Praying for Sleep (48 page)

Silence.

A fist rapped on a bottle-glass window in the far guestroom. The pane broke but she heard nothing else and guessed the windows were too high and the lattice too solid for Hrubek to climb through.

Silence again.

Then he howled and pounded on a wall, ripping cedar shakes from the side of the house.

As she scanned the rooms, her eyes fell on the basement door. My God, she thought suddenly. Owen's guns. His collection was downstairs. She'd get one of his shotguns.

Yet as she took a step toward the basement she heard a crash from outside. Then more — powerful blows that seemed to shake the foundation of the house. Wood splintered. And with a huge bellow Hrubek kicked his way through the outside basement entrance. The padlock on the door had stopped him for all of thirty seconds. His feet scraped on the concrete floor. A moment later the stairs began to creak, the stairs leading up to the hallway in which she stood. Oh, Christ.

The door to the basement was deadbolted but the fixture was thin brass, more cosmetic than substantial. She looked for something with which to wedge the door closed. Just as the knob started to turn, she lifted a heavy oak dining-room chair and shoved it into hallway, wedging the door shut.

The knob turned sharply. She leapt back, wondering if he could still shatter the door, just kick his way in. But he didn't. After a minute of playing with the knob — almost timidly — he started back down the stairs. The blanket of silence returned, broken by an eerie laughter and the sound of his feet scraping on the basement floor. He muttered words she couldn't hear. After five minutes, even these stopped. Was he still there? Would he set the house afire? What was he doing?

She heard no other sound from downstairs. Or from outside either, other than the steady patter of rain. Michael Hrubek had vanished again. Holding the knife in one hand and leading Heck's hound with the other, Lis Atcheson walked into the greenhouse and sat in a dark corner to wait.

The rain clattered like marbles on the greenhouse roof. Portia'd been gone twenty minutes. It was only eight miles or so to the Sheriff's Department but the road might now be completely impassable. It could take her an hour or more to get through. Yet as the time passed and she heard nothing more of Hrubek, she began to relax. She even let herself ponder if maybe, just maybe, he'd fled. She felt a glow of euphoria and reflected that perhaps this was all that comfort ever was: believing that we're safe despite the clear and unobvious dangers from which we're protected by nothing more than single-strength glass.

She found herself wondering about Owen. She refused to think the worst. No, no. He was fine. With so much flooding he'd probably ducked into a garage or house to wait out the worst of the storm. She looked up at the black sky above her head and uttered a short prayer for dawn — exactly the opposite of what she usually prayed for, lying in bed, trying so desperately to sleep.

A prayer for light, for morning, for rampaging red and blue and white lights atop approaching cars.

She smelled a rose, whose scent now wafted past her face. Only twenty minutes more. Or nineteen. Or fifteen. Help will be here by then. Surely Michael Hrubek was lost in the forest. Surely he'd fallen and broken his leg.

Lis scratched the dog's ears. "It's all right, your master'll be all right," she said to him as he tilted his head. Lis put her arm around the drooping shoulders. The poor thing. He was as nervous as she — his ears were quivering and his neck was a knot of muscle. Lis eased back and looked at him, the folds of skin and bored-looking eyes. His nose was in the air and his nostrils began twitching. She smiled. "You like roses too, boy? Do you?"

He stood. His shoulder muscles tensed.

An unearthly growl rumbled from deep in his throat.

"Oh, my Lord," Lis cried. "No!"

He sniffed the air hard, his legs eager, his head lifting and falling. He began to walk quickly back and forth over the floor. Lis leapt to her feet and grabbed the knife, looking around her at the misted glass of the greenhouse. She couldn't see through it. Where was he?

Where?

"Stop it," she shouted to the dog, who continued to pace, sniffing the air, growing more and more frantic. Her palms were suddenly slick with cold sweat and she wiped them and gripped the handle of the knife once again.

"Stop it! He's gone! He's not here anymore. Stop howling!" She was turning in circles, looking for an enemy only a dog could detect. The growling became a bay, a bane's wail, ricocheting off every inch of window. "Oh, please!" she begged. "Stop!" And he did.

Silently the hound spun around and ran straight to the lath-house door — the one Lis recalled she'd been on her way to check when Heck had arrived.

