The Devil's bed

“I talked with Jake Russell. He’s going to relay the information to Manning. I figure it’s Manning’s decision whether to inform the First Lady and Annie.”

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Try to find answers to three questions. What’s the connection, if any, between Tom Jorgenson and David Moses? Why would such a towering intellect choose to join the military at seventeen? And, because he was underage, who signed as his guardian on the enlistment papers?”

“Let me guess,” she said, glancing at her notes. “You’re going to St. Jerome’s Home for Children, where you’re hoping to find the answers to all three questions.”

“You’re scary,” he said.

“Just good at this job. As you are. Well done, Bo.”

He was heading for the elevator when Diana Ishimaru stepped quickly out the door of the field office and called to him. “Bo. I just got a phone call from the Washington County sheriff. Tom Jorgenson’s regained consciousness.”

Where I-94 snaked through downtown St. Paul, there was a rollover with injuries. Bo got caught in the snarl of traffic. He was delayed nearly an hour getting to the St. Croix Regional Medical Center. He observed immediately the intensified security. Additional hospital guards and sheriff’s deputies made access to the fourth floor impossible for all but authorized visitors and staff. Consequently, the newspeople had set up camp in the main lobby. Media vans and cars that had been parked along the highway fronting Wildwood now sat in the hospital lot. Bo parked in a tow zone near the Emergency Room entrance and went in that way. He found the security desk manned by C. J. Burke, the guard who’d been on duty the night O’Meara died. Burke had the current issue ofGamer’s Magazineopen on the desk in front of him. He looked at Bo through eyes heavy with boredom.

“Sorry about your partner,” Bo said.

“Partner?”

“O’Meara.”

“He wasn’t my partner. We just worked the same shift.”

The guard wrote Bo’s name in the log and went back to looking at his magazine.

Bo was angry that Burke didn’t seem to give a shit about his fallen colleague, but he let it go. What good would it do to lash out? You cared or you didn’t, it was that simple. He took the elevator to the fourth floor, where Tom Jorgenson now lay conscious. A sheriff’s deputy stopped Bo the moment he stepped out, then allowed him to pass when he saw the Secret Service ID. Another deputy had been posted at the door to Jorgenson’s room. Sheriff Doug Quinn-Gruber was using the phone at the nurses’ station.

When the phone call ended, Bo approached. “Doug, have you had a chance to talk to Tom Jorgenson?”

Quinn-Gruber sipped vending machine coffee from a disposable cup. “He’s pretty weak. The doctor’s allowed only family in so far. The First Lady was here with Annie. They headed back to Wildwood just a few minutes ago. Ruth stayed. She’s here somewhere.” He glanced around. “Must’ve gone to the ladies’ room.”

“Any of the family know about Moses?”

The sheriff shook his head. “Manning didn’t want to say anything until he knew more. We got a photo of David Moses over the wire from Minneapolis P.D. Everybody working security has a copy of it. Detective Timmons is at Hennepin County Courthouse checking the file they’ve got on Moses.”

Bo glanced toward Jorgenson’s room. “How’s he doing?”

“Seems okay now. They had a scare when he first came to. He went ballistic. Disoriented, I guess. The nurses had to restrain him. The doctor asks him if he knows where he is. Jorgenson looks at him like the doc’s the devil himself and says, ‘Are you no man?’ Doc tells him he’s a physician and that this is a hospital. That settled him right down. He’s been fine since.” The sheriff shook his head. “‘Are you no man?’ What kind of question is that?”

Bo went to the physician who was deeply engrossed in reading Jorgenson’s chart, and he interrupted gently, “I’m Special Agent Bo Thorsen, Secret Service.” The two men shook hands. “I know Tom Jorgenson’s condition isn’t good, but I’d like to talk with him.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“It’s important or I wouldn’t ask.”

The doctor considered, then said, “All right. But keep it short.”

Tom Jorgenson’s eyes were closed. His face was sallow, his cheeks and sharp jaw grizzled with white stubble. A tube was attached to one arm, and another came out a nostril. He was hooked to electrodes connected to an EKG monitor. He reminded Bo of a puppet abandoned by whoever it was that usually pulled the strings. The shades over the windows were open to let in sunlight, but the glass was tinted, and what came through was subdued. The tint turned the blue of the river and the sky to deep gray. Bo drew up a chair next to the bed. Tom Jorgenson still wore a turban of gauze, and his eyes still looked as if he’d been pummeled in a prize-fight.

“Bo?” he whispered.

“Hello, Tom.”

He spoke slowly. “What are you doing here?” He thought a moment, then answered his own question. “Oh, Kate.”

“I’m only going to stay a moment, Tom. I need to ask you a couple of questions, okay?”

Jorgenson gave a faint nod.