Praying for Sleep

think—”
    Crack . . .
    A fierce noise like a gunshot sounded next to Heck’s ear and he swung around, heart pounding, pistol raised. The volume on Charlie Fennel’s walkie-talkie had been full on when he received the transmission. Fennel turned down the squelch and volume knobs and palmed the unit. He spoke softly into it. In the distance, on the road, the red-and-blue roof lights on the Boy’s squad car started spinning.
    “Fennel here. Go ahead.” He lowered his head as he listened.
    What are they doing? Heck wondered.
    Fennel signed off and put the walkie-talkie back on his belt. He said, “Come on. They’ve found him.”
    Heck’s heart fell. “They got him? Oh, damn.”
    “Well, not quite. He got himself all the way to a truck stop in Watertown—”
    “Watertown? That’s seven miles from here.”
    “—and tried to hitch a ride up to, guess where, Boston. The truck driver told him no so Hrubek took off on foot heading north. We’ll drive over there and pick up the trail. Man, I hope he’s winded. I myself don’t feel like a half-hour run. Don’t go looking so sorrowful, Trenton, you’ll be a rich man yet. He’s not but a half hour away.”
    Fennel and the bitches bounded back toward the road.
    “Come, Emil,” Heck called. The hound hesitated just a moment longer and slowly followed his master, clearly reluctant to forsake the grassy fields, damp and cold though they were, for the slippery plastic bench seat of an old, smelly Chevrolet.
     
    When she heard the deliberate footfalls coming up from the basement stairs, the heavy steps, the dull clink of metal, Lis Atcheson understood immediately, and the mood of the night at once turned icy.
    Owen walked into the doorway of the greenhouse and looked at his wife, who was pulling more burlap bags from the stack near the lath house.
    “Oh, no!” Lis whispered. She shook her head and then sat on a bench made of hard cherry wood. Owen paused then sat beside her, smoothing her hair over her ear the way he did when he explained things to her—business things, estate things, legal things. But no explanation was necessary tonight. For Owen was no longer in his work clothes. He wore a dark-green shirt and matching baggy pants—the outfit he wore under a bright-orange slicker when he went hunting. On his feet were his expensive waterproof boots.
    And in his hands, a deer rifle and a pistol.
    “You can’t do it, Owen.”
    He set the guns aside. “I just talked to the sheriff again. They’ve got four men out after him. Only four goddamn men! And he’s already in Watertown.”
    “But that’s east of here. He’s going away from us.”
    “That doesn’t matter, Lis. Look how far he’s traveled. That’s seven or eight miles from where he escaped. On foot. He’s not wandering around in a daze at all. He’s up to something.”
    “I don’t want you to do this.”
    “I’m just going to see exactly what they’re doing to catch him.” He spoke in an austere, assured voice. It was her father’s voice. It was a voice that could hypnotize her.
    Still, she said, “Don’t lie to me, Owen.”
    And like Andrew L’Auberget, Owen’s eyes contracted, hard as a tick’s back. He had a faint smile on his face but she didn’t believe it for a second. She might very well have been speaking to one of the marble-eyed trophies Owen had nailed up on his den wall, for all the effect her words had on him. She touched his arm and let her fingers linger on the thick cloth. He pressed his hand over hers.
    “Don’t go,” she said. She pulled him to her. She felt a surge of unfocused ardor. It was more than the memory of their liaison earlier. His strength, his gravity, the hunger in his face—they were all immensely seductive. She kissed him hard, open-mouthed. She wondered if the arousal she felt was truly lust, or was rather an attempt to keep him encircled in her arms all this long night until the danger was past.
    Whatever her motives might have been, though, the embrace had no effect. He held her for a moment then stepped to the window. She rose and stood behind him. “Why don’t you say it? You’re going to hunt him down.”
    She studied her husband’s back and the reflection of a face that should, she supposed, be vastly troubled. Yet he seemed very much at peace with himself. “I’m not going to do anything illegal.”
    “Oh? What do you call murder?”
    “Murder?” he whispered harshly, spinning around, and nodding toward the upstairs of