The door that she'd forgotten completely about. The door that now burst open and struck the hound in 'his ribs, knocking him down, stunned. Michael Hrubek stepped into the greenhouse. He stood, dripping and huge and muddy, in the center of the concrete floor. His head swiveled, taking in the gargoyles, the flowers, the mists all the details — as if he were on a garden-club tour. In his hand was the muddy pistol. Seeing Lis, he called her name in an astonished whisper and his mouth hardened into a smile — a smile that arose from neither irony nor triumph nor even mad humor, but was instead reminiscent of an expression one might find upon the faces of the dead.

31

Standing before her, he was so much larger than she remembered.

At the trial he'd seemed small, a dense bole of evil. Here, now, he filled the large greenhouse, expanding to touch every wall, the gravel floor, the peaked roof. He wiped rain from his eyes. "Lis-bone. Do you remember me?"

"Please..." she whispered. The narcotic of fear flooded through her and stilled her voice.

"I've traveled very far, Lis-bone. I fooled them all. I fooled them pretty good. Make no mistake."

She stepped back several feet.

"You told them I killed that man. R-O-B-E-R-T. Six letters in his name. You lied..."

"Don't hurt me. Please."

A fierce growling came from the hound, who was standing tall and tense behind Michael. The flesh of the dog's' mouth was drawn back from his ardent yellow teeth. Michael looked down and reached for him as if the dog were a stuffed toy. The hound dodged the hand and sank its teeth into Michael's swollen left forearm. Lis thought he'd scream in agony but the huge man seemed not to feel the bite at all. He lifted the dog by its teeth and dragged him to a large storage closet. He pulled the slavering jaw from his arm and threw the animal inside, slamming the door.

Oblivious to the gleaming razor-sharp knife in her hand Michael turned to Lis. Why bother? He can't feel pain, he's huge, he has a gun... Still, she held the knife firmly in her hand and it was pointed directly at his heart.

"Lis-bone. You were in court. You were part of that betrayal."

"I had to be in court. I had no choice. They make you be a witness. You understand that, don't you? I didn't mean any harm."

"Harm?" He sounded exasperated. "Harm? There's harm all around you! How could you miss it? The fuckers are everywhere!"

Trying to stall him she said sympathetically, "You must be tired."

Ignoring this he said, "I have to tell you something. Before we get down to it." Down to it. A chill ran from her neck to her thighs. "Now listen carefully. I can't speak loudly because this room is sure to be bugged. You may know that as surveillance, where they watch you from behind veils or masks or TV screens. Are you listening? Good."

He began a lecture, frantic yet passionless. "Justice cures betrayal," he said. "I killed someone. I admit it. It wasn't a fashionable thing to do and I know now it wasn't smart." He squinted, as if trying to recall his text. "True, it was not what you think of as killing. But that doesn't excuse me. It doesn't excuse anybody. Anybody!" He frowned and glanced at words written in red ink on his hand. They had bled, like old tattoos.

The monologue continued, his subject betrayal and revenge, and he paced the greenhouse floor, occasionally turning his back on Lis. At one point she almost leapt forward and plunged the blade into his back. But he turned quickly, as if suspicious of her, and continued to speak.

With its faint blue-green lights the room seemed far removed from this time and place. It reminded her of a scene from a book she'd read years ago, perhaps the first novel of her childhood.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
. It seemed, in her own numb dementia, that they stood not in a rural greenhouse but in a Victorian submarine and that she was an innocent harpooner, watching the mad captain rant while the dark ocean passed over and around them.

Michael talked about cows and Christian Scientists and women who hid behind unfashionable hats. He mourned the loss of a beloved black car. Several times he mentioned a Dr. Anne and, scowling, a Dr. Richard. Was that, she wondered, Kohler?

Then he wheeled toward her. "I wrote you a letter. And you never answered it."

"But you didn't put a return address on it. And you didn't sign it. How would I know who it was from?"

"Nice try," he snapped. "But you knew I sent it."

His eyes were so piercing she said at once, "I knew, yes. I'm sorry."

"They kept you from writing, didn't they?"

"Well —"

"The spirits. The con-spirat-ors."

