“Right.”
“Does this have anything to do with the First Lady’s safety?” Coyote asked.
“Not directly. Not in any way that I can see.”
“Then forget it. Look, it’s been a long day. I’m heading home.” Coyote put a friendly hand on Bo’s shoulder. “Do me a favor, will you? Manning’s gunning for you. Don’t give him any ammunition.”
After Coyote left, Bo stood in the yard and looked toward the west. The setting moon, only a couple of days past full, cast a brilliant glow over the apple trees. He knew that Tom Jorgenson would see beauty in that bright light. Bo saw mostly advantage. It always meant that anyone moving among the orchard rows could be more easily seen.
chapter
seven
When he saw the two agents head toward the barn, Nightmare switched to the camera he’d concealed in a hay bale in the loft two days earlier.
In the weeks before, access to Wildwood had been easy. The grounds were large, and unsecured. Tom Jorgenson liked to think of himself as a man of the people, and unless a dignitary was visiting, he didn’t believe in extensive security measures. Nightmare had scaled the stone wall dozens of times, coming and going in the night as he studied the layout of the buildings and the equipment the Secret Service would eventually use to create the illusion of safety. While the Jorgensons slept, or while they were absent, Nightmare had walked their rooms undetected. He felt like a ghost, and he liked the feeling. He would show them what the dead could do.
The two agents stood in the open doorway of the barn. On Nightmare’s monitor and seen through the sunglasses that he wore even in the dark, they were black shapes against the glare of the yard light. He turned up the microphone and listened as they discussed the concern of the one called Thorsen.
The tractor. It was a small detail. Why hadn’t he let it run off the cliff? The answer was simple. Too much noise. Too great an announcement of the event. Nightmare had always been an operative who appreciated the quiet and the dark. Execute and evaporate. Gone before anyone knew he’d ever been there.
But this Thorsen was observant and smart. Nightmare knew he would have to watch the man, and eliminate him if necessary. Not difficult. Nightmare had dealt with dozens like him, men who thought they were too smart to get killed.
When the two agents split up, Nightmare switched cameras again, this time to a view of the house from a unit he’d secreted in the sycamore tree. The three women had quit the porch. Nightmare checked the kitchen camera hidden in a false fire extinguisher with which he’d replaced the real one, then he flipped to the camera hidden in a book on a shelf in the living room where the agent on duty was playing a game of solitaire on a coffee table. Finally he checked the camera he’d placed in the bedroom that had once been Kate’s. He found, as he’d hoped, that the room was still hers. She sat on her bed, staring at a bare wall.
What do you see there, Kate? The future? The past? You don’t see me, I’ll bet. But you will.
He remembered the first night twenty years ago that he’d watched her like this, unseen. He’d climbed the sycamore, climbed as easily as a snake up a vine. In those days, there’d been curtains over the windows, gauzy things not dense enough in their weave to block his vision of her undressing. He remembered her breasts especially, tumbling from the bra that had held them captive. For weeks in that summer of his seventeenth year, he’d made a ritual of the sycamore tree. On those nights when she was gone, when they were all gone and the house was deserted, he climbed the porch supports, swung himself easily over the eaves to the roof, and crept to her window. He was already a genius at picking locks, at easing through the smallest breach in someone’s privacy. Her screen presented him no challenge at all. He wandered her room, fingering everything she’d touched. He lay on her bed, breathing the scent off her pillow.
He loved her, of course. How could he not love that which had possessed him?
In the present, he watched the First Lady drift left, just beyond camera range. She reappeared a minute later. Her yellow dress was gone, and she’d removed her bra. Her breasts were fuller now, heavier-looking, and there was a roundness to her belly and hips that was the signature of time, of the two decades that separated this intimate view from the last. She stood a moment, as if lost. Then she turned her back to the camera and bent her head. Nightmare could tell from the way her shoulders quivered that she wept.
Until that moment, he’d been hard in his thinking, brutal, in the way that time and circumstance had shaped him to be. But when he saw her cry, a different feeling nudged him, one that he had not expected. He remembered how his own mother used to cry, from confusion and loneliness.
