William Krueger: The Devil's bed

In sliding back, Bo had bumped into the camouflaged sniper rifle, and he remembered the weapon had a night sight. He stuffed his Sig into the waist of his pants, pulled away the burlap covering, and hefted the rifle. He drew the bolt back and found a chambered round. Scooting away from the edge of the sandstone, he crawled quietly toward the cover of the trees upslope. He veered south, keeping low, until he reached a place several yards to the left of the outcropping where a fallen tree gave him some cover. He brought up the rifle and directed the scope toward the area below the cliff.

At first, he saw nothing but underbrush and tree trunks and the pieces of fallen rock that littered the hillside. Then he saw the edge of one of those rocks move. He refocused the sight. There was Moses, with his back pressed hard against a big chunk of talus. Less than fifty yards separated them, and Bo had a clear shot. He knew the round in the rifle was unjacketed, that it would tear a hole in Moses a truck could drive through. But he hesitated. Moses should have been moving, trying for a different angle, changing his location. Instead, he was just sitting there. Bo saw him put a hand to his chest, then study his palm.

“I have the sniper rifle,” Bo hollered. “Night sight, remember? I’ve got a bead on you right now.”

Moses turned his head in the direction of Bo’s voice. A grin played across his lips. He lifted his hand and gave Bo the finger. After a moment, his other hand came up high. Bo could see the gun he held. With a weak toss, Moses threw the weapon away.

Bo pulled himself up and began to make his way down the hillside slowly, painfully. The moon, as it cleared the trees behind him, lit the slope, and he could see Moses clearly, even without the night sight. Moses watched him coming. Bo stopped a few feet away and stood with the barrel of the rifle leveled at Moses’s chest.

“If you try anything, I’ll open you up like a window,” Bo said.

Close now, he could see the blood soaking through Moses’s shirt.

“You were right.” Moses’s words were a slur. “I thought I didn’t need the armor. Didn’t expect you.”

“Did you come to kill her?”

Moses looked up at him, and an understanding came into his eyes. “For you, there’s more to this than duty. Should have guessed.” He shook his head. “Love is for only a few, Thorsen. Don’t expect it.” His lids fluttered closed, and just when Bo thought he was gone, he opened his eyes again, no more than a slit. His voice was a whisper. “You and me, we’ll always be alone. The difference is that in a few minutes, I won’t care anymore.” He smiled faintly.

Bo took a half step back.

Just in time.

Moses swung his foot in a powerful kick that, had Bo not anticipated it, would have connected with his already pained and swollen knee. Missing its mark, the kick sent Moses rolling over where he lay facedown, panting.

“You burned me once with that possum routine,” Bo said.

“Not much left to work with.”

Moses tried to roll over, to get his face out of the dirt, but he didn’t appear to have the strength. Bo could see a ragged hole in the back of the man’s shirt and a dark soaking that spread huge around it like a continent on a map of the world. The exit wound with a river of blood coursing from it. Moses wasn’t lying about one thing; in a few minutes, he would undoubtedly be dead.

Bo limped to a nearby rock and sat down to await the end. Moses’s breathing was shallow and labored, and there was nothing Bo could do to help, even if he’d wanted to. He didn’t know what dead was, but he believed it couldn’t be any worse than what life had offered David Moses.

“Stars,” Moses, grunted. “Like to see the stars.”

Bo understood. If he were the one lying there with his life leaking out, he’d rather look at the stars at the end. But that would mean getting close again. Even now, with the man leaning into a long fall toward forever, Bo had nothing but respect for David Moses’s ability to surprise.

“Life’s not fair,” Moses whispered. “But some people are. Be one of them.”

Bo set the rifle down and pulled the Sig Sauer from the waist of his pants. “I’m going to turn you,” he said. He limped to Moses, put the barrel of the weapon against his temple, and rolled him over.

“Thanks,” Moses said.

Bo moved back to the rock where he’d been sitting. They were both quiet after that. Moses fought to breathe. His eyes grew glassy staring at the sky. Bo had seen dying only once before, the long vigil he’d kept at Freak’s bedside. This wasn’t any easier.

“Night,” Moses said in a soft voice as if he were dreaming.

Bo wasn’t sure what that meant.

Above them, from the direction of the picnic area parking lot, came the sound of car doors slamming, muffled pops that reminded Bo of the silenced rounds that had taken out the assassins.

“Dark,” Moses said a few moments later. “Blessed dark.”

Bo glanced up where fingers of light poked through the trees on the hilltop.

Moses took three short breaths, air grasped desperately from the night, then he uttered the final word of his life. “Home.”

Bo saw him yield, saw his body go slack and relax into the earth. He waited and watched, looking for a twitch that would give away Moses’s charade, if charade it were. He heard crickets now, felt the kiss of a breeze, saw how lovely the river was, strewn with diamonds of light thrown down by the moon.

The pain of his knee gradually drew all his attention. He slid to the ground and sat propped with his back against the rock. He was sitting this way when the men with drawn weapons swept down the hill and gathered atop the sandstone outcropping.

“Down here,” Bo called.

Several powerful flashlight beams played across him.

“Police! Freeze!”

Bo didn’t move.

“It’s Thorsen, for God’s sake.”

Bo recognized the voice of Stu Coyote. A minute later, Coyote was at his side.

“You hurt, Bo?”

“S’okay,” Bo said. “I’m getting pretty used to it. What’re you doing here?”

“I located Otter,” Coyote said. He gently took the gun from Bo’s hand and sat on the ground beside him.

Special Agent Stan Calloway joined them and directed the beam of his flashlight toward the body. “Who’s this?”

“Moses,” Bo said.

“David Moses?” Calloway threw the beam up to the outcropping.

“How about up there?”

“The enemy,” Bo said.

Calloway looked him over and said, “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Bo said.

Calloway headed back up the hill.

“Otter sent you?” Bo said to Coyote.

“In a way. I came back as soon as I heard about Diana. I figured you’d turn to a friend, and the only friend of yours I ever met was Otter. I got his address from the visitor’s log security kept during your stay at the hospital.”

Bo smiled grimly. “You and Moses.”

“What?”

“Never mind. So you put two and two and two together?”

“That’s pretty much it. I talked to Calloway at Wildwood. We kept the First Lady off the bluff tonight.”

“And then you came over here because you thought he’d try the hit from here.”

“Not exactly. We got a call from the St. Croix County Sheriff’s Department. A farmer a mile north of here found a pickup truck parked on his land. Truck was full of ordnance. Had a Minnesota plate.”

“Let me guess,” Bo said. “Registered to Luther Gallagher.”

Coyote nodded. “We were up there investigating when we got the call on shots fired here.”

“Agent Coyote, I have to ask you to step away.” A man in a dark suit stood looking down at them. “This man is still wanted for questioning in the death of Diana Ishimaru.”