“What do you want to know?”
Bo mounted the steps but kept a discreet distance. “Was the tractor still running when you found Tom?”
“I don’t really remember. The lights were on, I do recall. I could see them when I stood out there in the yard. I think…” She closed her eyes and put a hand to her forehead as she concentrated. “It seems to me that it was very quiet when I got to him. So I guess the tractor was turned off. But I couldn’t really say for sure. Everything was so rushed and confused.”
“I understand, Annie.”
“Agent Thorsen.” Chris Manning’s voice brought Bo around. Manning materialized from a shadow and stood at the bottom of the porch steps. “I’m sure the First Lady and her family appreciate their privacy.”
Annie said, “That’s quite all right…Chris, isn’t it?”
“Special Agent Christopher Manning, ma’am.”
“Yes. Chris. Bo and I are old friends. He’s no intrusion.”
“Actually, Ms. Jorgenson, I need to take him from you. There are a few security issues we need to discuss.”
“Very well. ’Night, Bo.”
“Good night, ladies,” Bo said. “’Night, Earl. Say hi to Joanie Bones for me.”
“Joanie Bones,” Earl said, laughing.
Manning walked briskly toward the guesthouse. When he believed, apparently, that they were out of hearing range of the porch, he turned angrily to Bo. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“As much as possible, Agent Thorsen, we become the woodwork. We remain unobtrusive. In carrying on conversations with our protectees, we not only intrude in their affairs, but we lose our vigilance and risk their lives.”
“Look, Chris, I was just—”
“I don’t care, Thorsen. The First Lady’s safety is my responsibility. I won’t have that responsibility compromised by your incompetence. I’m noting this in my report.”
“Do what you feel you have to, Chris. You always have.”
Manning left him and went into the guesthouse.
From the dark of the porch, Annie’s voice carried to him. “Sorry, Bo.”
“No problem, Annie.”
The guesthouse door opened again, and Coyote came out. “Whoa, is he steamed. What did you do? Hit him again?”
“Let’s go to the barn, Stu,” Bo suggested. “I want to run something by you.”
They stepped into the opened doorway. The yard light cast their shadows inside where they merged with the dark of the barn.
“That Manning is some piece of work,” Coyote said.
“Forget about him. He’s just doing his job. Listen, Stu, something about Tom Jorgenson’s accident has been bugging me all day.”
“Yeah? What?”
“When the limb knocked Jorgenson from his seat, the tractor should have kept on going, but it didn’t. When Annie found him, she thinks the tractor was turned off, although she’s not absolutely certain. But suppose she’s right.”
Coyote said, “Then the question would be, if Jorgenson didn’t turn the tractor off, who did?”
“Right.”
“Does this have anything to do with the First Lady’s safety?” Coyote asked.
“Not directly. Not in any way that I can see.”
“Then forget it. Look, it’s been a long day. I’m heading home.” Coyote put a friendly hand on Bo’s shoulder. “Do me a favor, will you? Manning’s gunning for you. Don’t give him any ammunition.”
After Coyote left, Bo stood in the yard and looked toward the west. The setting moon, only a couple of days past full, cast a brilliant glow over the apple trees. He knew that Tom Jorgenson would see beauty in that bright light. Bo saw mostly advantage. It always meant that anyone moving among the orchard rows could be more easily seen.
chapter
seven
When he saw the two agents head toward the barn, Nightmare switched to the camera he’d concealed in a hay bale in the loft two days earlier.
In the weeks before, access to Wildwood had been easy. The grounds were large, and unsecured. Tom Jorgenson liked to think of himself as a man of the people, and unless a dignitary was visiting, he didn’t believe in extensive security measures. Nightmare had scaled the stone wall dozens of times, coming and going in the night as he studied the layout of the buildings and the equipment the Secret Service would eventually use to create the illusion of safety. While the Jorgensons slept, or while they were absent, Nightmare had walked their rooms undetected. He felt like a ghost, and he liked the feeling. He would show them what the dead could do.