He fingered the festering wound above his heart, full of ash and old blood. He put his sunglasses back on and closed himself like a fist around an understanding: It didn’t matter if what he did was done out of anger or out of pity. The end was the same.
Kate put on a nightgown, lay down, reached for a book on the nightstand, and began to read.
The sun will rise for you tomorrow, Nightmare thought as he watched her. But soon there will be nothing for you except the night, the unending night. And I will be the one who takes you there.
chapter
eight
Midmorning the next day, Annie Jorgenson, the First Lady, and Earl headed to the hospital. The word on Tom Jorgenson was that his condition had stabilized, but he still had not regained consciousness.
Protective detail was among the most important of a Secret Service agent’s duties, and also among the most tedious. Usually it entailed hours of doing nothing while trying to maintain a level of readiness to deal with the worst-case scenario. Bo thought the electronic sweep of Wildwood that hadn’t yet been done would be a good way to break the routine. At the briefing that morning, he discussed the possibility with Chris Manning. Manning vetoed the idea, pointing out once again that the purpose of the First Lady’s visit was personal, and that no state secrets were in jeopardy. Bo decided not to argue.
Shortly after the motorcade left, Bo put Jake Russell, the shift supervisor, in charge of the Op Center and left Wildwood. He checked in with the deputies posted at the entrance, Morgan and Braun, men he’d worked with before. Except for seeing the First Lady in person, it was dull duty. The news journalists in the cars and media vans that sat parked along the highway knew the drill. Cameras rolling when the First Lady appeared, but no access to Wildwood itself. Bo saw that there were more vehicles parked than he’d anticipated and heavier traffic on the usually quiet highway. Gawkers, hoping for a glimpse of Kathleen Jorgenson Dixon.
Bo drove toward Stillwater and headed to the office of the Washington County sheriff. He flashed his ID at the desk officer and waited a minute before he was buzzed through the security door.
Sheriff Douglas Quinn-Gruber was a big man with a wry smile and sharp, discerning eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He had a quick wit and an understanding of local politics that had kept him in office for three terms. He also had a taste for exotic beer. He brewed his own. Each Christmas for the last three years, Bo had received an assortment of home brews that tasted of raspberry or hazelnut or honey, and occasionally like beer. Bo’s own tastes were simple. He usually drank Pig’s Eye, brewed in St. Paul on the banks of the Mississippi River, but he appreciated the sheriff’s gesture.
“Hey, Bo,” Quinn-Gruber said, coming out of his chair. He reached out with a strong handshake. “I’m surprised to see you. I figured you’d be swamped at Wildwood.”
“Everything’s under control, Doug. We have a small army out there. How’s Mary Lou?” Bo always asked after the sheriff’s wife. He liked hearing what she was up to, always something interesting.
The sheriff laughed. “In two weeks, she turns fifty. Know what she’s planning on doing to mark the occasion? She’s going to canoe—by herself—the entire length of the St. Croix River.”
“You worried?”
“Naw. I called the counties up north and in Wisconsin, talked to a few fellow officers. T
hey’re going to keep an eye on her progress. Discreetly. Have a seat.” He indicated a chair and sat back down at his desk. “So, what brings you here? I’m in touch pretty regularly with Stu Coyote. Everything seems fine.”
“It is, as far as the First Lady’s concerned. I wanted to ask about Tom Jorgenson’s accident.”
“A shame, that.”
“Doug, did any of your people investigate?”
“Investigate? An incident report was filed, but I don’t think anybody saw any reason to investigate. Why?”
“Something bothers me.” Bo explained his concern about the mystery of the stopped tractor.
“What are you saying? Tom wasn’t alone out there?”
“I’m not sure. But it kind of looks that way.”
“Are you thinking maybe it wasn’t an accident?”
“On occasion, Tom’s received hate mail because of the work he does with the Institute for Global Understanding. I’ve always been afraid he might end up a target someday. And you know how lax he’s always been about his own security at Wildwood.”
