The Devil's Bed

by William Kent Krueger

  As he stood considering what next, a chopper swung over the hill, hovered above the roof of the hospital tower, and descended toward the pad there until it was out of Bo’s sight. He could hear the thump of the blades slowing after it landed.

  Down the hill overlooking the town, Bo saw a SuperAmerica gas station/convenience store at the next intersection, and he had an idea. He bounded off the loading dock, raced across the laundry parking area, and jogged down the sidewalk to the store. He found a pay phone near the pumps, but where the phone directory should have been there was only the dangling end of the chain that had once held it in place. He pushed through the door of the store and leaned on the counter, breathing hard.

  “I need a phone book. It’s an emergency.”

  The clerk, a kid with gold wire-rims and the look of a failed poet, said, “Be with you in a minute.” He reached to the cigarette bins above his head and pulled down a pack of Winston Lights for the customer ahead of Bo.

  “I need that phone book now.”

  “I said just a minute.” The kid gave him a stern glare weighted with all the authority of a clerk in charge.

  Bo drew his Sig. “Give me the damn phone book.”

  The customer, a balding man with eyes that had bloomed huge as two chrysanthemums, stepped out of Bo’s way.

  The clerk kept his gaze on the barrel of the Sig, reached to the phone book that was on a stool near the register, and handed it to Bo.

  “I’ll need fifty cents for the phone, too.”

  The clerk rang open the register, fingered out two quarters, and handed them over.

  “Thank you,” Bo said. He pushed out the door and ran to the phone.

  As he looked up the number of the St. Croix Regional Medical Center, he heard the chopper lift off from the pad on the hospital roof. He glanced up and saw it zip away over the hills to the south. He dialed the hospital operator, gave his name as Doctor Lingenfelter, and asked to be connected to the nurses’ station in Trauma ICU. When he was connected, he asked if Maria Rivera was on duty. She was. He asked to speak with her.

  “Hello, this is Nurse Rivera.”

  He pictured her clean, white uniform, her kind eyes.

  “Maria, it’s Bo Thorsen.”

  She was quiet.

  “I need a favor, Maria.”

  “What?” she asked carefully.

  “Just tell me if they’ve put additional security on Tom Jorgenson.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “It’s important, Maria. His life may be in danger.”

  “He’s not here,” she finally answered. “A helicopter just picked him up and took him to Wildwood.”

  “Thank God,” Bo whispered into the receiver.

  “Bo, what can I do to help you?”

  “You’ve done it, Maria. Thank you.”

  “Be careful, Bo.”

  He hung up. He looked back through the glass of the convenience store and saw the clerk on the phone. Calling the police, no doubt. Bo beat a hasty retreat.

  Otter was still in the van, the engine idling.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Bo said. “But slowly and carefully.” He crouched on the floor of the van so that he couldn’t be seen.

  “How’d it go?” Otter said, signaling to pull away from the curb.

  “If they thought I was crazy before, they’ll be damn sure of it now.”

  By the time they returned to St. Paul, a gray evening light hung over the quiet neighborhood and the church. Otter pulled up to the back entrance and gave Bo a key.

  “All the doors are locked. Nobody will disturb you. Go on in and wait for me. I’m going to gas up the van. Then there’s a good Greek place a mile or so up Snelling. How about I grab us a couple of gyros. I don’t know about you, but this spy stuff makes me hungry.”

  “I’m starved. Thanks.”

  Bo shut the van door, and Otter headed away.

  Inside, the church was dark and deserted. Instead of heading to Otter’s room in the basement, Bo went to the sanctuary. He was still tingling from the adrenaline rush of his dash to Stillwater. He wanted to relax for a few minutes. The church sanctuary seemed as good a place as any.