She nodded and he rambled on. He seemed to think her given name had seven letters in it. This pleased him enormously and she was terrified that he'd find some correspondence or a bill that would reveal the extra letter and he'd kill her for this deceit.

"And now it's time," he said solemnly, and Lis shivered again.

He pulled his backpack off and set it beside him. Then he undid his overalls, pulling them down over his massive thighs. The fly of his boxer shorts parted and, stunned, she saw a dark stubby penis, semi-erect.

Oh, God...

Lis gripped the knife, waiting for him to put down the pistol and pull his engorged prick free. She'd leap the instant he did.

But Michael never let go of the gun. His left hand, the damaged one, was deep within his stained and filthy underwear, as if exciting himself further. But after a moment, when he removed his fingers, she saw he was holding a small plastic bag. The opening had been tied shut with a piece of string and he squinted like an absorbed child as he carefully untied it with his good hand. He paused to pull his overalls up once more and with some frustration re-clipped the straps.

He pulled from the bag a piece of newspaper. It was damp and tattered. He held it out like a tray and on it he reverently placed a tiny perfect animal skull, which he'd taken from his backpack. When she didn't touch either of these, he smiled knowingly at her caution and laid them on the table beside her. He opened and smoothed the newspaper clipping then pushed it halfway to her, stepping back like a retriever that had just deposited a shot quail at a hunter's foot.

His hands were at his side, the gun muzzle down. Lis planned her assault. She would slip closer and aim for his eyes. What a horrible thought! But she had to act. Now was the time. She tightened her grip and glanced at the clipping. It was a local newspaper's account of the murder trial, the margins filled with the minute scrawl of his handwriting. Bits of words, pictures, stars, arrows — a good freehand drawing of what seemed to be the presidential seal. A silhouette of Abraham Lincoln. American flags. These all surrounded a photograph Lis recognized: her own grainy black-and-white image, taken as she walked down the courthouse steps toward the car after the verdict.

She and Michael were now six feet apart. She casually stepped closer, lifting the clipping, tilting her head toward it as she pretended to read. Her eyes were on the gun in his hand. She smelled his foul odor, she heard his labored breathing.

"There's so much betrayal," he whispered.

She gripped the knife. His eyes! Aim for the eyes. Do it. Do it! Left eye, then right. Then roll beneath a table. Do it! Don't hesitate. She eased her weight forward, ready to leap.

"So much betrayal," he said, and flecks of his spittle pelted her face. She didn't back away. He looked down at the gun and transferred it to his good hand. Lis's grip tightened on the knife. She was incapable of praying but many thoughts filled her mind: Of her father. And mother. Oh, and please, Owen, I hope you're alive. Our love was perhaps damaged but at least, at times, it was love. And Portia I love you too — even if we'll never become what I hoped we might.

"All right," Michael Hrubek said. He turned the gun over in his palm and offered it to her, grip first. "All right," he repeated gently. She was too afraid to take her eyes from the pistol for more than an instant but in that brief glance at his face she saw the abundant tears that streamed down his cheeks. "Do it now," he said with a choked voice, "do it quickly."

Lis did not move.

"Here," he insisted, and thrust the gun into her hand. She dropped the clipping. It spun to the floor like a leaf. Michael knelt at her feet and lowered his head in a primitive signal of supplication. He pointed to the back of his head and said, "Here. Do it here."

It's a trick! she thought madly. It must be.

"Do it quickly."

She set the knife on the table and held the gun loosely. "Michael..." His first name was cold in her mouth. It was like tasting sand. "Michael, what do you want?"

"I'll pay for the betrayal with my life. Do it now, do it quickly."

She whispered, "You didn't come here to kill me?"

"Why, I'd no more kill you than hurt that dog in there." He laughed, nodding toward the supply closet.

Lis spoke without thinking. "But you set traps for dogs!"

He twisted his mouth up wryly. "I put the traps down to slow up the conspirators, sure. That was just a smart thing to do. But they weren't set. They were sprung already. I'd never hurt a dog. Dogs are God's creatures and live in pure innocence."

She was shocked. Why, his whole journey this evening meant nothing. A man who'd kill people and revere dogs. Michael had traveled all these miles to play out some macabre, pointless fantasy.