William Krueger - The Devil's bed

No, he thought, but he gave no sign of it.

She locked him in her unwavering gaze. Her eyes were steady, not cold. Patient, not demanding. She seemed prepared to wait him out.

“No,” he finally said.

She sat back. “There’s a place I know that’s a good place. People I know who are good people. I’d like you to spend some time with them.”

“Why?” Bo asked.

“Because there are all kinds of families. I’d like you to experience a good one. If you give it a chance, you won’t be sorry, I promise.”

“Promises are easy,” Bo pointed out.

She nodded, granting him that. “I imagine you’ve been lied to a lot. I imagine people have been a pretty big disappointment to you. I’m a judge. That gives me some power. The promises I make, I’m able to keep. All you have to do is give me a chance, Bo, give these people a chance. We won’t fail you.”

It had been a long time since he had believed an adult, but the woman judge seemed sincere. More than that, she seemed strong in a good way. And what the hell. If things didn’t work out, he could always run.

“All right,” he said.

“A good decision, Bo,” she told him seriously. “I think you’re going to like them. Their name is Thorsen.”

Headlights dashing at him from behind yanked Bo from his memories. The vehicle rode his bumper awhile. Bo wondered why the damn thing didn’t pass him. Then it dropped back and followed at a safe, legal distance. Bo kept glancing at the headlights reflected in his rearview mirror, and he began to imagine them as a pair of glaring eyes watching him.

Thorsen, you need some coffee, he told himself.

He pulled into an all-night gas/convenience store on the outskirts of St. Peter, and the vehicle that had been behind him flew past on its way down Minnesota 169. He didn’t catch the make, but it certainly wasn’t the creature with eyes his tired brain had imagined. After he’d filled the gas tank, he got some coffee and asked the clerk for directions to the street where Luther Gallagher lived.

The address was near an industrial park. Gallagher’s house stood alone behind a wall of ragged lilac bushes. It was a two-story cadaver of a structure. Death by neglect, Bo thought. In the hard, brilliant moonlight, he could see peeling paint and window screens that carried long, open wounds. The yard was a mix of thin grass and hard bare dirt, reminding Bo of the coat of a distempered dog. He walked along a cracked and weedy sidewalk to the enclosed front porch. Five newspapers, still rolled in the cellophane bags in which they had been delivered, lay where they’d been tossed on the steps. Bo took out his penlight and checked the dates. Each was a Sunday edition of theSt. Paul Pioneer Press. There was a mail slot beside the door. Bo mounted the steps and shined his penlight through the dirty porch window. Unopened mail lay in a jumble under the slot on the other side. He was tempted to resort to a little B and E but restrained himself. He returned to his car and headed back to St. Paul.

It was 4A.M. when he parked in the garage of the duplex in Tangletown. He entered quietly, trying not to disturb his landlady, who lived below him. He stripped down, put on clean boxer shorts and a T-shirt, and made himself a cup of Sleepytime herbal tea. He had a lot of questions and no answers, but he needed sleep. He knew exactly what he wanted to do first thing in the morning, and he wanted to be clearheaded.

He sipped his tea and strolled to the living room window that overlooked the front yard and the street beyond. At that hour, he wasn’t particularly concerned about being seen in his underwear. He caught sight of an old pickup, driving slowly out of the light of the streetlamp in front of his house. For a moment, he thought it might be the pickup truck he’d seen at the Bayport Court. Then he shook his head and drew the curtains.

You need some sleep, Thorsen, he told himself. You need it bad.

The ringing of the telephone on the stand beside his bed pulled Bo from a deep slumber.

“Thorsen,” he mumbled into the mouthpiece.

“You sound asleep,” Stuart Coyote said.

Bo looked at the clock radio. 7:00A.M. “I am. What’s up?”

“Just checking in with my partner.”

“Partner?”

“Diana took me off the Wildwood detail and assigned me to work with you on the Tom Jorgenson thing. Interesting developments last night, I hear. How about you fill me in completely over breakfast at the Broiler.”

“When?”

“Is an hour enough time to make yourself gorgeous?”

“An hour,” Bo said.

Coyote was already waiting at the St. Clair Broiler, drinking coffee, looking over notes he’d scribbled on a small pad. “You look like you didn’t get any sleep at all.”

“Not much,” Bo admitted.

“Tom Jorgenson?”

Bo nodded. “The questions are piling up. The answers aren’t.”

Bo ordered black coffee and the Texas scramble. Stu Coyote asked for a Greek omelet.

“According to Diana, this is what we’ve got so far.” Coyote glanced at his notes. “A laundry worker with access to Jorgenson’s floor skips work the day after the apparent accident that killed the guard. The pickup he’s driving is registered to one Luther Gallagher. He abandons his motel room wiping away all traces of himself before you can talk to him. Is that about it?”

“One more thing. Luther Gallagher hasn’t been home in over a month.”

“How do you know that?”

“I went to his house last night.”

Coyote checked his notepad, then scowled at Bo. “You already went to St. Peter?”

Bo shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Looks like he’s a Sundays-only customer of thePioneer Press. Five weeks’ worth of newspapers are lying around his front steps, and a pile of unopened mail is sitting on his porch.”

“What do you know about Ableman?”

“Not much.”

“I can tell you the name’s an alias,” Coyote said. “Diana gave me the Social Security number you got off his job application and I ran it first thing this morning. It belongs to Max Ableman all right. But according to Social Security, Max Ableman is sixty-two years old and living in Florida. Looks like our guy plucked a name and Social Security number out of the air.”

“Knowing it would be quite a while, if ever, before the error was discovered,” Bo concluded.

Coyote referred again to his notes. “Gallagher works at the Minnesota State Security Hospital in St. Peter. Let’s head down there this morning.”

“You’re reading my mind, partner,” Bo said.

They drove in separate cars, giving them the flexibility to divide their time and energy if necessary. Bo led the way.

In daylight, St. Peter was a pretty little town set in the wooded valley of the Minnesota River. The Regional Treatment Center, of which the Minnesota State Security Hospital was a part, lay in the hills south of town. The facility was a mixture of imposing sandstone block buildings that looked several decades old and newer, more functional brick structures.

At the reception desk in the administration building, Bo and Coyote met briefly with the director of personnel, who arranged for them to talk to the program director in the Security Hospital where Luther Gallagher was employed as a security counselor.

The Minnesota State Security Hospital sat behind trees atop a hill a quarter mile west of the other buildings. It was a relatively new single-story facility, dull red brick, with barred windows, razor wire on the fencing, and a perimeter maintained with motion detectors and infrared cameras. Housed therein were the most dangerous of the patients remanded by the courts for treatment.

Helen Wardell, the program director, met them in her office, a gray, windowless room. She was a gaunt woman with dark circles under her eyes and a look on her face that seemed perpetually braced to deal with crises. The odor of cigarette smoke rolled off her clothing, and her voice was raspy in the way of someone long addicted to nicotine.