Praying for Sleep

not over yet.”
     
    Owen Atcheson parked his truck along Route 236 next to a large, freshly turned field about seven miles west of the high rock overlook where he’d located Hrubek’s nest. As anticipated, he’d found deep indentations of footsteps, indicating Hrubek was moving parallel to the road. From the depth and spacing of the toe prints it was clear he was moving fast, running.
    Owen stopped at a closed gas station and used the pay phone to call the Marsden Inn. The clerk told him that Mrs. Atcheson and her sister had called and said they’d be delayed some. They hadn’t checked in yet.
    “Delayed? Did they say why?”
    “No, sir, they didn’t. Is there any message?”
    Owen debated. He thought of trying to encode a message for her: Tell her the visitor’s heading west but she’s not to call anyone about it. . . . But there was too much risk that the clerk would be suspicious or get the message wrong.
    Owen said, “No, I’ll try them at home.”
    But there was no answer at the house. Just missed them, he thought. He’d call them at the Inn later.
    The night was very dark now, the cloud cover complete, the air growing colder, compressing around him. He used his flashlight sparingly, only when he thought he saw a clue and even then lowering the light almost to the ground before clicking it on, to limit the radiation of the light. He then moved on—but slowly, very slowly. Every soldier knows—as between the hunter and the hunted, the prey has the vastly greater advantage.
    Owen fell several times, catching his boot on a fence wire or forsythia tendril. He went down hard, always rolling and absorbing the impact with his shoulder and sides, never risking breaking a finger or wrist. He saw no more traps. Only at one point did Owen despair. The trail vanished completely. This happened in a vast grassy field, twenty acres square and bordered on all sides with dense woods. Owen was two hundred yards from Route 236. He stood in the center of this field and looked around him. The field extended through a break in the long line of rocky hills and offered an easy route south toward train tracks and more populated parts of the county. Freight trains came through here regularly and it was conceivable that Hrubek had leapt onto one. Or maybe he’d simply continued through the notch in the hills south toward Boyleston, a town that had both Amtrak and Greyhound stations.
    Losing hope, Owen moved aimlessly through the grass, pausing to listen for footsteps, and hearing only owls or distant truck horns or the eerie white noise of an expansive autumn night. After ten minutes of meandering he noticed a glint coming from a line of trees west of him. He headed instinctively toward it. At the grove of maples he went into a crouch and moved slowly through a cluster of saplings until he came to a break in the foliage. With his gun he pushed aside a bough of dew-soaked hemlock, inhaling in surprise as drops of water fell with chill pinpricks on his neck and face.

    Walking in slow circles around the old MG, Owen studied the ground. He kicked aside a white animal skull. He recognized it instantly as a ferret’s. There were dozens of footprints and tire prints covering the asphalt and the shoulder. Some seemed to be Hrubek’s but they were largely obliterated by people who had been here after him. He saw dog prints too and wondered momentarily if the trackers had learned that Hrubek was going west. But there was evidence of only one animal, not the three that he’d seen pursuing Hrubek from the site of his escape.
    He circled the car again, weaving over the shoulder and through the bushes nearby. No sign of Hrubek’s prints in any direction. Hands on hips, he glanced at the car once more. This time he noticed the bike rack but then he immediately dismissed the idea that Hrubek had stolen a cycle. What kind of escapee, he reasoned, would make a getaway on a bike, riding down open highways?
    But wait. . . . Michael Hrubek was a man whose madness had its own logic. A bicycle? Why not? Owen examined the road around the car and found faint tread marks, rather wide ones—either balloon tires or those of a bike ridden by a heavy cyclist. He glanced back at the car. The carrier rack seemed broken as if the bike had been removed by sheer force.
    Owen continued to follow the tread marks. At the intersection of this country lane and Route 236 he found where the rider had paused, perhaps debating which way to go.
    He was not