Praying for Sleep

losing his reward money, he’d have laughed too. The sight of the skinny man, searching desperately for his shorts, the long condom whipping back and forth as it dangled from his quickly shrunk member . . . Well, it was the funniest thing Heck had seen for a month of Sundays.
    “Don’t hurt me,” the woman wailed.
    “Son of a bitch,” the skinny man growled once more. Heck’s humor returned and he whistled the “Dueling Banjos” tune from Deliverance.
    In a Kentucky-mountain voice Charlie Fennel said, “Naw, I want him. He’s a purty one.”
    “Sooo-eee,” Heck called. “Here, piggy, piggy, piggy!”
    The woman wailed again.
    “Oh, shit . . .” The young man fumbled with his pants.
    “Calm down now.” Fennel shone the light on his badge. “We’re state troopers.”
    “That wasn’t funny, I don’t care who y’all are. She wanted to do it. She picked me up at that diner up the road. It was her idea.”
    The woman had calmed in proportion to the amount of clothing she’d pulled on. “ My idea? I’ll thank you not to make me sound cheap.”
    “I didn’t want—”
    “That’s your all’s business,” Fennel said, “but it’s our business you’ve had a hitchhiker on the back of your rig for the past ten miles. An escapee.”
    Heck too understood that this is what had happened and he was angry at himself for not thinking of it sooner. Hrubek had clung to the back bumper guard or loading platform of the truck. That was why the scent had been so weak, and why it had never wavered from the road.
    “Jesus, that fellow at the truck stop in Watertown? The big guy? Oh, my everloving Lord!”
    “You’re that truck driver?” Heck asked. “He asked you about going to Boston?”
    “Shitabrick, maybe he’s still on the rig!”
    But the Boy had already circled around and checked out the truck’s roof and undercarriage. “He’s not here, nope. And the back’s padlocked. He must’ve took off into the fields when the truck stopped.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” the driver whispered reverently, “he’s a killer, ain’t he? Oh, Jesus, Jesus . . .”
    The woman had started crying again. “This is the last time, I swear. Never again.”
    Fennel asked how long the driver had been there.
    “Fifteen minutes, I’d guess.”
    “You love bunnies hear anything?”
    “Nothing, not a single thing,” the driver said, eager to please.
    “I didn’t hear anything either,” the woman replied, sniffling, “and I don’t like your, you know, attitude.”
    “Uhn,” Fennel responded, then said to the young man, who was buttoning up his shirt, “Now I suggest you get back in that rig and take this lady home; and get on your way.”
    “Take her home? Forget about it.”
    “You prick,” she snapped. “You damn well better.”
    “I think you ought to do that, son,” Heck said.
    “Okay. If she don’t live too far from here. I’ve got a load of auto parts I got to get to Bangor by—”
    “You prick.”
    Fennel had checked the bushes around the semi. “No sign of him,” he called.
    “Well, with the sound these two were making,” Heck said, chuckling, “I’d run too. Well, let’s get on with it. He can’t be more than a half mile from here. We should—”
    The Boy said, “Uh, Trenton, I think there’s a problem.”
    Heck looked up to see the young trooper pointing at a small sign that in their silent approach they’d passed but not noticed. Its back was to Heck and Fennel. They strode to it, turned and read.
     
    Welcome to Massachusetts
     
    Heck looked at the scripty green letters and wondered why anybody’d waste a nicely painted sign here on this dim country road, home of madmen, horny truck drivers and loose waitresses. He sighed and looked at Fennel.
    “Sorry, Trenton.”
    “Come on, Charlie.”
    “We got no jurisdiction here.”
    “Why, he isn’t but a half mile away! He could be two hundred yards from us right now. Hell, he could be watching us from one of those trees over there.”
    “The law’s the law, Trenton. We need to get the Mass troopers in.”
    “I say let’s just go get him.”
    “We can’t cross the state line.”
    “Hot pursuit,” Heck said.
    “Won’t work. He ain’t a felon. Adler said that Hrubek didn’t kill that fellow was in the body bag. It was a suicide.”
    “Come on, Charlie.”
    “If he ain’t so crazy—and it looks like maybe he ain’t—and we nab him in Massachusetts, he might sue us for assault or kidnapping. And he could damn well