The Devil’s Bed

by Krueger, William Kent

  “They still had homes somewhere. Social Services sent them back to their parents.”

  “And they all lived happily ever after?”

  “Pearl got pregnant at sixteen. The first time. She has five children now by three different men. Her oldest daughter ran away this summer. Pearl still hasn’t heard from her. Otter’s an alcoholic, been in and out of treatment for years. Those are the success stories,” Bo said.

  “The other two? Egg and Freak?”

  “Egg’s doing time in Eddyville, Kentucky, for armed robbery. Freak died of AIDS, two years ago. He was a heroin addict.”

  “I’m sorry, Bo.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What about you? Are you happy with the life you’ve put together?”

  “Happier some days than others. Isn’t it like that for everyone?”

  Instead of answering, she rose and said, “I should be getting back. Earl, are you coming?”

  “Yeah. Do you want to go swimming?” He climbed down from the tractor and took his sister’s hand.

  Before she started away, the First Lady said, “Shouldn’t that tractor be moved?”

  “Your safety is our priority right now,” Bo said. “Eventually I’ll have one of my people put it in the barn.”

  “Or put it there yourself. Why give someone else the thrill?” She laughed, turned away, and headed toward the house with Earl, following the orchard lane Tom Jorgenson had taken a couple of days before. The two FLOTUS agents trailed her.

  When they’d gone, Bo walked to the apple tree behind the flatbed and climbed the trunk. He eased out onto the limb that seemed to have been the culprit in Tom Jorgenson’s accident. He crouched and examined the bark. Some of the very small sucker branches were bent or broken. It looked to Bo as if someone might well have climbed out onto that limb not long before him.

  chapter

  nine

  The St. Croix Regional Medical Center stood on a hill overlooking Stillwater and the St. Croix River. The wing that housed the trauma intensive care unit faced east, with a good view of the historic old town and of the broad, beautiful river that had been designated a national scenic riverway. The rooms in trauma ICU were all single patient rooms situated around the central nurses’ station like spokes around the hub of a wheel. The lovely view from the windows was lost on Tom Jorgenson. He lay unconscious in his bed, living through tubes and wires. His head was wrapped in a thick gauze turban. His eyes were black as a raccoon’s, as if he’d been beaten. A tube from a ventilator snaked down his throat. Another tube had been inserted into the side of his chest. Lacerations and bruises covered his arms. Even to Bo, who didn’t love him nearly as much as did Annie and his daughters, he looked like death already.

  Bo didn’t enter the room, just stood in the doorway. Keeping vigil at that hour were Ruth and Earl. Ruth Jorgenson, who’d kept her maiden name after marriage, had a successful law practice in St. Paul and was the attorney for her father’s Institute for Global Understanding. Like most attorneys with whom Bo was acquainted, she always seemed to be long on responsibilities and short on time. However, sitting at her father’s bedside, reading aloud from Wind in the Willows, one of Earl’s favorite books, she appeared to be in no hurry at all. Bo knew from his own experience that tragedy had this effect. It slowed the world so that every second of life counted. Earl sat near her, listening with a big smile on his face as she read.

  Bo returned to the nurses’ station where he’d previously flashed his ID. The nurse there, a stout woman with silvering hair and a name tag that identified her as Maria Rivera, R.N., asked, “What can I do for you, Agent Thorsen?” She spoke with a slight Hispanic accent.

  “Can you tell me who treated Tom Jorgenson last night?”

  “Dr. Mason was in charge in the E.R. I believe she oversaw the treatment of Mr. Jorgenson herself. Let me just check the chart.” She started to reach toward a rack of charts filed by room number but stopped abruptly and snapped sternly, “Mr. Cooper, stop that.”

  Bo followed her eyes. A large aquarium tank sat on a stand against one wall of the Trauma ICU. The bottom of the tank was covered with colorful marbles. An old man in a white robe had his arm in the tank, almost up to his shoulder.

