Warning Signs

CHAPTER 28

Lucy Tanner was the only child of a man named Charles Tanner and a free-spirited woman he'd met at a sit-in in a bank in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1969. The woman's name was Susie Pine. Lucy's conception predated Charles and Susie's subsequent marriage by almost six months. Susie's friends were much more surprised that Susie Pine married at all than they were that she never adopted her husband's last name.

The Tanner-Pine marriage endured, at least as far as the state of Michigan was concerned, for seven years. The reason that Susie gave when she initially left her husband and daughter in Ann Arbor was that she felt she had to go to the bedside of her older sister, who was dying of breast cancer in Tucson. Six weeks later, two days after her sister's Arizona funeral, Susie Pine packed up the things she wanted from her sister's house and moved to Boulder. Within days, she filed for divorce from her husband, Charles.

She never returned to Ann Arbor.

The divorce was uncontested, and custody of the minor child, Lucy, was awarded to Charles Tanner. He remarried two years later and his second attempt at marriage was much more successful than his first.

Lucy's adolescence was less tumultuous than her childhood had been, and she considered herself to be a relatively confident, though shy, young person when she graduated high school near the top of her class and moved west to attend Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

Lucy told me that her move west for school had nothing to do with a desire to reconnect with the mother who had abandoned her during her childhood. She maintained that she chose Colorado College solely because of its unique curriculum.

The psychologist in me noted her resistance, but I wasn't in Lucy's flat to give her a boost up on some eventual psychotherapy, I was there to be her friend. I bit my tongue and kept my thoughts about unconscious motivation to myself.

Susie Pine became Susan Peterson a little more than a year after her divorce from Charles Tanner. She and her new husband, an ambitious thirty-year-old prosecuting attorney named Royal, had two children during the first two years of their marriage, and added a third three years later.

One year after the completion of his family Royal Peterson won his first term as district attorney of Boulder County.

When did you find her for the first time?" I asked.

"I didn't even know if she was still in town when I joined the police department. I figured there was as good a chance that she had moved away as there was that she was still here. I never looked for her. That's not true. I checked the phone book once-does that count? Then I went to a reception when they opened the new coroner's offices in the Justice Center. That was about, I'm not sure, four or five years ago. She was there with Royal."

"You recognized her?"

"Sure. Susan had aged well. But I grew up with lots of photographs of her. My father is quite the amateur photographer and he always wanted me to know who my mother was. But she didn't recognize me. And I didn't talk to her that night. Not at all."

A cuckoo clock chirped once. I'd been wondering what time it was. Now I knew. I was also wondering how people survived living with cuckoo clocks. I still didn't know that.

"I finally went and saw her after I heard rumors about her illness. You know, her MS. I don't know why, exactly. Compassion? More likely pity, I guess. That, or it was just a good excuse to see her so I could try to begin to understand how she could leave her daughter so cavalierly. It was probably a combination."

I was uncomfortable with the way Lucy was referring to herself. "Her daughter was you, Lucy."

"Yeah. Her daughter was me. But, let's face it, I'm not the only kid who's ever been left behind by a parent. I remind myself of that a lot. Being left behind by my mother is not an excuse to let myself be damaged for life. My dad raised me well. My stepmother is a sweetheart. Whatever mistakes my father made with women, he got them out of his system by marrying Susan."

"Does reminding yourself that you're not the only child who's been left behind by a parent help?"

"Not much." She sighed. "I was terrified that first time that I went to her house to see her. Not that she'd slam the door in my face. My biggest fear? My biggest fear was that I was going to adore her, like instantly, the moment I set my eyes on her. As a girl, I'd idealized her after she left. My father was always kind; he never criticized her and I was left to create this image of her that had almost no basis in reality. She was as pretty as a movie star, as kind as the best mother in the world. Anyway, going to see her that day, I felt that some angel was going to answer the door. And I was afraid that the more it turned out that I adored her, the angrier I was going to be that she'd left me behind. Does that make sense?"

"Of course."

Lucy's voice grew small. "But it didn't turn out that way. I didn't like her. I didn't like her at all. She was critical, belittling, selfish. She wasn't this benevolent soul who'd left me to tend to my ill aunt. She was Susan Peterson. You must have gotten to know her through the DA's office. Didn't you? Lauren worked for her husband for years. You had to have known her at least a little bit."

"I've known her socially, yes."

"Do you like her?"

I managed a complete inhale and exhale before I responded, trying to find an alternative way to answer Lucy's question than the one I ended up with: "She can be difficult."

Lucy shook her head. "Please," she said. "You're being diplomatic. Difficult? That's an understatement if I ever heard one. Susan Peterson is a very unpleasant human being. On her best days, she's a bitch."

I forced a small smile. "At least the problem of adoring her never quite materialized."

Lucy didn't crack a smile. "Right," she said bitterly. "At least there was that."

