Praying for Sleep

recalled her father’s opening the gate once many years ago after a sudden spring thaw. Was it still there? And, if so, did it still work?
    Lis walked closer to the house and called, “Portia!”
    A second-floor window opened.
    “I’m going to the dam.”
    The young woman nodded and looked up at the sky. “I just heard a bulletin. They’re calling it the storm of the decade.”
    Lis nearly joked that she’d picked a fine night for a visit but thought better of it. Portia eased the window shut and continued her methodical taping. Lis walked cautiously into the culvert that led to the dam and, plunging into darkness, picked her way along the rocky creek bed.
     
    The two Labs suddenly jerked into a frenzy. The trackers simultaneously drew their guns, Heck thumb-cocking his. The men exhaled long as the animal—a raccoon fat on village garbage—jogged away from them, the concentric rings of its tail vanishing into underbrush. The indignant animal reminded Heck of Jill’s father, who was a small-town mayor.
    Heck, lowering the prominent hammer of his old German pistol, downed Emil and waited while Charlie Fennel futilely scolded the Labs and then refreshed their memory with Hrubek’s shorts. As he waited Heck gazed around him at the seemingly endless fields. They’d come five miles from the shack where Hrubek had stolen the traps, and the dogs were still scenting on the asphalt. Heck had never pursued an escapee who stuck so persistently to the road. What seemed like blood-sure stupidity now looked pretty smart: by doing just the opposite of what everybody expected, Hrubek was making damn good time. Heck had a vague thought, which lasted merely a second or two, that somehow, they were making a very bad mistake about this fellow. This impression was punctuated by a shiver that dropped from his neck to his tailbone.
    Charlie Fennel’s dogs were soon back on the trail and the men hurried along the deserted strip of highway under a sky black as a hole. To stem his own uneasiness Heck leaned over and said, “Know what’s coming up this week?”
    Fennel grunted.
    “St. Hubert’s Day. And we’re going to be celebrating it.”
    Fennel hawked and spit in a long arc then said, “Who’s we?”
    “Emil and me. St. Hubert’s Day. He’s the patron saint of hunters. St. Hubert hounds—that’s what he bred—”
    “Who?”
    “St. Hubert. This is what I’m telling you. He was a monk or something. He bred the dogs that eventually became bloodhounds.” Heck nodded at Emil. “That boy goes farther back than I do. Part of St. Hubert’s Day is a blessing of the hounds. Aren’t you Irish, Charlie? How come you don’t know this stuff?”
    “Family’s from Londonderry.”
    “You’ve got those Labs there. We ought to get a priest to bless our dogs. What do you think about that, Charlie? How ’bout over at St. Mary’s. Think that priest’d do that for us?” Fennel didn’t answer and Heck continued, “You know bloodhounds go back to Mesopotamia?”
    “Where the hell’s that?”
    “Iraq.”
    “Now that, ” Fennel said, “was a stupid little war.”
    “I think we should’ve kept going, tromp, tromp, tromp, all the way to Baghdad.”
    “I’ll second that.” Then Fennel laughed.
    Heck, grinning, asked, “What’s so funny?”
    “You’re a crazy man after a crazy man, Trenton.”
    “Say what you will, I think I’m going to find me a priest and get Emil blessed after this is over.”
    “If he catches the guy.”
    “No, I think I’ll just do it anyway.”
    The road down which they now pursued Hrubek was a dark country highway, which threaded through a string of small towns and unincorporated portions of the county. If Hrubek had Boston in mind he was taking the long route. But, Heck concluded, it was also the smarter way to travel. Along these roads there’d be hardly any local police, and the houses and traffic would be sparse.
    They followed the dogs, still short-lined because of the traps, only three miles east before Hrubek broke away and turned north, onto a small dirt lane. A hundred feet away they found a filthy roadside diner, which looked bleaker yet because of the sloppily taped X’s on the windows.
    Thinking that Hrubek might be inside, Fennel sent the Boy around back and he and Heck snuck up to the windows of the streamlined, aluminum-sided restaurant. Cautiously they lifted their heads and found themselves gazing straight into the eyes of the cook, waitress and two diners, who,