The Devil's bed

chapter
twenty-three

Nightmare checked his watch. Ten-forty. Sixteen minutes until the moon set. It was time.

He lay in the orchard grass, beyond the range of the motion detectors and the infrared cameras mounted on the stone wall. He wore midnight tiger camouflage fatigue pants and a T-shirt of the same design. The exposed skin of his face and arms was painted with a tiger stripe pattern of dark blue and black to match his clothing. Something fluttered among the trees behind him. Nightmare glanced back and watched an owl swoop and snatch up some small animal, then flap away, a black shape across the stars.

A dark figure walked along the edge of the orchard. Nightmare flattened himself against the ground. As soon as the patrolling agent had passed, Nightmare lifted the sod that covered the wood cap over the entrance to a tunnel just over two feet wide, and he reeled in his field pack. He’d crawled through the tunnel from the other side of the wall, dragging the pack that was tethered to his ankle by a short length of nylon rope. The weather in the two weeks since he’d completed the digging had been clear, and the passage under the wall was dry. The tunnel was exactly thirty-four feet long. He knew the capability of the motion detectors, and he’d placed the entrance and exit just beyond their range. Tom Jorgenson’s lax concern about his personal safety had allowed Nightmare the freedom to construct the tunnel, which had taken him nearly three weeks, working nights after his shift at the hospital. He’d intended from the beginning to fall back on an assault against Wildwood if the hospital bombing plan had to be abandoned. From the pack, he drew out his Beretta 92F and the suppressor, a 7.4-inch M9-SD silencer. He fitted the suppressor into the muzzle of the Beretta and gave it a quarter turn to lock it in place. He slipped off his T-shirt and donned a dark blue Kevlar vest. It was uncomfortable against his bare skin, but it was essential. He pulled his T-shirt back on over the vest, hefted the pack onto his back, and began to track the agent who’d passed only a minute before. He knew the agent had night-vision goggles. Nightmare carried nothing of the kind, for to him the dark was an old friend.

The agent had no idea an intruder was at his back and made no sound when the silenced round entered the back of his skull. Nightmare knelt and from the belt of the fallen agent unclipped the transmitter that sent a location signal back to the Op Center. He pulled a battery-powered vehicle the size of a loaf of bread from his pack. It was a mechanism of his own construction, built from components he’d ordered from Radio Shack. It consisted of a powerful little motor and receiver on a chassis that would roll across the ground on small tank tracks. The receiver was set to follow the signal of a tiny homing device Nightmare had secured to an overhanging tree limb near the end of the orchard a few days earlier. He’d adjusted the tanklike mechanism so that it would travel at about the speed a careful agent might keep in making rounds. With a bit of duct tape, he affixed the agent’s transmitter to the chassis and sent the device rolling forward under its own power along the same course the agent had been walking. For approximately eight minutes, the dot on the screen of the Op Center that monitored the agent’s position would continue to move. Once the little tank passed under the tree limb where the homing device had been secured, it would stop. Three minutes later, the Op Center would try to make contact to ascertain the reason for the agent’s pause. That gave Nightmare eleven minutes to complete his mission.

He sprinted across the orchard, ducking branches that bent low under the weight of ripening fruit. He knew that although the agents varied their rounds along the perimeter, they attempted to maintain their position relative to each other. Knowing the location of one, Nightmare could make a good assumption about the location of the other, and he moved to intercept.

He took the second agent down from the side with a single shot through the temple. As he’d done before, he snatched the location transmitter and taped it to a second motorized vehicle that he sent rolling through the orchard toward a homing device on the same heading the agent would have followed. Then he turned toward the main house.

He knew the range of the cameras mounted around the compound, and he’d already selected the best location for the next shot that night. He took up a position behind a gnarled old apple tree at the edge of the orchard behind the house. Sighting carefully on the camera mounted under the eaves that gave the Operations Center a view of the back door, he squeezed off a round and the camera jerked. He waited. Within a minute, the door of the guesthouse opened and an agent emerged. The agent went to the barn and came out with a ladder that he carried to the back corner of the house. He placed the ladder against the wall and shined a flashlight up at the camera. He unclipped a small walkie-talkie from his belt.

“Russell here. I can’t tell what the problem is yet.” He lifted his foot onto the first rung.

