Warning Signs

CHAPTER 47

Sam Purdy found me almost instantly after one of the firefighters escorted me from the building.

"You okay?"

I nodded. "I'm fine. Lauren and Cozy are hurt, Sam. They're trapped in an elevator near the seventh floor."

Sam put a hand on my shoulder and nodded. He didn't bother with platitudes. He didn't tell me that he was sure Lauren and Cozy would be fine. I barely noticed the fact that he was leading me down the sidewalk on Fourteenth toward the Mall. We stopped just beyond two parked ambulances, just outside the record store, still well within the confines of the yellow tape that had been stretched far beyond the north side of the Mall.

"Where's Marin?" I asked.

"She's still here. Couple of detectives are putting some pressure on her to find out what's coming next. We really need to know if there's a secondary in there."

"What's a secondary?"

"A second explosive device. Sometimes these assholes set off one device to draw cops and firefighters close, then they set off a second device to kill them."

I kept looking back at the lobby entrance, hoping to see Lauren emerge through the doorway. I wanted to see her walking out with a firefighter at each of her elbows. I was willing to see her being wheeled out on a stretcher.

But I wanted to see her.

"It's started, Alan. The bomb here. Another one already this morning in Denver. She and Ramp have started their spree."

"What about Lucy?"

"No sign of her yet. Not a trace."

"What happened in Denver this morning?"

"It's kind of baffling. Some ride at Elitch's. Don't see how it has anything to do with the criminal justice system, unless the kid is trying to be metaphorical in some way I'm too tired to comprehend. I don't get it."

I wasn't looking for metaphor. I asked, "Somebody was hurt in the Denver explosion, weren't they?"

"It only happened half an hour ago. They've just started to sift through the mess."

Sam stepped away from me and stopped a patrol officer who was hurrying toward one of the ambulances. I stayed a step behind Sam.

He asked the officer, "What's up?"

"Hey, Detective. One of the elevators had its cable severed by the explosion. They just found a body in the car in the basement."

"Dead?"

"Yeah."

I thought about my friends on the fifth floor.

Sam asked what I was too stunned to ask. "Who is it?"

The officer said, "It's some guy named Bob. He's like the super, the maintenance guy in the building. He fell from fifty, sixty feet up, maybe more. Apparently everybody knows him."

"I don't," I said.

Sam's phone tweeted in his pocket. He pulled it out, hit a button with his fat thumb, and said, "Purdy."

A few seconds later he turned his head away from me and said, "Yeah, of course. What's up, Walter?"

I waited until Sam shut off the call before I asked, "What did Walter have to say?"

He flashed a how-the-hell-do-you-know-about-Walter look until he recalled our conversation wandering the aisles of the grocery store. He said, "The Denver Police just found an apparent explosive device in the center of the stage at Red Rocks. Bomb squad is responding."

I was focusing most of my attention on the lobby entrance to the Colorado Building, waiting for Lauren and Cozy to emerge. What could be taking the rescuers so long? Sam's words registered on the boundaries of my awareness. I said, "What?"

"There's a bomb, or something that looks like a bomb, right in the center of the stage at Red Rocks."

"The amphitheater?" Red Rocks was Denver's world-famous outdoor concert venue. It was set in a gorgeous sandstone bowl in the foothills west of the city. Although totally surrounded by Jefferson County, Red Rocks was technically a Denver city park facility.

"Yeah. The bomb squad's on the way to evaluate it. It doesn't look good; they want to X-ray it."

"Is there a concert or something up there?" I asked.

"On a weekday morning at this hour? Hardly."

A yellow-suited firefighter emerged from the front of the Colorado Building, waving one arm back and forth across his chest to clear a wide path from the lobby to the ambulances waiting nearby. I started toward the doorway as though I were on a moving sidewalk.

The end of a stretcher broke the plane at the front of the building. Thick rubber wheels. Tubular aluminum frame.

I saw sneakers. The woman who had been carrying the coffee.

An eternity passed before a second stretcher breached the doorway.

Wingtips the size of dinghies.

Even from thirty feet away, I could almost count the little holes in the leather.

Cozy.

Sam's fingers curled over my left shoulder. He was providing comfort. He was also preparing to keep me from rushing the door.

A third stretcher began to emerge from the door as though the building were giving birth to it.

Triplets.

I held my breath and waited to see one black Cole Haan slide and one elegant, very pretty, bare foot. Lauren's toenails were painted. I tried to recall what color she'd used. I couldn't.

The stretcher came out the door empty.

A sound emerged from somewhere deep in my tissues. Somewhere that knows no sound. It was part groan, part yelp, part plea.

Sam's fingers tightened on my shoulder. He said, "Wait."

It was an order.

I didn't know it at the time, but Sam's eyes were flitting between the doorway and Scott Truscott, the Boulder County coroner's assistant. Scott's vehicle was across the street and Scott was waiting to be invited inside the building to assess the casualties whose injuries were so monumental that they didn't require an ambulance ride to anywhere.

"Where is she?" I said to God.

Another stretcher began to come into view.

I saw black hair and I started to cry.