along to go to Boyleston.
Item: But on the other hand he might be so high-functioning that he was double-feinting--appearing to head for Ridgeton when that town was in fact his destination.
Item: He's capable of unmotivated murder.
Item: Some of his delusions have to do with United States history, politics and government agencies. And several times in his therapy sessions he mentioned Washington, D.C.--a place he could get to via Amtrak.
Item: He has a hatred of women, and he has a rape conviction. He threatened the Atcheson woman several months ago.
Item: He has a fear of confrontation.
Item: He cheeked his medicine, in anticipation of this evening, indicating a long-thought-out plot.
Item . . . Item . . . Item . . .
A thousand facts cascaded though the doctor's sumptuous mind. Dosages of Haldol and Stelazine, intake-interview observations, milieu-therapy encounters, verbatims of his delusional ramblings, psychopharmacologists' and social workers' reports . . . Adler spun back to confront the files, spearing some sheets of paper beneath his narrow fingers and clutching others randomly. He looked at a page of transcript but he saw instead Michael Hrubek's face--eyes that revealed no ebullience or lethargy, no affection or contempt, no trust or doubt.
Adler sat very still for a moment. Suddenly, he looked up at the lined, exhausted face of the state trooper and spoke what he devoutly believed to be the truth. "Hrubek's making for the train station. He's going to Washington, D.C. Send your troopers to Boyleston. Now!"
The two sisters went about their tasks, combing the house, shutting out lights. They walked in silence, jumping at the noise when there was thunder and at the shadows when there was not. Finally, the house was lit only by ambient light from outside and a few blue up-lamps in the greenhouse, which Lis had left on for the comfort of the faint illumination; she reckoned they'd be invisible from the outside. Shadows fluttered on the walls and floors. Together, they returned to the kitchen and sat side by side on a bench, facing an army of pine and birch trees through the rain-swept backyard.
Five minutes of quiet passed, the rain battering the greenhouse, the wind screaming through the holes and cracks in the old house. Finally Lis was no longer able to keep from speaking. "Portia, there's something I started to tell you tonight."
"Earlier?"
"The affair," Lis whispered discreetly, as if Owen were in the next room.
"I don't know if this is the time--"
Lis touched her sister's knee. "This thing's been between us too long. I can't stand it anymore."
"What's between us? Lis, this isn't really the time to have a talk. For heaven's sake."
"I have to talk to you."
"Later."
"No, now!" Lis said heatedly. "Now! If I don't do it now, I may never."
"And why's it so important?"
"Because you have to understand why I said those terrible things to you. And I have to know something from you too. Look at me. Look!"
"Okay, you told me you were seeing somebody. So what? What does Indian Leap have to do with it?"
"Oh, Portia . . ."
Lis must have unknowingly inhaled a huge lungful of air; her chest stung suddenly and she lowered her forehead to her drawn-up knees to ease the pain. In the turbulent silence that flowed between them Lis felt the pain drift away and she lifted her head again to face her sister. As she was about to speak, a faint, not unpleasant roll of thunder filled the room and as it did Portia's eyes harrowed with understanding. She said, "Oh, no."
"Yes," Lis said. "Yes. My lover was Robert Gillespie."
28
"So how long you known the Atchesons?"
The Jeep driver had a narrow face and gray wattles running down his throat. He downshifted the old vehicle and nursed it up a hill north of downtown Ridgeton, exhaust popping and the gears in agony. The big man next to him was studying the shifting with more interest than the driver thought natural.
"Years and years I've known them," he said. "Many years."
"I know Owen," the driver said. "Talked to him a few times. We run into each other at Ace Hardware some. A decent sort. For a lawyer."
"A hundred years, I'd guess."
"Pardon me?"
"Lis-bone especially."
"I didn't think she pronounced it that way. But you know 'em better'n me, I'd guess." The Jeep bounded over a rough spot of road. "You're lucky I come by. Nobody's out on the streets tonight because of the storm. Those weathermen with their toupees and funny names, they said it's going to be a pisser of a storm but naw it's just a little rain is all it is."
The big man didn't respond.
The Jeep hissed past the intersection of Cedar Swamp and North Street and for a moment the driver thought that he saw someone turn quickly, startled by their passage, and drop over the side of a small hill near the drainage ditch. Simultaneously the sky filled with a huge sphere of lightning and shadows danced every which way. A branch fell nearby. The driver put the apparition down to a freak arrangement of lights and fog and rain. He sped up and followed the winding, uneven course of Cedar Swamp. "Shameful on the part of the county. When're they going to get around and do it up right? Put some new asphalt along here? This road's mostly mud and twigs."
