Warning Signs

CHAPTER 22

Lucy Tanner promised to check in with me on Sunday. She didn't. Grace and I spent the day together as Lauren did her best to cope with the toxic consequences of her weekly interferon injection. She loved the drug almost as much as she hated it. As long as she'd been taking the stuff, it had kept its promise to keep the MS dragons on the other side of the moat. The price for the prophylaxis was that she was sick-sometimes moderately, sometimes severely-for the twenty-four hours after the long needle left her thigh.

Grace and I did what we could to make her comfortable. Whatever it was we did, it felt inadequate. And probably was.

Monday at twelve-fifteen Naomi Bigg showed up right on time for her appointment.

Over the weekend there was virtually no way that she could have avoided the extensive news coverage of the discovery of the explosive device in Royal and Susan Peterson's house. I expected to spend the Monday session dealing with Naomi about my role in the detection of that bomb and rehearsed my arguments as she settled herself on the chair.

Naomi started her session by saying, "What I've been thinking? I've been thinking that there's a big difference between the Klebolds and the Harrises and me-I mean the situation I'm in."

She paused as though she wanted me to ask her what the difference was. I didn't ask. I was too busy trying to spot the ambush that I was sure she was planning about the Peterson bomb.

She went on unprompted. "The difference is that there was no way to defend-to justify-what those two kids were planning. No matter how you look at it, Eric and Dylan were targeting innocent children. They were planning indiscriminate slaughter. They were blaming the world for the way they thought they'd been treated. They wanted blood, they wanted gallons of it, and they wanted it from innocents. If their parents had an inkling of that, there is no excuse for them not acting."

Her words shook me. I stopped plotting my defense to accusations of clueing the police in to look for the bomb. As always, Naomi Bigg had a knack for capturing my attention.

The question that almost jumped out of my mouth-but didn't-was, And there is a way to justify what your child and his friend are planning? I think the reason I didn't actually ask the question out loud was that I feared I was incapable of keeping the incredulousness out of my inflection.

After a few sessions with me, Naomi was growing accustomed to the silences. She didn't hesitate to pick up on her own. "The wouldn't-it-be-cool games that the boys play always target-for want of a better word-perpetrators. People who actually bear responsibility for some serious, serious injustice. That's what's different. So even if Paul and Ramp are actually planning something and not just… talking-and I'm not convinced that they are-I think, knowing what I know, that I'm in a different position than the Harrises and the Klebolds. It's a big difference."

What? "It's different because in your circumstances the potential victims… deserve what happens to them? Is that it?"

Naomi shrugged. "Want to know what I think? Five years ago, I was somebody who used to think that in this country, justice was equal for everybody. Justice was the courts and the police and the jails. The scales always balanced. What's-her-face never peeked out from beneath her blindfold. But I know now that that's not true. Justice isn't just. Justice isn't like a fresh coat of paint on a wall. It doesn't cover equally. It doesn't spread equally. In our system, justice is more like a line of summer thunderstorms. Some places get soaked. Other places stay bone dry. After going through what I've been through with my family, can I continue to believe that providing justice should be the sole province of the criminal justice system? For every ten good cops, there's a Royal Peterson. For every office full of passionate prosecutors, there's a rotten cop. And defense attorneys?" She groaned. "Don't even get me started on defense attorneys. Or parole boards? God in heaven. The system is too corrupt to be trusted."

"And the alternative… is for people who perceive themselves to be victims of injustice to be free to act on their own?"

She hesitated for only a few seconds. "In certain circumstances, I've concluded that the answer to that might be yes. I couldn't do it myself. But I can understand people doing it."

Was she talking about her husband and his cutoff baseball bat or her son and his friend and their bombs? I couldn't keep myself from asking, "So, if these victims of injustice decide to act as vigilantes based on their own conclusions about events, then their victims deserve what happens to them?"

