Warning Signs

CHAPTER 29

The alarm clock cracked me awake at six-thirty. Lauren was already up with Grace. Before I climbed in the shower, I wasted a minute trying to decide how many hours of sleep I'd had. Before I reached a number that felt correct, I concluded that the answer was simply "not enough."

After a quick shower and shave I joined my family in the kitchen. I was most of the way through a condensed rendition of the previous night's events for Lauren's benefit when my pager went off. Moments later, I was back in the master bedroom closet trying to simultaneously get dressed and maintain a conversation with Naomi Bigg.

She wasted no time. "Can I see you today? Any time at all. I'll leave work. Please."

"Just a second," I said while I zipped up my trousers and began to thread a belt around my waist. "I have to go get my calendar." I moved from the closet to the bedroom and retrieved my schedule from beside the bed. I was still undecided about trying to run out to Limon or Agate to see Ella Ramp. I didn't know where I could stick an emergency appointment.

She said, "Please, please. What we've been talking about with the kids? It's come to a head, I think. What you've been-what I've been… you know. Anyway, this morning, I found a… I found something that's convinced me that I need to…" Her voice faded away. "Please," she repeated.

Almost impulsively, I said, "Four-thirty this afternoon. I'm afraid that's all I have, Naomi."

"Four-thirty? Is that right? Okay, okay."

I could feel the pressure building. "Can it wait till then? Do you want to take a minute right now, Naomi, and tell me what-"

She hung up.

"I guess not," I said aloud.

"You guess not what?" Lauren asked from the doorway. Grace was asleep in her arms.

"A patient hung up on me in the middle of our conversation."

"Oh," she said, disinterested. She tilted her head back toward the kitchen. "The story about Lucy's mother is on the news. They make it sound awful. As though the fact that Susan is Lucy's mother gives Lucy a reason to murder Royal. It doesn't make any sense."

"They don't know about the wet spot?"

Lauren covered Grace's ears.

"No, they don't know about the wet spot."

"Well, I'm not surprised the press is making it look bad. That seems to be their job," I said. "I'm late-I need to get downtown. You're okay with Grace until Viv gets here?"

"I'm fine," she replied. She kissed the top of the baby's head. "We're great."

The previous night's snow was history. The faintest reminder of the storm still clung as transparent white frosting feathering the highest reaches of the Flatirons, but otherwise the morning was brilliant and warm and the city bore no evidence of the midnight flurries.

Lucy didn't answer her cell when I tried her a few minutes before nine, nor when I tried again at nine forty-five.

I finished with my nine forty-five patient right on time at ten-thirty. As soon as he was out the door, I checked my voice mail and retrieved two messages. One was a cancellation by my one o'clock, the other another call from Naomi.

"It's me again. I'm sorry I'm so scattered. You said four-thirty, didn't you? If that's not right, call me at the office. I can't tell you how much I need to see you. There's another bomb. That lawyer."

That was it.

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

I replayed the message to assure myself that that was what she had said.

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

Shit. I decided that I couldn't wait any longer to find out what Ramp was up to. I called Lucy one more time. Finally, she answered. She was already far from Boulder-at a diner outside Fort Lupton where she'd stopped to have a late breakfast-on her way to the eastern plains. She didn't argue when I told her that I wanted to meet her. I jotted down directions to Ella Ramp's ranch, which was almost precisely halfway between Limon and Agate, and I hustled out the door. From my car I canceled lunch with a colleague and all my remaining therapy appointments until my four-thirty emergency session with Naomi.

It took me almost an hour to plunge through the northern congestion of Denver's metropolitan area and intersect with Interstate 70 on my journey toward Limon, the little town that is the geographic bull's-eye in the center of Colorado's eastern plains.

Many people who have never visited Colorado have a mental image that the state consists predominantly of mountains. Sharp juvenile peaks, high meadows, glacial faces, deep canyons. Travel magazine stuff.

But if a driver heads east away from the Front Range, especially if he's beyond the boundaries of Denver's metropolitan sprawl, and if he doesn't glance back into his rearview mirror, the state of Colorado is hardly distinguishable from Nebraska or Iowa or Kansas. Less corn, more wheat, but mostly mile after mile of mind-numbing Great Plains high prairie. Some people love it, others don't. Either way, the broad expanse of endless horizon and infinite sky takes up roughly half the state.