The sheriff removed his wire-rims and squinted through them. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the lenses. “That tractor was hauling a trailer. Maybe the extra drag on the engine made it stall.”
“I thought of that,” Bo said.
“I don’t want to take a chance where Tom Jorgenson is involved,” the sheriff said. “I’ll have one of my investigators look into it. Think we’d get anywhere dusting the tractor for prints?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“Consider it done.”
“Thanks.” Bo stood up. “I appreciate your help, Doug.”
“No problem. Hey, I’m trying a new recipe. Rhubarb beer.”
Bo grinned. “Can’t wait till Christmas.”
Less than two hours later, an investigator named Timmons showed up at Wildwood. He spoke with Annie. Just a routine follow-up, he told her. Then he checked in with Bo. Tom Jorgenson, Timmons reported, had had no threats in almost two years. One of the sheriff’s deputies admitted to moving the tractor ahead a bit so that the paramedics could work more easily on Jorgenson but couldn’t remember if the ignition had been in the “off” position, so there was no way of telling whether the engine had died on its own or had been turned off. Bo accompanied Detective Timmons to the tractor. While Timmons dusted for prints, he pointed out to Bo that in the last two months, Tom Jorgenson had suffered several minor accidents, due entirely to carelessness. “Everyone gets old,” he said with a shrug. “And sometimes forgetful.”
After the investigator had gone, Bo stood in the shade of the limb that had apparently knocked Tom Jorgenson into harm’s way, and he studied the line of the flatbed and the track of the wheels. Finally, he went to the Kubota and climbed into the seat. It was comfortably padded, with a soft, cushioned back. Bo sat and imagined the limb catching him in the forehead, knocking him backward. The seat back would probably have prevented him from toppling off. He thought awhile, then let himself tumble sideways into the soft orchard grass where he lay, looking back at the flatbed.
“Comfortable, Bo?”
The First Lady came around the tractor and stood gazing down at him. She wore a white T-shirt, jeans, and a dark blue ball cap with Twins printed across the crown. She carried her sandals, leaving her feet bare. She looked more like a country girl than the wife of the nation’s commander in chief. She was smiling. Not a large smile, but the first Bo had seen since she’d arrived. Two of Manning’s people trailed at a reasonable distance.
Bo stood up. “I was just admiring the machinery.”
“From every angle, I see. Do you know about tractors?”
“After I was arrested, Annie arranged for me to live with a foster family down in Blue Earth,” Bo said. “Farmers. I did my time on the seat of an old John Deere Model B.”
Her smile grew. “We had a Model B when I used to help my dad in these orchards. That was a monster. Not like this Kubota.” She put a hand on the tractor, but she pulled it back quickly from the sting of the metal that had turned hot in the afternoon sun.
“You know about the Kubota?”
“An M-series narrow. Specially built for orchard work. Hydrostatic power steering. Synchronized main and shuttle transmission. Three Vortex Combustion System diesel engine. Eighty PTO horsepower.”
Bo let the fact that he was impressed show. She laughed, and he liked the sound.
“I’m not as smart as I seem,” she confessed. “Dad and I talk on the phone almost weekly. He told me everything. He was so proud of his new toy. What interests you so much about the tractor?”
Manning had been explicit in his directive. The First Lady wasn’t to be worried.
Bo said, “On the farm, I fell in love with machines. The smell of grease and gasoline and field dust. I appreciate their purpose and their power.”
“But you didn’t become a farmer.”
“Wrong temperament,” Bo replied.
“Katie! Katie!”
The First Lady turned back as Earl galloped toward her down the orchard row. He was a big, ungainly man who ran without any grace but a lot of joy. He smacked into a low-hanging branch, spun around, and came on as if nothing had happened. When he reached them, he was breathing hard and smiling big.
“Hi, Bo.”
“Morning, Earl.”
“Beautiful, huh?”
Bo looked at the First Lady, and thought, Yes. Then Earl touched the tractor, and Bo understood what he’d meant.
“I get to drive it sometimes,” Earl said.
“But not now,” Kate told him.