  “You put those marbles back.”

  The old man opened his fist, and an array of marbles sank back to the bottom.

  Nurse Rivera shook her finger at him. “You wait right there. Don’t move.” She dialed a number and spoke with exasperation, “Mr. Cooper is up here again. You’d better bring a dry bathrobe.”

  The old man looked duly chastised. He waited until an orderly arrived, and he let himself be led away.

  Nurse Rivera shook her head. “He means no harm. He comes up from the geriatric unit on the floor below. The marbles have some significance with his childhood, I think. If we don’t watch carefully, he takes a handful and disappears. He ought to be restrained, I suppose, but he’s really no danger to himself. Just a nuisance to us. Now then.” She pulled Tom Jorgenson’s chart. “Yes, it was Dr. Maggie Mason.”

  “Is she on duty now?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d be glad to check.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bo waited while she made the call. Waited uncomfortably. He hated the smell of hospitals, a smell that took him back to the days when Freak was dying and the doctors could do nothing but try to make him comfortable. Bo had never felt so helpless. He and Otter had sat at the bedside, taking turns holding their friend’s hand while the life slipped away little by little until Freak was gone and no one but Bo and Otter seemed to have noted his passing.

  “Agent Thorsen?”

  He came back mentally. “Yes?”

  “Dr. Mason’s in the E.R.”

  Bo headed to the elevator and pushed the signal button. When the car arrived and the doors opened, a man stepped out. He was a hard man to miss. The first thing that caught Bo’s attention was the scar tissue. It was thick and agate colored and bubbled up from beneath his shirt collar to spread over his neck and right cheek. His right ear didn’t look natural, and Bo was certain it had been reconstructed. Bo stepped back to let the man pass, then got on the elevator himself.

  He caught the doctor between patients, a fisherman with a hook imbedded deep in his thumb and a seven-year-old boy who’d fallen from a garage roof and was being prepped for an X ray.

  “I’m interested in the blow to Mr. Jorgenson’s head,” Bo explained.

  Dr. Mason, a woman in her late forties and with long dark hair just beginning to streak gray, glanced up from the intake form she was scanning. She didn’t seem pleased at the interruption. “Which one?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There were two blows. One to his forehead.” She indicated a place above her right eye. “And one to the back of his head.”

  “The blow to his forehead. Was that consistent, do you think, with hitting the limb of an apple tree?”

  “We cleaned a bit of barklike material from the skin before we dressed the area, so I would say it probably was consistent with hitting a tree limb.”

  “What about the one to the back of his head?”

  “I assume when he fell from the tractor he hit his head on something.”

  “What about his black eyes?”

  “Battle signs, we call them. They often accompany trauma to the back of the head.”

  “And his other injuries?”

  “Crushed pelvis, hemothorax—”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bleeding in the lung space. We checked for pulmonary contusion and found nothing. It’s all pretty consistent with the kind of accident that was reported. But I explained all this to a policeman earlier today. A Detective Timmons, I think. And not more than fifteen minutes ago to one of your people. I’d appreciate it if you could all share information with one another.”

  “One of my people? Secret Service?”

  “A federal agent of some kind.”

  “Do you recall his name?”
/>   “I don’t. But he’s an obvious burn victim.”

  “Thanks,” Bo said.

  The doctor returned her attention to the form in her hands.

  Bo didn’t know the agent he’d passed in the elevator and was sure he wasn’t Secret Service. It was possible Dr. Mason had made a mistake about him being an agent at all. Considering Tom Jorgenson’s stature, however, it was very probable that law enforcement agencies at several levels were taking a look at things, and Bo knew only too well how bad the communication among them all could be.

  His next stop was the main lobby, where the security officer on duty was posted. Bo found C. J. Burke reading a newspaper.

  “Yeah?” Burke looked up from the sports page. He was a thin man with a ratty black mustache that curled around the corners of his lips. Bo guessed him to be thirty. Bo flashed his ID, which didn’t seem to impress Burke in the least. Mostly, the guard appeared unhappy at the interruption.

