“Seems to me, they have been. At least the one with the broken arm.”
“Listen, Don, can we do this one quietly?”
The captain grinned. “Why, scared of a little publicity, Mr. Three in Two Years?”
Adler paused then spoke in a low voice that barely broke above the ghostly wail that still filled the halls. “Now, listen to me, Captain. You quit jerking my chain. I’ve got close to a thousand of the most unfortunate people in the Northeast in my care and money to treat about one quarter of ’em. I can-”
“All right now.”
“-I can make some of their lives better and I can protect the general populace from them. I’m doing the fucking best I can with the fucking money I’ve got. Don’t tell me that you haven’t had troopers cut back too.”
“Well, I have. That’s a fact.”
“If this escape becomes a big deal some prick of a reporter’s going to run with it and then maybe there goes more money or maybe the state’ll even look into closing down this place.” Adler’s arm swept toward the wards filled with his hapless charges-some asleep, some plotting, some howling, some floating through nightmares of madness or perhaps even dreaming dreams of sanity. “If that happens then half those people’ll be wandering around outside and they’re going to be your problem, not mine.”
“Simmer down now, Doc.” Haversham, whose law-enforcement career like most senior officers’ was informed more by his skills at self-preservation than detection, said, “Tell me the God’s truth. You say a low-security patient wandered away, that’s what I’ll go with. But you tell me he’s dangerous, it’ll be a whole different ball game. What’s it gonna be?”
Adler hiked up his waistband. He wondered if his wife was at home masturbating as ardently as Billie Lind Prescott. “Hrubek’s half-comatose,” Adler spoke directly into the eyes of Peter Grimes. The young assistant nodded numbly and added, “He’s stumbling around in a daze like a gin-drunk fool,” and wondered what on earth possessed him to say that.
“Okay,” Haversham said with finality. “I’ll send it out as a missing-patient notice. You got some fellow wandered off and you’re worried about his welfare. That’ll make sure it’s not scanner-feed. These boys and girls they call reporters round here won’t even notice it, not with a storm gonna take off roofs.”
“I appreciate this, Don.”
“Now let me ask. You got some bucks to spend?”
“How’s that?”
“There’s somebody I’m thinking might be a help. But he ain’t cheap.”
“We’re a state hospital,” Adler said. “We don’t have much money.”
“That may be true. But one thing you do have is an escaped nutzo who happens to look like Attila the effing Hun. So, what about it? You gonna hear me out?”
“Oh, by all means, Captain. By all means.”
A cold and anxious Michael Hrubek stood on broad, naked feet in the center of a large rectangle of ruined grass. His hands gripped the waistband of his muddy and dew-stained shorts, and he stared at the shabby building before him.
The small shop-taxidermy, trapping and hunting supplies-was surrounded by chicken wire suspended from rusted posts with Baggie twist ties. Much of the mesh was squashed to the ground in a way that for some reason depressed Hrubek profoundly.
He had run all the way from the site of the attack on the orderlies to this cluster of lights, ghostly in the fog: a truck stop, which contained this shop, a diner, a gas station and an antique store. Positive he was being pursued by the Secret Service, Hrubek wanted to keep moving. But, as he’d announced aloud to himself, a naked man’d be “too damn obvious. Make no mistake about that.”
He’d then noticed a window in this outdoors shop and that had decided the matter.
He now stood in the exact spot where he’d been frozen in place for the past few minutes, gazing into the store at seven tiny animal skulls, boiled and bleached white as clouds.
Oh, look there. Look at that!
Seven was an important number in the cosmology of Michael Hrubek and he now leaned forward, counting them aloud, and enjoying the sound of the numbers in his mouth.
Seven skulls, seven letters, M-I-C-H-A-E-L.
Make no mistake, he thought. This is a special night.
Much of Hrubek’s thinking was metaphoric and the image now occurred to him that he was waking up. He liked to sleep. He loved to sleep. Hours and hours in bed. His favorite position was on his side with his knees drawn up as far as his massive legs and thick chest and belly would allow. Most of his waking hours too were a type of sleep-a slippery succession of chaotic dreams, a jumble of disconnected faces and scenes that fished past him, products of both his troubled mind and various medications.
Awake!
He bent down and in the dirt at his feet wrote with his stubby finger: i as I am AWakE tonIght. AWakE!
He made his way around the store, noting a sign that said the owner was on vacation. He kicked in the side door and entered. Avoiding a tall black bear, mounted in a rearing position, he made a circuit of the shop. He inhaled deeply and smelled musk and boiled game flesh, his hands shaking with exhilaration. He noticed shelves containing clothing and he rummaged through the piles of shirts and coveralls until he found several items that more or less fit. Then socks, and finally an Irish-tweed cap that he liked very much. He placed it on his head.
“Very fashionable,” he whispered, looking into a mirror.
Hrubek continued searching until he located a pair of engineer’s boots and struggled to pull them on. They were tight but not painful. “John Worker,” he muttered, running his hands over his clothes with approval. “John Worker.” He poured cleaning fluid onto a rag and scrubbed hard at his face to remove the blue ink from his cheeks and forehead.
He solemnly placed the seven skulls into a green canvas backpack he found in the shop. Then, keeping a suspicious eye on the rearing bear, Hrubek crossed the floor to the sales counter, where he’d noticed a display of cellophane packs of beef jerky. He ripped them open with his teeth, one after another, and chewed down the salty meat, all eight packages.
He was about to leave when he glanced down, beneath the counter, and his face broke into a huge grin.
“A present from Jesus Cry-ist our Weeping Lord.”
The pistol was a long-barreled Colt revolver. Hrubek lifted it to his face and smelled it and rubbed the cold blue metal on his cheek, grinning like a boy who’d just pocketed a ten-dollar bill. He put the gun in his backpack and, once more sizing up the bear, slipped from the door.
A wedge of light suddenly filled the grass, accompanied by the clatter of an aluminum door. Hrubek stepped quickly into a large open shed behind the shop and pulled the pistol from the backpack.
A man’s voice cut through the night, “You left it out there, you go pick it up. It’s rusted, I’ll tan your hide, young man.”
The man was speaking from a dingy but brightly lit one-story house from whose chimney drifted wood and trash smoke. It was about thirty yards from the shop.
A boy, about eight or nine, walked sullenly past the shed. Without looking inside he disappeared behind the shop. A moment later he started back toward the house, holding a long hammer close to his eyes, inspecting it and scratching hopelessly with his thumbnail at dots of rust.
A noise nearby startled Hrubek. A fat raccoon was in the shed, scuttling over the concrete floor. It hadn’t seen him and was nosing obliviously among garbage bags. The boy had heard the scratching of claws on concrete and stopped. Holding the rusted hammer like a club he stepped to the shed door and peered into inky darkness.