I'm convinced that if highway planners hadn't chosen the Limon-to-Agate spur for Interstate 70's northwest traverse across the eastern prairie toward Denver, virtually no one would have any reason to be aware exactly where either Agate or Limon is. Nor would anyone care much. In fact, absent the wide ribbon of interstate, Colorado's eastern plains are geographically pretty close to nowhere, and one look at the map confirms that Limon and Agate are about as close to the middle as is theoretically possible.

I made only one wrong turn as I was navigating the grid of county roads east of Agate, and found the Ramp spread on my first try. As I made the last turn, I spotted Lucy's red Volvo parked in the shadow of a huge stack of hay. The lead-gray color of the straw told me that it hadn't been baled or stacked recently. I stopped and got out of my car.

"You been waiting long?" I asked Lucy.

"Half an hour, forty minutes."

"Sorry, I went as fast as I could."

"It's okay, I'm just killing time today anyway. The house is right down there. Why don't we leave your car here, just take mine. I don't want to spook her any more than we already will."

The Ramp home was a sixties-style suburban ranch house that seemed out of place without a few dozen clones crammed around it on six-thousand-square-foot lots. An uninterrupted line of spreading junipers was the only vegetation around the house. A solitary tree-I thought it was a hackberry-stood at the edge of a field about fifty yards to the east.

Lucy drove past the house once before she doubled back toward the driveway. I wasted a moment trying to decide how nearby Ella Ramp's closest neighbor lived. Distances were great out there, and I guessed it was almost a mile between houses.

An impeccably preserved brown Ford pickup-the vintage was late sixties or early seventies-was parked on the dirt drive, not far from the house. Lucy parked behind the truck and we walked to the front door. She knocked. I was already having second thoughts about being out there; a good-sized part of me wished that I'd instead stayed in Boulder and moved up my appointment with Naomi Bigg.

There's another bomb, she'd said. That lawyer.

I nearly jumped when I heard somebody say, "Hell!"

Half a minute or so later the door opened. "What?" squealed the woman who stood in the doorway. She was a wiry woman who'd once been of average height, but her frame was beginning to bow to gravity and osteoporosis. Her hair was as gray as slate and her eyes were a blue that glowed like the ocean in the tropics.

"What?" the woman repeated in the same acidic tone. Despite her posture, I pegged her at only about sixty.

Lucy said, "Hello, I'm, um, Lucy Tanner. I-"

"So what?"

Lucy moved back six or eight inches. "We spoke on the phone. I called about your grandson. Do you remember? May I come in?"

"Are you nuts? No, you can't come in. Didn't your mother ever tell you to wait to be invited? Where are your manners? And of course I remember. How many calls like that do you think I get? I'm not feeble."

At the first hollered "Hell!" I'd shifted into clinical mode. This woman-who answered her door by squealing "What?" and who had just called Lucy nuts-was now questioning her manners. I said, "Hello, I, um-"

She stepped right on my words, ignoring me, instead retaining her focus on Lucy. "You a cop?" she asked.

"Excuse me?" Lucy said.

"On TV, the cops always ask to come in. They never wait till they're invited. Something happen to my boy? Are you a cop?"

"I am actually, but I'm not here today as-"

Ella Ramp pushed out the door and shuffled past us. "Come on. I have to check on the chickens. I bet my ass you've never checked on a chicken in your life. I'm right, ain't I? Never mind, I know I'm right. That," she said, pointing at Lucy's Volvo, "ain't no chicken-checker's car."

The henhouse was about thirty yards away, out back. Lucy and I waited while Ella disappeared inside for about three or four minutes. Because she was stooped over, she fit right inside the coop door.

Lucy whispered, "She's… interesting, isn't she?"

"Yes," I said. "She is."

Ella shuffled back out and double-checked the clasp on the fence around the henhouse.

I asked, "Has he been out to visit you lately? Your boy?" I was careful to mimic the language she'd used to describe her grandson.

"What's it to you? And who the hell are you, anyway?" Her tone lightened suddenly as she said, "The chickens are fine, by the way, thanks for asking."

"My name is Alan Gregory, and I'm-"

"Well, whoop-dee-do." She turned to Lucy. "You his new girlfriend, missy? He knock you up? Is that why you've come out here? He's got a thing with the girls. And they certainly have a thing with him. But knocking up a cop? Did he? He didn't. Hell's another."

