Warning Signs

CHAPTER 30

I never used to curse before she died. Not even in anger. Certainly not just for the hell of it like I do now. The man who killed her stuck one knife in her chest and he stuck another one in my soul."

Hell's another.

I was still unsure what relation Ramp's mother was to Ella. I asked, "His mother was your daughter-in-law, Ella?"

"No, no, no. Denise was our daughter. Herbert and me had one daughter, one son. Our son-that's Brian-he died in a Humvee accident in Somalia. He was a medic in the Marines at the time. It was on the news."

Ella sighed quickly-almost a gasp-before she continued. "Then Denise was murdered in Denver. Bang, bang. Strike one, strike two."

"I didn't know. I'm so sorry."

"Brian-that's our son-he was trying to do good when he died. Humanitarian assistance in Somalia. That's in Africa. He was a peacekeeper. A Marine peacekeeper. Herbert always thought it was an oxy-whaddyacallit?"

"Oxymoron."

"Yeah. Oxymoron. Doesn't matter. Fact is, Brian was a peacekeeper at heart. His death was just one of those things that preachers can't explain no matter how hard they try or how long they talk on Sunday mornings about God's mysterious ways. Herbert was philosophical about it, said it could just as easily have been a pickup truck accident on I-70 that killed Brian. If I'd had a bet to place, I would've rather bet my son's life on the pickup and the interstate, you know what I mean?"

I said I did.

Ella required no further prompting. She said, "But Denise?" She shook her head as though trying to cleanse an image of something she'd rather not recall. "It was four years, five months ago. Two weeks before Christmas. She was living with her husband, Patrick, in Denver, in the neighborhood they call Uptown. You know it?"

"Vaguely," I said. Years before during my first marriage, when I'd spent more time in Denver, the neighborhood was called North Capitol Hill. Now dubbed Uptown on the Hill, the compact urban neighborhood just northeast of downtown was an interesting multiethnic place with a range of residents who varied widely in financial wherewithal. Despite its new name, though, the neighborhood wasn't on much of a hill. Recently refurbished late-nineteenth-century homes sat adjacent to massive redevelopment projects, vacant lots, and old apartment houses gone to seed.

"Denise was a nurse at one of the hospitals nearby. Presbyterian? She liked the neighborhood because she could walk to work and because there were all kinds of people living there. That was her way of telling us that life there was nothing like being out here in Agate. The whole time she and Pat were there, they didn't even know it but three doors down from their old Denver square was a rooming house that was actually a halfway house, you know, a place for released criminals. The ones who've been, whaddyacallit, paroled?"

"Yes," Lucy said, "paroled."

Ella had already shared enough details that I thought I knew the rest of the story. A Denver woman had been stabbed to death by a guy on parole for a previous murder conviction. I remembered the story from news reports and I recalled discussing it in some detail with Sam over a couple of beers one night.

Sam had been especially irate about the crime. The practice of releasing dangerous felons on early parole was an issue that bugged cops more than it bugged anybody else. Except, maybe, the families of the paroled felon's last victims, or the families of his next victims.

"He'd been in the halfway house for a few months," Ella told us. "Luther Smith is his name. He'd served four years, five months, three days for a manslaughter conviction in Commerce City before he was released into a halfway house in Denver. Why there? Why right down the street from my girl? Who knows? But he was living in that halfway house when he began following my Denise to work and deciding that since she worked at a hospital she might be keeping drugs at her house. That's what he told the police anyway; that's the way he explained breaking into her place and ransacking it and waiting for her to come home from work that day.

"Pat-her husband-worked as a pressman at the Denver Post. He was gone evenings. Denise thought she was coming home to an empty house. But she wasn't. Luther Smith was there waiting for her and he was mad as hell because he hadn't found any drugs anywhere in the house."

Ella thrust her chin forward. I could see the effort she was using in her attempt to control the quivering that had erupted.

"He began to try to rape my little girl and she fought him like a banshee. That's what the cops said. She fought him as hard as any woman has ever fought off any man. That's what they told me and Herbert.

"So Luther Smith stabbed her. He did it just once. Sliced right through some big artery at the top of her stomach. And my Denise bled to death right there in her own bedroom. It was Jason who found her when he got home from a football game at his high school that night."

