William Krueger - The Devil's bed

“No. But then, I’m not here that much.”

Bo unlocked the door of Max Ableman’s room, stepped in, and turned on the light. It looked as if no one had ever been there. The bed was neatly made. Through the opened doorway to the bathroom, Bo saw that the towels hung perfectly folded. He walked to the closet. Empty. He went to his car and punched in Diana Ishimaru’s home phone number. She answered, sounding groggy from sleep.

“Diana, this is Bo. I need a fingerprint technician. Now.”

Clean,” Rosie Mortenson said. “Not a print anywhere. Not even any residuals in the usual places. The bathroom fixtures, the lamp, the doorknobs, the jambs, the television. Christ, even the damn Gideon Bible. They’re all absolutely clean. What does that tell you, Bo?”

“If this were the Hilton, I’d say excellent housekeeping.” Bo shook his head. “He knew what he was doing.”

“I did pull a few prints off the headboard, but they were in a place where someone might grab hold in the throes of passion, if you know what I mean. I’ll run them, but don’t get your hopes up.”

“Thanks, Rosie.”

“I wish I could have been more help.”

“You came out at a god-awful hour, and what you found tells me a lot.”

The fingerprint technician began to pack up her gear. Diana Ishimaru stood in the doorway to room ten, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her jeans, her eyes on the carpeting. “Who is Max Ableman?” she asked, more to herself than to Bo.

“I’ve been asking myself that for a while,” Bo said.

“Do you have a photograph?”

“No. He probably had a picture taken for his hospital ID. I’ll get it first thing in the morning.”

“Let’s contact the Washington County sheriff’s office and have them put out an APB on the pickup.”

Bo said, “I’d like to talk to Luther Gallagher.”

Ishimaru glanced at her watch. “Not at this hour. Go on home and get some rest. You can check him out tomorrow.” Rosie Mortenson slipped past them and went to her car. Ishimaru took one final look at the empty room. “I admit this is getting curiouser and curiouser, Bo. But we still have no evidence that connects Ableman to Tom Jorgenson’s accident. For that matter, we still have no proof that a crime has been committed.”

“I’ll get the proof.”

“Get it tomorrow, Bo. Tonight, get some sleep.”

But Bo knew sleep was going to be impossible. There were too many unanswered questions, and he’d roll them over and over in his mind until the sun came up. So he took I-94 to the beltway, swung south of the Twin Cities, and picked up Minnesota 169 heading southwest toward St. Peter, where Luther Gallagher lived. As he drove out of the bubble of urban light, the country night closed in around him, and the number of stars in the sky seemed to multiply. Distant yard lights became beacons that indicated farmhouses set among broad fields. The moon lit the land, and the highway was a long white corridor between silvered stalks of corn and leafy soybeans. He was heading into the country that long ago had been the site of his salvation.

Bo’s memories of his father were vague and shadowy. A huge shape looming over him, dark against the sunlit slats of venetian blinds. The smell of diesel fuel on big hands. A ride once atop broad shoulders to watch a parade. Only bits and pieces, as if he were always looking at fragments of torn-up photographs.

His father left when Bo was five years old. Ran off, according to Bo’s mother, with some Frederick’s of Hollywood whore who had all her brains between her legs. Bo never understood why his father would leave. Even Bo recognized how attractive his mother was. She was pretty enough to be in the movies. The men she brought home were always telling her that.

When Bo was fourteen, they lived in a run-down apartment building in an old section of St. Paul known as Frogtown, within sight of the golden horses that topped the capitol. His mother worked nights as a cocktail waitress; days, she slept off her weariness or slept off the booze. Bo was left pretty much on his own. Sometimes he went to school, but often he did not. He spent a lot of time on the streets. Although he was small for his age, he had an attitude that made kids much larger steer clear of him. He had a juvenile record, nothing serious, mostly truancy, a couple of incidents of shoplifting, one charge of criminal trespass that was eventually dropped. He’d done other things, just never been caught. Several social workers had threatened to put him in a foster home, but the truth was, and they all knew it, there were kids much worse than Bo, and much worse off. His mother kept a roof over his head and food in the cupboards. Bo knew how to wash his own clothes (and hers), and how to cook his own meals (and hers).

Bo loved his mother. He also sometimes hated her. It wasn’t uncommon for him to leave the apartment in a rush of anger, aiming back over his shoulder a parting shot that usually went something like, I wish you were dead. They argued about everything. His truancy, her drinking. His friends, her boyfriends. His dreams, her realities. Sometimes as he headed out the door, she called him back suddenly and held his face between her hands. “You wouldn’t ever leave me, would you?” she’d ask, as if she were seriously afraid. If it had been a good day, he’d answerDon’t be silly. If they’d argued, he was likely to sayDon’t bet on it. Their fights could be verbally brutal, but until the last night he saw her alive she’d never laid a hand on him.

He was in a fight at school that day. He’d been talking to the girlfriend of a kid named Krakhauer, when Krakhauer gave him a hard shove from behind and slammed him headfirst into the lockers. Bo coldcocked the kid. It didn’t matter that Bo hadn’t started things. Krakhauer was the one bleeding all over the hallway floor when the vice principal showed up. Bo was suspended. No big deal. It always struck him as odd punishment, this banning him from school, because school was a place he’d just as soon avoid anyway.

His mother came home late that night, drunk, and not alone. Bo was awake, lying in his bed. He’d waited up, wanting to talk about the fight, the suspension. When he heard the other voice, he grew angry. Once things started on the other side of the thin wall that separated his bedroom from his mother’s, he got up and got dressed. As he was heading toward the front door, his mother came from her room.

“It’s one o’clock in the morning. Where the hell do you think you’re going?” She’d thrown on an old robe that she held closed over her breasts with the clutch of one hand. In the other hand, she held an empty gin bottle.

“Why?” Bo asked. “You want me to pick up some booze for you?”

“Don’t get smart with me.” Her hair, long and blonde and disheveled from what had been going on in the bedroom, lay fallen over one eye. She brushed it away with the back of the hand that held the empty bottle.

“I’m going out.” He gave a surly glance toward her closed bedroom door.

Her own eyes went there, too, and everything about her seemed to sag. She came close to him, and when she spoke again, she’d softened. “You wouldn’t ever leave me, would you?”

Bo was sick to death of it. Sick to death of everything. And he said the cruelest thing he’d ever said to her. “He left you, you know, because you weren’t pretty enough.”

She drew back as if Bo had struck her. Then she let go her hold on the robe and slapped him. The robe fell open. Bo could see the stretch marks on her breasts and belly. “You will not speak to me that way,” she said in a choked voice. “I’m your mother, goddamn it.”

“That’s not my fault, goddamn it,” Bo threw back at her. He turned and stormed out the door.