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.”
“FBI,” Coyote said to Bo. Before he stood up, he said, “Need anything?”
“A doctor would be nice. My knee’s pretty screwed up.”
Coyote glanced up at the federal agent. “Get paramedics down here.”
“We’ll take care of everything.”
Bo looked across the river. The bluffs at Wildwood were so bright in the flood of moonlight that even from this distance he could make out details. But it was not what he saw that made him smile even in his pain. It was what he did not see.
chapter
forty-seven
Bo lay on the hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling light in his room. A casing of wire mesh protected the bulb. Tendrils of cobweb fuzzy with dust hung from the mesh like unraveled threads. Although there was no breeze that Bo could feel, the tendrils gently waved in some high current of air.
They’d transported him to the nearest medical facility, the St. Croix Regional Medical Center. They’d done a CAT scan to make sure there was no internal damage from his fall. They’d x-rayed his knee, had found bone chips, and had immobilized the joint pending surgery. They’d cleaned and dressed the wound on his head. Then they’d isolated him in the Psychiatric Unit. No one had come to see him since he’d been taken into custody and had told his story. He hadn’t been read his rights, nor had they given him an opportunity to make a phone call. He was not under arrest, they said. Since they’d locked him in the room hours before, he hadn’t seen a living soul.
He didn’t mind the isolation. It gave him time to think. And what he thought about was David Solomon Moses.
Moses had done terrible things. Killed many times over. Murdered agents Bo knew and respected. That he’d lived, according to Dr. Jordan Hart, in a world that he perceived to be in a constant state of war, much of it directed against him, didn’t alter greatly Bo’s impression of the man. He’d hunted Moses as he would an animal, a sick, dangerous animal. He’d thought of him as hate stuffed into a thin sheath of flesh. Yet on the cliff, with Kate on her knees, Moses had offered her a chance at life. Why? And later he’d killed the men whose assignment it was to assassinate her. Had that been for his own dark reasons? Or had Bo, in that St. Paul church, actually convinced him to let go of vengeance? Father Don Cannon claimed people came into the world with much of their spirit already formed. If that was true, then maybe something had been in David Moses when he was born, some possibility of goodness that all the cruelty and betrayal in his life hadn’t managed to destroy completely. Bo would never know for sure. Moses had taken all the answers with him.
Like the ceiling light, the windows in the room were covered with heavy wire mesh. Above the door a security camera was mounted to the wall. Bo guessed he was being watched. By whom was a concern, for he knew all too well that NOMan was everywhere. They could shoot him in that room and make it look like anything they wanted to. He had refused the pain medication the medical staff offered. If he was going to die, he wanted to be awake for the event.
They came for him after many hours. There were three of them, men in dark blue suits, accompanied by an attendant in a white uniform. It was the attendant who unlocked the door, and who brought a wheelchair.
“Let’s go, Thorsen,” one of the suits said.
“Where?” Bo asked.
“Shut up,” another suit said.
Bo didn’t want to give them any reason to kill him if that’s what they were looking for. He went without protest.
They didn’t go far. He was wheeled into an adjacent room, this one with a table and three chairs and no window. Most of one wall was reflecting glass, a two-way mirror. Two of the chairs were already occupied by other men in suits. One suit was light gray, the other a charcoal pinstripe. Bo was positioned across the table from the two men. The gray suit nodded to the blue suits, who left the room.
“Do you know who I am?” the gray suit asked.
“No.”
“I’m Assistant Director James Norton, Secret Service.”
Bo knew the name, although not the man.
Norton nodded toward the pinstripe. “This is FBI Assistant Director Hector Lopez.”
Lopez said, “We’ve been looking into the story you told. Your allegations concerning National Operations Management are, quite frankly, pretty crazy. We’ve done some preliminary investigating, and we can find nothing to indicate that NOMan is anything other than what it purports to be.”
Norton said, “You contend that NOMan wanted the First Lady assassinated, and you’ve alleged that Senator William Dixon is involved. Yet you have no evidence of this. Nor can you give us any reason why any of these people would instigate such an action.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Bo said. “My guess is that it has something to do with the president’s reelection. Newly widowed, Dixon would be hard to beat. And NOMan could lay the blame on Moses.”
“I’ve got to tell you, Agent Thorsen,” Lopez said, “this conspiracy theory of yours sounds like paranoid raving. The raving of a man already wanted in connection with a murder in St. Paul. As a matter of fact, we believe there is sufficient evidence at this point to seek an indictment against you, should we choose to advise the federal attorney to do so.”
“An indictment would never hold up in court,” Bo said.
“Wouldn’t it?”
“Is this a threat?”
“It’s a potential, Agent Thorsen,” Norton said.
“Funny, it sounds just like a threat.”
Norton put on a pair of half glasses and lifted a cordovan attache case from the floor beside his chair. He snapped it open and pulled out several pages of typed documents that he slid across the table to Bo.
“This is your statement of the events leading up to the death of David Moses.” Norton cast a look at Bo over the flat rim of his half glasses. “The most recent death.”
Bo scanned the document. “This isn’t my story. This makes no mention of NOMan. It says Moses acted alone.”
“This is the statement we want you to sign.”
“This is bullshit.”
“Agent Thorsen,” Norton said, “consider the impact of your accusations. If the American people believe your story, imagine the erosion of public confidence, the chaos.”
Lopez said, “The Bureau is already at work very quietly assessing the true threat of NOMan. If this organization is anything that you contend it is, don’t you think we want to combat it as much as you? I’m an assistant director of a federal agency, but I’m an American citizen first and foremost. I love this country. I have every intention of preserving its laws and the integrity of the system that governs it.”
“If there is any truth at all in what you say, we have to consider how to address this situation,” Norton said. “At the moment, we feel that silence on your part is the best way.”
“And if I don’t agree?”
Lopez said, “Charges will be brought against you, and the federal government will do its best to prove, in the case of thePeople v. Bo Thorsen, that you did willfully murder Special Agent-in-Charge Diana Ishimaru.”
“No jury would convict.”
“Do you want to take that chance? And in the meantime, drag your name through the dirt?”
“And alert NOMan and contribute in no small way to that organization’s ability to cover its tracks.”
Bo stared at the pages on the table. “It says here that I believe David Moses killed Diana. That’s not