Jason, I said to myself. He has a name. The bomber has a name. It's Jason, but not Jason Ramp. Ramp's his mother's name. It's Jason what?

To Ella, I said, "I'm so sorry. You've had so much loss."

Lucy added, "I'm so sorry, too. What happened to your daughter is awful. Inexcusable."

Ella frosted her voice with defeat. "He didn't rape her. Coroner said he didn't rape her. I sometimes find myself wishing that he had. Wishing she hadn't fought him so hard so she might be alive."

Her words covered the contours of the irony of rape like upholstery covers an old sofa. "I'm so sorry, Ella," I said again. There should have been better words, but if there were, I didn't know them.

"I still go to church every Sunday, you know. Despite what God allowed to be done to my children. I made a pledge to keep giving Him a chance to explain Himself until the day that I die."

Lucy said, "It's my understanding that your grandson calls himself Ramp, still. That's in honor of his mother?"

"No, our name-his mother's maiden name-is his middle name. The boy's name is Jason Ramp Bass. His friends started calling him Ramp sometime in high school. Something about skateboarding I never understood. There's a lot about skateboarding I never understood." Ella sighed. "You get to be my age, you realize the list of things you never understood is a hell of a long one."

Lucy and I sat at the kitchen table with Ella for quite a while early that afternoon, learning about Denise and Pat, and the boy his grandmother called Jase.

"Pat couldn't manage Jase after Denise died. Boy gave him no end of trouble. So he came out here to live with me and Herbert. Jase didn't like it out here in the country but he adjusted okay. I give Herbert most of the credit for that. When Herbert was in town between demo jobs, the boy and him were inseparable. Always doing things together. Mostly cutting steel with explosives. Herbert said that the boy had a knack with explosives."

From the corner of my eye, I could see the screen on the television set on the counter. A teaser for the evening news was running. I wasn't sure if Lucy saw it, too, but assuming that Lucy's story was about to be featured, I knew that I didn't want Ella to be reminded of Lucy's recent notoriety.

I stood, carrying dishes toward the sink.

"Don't do that," Ella said. "I'll clean up."

"It's not a bother-it's the way I was brought up," I said. I switched the TV off before I stacked the dishes. "I hope you don't mind that I turned it off. It's distracting me."

"Oh, I don't mind. It's only there for company. And I've already got company, today."

"Where's Jase now? In Denver?" Lucy asked.

"Mmm-hmm. Denver. He works for a welding company. It's something else that Herbert taught him. Herbert was always cutting metal and welding metal for his experiments."

"Shaped charges," Lucy said.

"That's right." One side of Ella's mouth elevated in a smile. "You don't know what they are, do you?"

"No," she admitted. "I don't. I don't have a clue what a shaped charge is."

Ella laughed so hard she started to cough from a place deep in the recesses of her lungs. When she finally controlled the spasm, she said, "You two are going to go talk to him now, aren't you? Once you leave here."

Lucy and I both nodded.

"Figured. Well, I'll save you some time and tell you where to find him, but I want to talk to him first. I should also talk to Pat, his father, let him know what you told me. Once I do those two things, I'll tell you where to find Jase. If he really did what you say, well… But I want you to remember something, too. I want you to remember that the boy was hurt by his mother's death. You'll remember that? We've all been hurt by what happened."

I said, "Of course."

Lucy wrote her phone numbers on a sheet of paper and gave it to Ella. She said, "That's fair, Ella. You give me a call after you talk to Jason and his father, okay?"

Ella looked back up at me before she spoke to Lucy. "Right now, you're acting like you're going to wait to talk to Jase until I call you. But you won't wait. You're going to go try to find him as soon as you leave here. You're going to go out to your fancy car and get on your cell phone and call your cop friends or you're going to use some computer whizbang and do some magic thing that the police do on TV and you're going to try and find him. Clear as dew, you'd lie to an old woman."

Lucy said, "To track down whoever has been setting those bombs, Ella, I'd lie to every old woman I could find."

Ella opened a drawer that was recessed into the side of the kitchen table. She reached in and slid out a huge revolver. I thought it might be a.45. It was clean and gleamed with fresh oil. Ella rested the weapon on the table, the barrel pointed only slightly away from Lucy.

My heart galloped.

"I like you both," Ella said. "I do."

I thought, Hell's another.