William Krueger - The Devil's bed

Then he thought of Diana Ishimaru. She lived on East River Road, less than a mile from Tangletown. All he had to do was stay awake for a few more minutes and he would be there.

He drifted, heedless of stoplights. Dimly, he understood that it must be very late because there was almost no traffic. On East River Road, he tried to remember which house was hers. In the dark and the rain, it was hard to tell. He pulled to the side of the street, and the front right wheel jumped the curb. He jerked the door handle and tumbled out onto the pavement. He stumbled up the walk to the front door, leaned against the clean white wood, and pounded.

The porch light came on. The locked clicked, the door opened, and Bo fell forward. A man caught him and stood him up.

“Diana?” Bo said.

“Ishimaru? Diana Ishimaru? She lives next door.” The man swung his hand in that direction. He wore a white robe and an angry look.

Bo took a couple of steps back into the rain and almost toppled over.

The man said, “Drunken asshole,” and slammed the door.

Bo crossed the wide lawn, tramped through a flower bed, reached the porch of the next house, and hit his fist against the door.

Diana Ishimaru answered immediately. Despite the hour and being dressed in a red chenille bathrobe, she looked wide awake.

“Bo? Jesus, come in out of that rain.” She reached out and took his arm.

Bo stumbled into the hallway. “Tried to kill me…” he mumbled.

“What?”

“Coffee,” he said. He leaned against the wall. He felt so tired.

“Out of those clothes, first. You’re dripping all over my rug.”

She led him to the bathroom. By the time she came back with dry clothes, he’d curled up on the tile floor and was drifting off.

“Bo.” She shook him. “Here, let me help.”

She worked him out of his shirt and then his pants. That left him in boxers. “I’ve done all the helping I’m going to. Get out of those wet Skivvies and into these things.” She dropped a set of gray sweats into his lap. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

Slowly, Bo finished what Ishimaru had started. She knocked on the door, came in, helped him stand up, then walked him into her living room, where she settled him on the couch.

“I’ll get the coffee and be right back.”

Bo laid himself down. The couch cushions felt so good, so soft, so welcoming.

Diana Ishimaru was an enigma in many ways. Although Bo knew where she lived, had driven past her house many times, he’d never been invited inside. So far as he knew, none of the agents in the field office had. In this way, and others, she’d kept her personal distance. As he took in the interior of her home, Bo was treated to a side of Ishimaru he’d never seen. A pair of gold-flaked screens decorated with cranes separated the living room and dining room. In the middle of the table near the front window sat a zen rock garden, six stones in raked white sand. On top of her bookcase were two clay pots containing tiny bonsai trees. On the wall behind the sofa hung a mirror in a blond wooden frame into which had been carved the delicate image of birds perched on branches. Bo was surprised by all this, for in her office, Ishimaru kept little evidence of her ancestry. He was just closing his eyes, ready to dream of the Orient, when Ishimaru shook him vigorously.

“Wake up, Bo.”

She pulled him upright and shoved the coffee cup into his hand. As he sipped, she drew an armchair near him and sat down.

“All right, what’s going on?”

In a stumbling patchwork of narrative, Bo told her everything. About the president’s request. About his own investigation into NOMan. About the men who’d drugged him and tried to throw him from the High Bridge. Although he got all the information out, he wasn’t certain how coherent it was. At the end, he felt better, but only a little less tired than before.

Ishimaru looked thoughtful. “I haven’t been able to sleep, thinking about everything that’s going down now. I’ve had a bad feeling about a lot of this, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly it was that felt hinky.”

“Sorry about blowing up this afternoon,” Bo said.

“Forget it. We’ve got more important things to worry about.” Ishimaru stood up, stuffed her hands into the pockets of her robe, and began to pace. For a little while, she said nothing, then she looked at Bo, who was tilting to one side. “That coffee hasn’t done you much good. Go ahead and lie down. Get some sleep. You deserve it.”

Bo followed her suggestion. “What about you?” he asked as he let his eyelids close.

“I’ve got some heavy thinking to do. Considering the cloud you’re currently under, you’re not going to be viewed as the most reliable source. But rest, Bo. Let me worry about that now. You’ve done a good job.”

Bo appreciated that. Coming from Ishimaru, it meant a lot. He finally gave himself over to the sleep that had been calling to him for what seemed like forever.

In his sleep, he heard the sound of thunder, but it was a different kind of thunder. Fragile. More like the shattering of glass.

He struggled to come up from his good, pleasant dreaming. As he opened his eyes, his head exploded. A stunning blow sent him right back into the dark from which he’d just climbed. Deep enough to dream again, this time a nightmare full of blood, but only for a moment before he tried once more to pull himself back to consciousness. As he did so, his body was yanked upright.

“Good,” he heard a voice that was all too familiar say. “Now put the Sig in his hand.”

He felt the press of a gun butt against his right palm, and a hand molded his own hand around the grip. He felt the trigger slip under his index finger.

“Where?” the voice asked. “I think between the eyes.”

“No. Stick it in his mouth. An agent like him would eat the bullet.”

Bo felt his hand rising under the power of another hand. An alien finger wormed its way into his mouth, prying his jaws apart. The finger tasted of leather.

Bo bit down hard.

“Jesus, God,” the voice screamed. “He tried to bite my finger off.”

Bo dimly aimed the gun in the direction of the voice and he fired. The sound of confusion followed, the clatter of upended furniture.

“Move, goddamn it,” someone shouted.

Two figures, vague in Bo’s vision, merged with the dark near the back of the house. A door slammed shut. Everything fell quiet.

Slowly, Bo stood, wavering in his stance, trying to pull his senses together. His head hurt and his eyes still felt heavy. He took a step forward, and he stumbled, but not from his own weakness. He looked back at what he’d tripped over. His heart nearly broke.

Diana Ishimaru lay at his feet, her eyes half open. Had it not been for the small, bloody hole in her forehead, Bo might have thought she was simply staring at the ceiling. Although he knew it was useless, he reached out and felt at her neck for the pulse that was not there. From beneath her head, from the exit wound Bo knew would be large and ugly, blood leaked, spreading across her clean beige carpet, staining it steadily fiber by fiber.

“No,” Bo cried. “God, no.”

He stood up and gripped the gun tightly in his hand. He wanted to kill the men who’d done this. He wanted to blow their fucking hearts right out of their fucking chests.

He stumbled toward the dark at the rear of the house where the men had fled. As his thinking cleared, he realized the uselessness of pursuing them. They were well gone by now. He looked back and saw that he’d tracked blood across the room. Her blood.

He stared down at the gun in his hand. It was a Sig Sauer. He checked the registration number. His Sig. And he was pretty sure that the only prints on it were his as well.