Grimes impersonated a fish again, chewing water urgently, and wondered aloud what they might do next.

“I want to be ready to preempt the press. If this…” He tried out several words for size before saying, “If this situation becomes critical-”

“If it’s a worst case.”

“Yes, if it’s worst-case, we’ll have to go public immediately. I want a release. Write it up-”

“A press release?”

“What else would I mean? Can you draft one up? Subject, verb. Subject, verb. That too much for you? And let’s go over it, you and me. Say that, unbeknownst to staff, no, say unbeknownst to administrators and officials, a private physician with privileges here gave Hrubek access to all wards, which allowed him to escape. Say ‘with privileges’; don’t say ‘attending.’ Let’s confuse the morons. Then say that this was in defiance-”

“ Defiance?”

“-of clear instructions that any transfer of Section 403 patients must be approved by the office of the director before they go into any milieu, group, or off-ward therapy.”

Instructions, yes, well, his assistant stammered. But there were no instructions to that effect, were there? Oh, it made sense, yes. There probably should be, yes. But at the moment there were none.

“The memo,” Adler said impatiently. “Don’t you remember? The 1978 memo?”

Grimes glanced out the window. Adler was referring to a directive that required notice to the director’s office before criminally insane patients could be moved into medium- or low-security wings, even temporarily-if, for instance, the showers on E Ward weren’t working. While this was a rule, yes, it was observed only by the most (Grimes allowed himself the diagnosis) anal-retentive of the doctors at Marsden.

“This seems a little…” Now words evaded Assistant Grimes.

“And put a copy in here. What’s the matter?”

“I just… The issue isn’t really access, is it?”

“Well, what is the issue?” Adler said this with a sneer in his voice and Grimes had an urge to call him a schoolmarm, which certainly would have cost him his job faster than jokes about rape.

“Kohler doing delusion therapy. That’s what set Hrubek off. That’s what we can hang him with.”

This was, Adler reflected, a good point. Hrubek’s roaming the halls near the morgue was essentially the orderlies’ fault. They missed his medicine stockpile and they were careless with Callaghan’s body. But Kohler’s sin, as Grimes accurately pointed out, was far more serious. He had somehow awakened Hrubek’s desire to escape. The means were largely irrelevant. Those fantasies ought to have been tucked away inside Hrubek, tucked away very deeply-or, better yet, behaviorially conditioned out of him. Say what you might, electrodes and food could turns rats into quite model animals. Why, witness young Grimes…

Still, the hospital director assessed, Kohler’s errors would be tough to sell to the public-simple people who would want simple answers in the event that Hrubek knifed a trooper to death or raped a girl. He thanked Grimes for his insight and then added, “Let’s just lay the access issue at our friend’s feet, shall we? By the time it’s all sorted out, he’ll be everybody’s whipping boy, and no one’ll really care exactly what he did.”

And his assistant, pleased to have been patted on the head, nodded instantly.

“Don’t be too specific. We have to massage the facts. Say, because of his involvement in Kohler’s program Hrubek was free to get into the freezer, the morgue and the loading dock. None of the other Section 403 criminally insane have that access. That’s true, isn’t it?”

It was, Grimes confirmed.

“But for his involvement in the program he never would’ve escaped. Sine qua non.”

“You want me to say that?”

“Well, not ‘sine qua non,’ obviously. You know what I’m saying? You get the picture? And don’t use Kohler’s name. Not at first. Make it sound like we’re concerned about, you know…”

“His reputation?”

“Good. Yes, his reputation.”

The only mechanic answering the phone tonight was in Roenville, about fifteen miles west on Route 236. The man chuckled and answered that sure he had a truck but it’d be four or five hours before he could get somebody over to Ridgeton.

“Already got three roads out in this part of the county alone. And my men’re getting a wreck off Putnam Valley Highway. Injuries. Mess of ’em. Hell of a night. Just one hell of a night. So, you wanna go on the list?”

Lis said, “That’s okay,” and hung up. She then called the Ridgeton Sheriff ’s Department.

“Why, hello, Mrs. Atcheson,” the dispatcher answered respectfully. The woman’s daughter was in Lis’s class; parents tended to address her as formally as their children did. “How you weatherin’ the storm tonight? So to speak. Ha. It’s something, isn’t it?”

“We’re getting by. Say, Peg, is Stan around?”

“Nup, not a soul here. Everybody’s out. Even Fred Bertholder, and he’s got the flu like nobody oughta have. And they didn’t cancel that rock concert like they oughta’ve. Can you believe that? A lotta youngsters got stranded. What a mess.”

“Have you heard anything from Marsden hospital, about Hrubek?”

“Who’d that be?”

“That man who escaped tonight.”

“Oh, him. You know, Stan called the state police about that just ’fore he went out. He’s in Massachusetts.”

“Hrubek? In Massachusetts?”

“Yes’m.”

“You’re sure?”

“They tracked him to the state line then our boys had to call off the search. Handed it over to the Mass troopers. They’re top-notch at finding people even though they don’t have any sense of humor. That’s what Stan says.”

“Have they…? Have they found him?”

“I don’t know. The storm’ll hit there in an hour, hour and a half, so I don’t suppose a drugged-up psycho’s a real high priority but that’s me speaking not them. They might not take to madmen from out of state. Being so serious and all. You know, Mrs. Atcheson, been meaning to speak to you about that C-minus Amy got.”

“Could we talk about it next week, Peg?”

“Absolutely. It’s just that Irv coached her like a demon, and he reads all the time. Knows his literature, and I don’t mean just schlock either. He read Last of the Mohicans even before it was a movie.”

“Next week?”

“Absolutely. Good night to you, Mrs. Atcheson.”

She hung up and wandered out to Portia, who stood sipping a Coke on a small screened-in porch off the kitchen. They didn’t use the place much for entertaining. The sun never reached it, and the view of the yard and lake was all but cut off by a tall growth of juniper.

“This is pretty,” her sister commented, running her hand along an elaborate railing of mahogany, carved in the shapes of flowers, vines and leaves. The wind blew an aerated mist of icy rain toward the house and the women stepped back suddenly.

“That’s right, you haven’t seen it.”

Lis had noticed the balustrade at an upstate demolition site and knew at once that she had to have it. In one of her brashest moments she’d laid quick, cold dollars into the ponderous hands of the wrecking-crew captain. It was probably an illicit deal, for he turned his back as she dragged off the delicate sculpture, which she then spent another two thousand dollars incorporating into the railing here.

Friends wondered why such a beautiful piece of woodwork accented a dark, out-of-the-way porch like this. But the carving had one frequent admirer: Lis herself spent many nights here, bedded down in a chaise longue she’d commandeered for the times when the insomnia was particularly bad. The porch was open on three sides. If there was wind the breezes flowed over her as she lay beneath the blankets and if there was rain the sound was hypnotic. Even when Owen was away on business, she’d often come down here. She supposed it was risky, being alone and so exposed to the night. Yet the game of finding sleep is a crucible of trade-offs and an insomniac can’t afford the luxury of separating slumber and vulnerability.