Hell's another? Hell's a mother? I wasn't sure what Ella had said or what on earth it was supposed to mean.

"No, I'm, um, not pregnant."

Ella stopped. She had to crane her neck to look up at Lucy. "Dearest God, you're tall. You're taller than he is. That'd be awkward in my book. But you're not… you and he, you're not…?"

"No, we're not."

"That's for the best, I suppose. But you haven't told me why you are here, have you?"

While Lucy sputtered to find a way to reply, I said, "It's about the explosives, Mrs. Ramp."

"Oh, that," Ella replied in a dismissive voice as she shuffled back toward the house. "I thought he was in trouble or something."

Ella busied herself fixing coffee and I agreed to accept a cup even though I would've preferred a glass of water. Lucy, who despised coffee, took one, too. On the way from the front door to the kitchen, I'd tried to spot a collection of framed family photographs, hoping to see a photo of Ella's grandson. But the living room was spare in its decor and the only photographs in sight were of pets. Mostly horses, but also a dog. A huge dog. I thought it was a mastiff, but I wasn't sure.

Ella's kitchen was as spotless as her truck. The pristine room could have been lifted out of the house in one chunk and installed-intact-in some granite edifice as a museum exhibit about life in 1962. Maybe part of a Dwight-and-Mamie-Eisenhower-at-home exhibit at the Smithsonian. The old refrigerator was a Norge and it hummed at a volume that screamed for someone to clean its coils.

The only modern appliance in the kitchen was a little white color television. Ella had it tuned to one of the Denver stations. She turned the sound down all the way before she served the coffee.

Ella said, "Milk? Sugar? I don't use 'em, but I can find 'em if you want 'em."

"No, thank you," I said.

Lucy added, "Black is fine."

"He came by the explosives legal, by the way. They were Herbert's. I told the boy he could experiment with them the way Herbert taught him. The neighbors don't mind; they're used to it by now. It's been going on for at least a quarter century. You know you're getting old when you hear yourself talking in quarter centuries."

I hesitated a moment to see if Lucy was planning to take the lead. She wasn't. I raised the cup to my lips and tried to sound nonchalant as I replied, "The explosives were Herbert's?"

"Who did you say you were? Are you like her lawyer or something?"

"No, I'm Alan Gregory, Dr. Alan Gregory. I'm a psychologist in Boulder."

"Well, what the hell are you doing out here?"

"The explosives," I said. "We came to talk with you about the explosives."

She harrumphed. "You ever been to Las Vegas?" asked Ella.

Lucy said she had driven through, but never stopped. I added, "I've been there a few times."

"Well, I'm proud to say that my Herbert blew up half that damn town. Maybe more than half."

"He did? He blew up half the town?" I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but was eager to keep her talking about it.

"You know the company called Demolition Specialists? Doesn't matter whether you do or you don't. They're some of the boys who blow up those big buildings all over the place. You always see 'em on the national news, usually on Sunday. They blow most of the big buildings on Sunday on account of there aren't so many people around. People are drawn to explosions for some reason. Like bugs to light, I think. What they do is they implode the buildings actually, so that they fall in on themselves.

"Herbert was a demolition engineer. He worked for Demolition Specialists for most of our marriage. He traveled the world blowing up buildings. Blew up stuff in Japan and Saudi Arabia. Toward the end he was on the team that did all those big demos in Las Vegas. The old casinos? You see those monsters come down on the news? I flew out with him and watched the Sands Hotel come down. That was some week we had, let me tell you. Fireworks, buffets, slot machines, girls dancing around wearin' nothing over their tits. I joked that they'd all lost their shirts gamblin'. Herbert liked that part best, I think, the girls. That was a weekend." Ella smiled at the memory.

It was easy to smile right back at her. "So that's what Herbert did for a living? He blew up buildings? And he took down those old casinos in Vegas?"

"Not just him. He was a team player. You might not think it, but it takes a mess of people to bring down a skyscraper. Takes weeks to get one ready to come down. He was gone half the time. Herbert."

"And he's dead now, Ella?"

"With the Lord." She touched her heart.

"I'm sorry. And the explosives that your grandson uses for his experiments? They belonged to Herbert?" I asked.