Nightmare put a round squarely between the man’s shoulder blades. The agent went forward, as if shoved from behind, bounced off the aluminum ladder, and fell back in a heap. Nightmare ran to him and put another round between his eyes. He grabbed the walkie-talkie and spoke in a rough approximation of the agent’s voice. “Squirrel damage.”

“I copy that,” the Op Center replied.

The locks on the back door took him only moments, and he was quickly inside the house, standing in the darkened kitchen. He knew that the agent on duty inside preferred the comfort of the living room, and he began to creep in that direction. He’d taken only a few steps when an old board beneath his foot sent a squeal into the quiet of the house. A moment later, a gray shadow touched the door frame. Nightmare knelt in a firing position. The agent stepped into the doorway and reached for the light switch. Nightmare fired twice at the silhouette, the silencer thumping as it spit out the rounds, the lead slugs thumping again as they slammed into flesh and bone. Nightmare put a new clip into the Beretta. He stepped over the downed agent and started up the stairs to the second floor. Slipping along the hallway, he passed the rooms he knew were occupied by Annie Jorgenson, Earl Jorgenson, and Nicole Greene, and he stood finally at the threshold of the First Lady’s bedroom. Light from inside filtered under the door. On the monitor in the van parked on the highway, he’d watched her prepare for bed, slide under the covers, and lift a book from the nightstand. He figured she must still be reading. The knob turned easily and silently in his grip. He edged the door open.

She sat propped up against a pillow. The book lay open on her lap. Her eyes were closed. Her chin rested on her chest. The headboard that framed her was walnut, an antique. A beautifully carved angel with spread wings hovered above each of her shoulders. Nightmare smiled grimly. A fat lot of good they would do her now.

Her eyelids fluttered open at the touch of the silencer against her forehead.

“Waking you with a kiss seemed so cliche,” he whispered.

She spoke not a word, but her eyes seemed to struggle for some kind of understanding as they stumbled between the barrel against her forehead and the face of her assailant. A small gasp escaped her lips. He put a finger to them, a warning against crying out.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head, barely more than a quiver against the silencer.

“You ruined my life and you don’t remember.”

“Who…” she began, but her voice failed her.

“David Moses,” he answered.

It took a moment to register, but he saw that it did, and that pleased him.

“No,” she pleaded softly. “Please, no.”

“Oh, yes,” he answered. “But not here. We’re going for a walk, you and me. We’re going to look at the moon together one last time.”

Bo pulled out of River Falls, heading southwest toward the bridge at Prescott. The moon was just about to set. The night was dark, and the sky was full of stars. He drove with the windows down. The wink of fireflies filled the fields along the road, and from the marshes came the bellow of bullfrogs. It would have been a lovely night if Bo hadn’t been so troubled by what he’d learned from the priest.

He’d been looking for a connection between Tom Jorgenson and David Moses, something powerful enough to be a motive for murder. He believed he’d found it-the confrontation long ago between the two that had brought an end to any hope Moses might have had for a normal life. Still, a lot of questions remained. If the motive was an old grudge held by a disturbed man, why act now? Why, after all these years, after a whole lifetime of opportunity, was Moses only just now making his move? And why all the complications-the hospital job, the charade of Max Ableman, the “accident” in the orchard? Why hadn’t he just killed Jorgenson and been done with it?

His cell phone chirped. It was Coyote.

“Where are you, Bo?”

“Crossing the river into Minnesota. I’m heading back to Wildwood.”

“I’ve got some interesting news.”

“Shoot.”

“Luther Gallagher’s credit cards show a lot of unusual activity in the last month. Expensive purchases of sophisticated electronics. We’re talking monitors, receivers, minidome cameras, pinhole cameras, audio transmitters, telephone transmitters.”

“Surveillance,” Bo said.

“Bingo.”

“Of whom? Jorgenson?”

“Well, so far he’s the only item on the menu.”

Bo thought a moment. Things began to click. “Stu, I’ve got to go.” Without waiting for an answer, he broke the connection and punched in the number of the Op Center at Wildwood.

“Agent Foster.”

“Adam, this is Bo Thorsen.”

“Evening, Bo. What’s up?”

“Let me speak with Jake Russell.”

“He’s out fixing a camera. Damn squirrel chewed through the line again.”

“Is Manning there?”

