vulnerable right now.”
“I’m nothing to her,” Bo said. “Believe me.”
“You underestimate your charm.”
“Are you talking to me as my boss?”
“At the moment, as a friend. Think about what you’re feeling and then think about what you’re doing. And most of all, think about her.”
Bo looked out at the wooded hills. For a while he rode in silence.
“You look tired,” he said finally.
“Lots of people outside Secret Service are poking their noses into the incident at Wildwood. We’re not getting a lot of support from above.”
“You think someone’s going to get hung out to dry?”
“I can’t see it. I’ve reviewed everything, and we’re clear on protocol.”
He thought he noted some hesitation in her voice. He asked, “They want a scapegoat?”
“You just worry about getting yourself healthy,” she replied. “And keeping your face off the front page of tabloids. I can handle the rest.”
Just before they reached the turn to Wildwood, Ishimaru said, “By the way, military dental records for Moses arrived. Washington County ME says they’re a match. The body on the houseboat was definitely him.” She pulled into the drive, pausing a moment for the deputies there to ID her and Bo. At the gatehouse, an agent unfamiliar to Bo was standing post. After they’d passed through, he saw a newly dug trench running along the inside of the stone wall around the orchard.
“Underground, motion sensitive cable,” Ishimaru explained.
Bo understood. Nobody wanted a repeat of the tunneling Moses had done. It was a measure Bo himself had suggested several times, but Tom Jorgenson always vetoed the proposal. “I live behind enough of a wall already,” he’d complained. “And we both know that no matter how many security measures you put in place, someone bent badly enough on killing will find a way.” Which, as it turned out, was undeniably true.
They passed a number of agents Bo didn’t know. Ishimaru said, “The field office has been temporarily relieved of responsibility for security here. All our agents are back on normal duty.”
“Punishment?”
“Not necessarily. We’ve been under a lot of strain.”
“Diana, do you think I-”
She didn’t let him finish. “You were the only thing that stood between Moses and the First Lady. In the end, you were all that kept her alive.”
Not quite, Bo could have said. For Moses had offered the First Lady a chance at life. All she had to do was beg forgiveness for a sin he imagined she’d committed. Despite all his careful planning, Moses had hesitated. And that moment of hesitation was Bo’s opportunity and the First Lady’s salvation. Bo had written all this in his incident report, and he was sure Ishimaru knew it, so he said nothing.
She let him off at the guesthouse, where his car was parked. “Stay in touch,” she said.
A couple of agents came out to greet him-Cole Dunning, with whom he’d worked briefly while on assignment with the Dignitary Protection Division during the years of George Bush Sr., and Mack McKenzie, who’d gone through training with him. They shook his hand, and laughed, and they called him a hero. They said it lightly, but they meant it.
He found the First Lady sitting under an apple tree, the last in the row. Before her, the orchard grass ran ten yards to the edge of the bluff. Far below lay the sweep of the river. It looked peaceful and unmoving from that distance, a blue snake sleeping in the sun. Kate stared at the water.
“Hello,” Bo said.
She was startled, but she smiled when she saw him. “Bo. What are you doing here?”
“Came to get my car.”
She stood up. He saw that her feet were bare.
“They finally let you exchange your hospital gown for civilian clothes,” she said. “You look good.”
He almost said, So do you. Instead he indicated an area far to her right where a pile of stone and sacks of dry mortar lay. “What’s going on?”
“They’re putting up a wall. Dad finally gave his okay. It’ll ruin the view.” She stared again at the river. “They told me the body’s been definitely identified. It was David Moses.”
“Yes. It’s over, Kate.”
She gave her head a faint shake. “Once a thing happens, it’s never really over. It’s always there in your memory. In your nightmares.”
Bo thought about his own nightmares and knew that what she said was true.
Another smile brightened her face. “By the way, you’re invited to Sunday dinner. I hope you haven’t already made other plans.”
He decided she must not know about the tabloid story yet. He thought he should tell her, but he liked seeing her happy, and he liked feeling happy himself.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
He pulled into the garage behind the duplex in Tangletown. He climbed the stairs to his apartment and unlocked the door. Inside, he felt a little disoriented, as if he’d been gone on a long trip. He knew that in a way he had.
He put his things away, popped on a Miles Davis CD, and stood at the window in his living room. The street was quiet, full of sunlight and the shade of big trees. Down the block, a teenager ran a gas mower across a lawn. Nearer, a man in jean cutoffs hosed the suds off his car in the driveway. Bo could see kids on a swing set visible in one of the backyards. It all looked so normal, and it all felt so alien.
You’re just tired, he told himself. He went to the bedroom to lie down. With him, he took the book she’d given him. He opened it and read again the inscription she’d written. “…your name upon my lips.”
He closed the book.
“Kate,” he whispered.
It felt very good on his own lips.
chapter
thirty
The doctor had sent Bo home with pills. Penicillin to fight infection. Codeine to deal with residual pain. And Xanax to help him sleep. Bo sometimes had nightmares about Wildwood. The faces of the men and the woman who had died there haunted him. Often, in the nightmares, he relived the confrontation on the bluff with Moses. Sometimes in the nightmares, it was Bo who went over the cliff, and as he fell, he realized Kate was going to die, too. That nightmare always wrenched him from his sleep.
Awake in the dark one night, he got up to take some Xanax. He settled in front of the television and caught a late-night news program on cable. It was called “Profile of a Madman” and was subtitled “The David Solomon Moses Story.” In the wake of the attack on Wildwood, most networks had thrown together reports, profiles, documentaries of one kind or another. In most respects, the one Bo watched seemed a rehashing of what he and everyone else already knew by now. Moses, the brilliant, troubled man with a horrendous history. The romantic obsession for Kathleen Jorgenson. The assaulton Kate after she made it clear to him that she didn’t return his affection. The choice between prison and military service. There were a couple of new twists. While in the army, David Moses had served with Special Forces. There were positive comments about him from superior officers who felt he’d distinguished himself during a number of assignments. His history after his discharge was vague but included rumors of psychiatric treatment in several VA facilities across the country prior to his arrest for manslaughter in Minneapolis. Bo thought about the alphabet boys. CIA, NSA, DOD. They had the resources to create a smoke screen past for Moses, a man whose association with them, if indeed there’d been one, they would