  It was a vast room with great stone arches that reminded Bo of a cathedral. There were a dozen stained glass windows set high in the walls along the sides and behind the altar. Probably when morning light streamed through them, they were dazzling. As it was, with the dark of night closing in behind them, they seemed lifeless. Aside from the red glow of the exit signs, there was only one light in the sanctuary, directly above the cross on the altar. Beyond the chancel rail, the light faded quickly so that the sides of the great room and the far back corners lay in a charcoal gloom. Bo walked to a pew near the rear of the church and sat down next to the center aisle. He removed the Sig Sauer that had been stuffed in the waist of his pants and laid it beside him on the pew. For a long time, he stared at the gold cross on the altar.

  Until he went to live with Harold and Nell Thorsen, he’d never gone to church. They insisted that every Sunday he accompany them to Valley Lutheran. He went mostly because he grew to like the people who made up the congregation, people like Harold and Nell, farm families. But he never got the God part of things. In all his growing up, he’d never felt safe, protected, watched over, cared for in any but the most careless way. Although he knew she loved him, his mother had failed miserably in giving him any sense of security. Whenever Harold or Nell suggested to him that God’s hand had guided his way to their farm, he was clear in pointing out that it was the hand of the Minnesota justice system that had brought him there, and the judicial shoving of Annie Jorgenson in particular. As grateful as he was to Annie, he’d never been inclined to think of her as an angel of God. What he’d wanted in all those Sundays, demanded silently in church, was something on the order of a miracle. He challenged God, “Give me a sign, something I can’t miss, and I’ll believe.” The miracle never came. For Bo, church remained an experience based on community rather than religion. Eventually, in place of a religious doctrine, he established for himself a credo of his own, three simple dictates that he tried to live by.

  1. The world is hard. Be strong.

  2. Love is for only a few. Don’t expect it.

  3. Life isn’t fair. But some people are. Be one of them.

  Over the years, he’ d considered adding others—Laugh when you can; the opportunities are few; and Women are easy; compliment their shoes— but he’d always kept it limited to the three he formulated in that small country church outside Blue Earth. He had no complaints. He suffered only when he broke one of his commandments.

  With his eyes on the dull reflection off the cross he whispered, “The world is hard. Be strong.”

  From directly behind his right ear came the click from the hammer of a pistol being cocked. Bo felt the cold kiss of a gun barrel against the bone at the back of his head.

  “Two: Love is for only a few. Don’t expect it. Three: Life isn’t fair. But some people are. Be one of them.” A small laugh accompanied the recitation. “Briefer than the Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights,” David Moses said, “but not a bad way to live, Thorsen. Not bad at all.”

  chapter

  forty

  Surprised that I’m alive?” David Moses said. “But why would that be? Isn’t this a place that celebrates resurrection?”

  Bo glanced at the Sig beside him on the pew.

  “Uh-uh. Eyes on the cross.” The muzzle of the gun barrel pushed Bo’s head gently toward the altar. An arm reached alongside Bo and sent the Sig sliding to the far end of the pew.

  “What now?” Bo said.

  “Now? We talk.”

  “About what?”

  “I read about you in the papers, that they suspect you killed your boss. Anybody who has any idea of who you are wouldn’t believe that bullshit for a moment. You were framed. I’m wondering by whom.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Bo was trying to come up with a plan, a mo
ve that would give him some advantage. But at the moment, he could think of nothing. Moses was in complete control. Keep him talking, Bo thought.

  “The real question is, how did I find you when the authorities couldn’t. They look in all the obvious places. They’ve staked out your apartment. They’re watching that farm you grew up on in Blue Earth. They’ve even got a detail posted at your partner’s place. What’s his name? Coyote? But I know you, Thorsen. And I know how you think.

  “Specifically, I asked myself when a man’s got no place to run, where does he turn? To family? Too obvious. Maybe to a close coworker. But your boss is dead, and Coyote is out of town. How about a friend? I’m sure the authorities thought about that, but anyone looking at you on the surface would think you didn’t have any friends. So the question for me was, if you turned to a friend, how would I identify him?”

  There was a moment of silence in which, apparently, Moses waited for a response. Bo heard the creak of the old wooden pew as Moses leaned forward and spoke into his ear.

