Stephen White - Warning Signs

"Ella," I finally said, "I could bullshit you right now. I could. I'm good at it and despite the fact that I believe you when you say that you are a bright woman, I think I could succeed in bullshitting you. But I won't. So here's the truth: The reason we're trying to find your grandson is that we think he may be responsible for setting some bombs that have hurt some people."

Ella sipped at her coffee. She narrowed her eyes as though she was protecting them from the steam. She asked, "That one in Denver last week? Where that woman died in that car? That's one of 'em?"

"Yes, that's one of them."

She appeared to be puzzled. "Why would he do that? Why would the boy do that?"

Lucy said, "We think he might be angry at law enforcement or the justice system. The courts."

Lucy's words assaulted Ella like a physical blow. Her breath caught in her chest, her eyes closed in a wince, and the fingernails of her right hand cut sharply into the skin of her left arm.

I waited for Ella's next move, which I assumed would be an awkward denial that her grandson was angry at the criminal justice system. But Ella didn't protest. Instead, she narrowed her eyes again and stared at me hard, then glanced over at the TV. "You're that girl who they think killed her momma's husband, aren't you? From up in Boulder? You're the girl from the news this morning?"

Despite her best efforts to maintain her detective's poker face, I could feel Lucy's demeanor change as she tried to process the question.

Ella shook her head in a wide arc. "Well, hell's another. Hell's a-nuh-ther. My own momma always said to wake up looking forward to each day because you never really know what's going to come along with the dawn. But I swear it's been a while since I've had a day quite like this one. A girl from the morning news program sitting right here in my kitchen."

I lifted my cup again but didn't actually get it to my lips before Ella cracked a little smile and said, "So tell me, missy, you have a gun under that jacket? You planning to shoot me if I don't talk?"

Lucy exclaimed, "What?" But she left both hands on the table where Ella could see them. "No, Ella, I'm not going to shoot you."

The tension between the two women was suddenly as thick as butter. I interjected, "But we would like to talk a little bit about how the boy's mother died, Ella. Could we do that?"

Ella burped a tiny burp and covered her mouth. She looked away and closed her eyes, holding them tightly shut.

"Ella?" I said.

"Hell's another," she muttered. "Hell's another."

I never used to curse before she died. Noteven 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."