“Yeah. Want me to get him?”

“Thanks.”

It seemed to take Chris Manning forever to come on the line. “What is it, Thorsen?”

“David Moses. He’s got a possible motive for murder, and not just Tom Jorgenson. I think he may be after the First Lady as well.”

“What have you got?”

“Moses worked at Wildwood a long time ago. Some pretty hard shit went down, things that could easily have made Moses bitter against the Jorgensons, Kathleen as well as Tom. I’ve been wondering why he didn’t just kill Tom Jorgenson in the orchard. Maybe it’s because he wanted to use the father as bait to lure the daughter here.”

“Are you saying the First Lady has been his target all along?”

“He probably wants both of them dead. Look, Chris, he bought a lot of surveillance equipment in the last month. I think he may have bugged Wildwood.”

On his end of the line, Manning was quiet for a moment. “We never ran a sweep.”

“I recommend you put additional agents on the First Lady, and you do it now.”

Bo heard Manning talking to Adam Foster. “Thorsen, I’m staring at the perimeter screen, following the dots that are your agents patrolling out there. Everybody’s moving. We’ve had no indication of a breach. So we seem to be fine at the moment. I’m heading out to talk to Jake Russell right now. I’ll have him put additional people in the orchard. Then I’ll stand post in the main house myself.”

“All right, Chris. I’m on my way.”

Bo looked at his watch. Another five minutes and he’d be at Wildwood. He bore down on the accelerator.

Nightmare held the gun to her head as he guided the First Lady down the stairs. She hesitated and audibly caught her breath when she saw the agent lying on the floor inside the kitchen doorway.

“Step over the body.” Nightmare pushed her forward. “Mind the blood.”

He led her to the back door, opened it, and forced her outside.

“Oh, God,” she said, catching sight of the agent on the ground at the foot of the ladder.

“Don’t waste pity on the dead,” he advised.

“He had a family,” she shot back.

“Then he should have been an accountant. Into the orchard.”

They hadn’t taken a step when Nightmare heard the distant shutting of the door to the guesthouse. He shoved the First Lady against the wall, face first, muzzle of the silencer pressed hard against the back of her head. “Not a sound,” he whispered.

He peered around the corner of the house and watched the agent walking in the glare of the yard light. The agent was headed for the front door of the main house but saw the ladder and changed direction, coming straight toward the shadows where Nightmare waited. As soon as the agent spotted the body and reached for his weapon, Nightmare pulled the muzzle of the silencer away from its kiss of the First Lady. He dropped the agent with one shot in the chest.

“Please, God,” the First Lady whispered, “this can’t be happening.”

“It takes a while to adjust to hell,” he said, and he yanked her toward the orchard.

They moved rapidly. Nightmare saw clearly the sweep of the limbs that hung in their way, but the woman kept getting caught in the low branches, slowing them down. She tried to talk as they walked.

“Why?” she asked.

“I told you.” He jerked her down to keep her from smacking another limb.

“I don’t believe you. That was more than twenty years ago.”

“There are no statutes of limitation on murder.”

“Murder? What are you talking about?”

“You ended a boy’s life.”

“But you’re alive.”

He stopped and turned her harshly so that she had to look into his face. He moved near enough so that even in the dark she could see him clearly. “What I am is not alive. I am Death walking.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you remember our last time here together?”

She hesitated, and he knew she was trying to read him. What kind of answer did he want?

“August twenty-eighth,” he went on. “The moon rose at ten-o-nine, a day past full. You wore jean cutoffs, a sleeveless white blouse. Your feet were bare. You said you liked the way the orchard grass tickled your soles.”

“David-”

“We talked about the year ahead. I tried to kiss you. My first kiss. You pulled away. Repulsed.”

“No, David, not repulsed. I do remember. I was surprised, that was all. I hadn’t expected it.”

“Your father came then, interrupted us. He walked you back to the house. I told you I was going home.”

“On your motorbike, the one you built,” she said, with a little note of hope, as if remembering that small detail might save her.

“I parked it in the orchard on the way out, then came back and watched your room.”

“I found out you’d often watched.” It sounded like an accusation.

“I loved you,” he said coldly. “Then I saw you leave the house, and he followed. When I reached the bluff, he had you in his arms. You were fighting him.”

“He wasn’t there, David. I swear to you.”

