Praying for Sleep

reward money was his main thought and he too ignored the smell of a much-desired cheeseburger. He continued his discussion with the Highway Patrol trooper.
    “And he really seemed set on Boston, did he?” Heck asked.
    “That’s what the driver said. He was babbling about it being the home of our country or something.”
    Fennel, drawing nearby, said, “He was a history major.”
    Heck looked up in surprise.
    “Yup. That’s what I heard.”
    “He went to college ?” This made Trenton Heck, with only eleven hours of credits toward an associate degree, feel very bad.
    “One year only, before he started to go wacko. But he got himself some A’s.”
    “Well. A’s. Damn.” Heck pushed aside his personal chagrin and asked the HP trooper if he’d have the truck driver step outside for a minute.
    “Uhm, he’s gone.”
    “He’s gone ? Didn’t you tell him to wait?”
    The trooper shrugged, looking placidly into the civilian’s eyes. “It’s an escape situation, not an arrest situation. I got his name and address. Figured he didn’t need to stay around to be a witness or anything.”
    Heck muttered to Fennel, “Address isn’t going to be real helpful. I mean, what’re we supposed to do? Send him a postcard?”
    The trooper said, “I asked him a bunch of stuff.”
    Heck slipped the harness off Emil. The trooper looked even younger than the Boy and would have no seniority over anybody. The Highway Patrol had a separate budget for salaries and they hardly ever fired anybody. Heck’d had the chance to put in for Highway Patrol when he first joined. But, no, he wanted to fight real crime.
    “What was he wearing?”
    “Overalls. Boots. Work shirt. Tweed cap.”
    “No jacket?”
    “Didn’t seem to be.”
    “Was he drinking?”
    “Well, the driver didn’t say. I didn’t exactly ask that. Didn’t see any need to.”
    Heck continued, “Was he carrying anything? Bag or weapon? Walking stick?”
    The trooper looked uneasily at his notes then at Fennel, who nodded for him to answer the questions. “I don’t exactly know.”
    “Was he threatening?”
    “No. Just kind of goofy, the driver said.”
    Heck grunted in frustration. Then he asked, “Oh, one more thing. Just how big is he?”
    “The driver said about six five, six six. Three fifty, if he’s a pound. WWF wrestler, you know. Legs like a side of beef.”
    “Side of beef.” Heck gazed into the blackness in the east.
    Fennel asked him, “Is there enough trail to follow?”
    “It’s not bad. But I wish it’d rain.” Nothing brought out a latent scent better than a gentle mist.
    “To hear the weatherman tell it, you’re going to get that wish in spades.”
    Heck hooked up Emil again and refreshed the scent memories of the dogs with Hrubek’s shorts. “Find, find!”
    Emil took off down the shoulder of the road, Heck paying out the dark-red rope until he felt the twenty-foot knot. Then he followed. Fennel and the retrievers too. But they hadn’t gone fifty feet before Emil turned and nosed slowly toward an unlit, dilapidated house squatting in an overgrown yard. A spooky-looking place, with a sagging roof and shingles like old snake scales. In the window was a sign. Hunting Goods. ETC. Deer dressed and mounted. Pelts bought and sold. Trout too.
    “Think he’s in there?” The Boy uncomfortably eyed the black windows.
    “Hard to say. All that animal work’d confuse even Emil.”
    Heck and Fennel led the dogs to a cockeyed fence post and tied them up. The men drew their sidearms and simultaneously chambered bullets and put the safeties on. Heck thought, Don’t let me get shot again. Oh, please. I got no insurance this time. Though what was behind this prayer wasn’t hospital bills of course but the horror of a scalding bullet.
    “Trent, you don’t have to do this.”
    “From the sound of this guy, you need everybody you’ve got.”
    Conceding, Fennel nodded then motioned the Boy around back. He and Heck walked onto the front porch quietly. Heck looked at Fennel, who shrugged and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Heck leaned forward and looked through a grimy window. He leapt back suddenly. “Jesus! Oh!” His voice clicked into a high register.
    Fennel drew down on the window with his Glock. He squinted. Then laughed. Six inches away, through the muddy glass, was the rearing form of a black bear staring out at them, taxidermied into ferocity.
    “Goddamn,” Heck said reverently. “Son of a bitch, I nearly dampened