"Mud and twigs," the big man fired back. "Mud and twigs."
I believe I may've made a mistake here. "What happened to your car?"
"Mud and twigs maybe, something you seem to know a lot about."
When his rider added nothing more, the driver said, "Ahn."
"She slipped out from under me on a slick road. She went and twisted. Rolled over and over."
"What about the police?"
"They're busy elsewhere. Two of them. Two young men. I was particularly sorry about them. Poor Gunderson boys. But I had no choice."
Never again, the driver thought. Never ever again, rain or no rain, cracked wrist bone or no.
The big man stared intently at the trees then with great concentration unlocked and relocked his door seven times. He asked, "You ever been in the army?"
What's the best answer to give? The driver said, "Did a tour, yessir. Was stationed in--"
"Army intelligence?"
"Nope. I was a GI."
The big man frowned. "What's that ?"
"Government Issue. A dogface. Combat infantry-man."
"A GI."
"Yessir."
"GI, GI. Gee, I wonder if you know where Abraham Lincoln was shot."
"Uhm."
"In the head. Or during a play. They're both right answers."
"I knew that, sure." Oh, brother, what've I done to myself here? "Quite a storm after all. I stand corrected. Glad I got four-wheel drive."
"Four-wheel drive," the man said. "Yes. What is that exactly? What is four-wheel drive?"
"You don't know that?" The driver blurted a laugh. "Everybody knows what four-wheel drive is." The big man turned to him with a malevolent glare and the driver rubbed the back of his hand across a stubbled cheek, adding, "That was most probably a joke."
"Nice try," the man snapped, leaning across the gearshift, placing his round face very close to the driver's. "But if somebody was away in a different country for a long time, isn't it possible that they might not know what four-wheel drive is?"
"Put that way, it's more'n possible."
"What if somebody from 1865, for instance, just showed up now? Are you saying it's not possible that they might not know what four-wheel drive is?"
"More'n possible," he repeated miserably. "You know, I'm thinking we should really stop by that hospital. Get your arm looked at."
The big man wiped his face with his stubby peasant fingers, yellow as his teeth, and then took from his pocket a blue-black pistol. He lifted it to his face and smelled it then licked the barrel.
"Ah," the driver whispered and began to pray.
"Take me to the Atchesons' place," the man bellowed. "Take me there n
ow and use all of those damn four-wheeled drivers of yours!"
Several miles up the road the driver pulled the Jeep to a stop, bladder loose and hands quivering. I'll never forgive myself for doing this to the Atchesons, he thought, but this's the way it's gotta be. "That there's the driveway."
"Nice try but I don't see the sign."
"There it is. There! Underneath that rose on the mailbox. See the name? Are you going to kill me?"
"You get out of this car and I want to make it so it won't work anymore."
"The Jeep?"
"Yes. I want to make it so it won't work."
"Okay, I can do that. Let's both get out. Only I'm asking you not to hurt me."
"You ever have a mind to go to Washington?"
"D.C. you're speaking of ?"
"Of course D.C.! Who gives a shit about Seattle?"
"No, no! Never have. I swear."
"Good. Show me how to dismember this truck."
"You take off the distributor cap and pitch it away. This thing'll never start."
"Do that."
The driver opened the blunt hood of the car and ripped the cap off. It sailed into the woods. He looked completely forlorn. The rain matted his hair and ran into the deep grooves of his face. The big man turned to him. "Now, you think I'm stupid. You're trying reverse psychology. You say you don't want to go to Washington hoping I'll say go there? Is that right?"
The man choked. "That's about right, sir."
"Well, I want you to run. You run all the way to Washington, D.C., and tell them that revenge is here."
"Are you going to shoot me in the back?"
"You tell them that."
"Are you going to--"
"RUN!"
He ran, never looking back, believing that he'd die before he got ten feet. Then before he got twenty. Then fifty. Running through the streams of rain, waiting for death. He never turned and so he never saw the big man, holding the pistol high in front of him like a nineteenth-century Pinkerton detective, stalk slowly down the driveway of gravel and mud.
Lis stared at the young woman's face. Even in the dark she could clearly see silver dots of reflection in her eyes. Yet Lis would have turned on all the lights in the kitchen, risked attracting a hundred Michael Hrubeks, to witness her sister's expression at this moment, to see if her words were lies or the truth.
"Tell me honestly, Portia. Did you know about us, Robert and me? Before you . . . made love with him."