"Yes, they did. In between jobs, Herbert did research. His thing was shaped charges. He was always playing around with shaped charges and the best way to cut metal. That was his specialty: cutting metal with shaped charges. Kept material here for his research. Mostly dynamite, I think. But some other things, too. I never paid much attention. We got a shed he had built special. It's more like a vault than a shed, to tell the truth. Herbert had a thing about security of his explosives. Wrong hands, you know?"

I wouldn't have known a shaped charge if I was sitting on one, and now I found myself yearning to have Sam Purdy beside me. Lucy sounded like she was better informed than I when she said, "I always wondered who did the shaped-charge research. That's remarkable about Herbert. And he taught your grandson what he knew?"

"A lot of it, he sure did. Always thought that the boy might follow in his footsteps. Herbert would've loved to have lived long enough to make the boy an apprentice in the company. Can't go to college to learn to do what Herbert knew about bringing down buildings. Herbert always said as long as there are bad architects and worse builders, there'll be a need for people like him. Can I get you all some more coffee?"

I shook my head and pretended to take another sip of coffee. Lucy said, "Do you know how I can reach him? Your grandson? I have some questions for him."

Ella Ramp set her cup on its saucer and stared at her. "You said you're a cop. Now's about the time where you should be getting around to telling me why you want him."

"The truth is, I need to talk with him about the explosives."

Ella stretched her neck from side to side. It appeared that the act caused considerable pain. Midway through the stretch, Ella said, "I'm getting old, I know that. As far as I'm concerned, it's premature, but so be it. Life is what life is. Mine? I live by myself a hundred miles from life as most city people know it. I know more about chickens and horses and dogs than I do about people. I'm stooped over and I'm gray and when I dare myself to look in a mirror I usually conclude that I'm butt ugly. But I'm not particularly stupid. Now stop repeating yourself and tell me what the hell you want with my grandson. What about the damn explosives?"

I took a moment to try to decide how to play this. As a psychologist, I actually adored moments like these. Some of my most memorable conversations with Sam Purdy had been discussions about how to play situations just like this one with Ella.

"Ella," I finally said, "I could bullshit you right now. I could. I'm good at it and despite the fact that I believe you when you say that you are a bright woman, I think I could succeed in bullshitting you. But I won't. So here's the truth: The reason we're trying to find your grandson is that we think he may be responsible for setting some bombs that have hurt some people."

Ella sipped at her coffee. She narrowed her eyes as though she was protecting them from the steam. She asked, "That one in Denver last week? Where that woman died in that car? That's one of 'em?"

"Yes, that's one of them."

She appeared to be puzzled. "Why would he do that? Why would the boy do that?"

Lucy said, "We think he might be angry at law enforcement or the justice system. The courts."

Lucy's words assaulted Ella like a physical blow. Her breath caught in her chest, her eyes closed in a wince, and the fingernails of her right hand cut sharply into the skin of her left arm.

I waited for Ella's next move, which I assumed would be an awkward denial that her grandson was angry at the criminal justice system. But Ella didn't protest. Instead, she narrowed her eyes again and stared at me hard, then glanced over at the TV. "You're that girl who they think killed her momma's husband, aren't you? From up in Boulder? You're the girl from the news this morning?"

Despite her best efforts to maintain her detective's poker face, I could feel Lucy's demeanor change as she tried to process the question.

Ella shook her head in a wide arc. "Well, hell's another. Hell's a-nuh-ther. My own momma always said to wake up looking forward to each day because you never really know what's going to come along with the dawn. But I swear it's been a while since I've had a day quite like this one. A girl from the morning news program sitting right here in my kitchen."

I lifted my cup again but didn't actually get it to my lips before Ella cracked a little smile and said, "So tell me, missy, you have a gun under that jacket? You planning to shoot me if I don't talk?"

Lucy exclaimed, "What?" But she left both hands on the table where Ella could see them. "No, Ella, I'm not going to shoot you."

The tension between the two women was suddenly as thick as butter. I interjected, "But we would like to talk a little bit about how the boy's mother died, Ella. Could we do that?"

Ella burped a tiny burp and covered her mouth. She looked away and closed her eyes, holding them tightly shut.

"Ella?" I said.

"Hell's another," she muttered. "Hell's another."