The two agents stood in the open doorway of the barn. On Nightmare’s monitor and seen through the sunglasses that he wore even in the dark, they were black shapes against the glare of the yard light. He turned up the microphone and listened as they discussed the concern of the one called Thorsen.
The tractor. It was a small detail. Why hadn’t he let it run off the cliff? The answer was simple. Too much noise. Too great an announcement of the event. Nightmare had always been an operative who appreciated the quiet and the dark. Execute and evaporate. Gone before anyone knew he’d ever been there.
But this Thorsen was observant and smart. Nightmare knew he would have to watch the man, and eliminate him if necessary. Not difficult. Nightmare had dealt with dozens like him, men who thought they were too smart to get killed.
When the two agents split up, Nightmare switched cameras again, this time to a view of the house from a unit he’d secreted in the sycamore tree. The three women had quit the porch. Nightmare checked the kitchen camera hidden in a false fire extinguisher with which he’d replaced the real one, then he flipped to the camera hidden in a book on a shelf in the living room where the agent on duty was playing a game of solitaire on a coffee table. Finally he checked the camera he’d placed in the bedroom that had once been Kate’s. He found, as he’d hoped, that the room was still hers. She sat on her bed, staring at a bare wall.
What do you see there, Kate? The future? The past? You don’t see me, I’ll bet. But you will.
He remembered the first night twenty years ago that he’d watched her like this, unseen. He’d climbed the sycamore, climbed as easily as a snake up a vine. In those days, there’d been curtains over the windows, gauzy things not dense enough in their weave to block his vision of her undressing. He remembered her breasts especially, tumbling from the bra that had held them captive. For weeks in that summer of his seventeenth year, he’d made a ritual of the sycamore tree. On those nights when she was gone, when they were all gone and the house was deserted, he climbed the porch supports, swung himself easily over the eaves to the roof, and crept to her window. He was already a genius at picking locks, at easing through the smallest breach in someone’s privacy. Her screen presented him no challenge at all. He wandered her room, fingering everything she’d touched. He lay on her bed, breathing the scent off her pillow.
He loved her, of course. How could he not love that which had possessed him?
In the present, he watched the First Lady drift left, just beyond camera range. She reappeared a minute later. Her yellow dress was gone, and she’d removed her bra. Her breasts were fuller now, heavier-looking, and there was a roundness to her belly and hips that was the signature of time, of the two decades that separated this intimate view from the last. She stood a moment, as if lost. Then she turned her back to the camera and bent her head. Nightmare could tell from the way her shoulders quivered that she wept.
Until that moment, he’d been hard in his thinking, brutal, in the way that time and circumstance had shaped him to be. But when he saw her cry, a different feeling nudged him, one that he had not expected. He remembered how his own mother used to cry, from confusion and loneliness.
He fingered the festering wound above his heart, full of ash and old blood. He put his sunglasses back on and closed himself like a fist around an understanding: It didn’t matter if what he did was done out of anger or out of
pity. The end was the same.
Kate put on a nightgown, lay down, reached for a book on the nightstand, and began to read.
The sun will rise for you tomorrow, Nightmare thought as he watched her. But soon there will be nothing for you except the night, the unending night. And I will be the one who takes you there.
chapter
eight
Midmorning the next day, Annie Jorgenson, the First Lady, and Earl headed to the hospital. The word on Tom Jorgenson was that his condition had stabilized, but he still had not regained consciousness.
Protective detail was among the most important of a Secret Service agent’s duties, and also among the most tedious. Usually it entailed hours of doing nothing while trying to maintain a level of readiness to deal with the worst-case scenario. Bo thought the electronic sweep of Wildwood that hadn’t yet been done would be a good way to break the routine. At the briefing that morning, he discussed the possibility with Chris Manning. Manning vetoed the idea, pointing out once again that the purpose of the First Lady’s visit was personal, and that no state secrets were in jeopardy. Bo decided not to argue.