"Victims?" she scoffed. "Like Royal Peterson? You calling Royal Peterson a victim? Royal Peterson wasn't a victim. He was the poster child of perpetrators. The true victims are the people who suffered because of his plea bargains-and believe me, there are dozens of them that are right now trying to pick up the pieces of their lives all over Boulder County."

As much as I disagreed with some of the prosecutorial decisions that Peterson had made over his long reign in Boulder, I knew the good he had done far outweighed his mistakes. I could barely contain my impulse to defend him. I said, "And because you disagree with some of his plea bargains, because of that, Peterson deserved to die?"

"I've already told you: I don't have any feelings about that. He's dead. I don't grieve him. I don't celebrate his death."

I struggled to control my breathing. "Let's say, Naomi, just for the sake of argument, that Ramp and Paul were involved in Royal Peterson's death. Your current feelings are that murdering Peterson was a reasonable reaction to what he did to your daughter?"

She shrugged. "Who cries when a child molester is attacked in prison? Huh? Who grieves for that? Peterson ruined lives, too. Hundreds of them. Take a look at his record of plea bargains. Go ahead. Well, let's say someone felt he needed to be punished for that. If that's the case, then, yes, he paid for his sins. Some people might call what happened to him a crime. It feels like justice to me. I'm not going to grieve for that. I am not."

She paused for an extended period, shifting her focus to the windows and the yard beyond. Then she said, "But I don't think they had anything to do with it. I just don't think they did."

Minutes before the session was scheduled to end, Naomi abruptly stopped talking about a staffing problem in her office and said, "The bomb the police found last Friday? At the Petersons'?"

"Yes?" I said, my heart racing.

"Do you wonder how they knew to look for it? Have you wondered about that at all?"

What was I going to say? No? Yes?

"I have," she said, saving me from a lie. "And I'd like to think that you didn't have anything to do with the police deciding to look for it. I'd like to think that I can trust you."

My ensuing silence wasn't strategic. I was absolutely tongue-tied. Yes, you can trust me, Naomi.

No, you can't.

"If I can't talk to you about these things, I don't think I'd talk to anyone about them. I certainly wouldn't talk to the police. Even if they knocked at my door, I wouldn't tell them a thing. You know what I mean, don't you? I really need to be able to trust you with all this."

I nodded. I knew exactly what she meant. She was warning me to keep my mouth closed.

Right then I should have heeded her advice. I didn't. I said, "Naomi, it's important that you understand that there are circumstances where I might have an ethical responsibility to reveal certain things that I hear in psychotherapy."

She frowned. "That's obtuse. What are you talking about? What kind of circumstances?"

"If I hear something that indicates to me that someone is being clearly threatened, for instance, I have a responsibility to warn that person or to tell the police about the threat. I have a specific responsibility to protect people from harm."

"So I can't talk to you about these… feelings I'm having? About the concerns I have about the boys?"

"Those two questions seem to imply that someone is actually being threatened, Naomi. Is that the case?"

"I've told you already that I don't think anyone's being threatened. I'm trying to understand my feelings. That's all."

"I'm not convinced that's all you're trying to do."

"What do you mean?"

I was ready. "The last few times we've talked, it's felt to me as though you were trying to get me to do something to help you act on your feelings-to get you to do what you know is right. I think you may be trying to back me into the same corner that you feel backed into."

"What corner are you talking about? What is 'right'?"

"The right thing to do would be to protect people from harm. If the boys"-I almost choked as I used her vernacular-"do have a list of people they are thinking of hurting, then those people should be warned. They must be warned. And the boys should be stopped."

"Oh really?"

"Yes."

"Is that what the Boulder DA did with my daughter's case? Putting her rapist in jail for a few months protected the people of Boulder from harm? That was his overriding concern when he made that decision? Protecting people? Innocent girls out on dates? Those kinds of innocent people? I don't think so."

"I think you know what you have to do, Naomi."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"Can you answer that question yourself?"

"Just like a freaking shrink," she scoffed. "Just like a freaking shrink. Ask a question, get a question."