Praying for Sleep

shotguns. He went deep-sea fishing in Florida and hunting in Canada. And he continued to take business trips, often overnight. But Lis believed his pledge of fidelity. Besides, she reasoned, Owen clearly liked being wealthy, and the money, stock and house were all in Lis’s name.
    So when, tonight—after they’d learned of Hrubek’s escape—Owen had stood before her, armed with his black guns, Lis had looked past his grim mouth and the consuming hunt lust in his eyes and had seen a husband trying the only way he could to fix a love altered by his own carelessness.
    Well, bless you, Owen, for your errand tonight, Lis thought, taping the last of the windows. Your efforts are appreciated. But hurry home now, won’t you?
    The wind was rising. It drove a whip of rain across the roof and north side of the greenhouse with such a clatter that Lis gasped.
    It was time to leave.
    “Portia! Let’s go.”
    “I’ve got a couple more to do,” she called from upstairs.
    “Leave ’em.”
    The woman appeared a minute later. Lis studied her for a moment and was surprised to see that in these country clothes, so atypical of Portia, the sisters looked very much alike.
    “What?” Portia asked, noting Lis’s gaze.
    “Nothing. You ready?” Lis handed her a yellow rain slicker and pulled her own on.
    Portia slung her backpack over one shoulder. Lifting her small Crouch & Fitzgerald suitcase Lis nodded toward the door. They walked outside into the rain that now was falling steadily. A sudden gust ripped the baseball cap from Portia’s head. She shouted in surprise and ran to retrieve the hat while her sister double-locked the back door, and they stepped along the soggy path to the edge of the parking area.
    Lis turned to look back at the house. With the windows barred by X’s of tape, and the old, warping shingles, the colonial had a battle-weary air, as if it squatted in the middle of a no-man’s-land. Her eyes were on the greenhouse when she heard her sister ask, “What is that?”
    Lis spun around. “My God.”
    Spreading out before them was a field of mud and water, nearly a foot deep, covering much of the driveway and filling the garage.
    They waded through the chill, slimy water and gazed at the lake. It wasn’t their levee that had given way; it was the sandbags by the dock—the ones that Owen had assured Lis he’d stacked high and solid. The rising lake had pushed them over and the water was backing into the creek behind the garage. Amid eddies and whirl-pools, the stream was filling the yard.
    “What do we do?” Portia shouted. Her voice was harsh and unsettling; despite the quick-moving current, the flood was virtually silent.
    There wasn’t much they could do, Lis decided. The water was flowing in through a twenty-foot gap—too large for the two of them to dam. Besides, the garage was in a low-lying area of the property. If the level of the lake didn’t rise much more, the house and most of the driveway would be safe.
    She said, “We leave is what we do.”
    “Fine with me.”
    They waded into the garage and climbed into the Acura. Lis slipped the key into the ignition. She paused superstitiously—concerned that the flood had shorted out the battery or ruined the starter. She looked at Portia then turned the key. The engine kicked to life and purred smoothly. Backing out carefully, Lis eased the car through the flood up the incline of the driveway.
    They were nearly out of the dark pool surrounding the garage when the car shuddered and the front wheels, the drive wheels, dug through the gravel and into the slick mud below, where they spun uselessly, as if they rested in ruts of ice.
    This, Lis recalled, had been her second concern.
     
    He eased his BMW around the curve on Route 236 and sped out of Ridgeton through the cutting rain.
    Richard Kohler now descended through the hills and swept to the right, heading due east once again. There it was. Perfect. Just perfect! He laughed out loud, thinking that the scene was far more impressive than he’d remembered. He pulled into the back of the lot, parked and shut the engine off. He unzipped his backpack, extracting Michael Hrubek’s file—the one he’d started to read earlier that evening.
    This battered folio had been penned by sixty-five-year-old Dr. Anne Weinfeldt Muller, a staff psychiatrist at Trevor Hill Psychiatric Hospital.
    Trevor Hill was a renowned private facility in the southern part of the state. Michael had been Anne Muller’s