  “I’m interested in the security here at night.”

  “You’re looking at the security here at night. Half of it, anyway.”

  Bo already knew from the contingency reports that two security officers in the hospital after hours was SOP. “Do you patrol?”

  “We rotate. Here two hours, patrol two hours.”

  “You lock the front doors at ten-thirty?”

  “Yeah. Then the only public access is through the E.R. We move to a desk down there.”

  “Your shift ends at eleven-thirty?”

  “Graveyard comes on then.”

  “Contact your partner and bring him down here. I’d like to talk to you both about security while the First Lady’s here.”

  “They already talked to us about that. Plenty.”

  “I’d like to go over a couple more items.”

  With an obvious effort, C. J. Burke closed the newspaper on his desk and reached to the walkie-talkie lying there. He raised his partner and passed along Bo’s request. In less than three minutes, Randy O’Meara strode briskly out of the elevator and approached them. Bo was relieved to see that at least one of the men took the job seriously. O’Meara was big and broad shouldered, midtwenties. He had brown hair, neatly trimmed. His uniform was pressed, and his shoes were polished.

  “This is Agent Thorsen, Randy. More Secret Service,” Burke said.

  O’Meara brought out a nice smile and offered Bo a firm handshake. “How do you do?”

  “Good, thanks.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “He wants to talk about security for the First Lady,” Burke said without enthusiasm.

  “Not really,” Bo told him.

  “I thought you just said—”

  “It’s not the First Lady I’m concerned about here. It’s Tom Jorgenson. I’d like to make a few suggestions.”

  “Go ahead,” O’Meara said.

  “First, I’d like to suggest you do the rounds tonight without rotating with Burke.”

  O’Meara glanced at his partner. “Why?”

  “Someone needs to be able to make a consistent assessment of the security of the hospital, particularly the floor where Jorgenson’s room is located. Rotating might cause you to lose that perspective.”

  O’Meara shifted on his feet and hooked his thumbs into his belt. “What exactly are you worried about?”

  “I’m concerned about Tom Jorgenson’s vulnerability. Some people don’t feel about him the way most of us Minnesotans do.”

  “You think somebody might try to hurt him?”

  “I’d just like to make sure that security in the hospital is as good as it can be.”

  “We’ll do whatever we can,” O’Meara promised.

  “I’d also like to suggest varying your rounds. Don’t keep to the same routine.”

  “Because that would make it easier to plan something?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  Bo looked at Burke, who hadn’t bothered to rise from his seat. “Are you okay with this?”

  He shrugged. “Randy’s the one whose feet are going to get tired.”

  Bo turned again to O’Meara. “Would you mind showing me around?”

  “My pleasure. What would you like to see?”

  “Let’s start with Tom Jorgenson’s floor.”

  • • •

  As they walked, O’Meara explained that he worked the night shift because he was taking day classes toward a degree in law enforcement at Metropolitan State University. He had experience as an EMT and held a brown belt in tae kwon do. Hearing these things reassured Bo. O’Meara showed him all the possible routes to Jorgenson’s floor. These included four public elevators, a freight elevator, and the stairs. The guard explained, as had Burke, that once the main doors were locked at ten-thirty, the only public entrance was through the E.R. Security personnel there barred unauthorized access to the rest of the hospital.

  “Any other doors?” Bo asked.

  “Four emergency exits. They’re all secured against outside entry and have alarms. There’s the loading dock. We lock those doors every afternoon at five. And then we go through the tunnel to the laundry and lock up there.”

  “Tunnel?”

  “The laundry’s in a separate building connected through a tunnel.”

  “Mind showing me?”

