Praying for Sleep

you crouched down and all.”
    “You come up on Michael Hrubek that way and he’ll panic,” Kohler snapped. “I guarantee it.” He rummaged inside the pack. Whatever was so precious inside—just a couple of bottles, it looked like—didn’t seem to be damaged. Heck wondered if he’d caught himself a tippler.
    “And I’ll tell you something else.” The doctor turned, examining Heck. “Even if you’d shot him, he’d’ve turned around and broken your neck before he died.” Kohler snapped his fingers.
    Heck gave a brief laugh. “With a head wound? I don’t know about that.”
    “There’s apparently a lot you don’t know about him.” The doctor rezipped the pack.
    Heck supposed he couldn’t blame the man for being pissed off but he didn’t feel too bad about the ambush. Kohler, it turned out, had been padding down the same path Hrubek must’ve taken earlier in the evening. In the dark, how was Heck to know the difference? True, the doctor was undoubtedly a lot punier. But then so are all suspects after they turn out not to be suspects.
    “What’s your interest here exactly, sir?” Heck asked.
    Kohler eyed his civvy clothes. “You a cop, or what?”
    “Sort of a special deputy.” Though this was untrue and he had no more police powers than an average citizen. Still he sensed he needed some authority with this wiry fellow, who looked like he was in the mood to make trouble. Heck repeated his question.
    “I’m Michael’s doctor.”
    “Quite a house call you’re making tonight.” Heck looked over the doctor’s suit and penny loafers. “You did some fine tracking to get yourself all the way here, considering you haven’t got dogs.”
    “I spotted him up the road, headed in this direction. But he got away.”
    “So he’s nearby?”
    “I saw him a half hour ago. He can’t’ve gotten that far.”
    Heck nodded at Emil, whose head was up. “Well, for some reason the scent’s vanished. That’s got me worried and Emil antsy. We’re going to quarter around here, see if we can pick it up.”
    The tone was meant to discourage company, as was the pace that Heck set. But Kohler kept up with man and dog as they zigzagged across the road and along the fields surrounding it, their feet crunching loudly on leaves and gravel. Heck felt the stiffening of his leg muscles, a warning to go slow. The temperature was still unseasonable but it had dropped in the last half hour and the air was wet with the approaching storm; when he was tired and hadn’t slept his leg was prone to seize into agonizing cramps.
    “Now that I think about it,” Heck said, “you were probably better off tracking him without dogs. He fooled our search party damn good. Led us all in the opposite direction he ended up taking.”
    Kohler once again—for the fourth time, by Heck’s count—glanced at the Walther automatic. The doctor asked, “Led you off? What do you mean?”
    Heck explained about the false clue—dropping the clipping that contained the map of Boston.
    The doctor was frowning. “I saw Michael in the hospital library yesterday. Tearing clippings out of old newspapers. He’d been reading all morning. He was very absorbed in something.”
    “That a fact?” Heck muttered, discouraged once again at Hrubek’s brainy talents. He continued, “Then he pulled a trick I’ve only heard about. He pissed on a truck.”
    “He what?”
    “Yep. Took a leak on a tire. Left his scent on it. The truck took off for Maine and the dogs followed it ’stead of going after his footsteps. Not many people’d know about that, let alone psychos.”
    “That’s not exactly,” Kohler said coolly, “a word we use.”
    “My apologies to him,” Heck responded with a sour laugh. “Funny thing: I was just falling asleep—you know how this happens sometimes?—and I heard a truck horn. It just come to me—what he’d done. Emil’s good but following airborne scent of a man hanging on to a tractor-trailer? Naw, that didn’t seem right. For that many miles? I drove back to the truck stop and sure enough picked up his backtrack. That’s a trick of the pros. Just like he hid that clipping in the grass. See, I wouldn’t’ve believed it, it’d been lying out in the open. He’s clever. He’s fooled dogs before, I’ll bet.”
    “No. Impossible. He’s never escaped from anything in his life. Not a calculated escape.”
    Heck looked at Kohler to see if he could spot the lie. But the doctor seemed sincere, and Heck added,