Stephen White - Warning Signs

"No. I keep going back and forth on that. I'm not sure she's on the list. I'm not sure there really is a list. Her health isn't great right now. I was hoping to learn more from my patient before I brought Lauren in on this."

"And I thought I was the one who was most vulnerable in this situation." Lucy leaned forward, closing the distance between us. She took one of my hands between both of hers. "So Nora's almost definitely on the list. And, maybe, so is Lauren. Who else do you think these two assholes might be targeting?"

"Cozy defended the rapist."

"Great. I take it you haven't said anything to him, either?"

"No. Keep in mind that I don't really know anything, Lucy. I keep weighing the damage I'll do by talking against the damage I'll do by keeping my suspicions to myself. My patient keeps alluding to the Klebolds and the Harrises. Whether they should have known what their kids were up to. Whether they should have talked to the police. That's her big issue. Deciding what her responsibility is. She wants to believe that the kids aren't really planning anything, that this is all just a big fantasy. And they haven't really made any threats that she's heard. Certainly none that I've heard."

Lucy's voice became derisive. "Of course the Klebolds and the Harrises should have known. And they should have talked to the police. There's no doubt about either of those things."

"But at what stage does someone really know enough, Lucy? At what stage do I know enough? Remember, I still haven't heard any threats. Nothing overt. This is all conjecture."

"The bomb they found yesterday at the Peterson house wasn't conjecture. That was a real bomb, and it was real dangerous. The rest of the people on the hit list are vulnerable, Alan."

"You're right, they are. The problem is that I don't really know the identity of anyone on the list-I'm just guessing at the identity of the people these two might be targeting. I would think it's likely that the list includes the judge who approved the plea agreement. That makes sense, right, that they'd include the judge? But I don't even know who that was."

"That's easy. I'll find out."

I said, "I've given this a lot of thought and I can't think of anyone else who might be targeted in Boulder because of the Bigg case, but I may be missing someone. Ramp apparently has his own list of people who were involved in whatever the situation was with his family in Denver, or wherever it was. I know nothing about that, nothing at all. I think it was his mother's murder. But I don't know the details of the case, where it occurred, even what year it happened."

"That's something I can work on," Lucy said.

I went on. "I am suspicious that the bomb that went off in that car yesterday morning was one of Ramp's. The target doesn't make sense, though. From what I've heard on the news and read in the paper, the woman who was killed in the car bomb has no contact with the criminal justice system. She worked in a children's bookstore. Volunteered at a hospital. She coached her kid's soccer team."

"What about her husband, her family?"

"Her husband works in some store in Larimer Square. Sells some western kitsch or something. Mostly tourist crap." I stood up, walked to the window, and watched the wind whip the last of the beautiful pink flowers from the frail redbud.

"The person who's telling you all of this? Your client? Are you still in touch with that person?"

"Yes."

"So you might learn more?"

"It's possible."

"Let's hope so," Lucy said. "Let's hope so. Tell me who it is, Alan. Who's your client?"

I had a patient once, a man, who routinely visited prostitutes when he was out of town on business trips. He rationalized his trysts as being inconsequential because he never kissed the women. If he actually kissed the prostitutes, he maintained, then the contacts would have been intimate.

I thought of him as I said, "Giving you that name won't help you. I don't want to tell you the name right now. Let's just say it's someone who doesn't want to believe that what they're seeing is true."

Not telling Lucy my patient's name was my way of rationalizing my betrayal of Naomi's confidence. It was my equivalent of not kissing the whore.

Lucy joined me by the window. "What you just said about someone who doesn't want to believe what they're seeing is true? That could be any one of us. It could certainly be me. I think it could be you, too."

I didn't turn to face her. Instead I examined her reflection in the glass. "The biggest reason that I was reluctant to clue Sam in about the bomb and that I'm reluctant to tell Lauren or involve the police-or even to involve you, Lucy-is that I'm terrified that this patient of mine will figure out that I've breached her confidence and then she won't-"

"Come back to see you again."

"Exactly. Then I wouldn't have any way of knowing… what kind of danger Lauren might really be in."

Lucy bit her bottom lip, touched me on the shoulder, and said, "You're telling me to be careful?"

"You could say that."

"But you're not going to tell me who your patient is?"

"No."

After a moment, she nodded in resignation. "Then I'll work on discovering who this Ramp guy in Denver is. It's something. Does he use that name online?"

"I don't know."

"I'll also find out what I can about the original Bigg case. See if there are any other potential targets. Maybe somebody in the probation department did an investigation on the rapist and issued a report that the family didn't like. A social worker, someone like that, you never know."

"You never know," I agreed.

T hat afternoon, while Lauren and Gracenapped, I duct-taped a hand mirror to a length of PVC pipe left over from our home remodeling and used the device to check the undercarriage of both of our cars for bombs. I didn't spot anything that didn't match the rather perfect coating of gray-brown grime that was slicked beneath each vehicle, although I did discover a leak in the left front axle boot on my car that I hadn't known about.

When I went back inside the house, I phoned Sam Purdy and asked him for Dorsey's phone number. I could tell that he thought he knew why I wanted it, but he didn't say anything, he just gave it to me. In return for his graciousness, I didn't chew on him about his disclosure to Lucy.

Dorsey couldn't have been kinder when I called. She said that she and Shadow could come by and snoop around that evening around six. I told her that we'd be gone; I didn't want my wife to be home during the search. Before we hung up, I gave Dorsey directions to the house and explained where she could find a key.

When Lauren woke up from her nap, I announced I was treating my girls to an early dinner at Rhumba. Since I didn't want Adrienne wondering why a bomb-sniffing dog was snooping around my house, I invited her and Jonas to come along with us downtown for dinner.

Lauren, of course, wanted to know why I insisted on putting the dogs into the dog run instead of leaving them to roam the house, which is what we would typically do. In response to her question, I said something inane about getting the new litter of fox kits accustomed to the dogs. She looked at me funny but, to my relief, decided not to argue with me. I shushed her out the door ahead of me so that I could lock up the house without setting the burglar alarm.

All the subterfuge and anxiety had left me absolutely exhausted by the time everyone was packed into Adrienne's Suburban for the ride downtown. As she pulled her huge vehicle out onto the lane, Adrienne reminded me, gleefully, that I'd become one of those people who dragged young children along to nice restaurants and ate dinner at five-thirty on weekends.

I smiled at my baby and knew that what my friend was saying was true. Absolutely.