Praying for Sleep

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