This was the point where Lucy sat all the way back on the sofa, crossed her legs, folded her arms, and told me that the whole story was going to be printed in the next morning's Daily Camera.

A good-sized chunk of an hour later Lucy seemed to have run out of words. It was time for me to head home. I told her so.

She nodded.

I said, "One more thing before I go. Lauren and Cozy were trying to get in touch with you tonight. Did they reach you?"

"I got a message from each of them. I wasn't in any mood to call them back. I'll talk to them in the morning. They'll have a lot of questions about the Daily Camera article anyway."

I nodded. If I hadn't been so tired, I would have been thinking more clearly, and I think I would have left things alone at that point. I didn't.

"The reason they were calling? Lauren told me when I went to pick her up after you left my office. The police found some laundry, Lucy, in the Peterson home. Some unwashed laundry, including a sheet-a bedsheet-with a stain on it. The lab has identified the stain as being dried vaginal secretions. They're working under the suspicion that when the DNA analysis finally comes back, they're going to discover that the vaginal secretions are yours."

For some reason I found myself contemplating when I'd last used the phrase "vaginal secretions" in a sentence. I decided that it hadn't been recently.

Her eyes widened. "Oh boy," she said. The words almost disappeared in a rapid inhale.

I waited a moment and stated the obvious. "You're not totally surprised, are you, Lucy?"

She was looking off to the side, into the dark room. "What am I supposed to say? That I can't believe it? That there's no way it's true? Okay, I'll say it: I can't believe it. There's no way it's true."

I'm supposed to be good at reading people and I wasn't sure whether or not she even intended for me to believe her.

She grabbed a pillow from the sofa, hugged it to her chest, and began rocking back and forth from the waist, slowly. "Alan, I'm being careful with you. You're not my attorney and you're not my therapist. There're certain lines I can't cross with you. Do you understand?"

"I understand. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut about the sheets, Lucy. I thought you'd want to know what the police had found. But this could have waited till tomorrow. I'm sorry I brought it up. I should have left it to Lauren and Cozy. I apologize."

"Don't. I appreciate it, Alan. I appreciate all you've done. Coming over here tonight was kind."

"I'll tell Lauren I was here, Lucy."

"I know. It makes no difference. By this time tomorrow I won't have many secrets left. You know," she added, "I told you I was going to make the rest of the phone calls to the Ramps that are listed in the phone book. I did, reached three more. Two of them I'm not sure I can rule out, so I'm going to go track them down tomorrow in person. With all that's happened tonight… I know I'm going to feel like getting out of Boulder. Maybe I'll get lucky and find the kid."

I knew that everything Lucy was suggesting was true. Whatever scrutiny she had received from the media up until then was only a warm-up to the firestorm she could expect after the news of her relationship to Susan Peterson hit the wires in the morning. And, regardless of the press coverage, one of us did have to continue our efforts to try to find Ramp.

"You'll go in the morning?"

She nodded. "Yeah. One of them lives all the way out near Agate."

"Where's Agate?"

"Out east on I-70, just before you get to Limon."

I blurted, "Limon is where Ramp and Paul played around with the explosives."

She cocked her head. "You didn't tell me that."

"I thought I did."

"Well, you didn't."

"My patient told me that Paul went out to some ranch near Limon and he and Ramp blew up a car or something."

"You didn't tell me any of this." The suffix "you idiot" was understood by both of us.

"I'm sorry."

"There's a listing out near Agate for a man named Herbert Ramp. Herbert's dead, but his widow, Ella, answered the phone. When I asked about a son or grandson, she kind of hung up on me."

"So it may be him?"

"You say the two boys played around with bombs out there? Damn right it may be him. I'm definitely going to go talk to her tomorrow."

"Maybe I should do it instead, Lucy. She may be wary of a cop showing up at her door."

"But a shrink from Boulder won't raise her suspicions at all?"

The tendons in the back of my neck felt like rebar. "I'm not sure what's best, which one of us should meet her. Let me think about it overnight, okay? We'll talk in the morning?"

"Yeah. Call me around nine; I think I'm going to try to sleep in a little bit. Use my cell; I'm not going to be answering my phone."

I stood to leave and opened my arms to give Lucy a hug. First, she dropped the pillow, then she leaned into the embrace with a hunger I didn't expect. When she finally released me, I turned toward the door. My hand on the knob, I stopped and asked, "Lucy, were you having an affair with Royal?"

The silence that followed was eerie. For the first few seconds, I suspected that she wasn't going to respond, and I wasn't surprised. I was already questioning my judgment in asking the question. Finally, I turned my head to look at her to examine the impact of my question.

The cuckoo clock chirped twice.

Lucy had spun away from me. Although I couldn't be sure from the reflection she made in the glass doors, I thought she was crying.

Our eyes met in the black glass. She said, "I wish it was that simple, Alan. I wish it was that simple."

Outside, the snow wasn't sticking to the streets, but the sidewalks were wet. The tree buds and flowers looked as though they'd been frosted.