Praying for Sleep

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. He 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