  “Simplicity itself. I secured a copy of the visitor’s log kept by the security guards at the hospital during your convalescence. Lots of cops dropped by to see you. But only one who decidedly wasn’t.”

  “Otter.”

  “Who gave this address to the guard.”

  The quiet of the sanctuary was broken by the rise of a siren wail. It grew in volume, passed, diminished, was swallowed by distance and the night.

  Moses said, “You know, I’ve been inside lots of churches all over the world trying to figure out this Christianity thing. Get this. ‘Christian soldiers are to wage the war of Christ their master without fearing that they sin in killing their enemies or of being lost if they are themselves killed…. If they kill, it is to the profit of Christ; if they die, it is to their own.’ A good Catholic saint said that. Pretty bloodthirsty, don’t you think?”

  “I never argue religion.”

  “Gets you nowhere, right? You know what Mark Twain said? ‘If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.’” Moses laughed softly. “What do you think of this whole God thing?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does or I wouldn’t have asked. I did a little checking on you. You had a tough time of it growing up. Orphaned. In trouble with the law.”

  “You had a pretty shitty childhood yourself.”

  “You think so? I never thought of it that way, actually. A little lonely, maybe, but what kid isn’t? My mother was available to me probably no more or less than yours was for you. She read to me, held me sometimes, relied on me. And my other companionship was with books. You like books, too.”

  “I didn’t kill my mother.”

  It was almost a full minute before Moses spoke again. Whether he was thinking or fuming, Bo didn’t know, but his words, when they finally came, were oddly gentle.

  “Have you ever put an animal out of its misery?”

  “Don’t tell me you did it out of pity.”

  “No. What I knew of love. I would do things differently now, but at the time, it seemed reasonable.”

  The pew behind Bo gave another creak, more pronounced this time as Moses leaned nearer.

  “Am I any worse than the God whose house this is?” Moses asked.

  “The God who sends plague and conflagration and misery and suffering to whole populations who piss him off. The Old Testament, now there’s a chronicle of brutality.”

  “That’s how you deal with your guilt? Pointing a finger at a greater guilt?”

  “Who said I had any guilt?”

  “What I’m wondering is why you’re still alive.”

  “Why, I can’t say. But if you’re interested I’ll tell you how.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “Buckle your seat belt, Thorsen,” Moses said. “You’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  chapter

  forty-one

  At first there’d been almost nothing. No day. No night. Only darkness, perpetual and full of pain.

  Death? David Moses had wondered. If so, then why the voices and the press of hands? Why the visitations and the dreams? Was death a long remembering and a longer regret?

  Should I give him more? A voice like the crackle of dry brush.

  A touch. Then another voice, No. Vitals are too erratic.

  He screams sometimes.

  Not from the pain. Dreams. His dreams, I’ll bet, are terrible.

  They were worse than terrible. They were the loneliness multiplied by the longing, the betrayal multiplied by a desperate trust.

  He was not dead, he thought in one lucid moment, for hell would have been easier.

  Moses dreamed.

  He was in the cell they called el Cuarto del Diablo. The Devil’s Room. He was naked, strapped to a wooden apparatus they called the Devil’s Bed. His nose was filled with the odor of vomit and blood and excrement that had soaked into the wood.

  The filthy guard the prisoners had nicknamed La Cucaracha stood near the barred window. The sky beyond was full of gray clouds. The guard held a long black stick. A Paralyzer shock baton. Eighty thousand volts in his hand. La Cucaracha turned from the window and began to walk toward Moses on the Devil’s Bed. His dark eyes traveled the length of Moses’s naked body, looking for the right spot. He grinned as he gazed at the shriveled testicles. His mouth was like a dark cemetery, his gapped teeth like gravestones. Moses felt his jaw go rigid as the baton descended toward his genitals. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying in the dark of this awful dream to will himself awake.

  He’s screaming again. What if someone hears?