Shortly after the motorcade left, Bo put Jake Russell, the shift supervisor, in charge of the Op Center and left Wildwood. He checked in with the deputies posted at the entrance, Morgan and Braun, men he’d worked with before. Except for seeing the First Lady in person, it was dull duty. The news journalists in the cars and media vans that sat parked along the highway knew the drill. Cameras rolling when the First Lady appeared, but no access to Wildwood itself. Bo saw that there were more vehicles parked than he’d anticipated and heavier traffic on the usually quiet highway. Gawkers, hoping for a glimpse of Kathleen Jorgenson Dixon.
Bo drove toward Stillwater and headed to the office of the Washington County sheriff. He flashed his ID at the desk officer and waited a minute before he was buzzed through the security door.
Sheriff Douglas Quinn-Gruber was a big man with a wry smile and sharp, discerning eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He had a quick wit and an understanding of local politics that had kept him in office for three terms. He also had a taste for exotic beer. He brewed his own. Each Christmas for the last three years, Bo had received an assortment of home brews that tasted of raspberry or hazelnut or honey, and occasionally like beer. Bo’s own tastes were simple. He usually drank Pig’s Eye, brewed in St. Paul on the banks of the Mississippi River, but he appreciated the sheriff’s gesture.
“Hey, Bo,” Quinn-Gruber said, coming out of his chair. He reached out with a strong handshake. “I’m surprised to see you. I figured you’d be swamped at Wildwood.”
“Everything’s under control, Doug. We have a small army out there. How’s Mary Lou?” Bo always asked after the sheriff’s wife. He liked hearing what she was up to, always something interesting.
The sheriff laughed. “In two weeks, she turns fifty. Know what she’s planning on doing to mark the occasion? She’s going to canoe—by herself—the entire length of the St. Croix River.”
“You worried?”
“Naw. I called the counties up north and in Wisconsin, talked to a few fellow officers. They’re going to keep an eye on her progress. Discreetly. Have a seat.” He indicated a chair and sat back down at his desk. “So, what brings you here? I’m in touch pretty regularly with Stu Coyote. Everything seems fine.”
“It is, as far as the First Lady’s concerned. I wanted to ask about Tom Jorgenson’s accident.”
“A shame, that.”
“Doug, did any of your people investigate?”
“Investigate? An incident report was filed, but I don’t think anybody saw any reason to investigate. Why?”
“Something bothers me.” Bo explained his concern about the mystery of the stopped tractor.
“What are you saying? Tom wasn’t alone out there?”
“I’m not sure. But it kind of looks that way.”
“Are you thinking maybe it wasn’t an accident?”
“On occasion, Tom’s received hate mail because of the work he does with the Institute for Global Understanding. I’ve always been afraid he might end up a target someday. And you know how lax he’s always been about his own security at Wildwood.”
The sheriff removed his wire-rims and squinted through them. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the lenses. “That tractor was hauling a trailer. Maybe the extra drag on the engine made it stall.”
“I thought of that,” Bo said.
“I don’t want to take a chance where Tom Jorgenson is involved,” the sheriff said. “I’ll have one of my investigators look into it. Think we’d get anywhere dusting the tractor for prints?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“Consider it done.”
“Thanks.” Bo stood up. “I appreciate your help, Doug.”
“No problem. Hey, I’m trying a new recipe. Rhubarb beer.”
Bo grinned. “Can’t wait till Christmas.”
Less than two hours later, an investigator named Timmons showed up at Wildwood. He spoke with Annie. Just a routine follow-up, he told her. Then he checked in with Bo. Tom Jorgenson, Timmons reported, had had no threats in almost two years. One of the sheriff’s deputies admitted to moving the tractor ahead a bit so that the paramedics could work more easily on Jorgenson but couldn’t remember if the ignition had been in the “off” position, so there was no way of telling whether the engine had died on its own or had been turned off. Bo accompanied Detective Timmons to the tractor. While Timmons dusted for prints, he pointed out to Bo that in the last two months, Tom Jorgenson had suffered several minor accidents, due entirely to carelessness. “Everyone gets old,” he said with a shrug. “And sometimes forgetful.”
