The Devil's bed

The guard followed him. “Ableman, what did you put in that cart?”

Nightmare reached the stairway door and abandoned his cart. He hurried through the doorway into the concrete shaft of the stairwell, pressed himself against the wall, and waited.

Damn. He’d given in to weakness, to a desire to taunt his enemy, the mistake of a green recruit. And this was the result. This was always the result when you let yourself go, even for a moment. Now he would have to risk much.

When Randy O’Meara swept through in pursuit, Nightmare leaped at his back. He used the bigger man’s momentum, pushed him forward, and hooked the guard’s ankle with his foot. O’Meara didn’t even have time to call out before he tumbled down the hard, concrete steps. He lay on the next landing, groaning. Nightmare sailed down the stairs, knelt, grasped the guard’s head in the crook of his arm, and gave his neck a powerful twist. He could feel the satisfying snap of bone against his own muscle. Afterward, he quickly mounted the stairs and checked the hallway. The nurses were still working on the Code Blue patient. No one seemed to have noticed him or O’Meara. He glanced back down at the dead man. Something more had to be done to cover the deed, and Nightmare, who was no stranger to tense situations, knew exactly what that was.

chapter twelve

Bo woke before dawn, as he sometimes did, from a dream of the days with his street family, Egg and Pearl and Otter and Freak. In the dream, they were all in the abandoned school bus, which floated on a river that was sweeping them away. Slowly, the bus was going under. Bo fought the steering wheel, but he could not make it turn toward shore. The dream was no mystery to him. He was still trying to save them. And still failing.

As a gray light crept over the orchards at Wildwood, Bo left his bed and checked in with Nick Pappas, the agent on duty in the Op Center. It had been a quiet night. Bo changed into his sweats and went for a run. He headed to the edge of the orchard along the river bluff and ran the perimeter of the Jorgenson land twice, a total distance of two miles. The grass was covered with dew, and his leather running shoes were soaked by the time he returned to the barn. He took a pair of four-ounce fingerless bag gloves and a black leather heavybag from where he kept them stored in a long bin. He hung the bag from a hook he’d installed long ago in one of the crossbeams.

Along with hay bales and orchard implements, he shared the barn with a plasma cutter, an angle grinder, a heating torch, and several half-formed iron sculptures taken from the studio of Roland Jorgenson when it was converted into the guesthouse. The dusty unfinished pieces and the equipment were among the few reminders left at Wildwood that once a famous artist had been at work there. The sculptures were wild things that gave the feel of monstrous forces barely contained. He didn’t know much about Roland Jorgenson, but there was definitely something about the man’s work that Bo found disturbing. In the bin where he kept his heavybag, Bo had come upon a portfolio containing early sketches for the sculptureGoddess. Accompanying the sketch on one of the pages was a note scribbled in what he guessed was the artist’s hand: For Kathleen. Bo was no judge of art, but he thought the sculpture, if indeed it was supposed to represent Kate Dixon, did her no justice. He’d given the portfolio to Annie Jorgenson and had no idea what had become of it.

He donned the gloves and worked the bag for half an hour before Chris Manning appeared in the doorway, sunlight at his back.

“We just got a call from the sheriff’s office. One of the security guards at the St. Croix Medical Center fell down some stairs last night and broke his neck. Fatal.”

Bo pulled off the gloves and wiped the sweat from his face with his T-shirt, which was itself soaked with sweat. “Who?”

“Guy named Randy O’Meara.”

Bo’s gut twisted hard. “Give me the details.”

Manning explained that at the change of shift, the security guard had not checked in. The other guards did a search and found O’Meara’s body on the stairs.

“Which stairwell?”

“Does it matter?”

“It might. Did anybody see anything?”

“No, but it’s pretty clear what happened. There were some marbles lying on the floor just inside the stairway door. O’Meara must have slipped on them and taken a fall. The marbles came from an aquarium in the ICU. There’s an elderly patient-”

“Mr. Cooper,” Bo interrupted.

“Right. The sheriff’s people checked his room. The sleeve of his robe was soaked and there were some marbles in one of the pockets.”

“Did he admit to anything?”

“According to the sheriff, he claims he doesn’t remember taking the marbles.”

“Have they scheduled an autopsy?”

“Medical examiner’s doing it this morning.”

“You think it’s an accident?”

“Looks like.”

“Just like Tom Jorgenson’s,” Bo said.

Manning looked at his watch. “We’ve got a briefing in twenty minutes. Get a shower. We’ll talk more then.”