  There’s no one to hear. Keep him sedated. Keep him restrained.

  Christ, I hate his screams.

  Just be glad you don’t have his nightmares.

  When he finally awoke, it was with a sudden tensing of his whole body. Moses lurched from unconsciousness and snapped instantly alert. In seconds, he’d assessed his surroundings.

  He was in a small room. No windows. One door. The room was lit by a low-watt bulb in a brass standing lamp a few feet away. He lay on a hard cot with a mattress so thin he could feel the iron webbing beneath it. His hands and his ankles were shackled to the cot frame. A tube fed into his left arm. The tube ran down from a nearly empty fluid bag hung on a mobile IV unit. Near the cot was a metal table on which lay a syringe and several capped vials. The dim lamplight illuminated stained green walls and a cracked plaster ceiling. In the corner where two walls and the ceiling met, a spider had spun a web. The spider must have successfully captured all the flies, for there was not a sound in the room. The smell of mildew came off the walls, but the scent of the sheet that covered him was clean and fresh.

  He made an inventory of his body, moving first his legs. His left thigh throbbed. His left hip was sore. His lower back ached. There was a sharp pain in his chest when he breathed deeply. His hands and arms seemed all right, but when he moved his right shoulder, he nearly cried out in agony. His right eye was swollen almost shut.

  Good, he thought. Feeling in all my limbs. I’m not dead and I’m not paralyzed.

  From beyond the only door crept the sound of music, very faint. The Beatles. “Penny Lane.”

  He began to consider his situation. The last thing he remembered was the struggle on top of the bluff at Wildwood. He remembered teetering at the edge, and he realized he must have fallen. That would account for all the damage to his body. In fact, as he considered it, he figured it was a miracle he’d lived.

  So, where was he? Obviously not in a hospital. The mildewed walls and cracked ceiling suggested someplace less officially sanctioned. Someplace isolated, he assumed. Someplace hidden from prying eyes.

  Who was hiding him? Not the police. In America, the police operated in a glare of public light. But there were other agencies in the States whose standard MO was covert operation. And one in particular with which he was well acquainted.

  He tested the cuffs that shackled him hand and foot to the cot. No giv
e. He scanned the room. It was empty except for the lamp, the IV unit, and the table with the syringe and vials. The single door, undoubtedly guarded, presented another challenge. He began to contemplate a weapon. The syringe and vials were a possibility. The iron webbing of the cot might provide the metal for a shiv. He could always use the standing lamp, swinging it like Davy Crockett did Ol’ Betsy at the Alamo. Contemplating the image of his own last stand, going down wielding a floor lamp, gave him a moment of amusement.

  The door opened and let in a slice of daylight. The music was louder then. The air that came in smelled of honeysuckle. Two figures stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the daylight. The door closed. One of the figures slowly crossed the room and entered the drizzle of light near the cot. It was a man. He was smiling. Moses recognized him immediately.

  “Hello, David,” Kingman said. “It’s been a long time.”

  Kingman carried a tray of food. The man behind him brought a gun. Kingman set the tray on Moses’s lap and unlocked the cuffs. He left Moses’s legs shackled to the cot. Kingman stepped back and said, “I’ll take it from here.”

  The other man nodded and left the room.

  Moses looked at the food. Dry, burned toast. Scrambled eggs that could have used another two minutes over the fire. Mandarin orange slices from a can.

  “You never learned to cook,” he said.

  “Another talent you had that I could only envy,” Kingman said.

  Moses began to eat, carefully. Almost any movement hurt him.

  “I’ll give you more Demerol if you’d like,” Kingman offered.

  Moses declined with a shake of his head. The pain was better than the fog of the Demerol. The pain kept him focused.

  “Breakfast,” Moses noted of the food. “Must be—what?—around seven A.M.”

  Kingman returned to the door and leaned against it. He crossed his arms and scanned the windowless room for what might have given Moses a clue to the time. “What makes you think so?”