  They descended to the basement and followed a corridor that brought them to an old, gated elevator. Laundry carts fitted with canvas bags were parked on either side of the elevator door. Bo and O’Meara took the elevator up a floor to the main laundry room, which was large and lined with industrial washers and dryers. Long tables were set in the middle for folding linen. Except for a man working on a pile of linen at one of the tables, the place was empty. The room felt stifling from the heat that had been generated during the day by the big machines. Classical music poured from a boom box on the table where the man folded linen. Bo spotted the exit door to the laundry, walked to it, and swung it open. The door led out to a small parking lot. Although the August afternoon was hot, the outside air felt cool compared to what lay trapped in the laundry.

  “You say you lock up at five?”

  “That’s right,” O’Meara confirmed.

  “What happens if this door is opened after it’s been locked?”

  “An alarm goes off. Unless it’s been disabled there.” He pointed at the wall, to a metal plate and switch labeled ALARM.

  Bo pulled the door closed. It was only four o’clock, and O’Meara made no move to lock up yet.

  “The laundry staff has left for the day?”

  “They’re off at three. Only one here is that man, Max Ableman. He’s the whole night shift.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “Hey, Max!” O’Meara called out.

  The man seemed to notice them for the first time. He paused in his work and eyed them, but he made no move to come their way. Bo walked to him. O’Meara followed.

  “Locking up already?” Max Ableman asked.

  He was of average height and build, but Bo could see that his body was taut and muscular. He had thinning blond hair. His voice was gentle, feathery.

  “No,” O’Meara replied. “Just showing Agent Thorsen around. He’s Secret Service.”

  Ableman nodded.

  “Nice music,” Bo said. “Debussy?”

  Ableman shrugged. “It’s quiet. That’s all I care about.”

  “Mr. Ableman, after the doors are locked, do you ever step outside? For a smoke, say?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  “Fresh air then? Maybe leave the door open for a while?”

  “Never.”

  “You don’t think it’s hot in here?”

  “You get used to it.”

  “I suppose,” Bo allowed, although the man had rolled the sleeves of his T-shirt all the way up to his shoulders.

  “Haven’t seen you for a couple of days,” O’Meara said in a friendly way.

  “Flu,” Ableman replied. He didn’t seem interested
in offering them anything further, but neither did he seem concerned that they’d disturbed his solitude.

  “Thank you for your time,” Bo said. He turned and headed away with O’Meara. “Those scars on his upper arms, any idea what they’re about?”

  “I don’t know,” O’Meara replied. “He’s new, just started a few weeks ago, and he never talks much. Maybe he was in the military or something.”

  “And what’s with the sunglasses?”

  “He’s ultrasensitive to sunlight, as I understand it. That’s why he works the night shift.”

  chapter

  ten

  It was an evening affair, the kind the president loved.

  Before dinner, the Texas Panhandlers performed some fancy clogging for Clay Dixon and the guests assembled in the East Room of the White House. Then the president made a brief speech about preserving the heritage of the nation’s folk traditions. The meal itself, served in the State Dining Room, paid homage to American cooking—fried chicken, mesquite barbecued ribs, corn on the cob, collard greens, corn bread, and watermelon. Afterward, the Dixie Maids played some lively bluegrass, and Clay Dixon asked if he could join them. He borrowed a banjo and sat next to a black-haired fiddle player. She worked her bow with a vengeance, and his own fingers danced. The guests of the White House enjoyed an old-fashioned hoedown, and they gave the president an exploding round of applause while the cameras of the press corps flashed like fireworks. D. C. Dixon was in his element and had the world by the balls.

  When it was over, he approached the senior senator from Colorado, who sat at the banquet table with the president’s daughter leaning against him. Stephanie’s eyes were closed, and she appeared to be asleep. The senator said, “She’s dead tired. Long past this young lady’s bedtime. Be glad to give a hand, Clay.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” the president said.

  “After that, I’d like a word with you.”

  Dixon nodded. “In my study.” He eased his daughter upright. “Time for bed, kiddo.” He lifted her and she laid her head on his shoulder. He carried her upstairs and helped her shrug off her dress and put on her pajamas. He pulled the covers over her.