“You tried to push him off you. That’s when I yelled and rushed to stop him.”

“It wasn’t like that-”

“Three years ago, I was sitting in my own filth in a jungle prison. Open sores over most of my body, waiting to die. I realized my life had been nothing but one betrayal after another.”

“Please, David, listen to me-”

“I decided I wasn’t going to die there, forgotten, without purpose, in all that stink. I decided if I was going to die, it would be while trying to remove from this world as many of the liars and betrayers as I could. Know this: After I do you, I’ll kill your father.”

“We don’t always see things the way they are.” Her words tumbled fast, her voice desperately pitched. “We deceive ourselves. It’s human. What you saw that night-”

“I know what I saw.”

They left the trees and stood on the cliff overlooking the river. Behind them, the moon was slipping below the horizon. It looked like the last glimpse of a golden child being drawn back into the womb of the night itself.

Nightmare stepped between the woman and the moonlight.

“It’s time,” he said.

At the entrance to Wildwood, Bo swung his Contour off the highway. He stopped beside the county sheriff’s car parked there.

“Everything okay?” he asked through his open window.

The deputy in the driver’s seat said, “Sure, Bo.” He sounded sleepy.

Farther down the drive, after the gates had swung open to let him pass, Bo checked in with Sumner, the agent on duty in the gatehouse. “Anything out of the ordinary tonight, Walt?”

“Heard we might get a display of the northern lights later. I wouldn’t mind seeing that.”

Bo pulled up to the guesthouse. Inside, everything was quiet. The main room was empty. The lights were out in the library. Someone had put a teakettle on in the kitchen, and it was just starting to whistle. Bo turned the burner off and stepped into the room that was the Op Center. Special Agent Adam Foster sat before the monitors. He glanced at Bo and lifted his hand in a greeting.

“Where’s Jake?” Bo asked.

“Still out there working on the camera.”

“Manning?”

“After he talked to you, he left right away. Didn’t even bother to take the teakettle off the burner.”

Good, Bo thought.

Then the perimeter alarm went off.

Bo’s eyes followed Foster’s to the monitor that picked up images from the tripod-mounted cameras that snapped on the instant the motion sensors were triggered. It was dark, but the infrared cameras easily captured the images.

“It’s the First Lady and Moses.” Bo noted the position of the perimeter breach. “They’re heading to the cliffs. Contact the agents in the orchard and get them out there,” he directed Foster. “Let Manning and Russell know what’s up. I’m on my way now.”

Bo hit the front door at a dead run, drawing his Sig from the holster clipped to his belt. He headed straight for the orchard, ran out of the spray of illumination from the yard light, and entered the silver and black of the apple trees in the late moonlight. The low branches made him run a crooked course, ducking and weaving. It was crucial to avoid the limbs not just because they would slow him down, but because the noise would alert David Moses to his coming. He approached the perimeter Moses and the First Lady had breached only a couple of minutes earlier, and he could see the black shape of the Kubota tractor, still parked where it had been left after the attack on Tom Jorgenson. Bo heard voices ahead, and he slowed. He crouched, came up behind the tractor, and pressed himself into its shadow. Shielded in this way, he crept along the body of the Kubota until he could see the edge of the cliff twenty yards ahead.

One silhouette stood against the backdrop of the Wisconsin hills across the river that were glazed with the last of the moonglow, but it was a silhouette with two heads. The First Lady and Moses were so close together Bo dared not risk a shot. The other agents would arrive at any moment and take up flanking positions. From a side vantage, Moses would be a clearer target. Bo could hear the First Lady speaking. Good, he thought. Keep him occupied.

“You made a mistake,” she said. “You were always so smart, David. Be smart now. Consider that you might have made a mistake. I know about your life in that old farmhouse. Isn’t it possible that what you saw you were predisposed to see, what your life up to that moment had conditioned you to see?”

“It’s possible,” Moses replied. His voice was cold and precise, not soft the way it had been when he spoke to Bo in the laundry. “But that’s not what happened. He attacked you. You fought back. I tried to help. Then you both lied, and I was silenced in the only way I could have been. Although I’m sure your father would have been happier if my tongue had been cut off and my eyes plucked out.”

“That’s not what happened, David.”

“Kneel down.”

“Please, just listen to me. Let me explain.”

