No, no-Michael Hrubek has no need to kill him. Michael Hrubek doesn’t even know him personally. Michael Hrubek couldn’t have made the journey back to the hospital in this short time, even if he did feel like eviscerating the director.

Dr. Ronald Adler the veteran of the state mental-health-hospital system, Dr. Ronald Adler the fair-tomiddlin’ graduate of a provincial medical school-these Dr. Ronald Adlers believe that he’s probably safe.

Yet the man whose head was entwined between his wife’s fragrant legs earlier in the night, the man who mediates board-meeting conflicts far better than he cures madness, the man who now pads down this murky, stone hallway-these Ronald Adlers are paralyzed by the sound of his own gritty footsteps.

Please, don’t let me die.

His office now seems miles away, and he gazes at the white trapezoid of light falling onto the concrete from his open doorway. He continues on, passing one of the arterial corridors, and exhales a fast astonished laugh at his inability to turn and look down it. If he does he will see a Technicolor film clip of Michael Hrubek reaching into Adler’s mouth. The hospital director cannot purge from his thoughts the passages of Hrubek’s transcripts he read earlier in the evening. He recalls in particular detail the patient’s lively discussion of locating and rupturing a spleen.

Enough. Please!

Adler passes by the corridor safely but a new worry intrudes-that he’ll lose control of his bladder. He’s insanely furious at his wife-for gripping his cock earlier in the evening and unwittingly putting in mind the now-consuming fear of incontinence. He must urinate. He absolutely must. But the men’s room is a lengthy way down the corridor he now approaches. The restrooms are dark this time of night. He considers pissing against the wall.

I don’t want to die.

He hears footsteps. No, yes? Whose are they?

The ghosts of one woman and two troopers.

What’s that sound›

Hah, they’re his own feet. Or perhaps not. He pictures the urinal. He turns toward it and begins to walk through the dim hall, and as he does a thought comes to mind: that Michael Hrubek’s escape tugs at everything he’s ever done wrong as a doctor. The escape is the crib sheets that accompanied him into organic-chemistry exams, it’s the charts he misplaced, the misprescribed medications, the aneurysms he forgot to inquire about before dispensing large dosages of Nardil. The madman’s escape is like lifting a twenty-pound line and watching rise from a murky pond some diseased fish snagged by your hook, bloated and near death-a prize you regret ever seeking, a token you wish would forever go away.

“Listen to me, you son of a bitch,” Haversham growled, after he hung up the telephone. His audience-the hospital director and a glazed-eyed Peter Grimes-stared at him numbly. A grating rain fell heavily on the windows of Adler’s office. The wind screamed.

“We just got ourselves another notice,” Haversham continued. “This one’s from Ridgeton. Seems there’s a report somebody crashed into a truck and drove it off the road. Both drivers disappeared into the woods. The truck got hit was registered to Owen Atcheson.”

“Owen-?”

“The husband of that woman testified against Hrubek. The fellow who was here before.”

So now, maybe four dead.

“They know for a fact it was Hrubek who did it?”

“They think. They don’t know. That’s what we need you for.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Adler muttered. He touched his eyes and pushed until he heard soft pops of pressure beneath the lids. “Four dead,” he whispered.

“It’s up to you, Doc. We need to know where to put our resources.”

What was he talking about? Resources?

“No cuddly-pup psychocrap. I want a straight answer. We’ve had two reports-Boyleston and Amtrak, or Ridgeton and that woman testified against him. Where’s he headed?”

Adler gazed at him blankly.

“I think they want to know where to send their men, sir,” Grimes explained delicately.

“That’s the problem, yeah. Two reports. They don’t jibe. Nobody knows jack shit for certain.”

Adler looked from his assistant to the tall cowboy of a trooper and thought: Sleep deprivation, that’s my problem. “Well, the Ridgeton sheriff has men he can send, doesn’t he?”

“Sure he does. Only they got but four in the whole of the department. They sent somebody out to the house so the woman’s safe. But I need to know where to deploy. We gotta catch this boy! I got four Tactical Services troopers ready to go. The rest of the men won’t be available for close to an hour. Where should I send the van? It’s your call.”

“Me? I don’t know the facts,” Adler blurted. “I need facts. I mean, are they sure Hrubek hit Atcheson? Where did he get a car? Was he actually sighted on the motorcycle? We can’t decide anything until we know that. And-”

“You’ve got all the facts there are,” Haversham muttered, gazing steel-eyed at the doctor. “This boy’s been in your care here for four months. Whatever you know about him is all you got to go on.”

“Ask Dick Kohler. He’s Hrubek’s doctor.”

“We would. But we don’t know where he is and he ain’t answering his pager.”

Adler looked up as if to ask, Why me? He leaned forward and pressed his palms together. He chewed compulsively on a red index finger.

Boyleston…

The doctor’s finger left his mouth and traced along the same map on which earlier in the evening he had plotted Michael Hrubek’s capture and Richard Kohler’s downfall.

Ridgeton…

Suddenly his face began to bristle, and nothing in this mad universe was as important to Dr. Ronald Adler as capturing his errant patient. Capturing him alive if possible but if not then putting him on a slab with his meaty toe tagged for burial in potter’s field, lying cold and blue and still.

Oh, let this night be over, he prayed. Let me slip back home and lie against the hot breasts of my wife, let me find sleep under the thick comforters, let this night end with no more deaths.

Adler ripped open Hrubek’s file and leafed frantically through the sheets. They spun out and scattered on his desk. He began to read.

Hrubek, Adler considered, displays classic paranoid-schizophrenic symptoms-thought content illogical, flights of ideas, loose association, pressure of speech and increased motor activities typical of manic episodes, blunted and inappropriate affect…

“No, no, no!” Adler spat out in a whisper, garnering troubled glances from the two men nearby. What, he raged to himself, do these words mean? What is Hrubek doing? What is driving him?

Who is Michael Hrubek?

Adler spun his desk chair and gazed out the rain-spattered window.

Item: Hrubek suffers from auditory hallucinations and his speech is a typical schizophrenic’s word salad. He might have told that truck driver, “Boston,” meaning to say, “Boyleston.”

Item: Revenge, the purported reason for going to Ridgeton, is a common element of paranoid-schizophrenic delusions.

Item: A schizophrenic would shun the circuitous path of getting to Boyleston via Cloverton.

Item: Amtrak runs through Boyleston. Train travel has a far lower stress factor than air travel, and accordingly would be preferred by a psychotic.

Item: Despite being off Thorazine, he is driving a vehicle. Thus Hrubek has, through will or miracle, tamed his anxiety and might make the more arduous and complicated journey south to Boyleston rather than the logistically simpler trip to Ridgeton.

Item: With all his tricks tonight, his false clues and cleverness, Hrubek was displaying astonishing cognitive functionality. He could easily be setting up a feint to Ridgeton, intending all along to go to Boyleston.