After the investigator had gone, Bo stood in the shade of the limb that had apparently knocked Tom Jorgenson into harm’s way, and he studied the line of the flatbed and the track of the wheels. Finally, he went to the Kubota and climbed into the seat. It was comfortably padded, with a soft, cushioned back. Bo sat and imagined the limb catching him in the forehead, knocking him backward. The seat back would probably have prevented him from toppling off. He thought awhile, then let himself tumble sideways into the soft orchard grass where he lay, looking back at the flatbed.
“Comfortable, Bo?”
The First Lady came around the tractor and stood gazing down at him. She wore a white T-shirt, jeans, and a dark blue ball cap with Twins printed across the crown. She carried her sandals, leaving her feet bare. She looked more like a country girl than the wife of the nation’s commander in chief. She was smiling. Not a large smile, but the first Bo had seen since she’d arrived. Two of Manning’s people trailed at a reasonable distance.
Bo stood up. “I was just admiring the machinery.”
“From every angle, I see. Do you know about tractors?”
“After I was arrested, Annie arranged for me to live with a foster family down in Blue Earth,” Bo said. “Farmers. I did my time on the seat of an old John Deere Model B.”
Her smile grew. “We had a Model B when I used to help my dad in these orchards. That was a monster. Not like this Kubota.” She put a hand on the tractor, but she pulled it back quickly from the sting of the metal that had turned hot in the afternoon sun.
“You know about the Kubota?”
“An M-series narrow. Specially built for orchard work. Hydrostatic power steering. Synchronized main and shuttle transmission. Three Vortex Combustion System diesel engine. Eighty PTO horsepower.”
Bo let the fact that he was impressed show. She laughed, and he liked the sound.
“I’m not as smart as I seem,” she confessed. “Dad and I talk on the phone almost weekly. He told me everything. He was so proud of his new toy. What interests you so much about the tractor?”
Manning had been explicit in his directive. The First Lady wasn’t to be worried.
Bo said, “On the farm, I fell in love with machines. The smell of grease and gasoline and field dust. I appreciate their purpose and their pow
er.”
“But you didn’t become a farmer.”
“Wrong temperament,” Bo replied.
“Katie! Katie!”
The First Lady turned back as Earl galloped toward her down the orchard row. He was a big, ungainly man who ran without any grace but a lot of joy. He smacked into a low-hanging branch, spun around, and came on as if nothing had happened. When he reached them, he was breathing hard and smiling big.
“Hi, Bo.”
“Morning, Earl.”
“Beautiful, huh?”
Bo looked at the First Lady, and thought, Yes. Then Earl touched the tractor, and Bo understood what he’d meant.
“I get to drive it sometimes,” Earl said.
“But not now,” Kate told him.
Earl looked disappointed and climbed onto the seat anyway. He began to pretend to drive the machine, making engine sounds. “Vrrooom! Vrrooom!”
The First Lady moved to the flatbed and sat in the shade of an apple limb. She put her sandals beside her and crossed her long, brown legs. “I used to come here with my father almost every night. He’d bring his telescope and we’d look at the moon and the stars for hours.”
“It’s easy to see why he loves it.”
“Am I keeping you from your work?” she asked.
“You are my work.”
“My aunt thinks the world of you, you know.”
“I’m pretty fond of Annie. I owe her my life. What I’ve made of it, anyway.”
“What about the others?” she asked. “The children who lived with you in the bus.”
“Otter, Egg, Pearl, and Freak.”
“Those were their names?”
“Street names. We all went by them.”
“What was yours?”
“Spider-Man.”
“So, what happened to the others?”
Earl was pretending to shift through gears and bouncing on the seat as if he were driving over rough road.
Bo leaned against the ridges of the Kubota’s big rear tire. The limb that shaded the First Lady also shaded him.
The Devil’s Bed Page 5