“You have no more to say. Kneel down. It’s time.”

Jesus, where are they? Bo thought, wondering about the other agents. They should have a clear shot by now.

“Kneel down,” Moses ordered again, angrily this time.

Yes, kneel down, Bo silently urged her. Get low, and I can take him out.

The First Lady said, “No, damn it.”

Bo wanted to yell at her, but he knew that the moment he opened his mouth she was dead. He edged back along the tractor and stepped onto the running board. He felt over the instrument panel until his fingers touched the switch for the headlights.

“If you’re going to kill me,” the First Lady said, in a voice whose quiver seemed as much from anger as fear, “you’ll have to look into my eyes while you do it. I won’t get down on my knees for you or anyone.”

For a long moment, nothing happened. Bo’s eyes had adjusted to the moonlight. He could make out, just barely, the separation of the two bodies on the cliff, and he could see that Moses held a gun in his hand. Bo ached to shoot, but his own bullet might be as deadly to the First Lady as any fired by Moses.

“You’ve made up your mind to kill me. It doesn’t matter what I say now or what the truth is.”

Moses considered her. “If you get down on your knees and beg for your life,” he said, “maybe I’ll grant it.”

The possibility of a way out seemed to break her anger. Bo saw her sway in her stance. Slowly she knelt and bowed her head. “Please, don’t kill me.”

“Admit that you lied. I want to hear you say it.”

“I lied,” she said in a voice gone suddenly soft.

Bo hit the lights. Moses blinked, blinded for a moment. Bo fired three times. Moses stumbled back. His weapon swung in Bo’s direction. Although the silencer deadened any report, the gun kicked in his hand, and Bo knew he was attempting to return fire. The shots went high, harmlessly drilling into the night sky. Then Moses collapsed and lay still near where the First Lady knelt.

Bo walked forward cautiously, his Sig trained on the still form of David Moses. He saw Moses’s handgun on the ground and kicked it away. The First Lady began to sob.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I…don’t think I can move.”

“Are you hit?”

“I don’t know…I don’t think so.” Her body shook as she wept.

Bo shifted the Sig to his left hand and reached out to the First Lady. “It’s all right now. It’s all over,” he said.

“Bo!” she cried.

Moses moved faster than Bo had ever seen a man move. From his prone position, he delivered a powerful kick, and Bo’s leg buckled. Even as he went down, Bo tried to bring the Sig to bear on Moses, but the man rolled quickly away. Bo hit the ground on his knees. Moses executed a knife-hand blow that deadened Bo’s arm, and the Sig dropped from his hand. In the same moment, Bo saw a flash of reflected light in Moses’s right hand. Moses whirled, and Bo felt the thrust of the knife blade in his back. Instinctively, he rammed his arm backward like a piston, hammering his elbow into Moses’s groin. He heard the man grunt in pain. Bo stumbled to his feet and turned to face the assailant. Moses lunged, leading with the knife. Bo parried with an arm bar. Although he deflected the blade from his body, he felt a deep slice across his forearm. He stepped left and delivered a kick that missed the knee joint that was its target, but nonetheless sent Moses stumbling backward. The man’s momentum carried him to the edge of the bluff. Moses tried to catch himself before he went over, balancing for an instant, arms flailing like the wings of a night bird desperate to fly. Then he plummeted. Bo staggered to the cliff edge and looked over. All he saw was the dark, unbroken canopy of the trees below, and all he heard was the rasp of his own heavy breathing.

He was growing faint. He looked down at his arm. In the illumination from the tractor lights he saw a bright red spurting, and he realized, a little distantly, that Moses’s knife had hit an artery. He was bleeding to death.

“Bo?”

The First Lady spoke behind him. He tried to answer, but all he could muster was a small grunt. He took a step away from the edge of the bluff, and his knees buckled. The First Lady knelt at his side.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

He fell against her, into her lap.

“Please,” he heard her say toward the sound of voices in the orchard. “Agent Thorsen’s badly hurt.”

Bo lay in her lap with his head turned toward the tractor. The headlights had been bright, but they didn’t seem so bright anymore. Whatever it was the First Lady was saying to him wasn’t very clear. Not even the pain was distinct. What was most real to Bo was the desire to sleep. It had been so long since he’d slept well. But now it was time. He could finally let go. His job was done.