Earl looked disappointed and climbed onto the seat anyway. He began to pretend to drive the machine, making engine sounds. “Vrrooom! Vrrooom!”
The First Lady moved to the flatbed and sat in the shade of an apple limb. She put her sandals beside her and crossed her long, brown legs. “I used to come here with my father almost every night. He’d bring his telescope and we’d look at the moon and the stars for hours.”
“It’s easy to see why he loves it.”
“Am I keeping you from your work?” she asked.
“You are my work.”
“My aunt thinks the world of you, you know.”
“I’m pretty fond of Annie. I owe her my life. What I’ve made of it, anyway.”
“What about the others?” she asked. “The children who lived with you in the bus.”
“Otter, Egg, Pearl, and Freak.”
“Those were their names?”
“Street names. We all went by them.”
“What was yours?”
“Spider-Man.”
“So, what happened to the others?”
Earl was pretending to shift through gears and bouncing on the seat as if he were driving over rough road.
Bo leaned against the ridges of the Kubota’s big rear tire. The limb that shaded the First Lady also shaded him.
“They still had homes somewhere. Social Services sent them back to their parents.”
“And they all lived happily ever after?”
“Pearl got pregnant at sixteen. The first time. She has five children now by three different men. Her oldest daughter ran away this summer. Pearl still hasn’t heard from her. Otter’s an alcoholic, been in and out of treatment for years. Those are the success stories,” Bo said.
“The other two? Egg and Freak?”
“Egg’s doing time in Eddyville, Kentucky, for armed robbery. Freak died of AIDS, two years ago. He was a heroin addict.”
“I’m sorry, Bo.”
“Me, too.”
“What about you? Are you happy with the life you’ve put together?”
“Happier some days than others. Isn’t it like that for everyone?”
Instead of answering, she rose and said, “I should be getting back. Earl, are you coming?”
“Yeah. Do you want to go swimming?” He climbed down from the tractor and took his sister’s hand.
Before she st
arted away, the First Lady said, “Shouldn’t that tractor be moved?”
“Your safety is our priority right now,” Bo said. “Eventually I’ll have one of my people put it in the barn.”
“Or put it there yourself. Why give someone else the thrill?” She laughed, turned away, and headed toward the house with Earl, following the orchard lane Tom Jorgenson had taken a couple of days before. The two FLOTUS agents trailed her.
When they’d gone, Bo walked to the apple tree behind the flatbed and climbed the trunk. He eased out onto the limb that seemed to have been the culprit in Tom Jorgenson’s accident. He crouched and examined the bark. Some of the very small sucker branches were bent or broken. It looked to Bo as if someone might well have climbed out onto that limb not long before him.
chapter
nine
The St. Croix Regional Medical Center stood on a hill overlooking Stillwater and the St. Croix River. The wing that housed the trauma intensive care unit faced east, with a good view of the historic old town and of the broad, beautiful river that had been designated a national scenic riverway. The rooms in trauma ICU were all single patient rooms situated around the central nurses’ station like spokes around the hub of a wheel. The lovely view from the windows was lost on Tom Jorgenson. He lay unconscious in his bed, living through tubes and wires. His head was wrapped in a thick gauze turban. His eyes were black as a raccoon’s, as if he’d been beaten. A tube from a ventilator snaked down his throat. Another tube had been inserted into the side of his chest. Lacerations and bruises covered his arms. Even to Bo, who didn’t love him nearly as much as did Annie and his daughters, he looked like death already.
Bo didn’t enter the room, just stood in the doorway. Keeping vigil at that hour were Ruth and Earl. Ruth Jorgenson, who’d kept her maiden name after marriage, had a successful law practice in St. Paul and was the attorney for her father’s Institute for Global Understanding. Like most attorneys with whom Bo was acquainted, she always seemed to be long on responsibilities and short on time. However, sitting at her father’s bedside, reading aloud from Wind in the Willows, one of Earl’s favorite books, she appeared to be in no hurry at all. Bo knew from his own experience that tragedy had this effect. It slowed the world so that every second of life counted. Earl sat near her, listening with a big smile on his face as she read.