Stephen White - Warning Signs

Another sign above the workbench in the explosives shed: Novelty creates confusion. Practice eliminates novelty .

"Right on, Granddad," Ramp said.

He collected three radio transmitters from the kitchen cupboard above the dishwasher. The three devices were dissimilar. One was a garage door opener. One had operated a remote-control children's car. The third had been designed to operate a model airplane. He placed them in a leather dopp kit that was already provisioned with fresh batteries for the transmitters.

He pried the floorboard away from the wall and pocketed the Zip disc that he'd stashed there. His work clothes and the other supplies were already packed in a duffel bag that he'd used to carry his soccer clothes when he was in high school.

Last, he retrieved a fresh battery for his cell phone, dumped everything into the duffel with his clothes, locked up his apartment, and descended the stairs toward his car.

B efore I was allowed to leave the hospital, alot of people wanted to talk to me. Almost all of them were from law enforcement.

Lauren, I think, wanted only to yell at me. But she didn't. She was overtly kind to me the way that I knew I would someday be overtly kind to Grace after she cut herself or broke a bone solely because of her poor judgment and stupidity.

Lauren could afford to be kind to me because she knew that I knew how stupid I'd been. She knew it because I reminded her of it every few minutes.

The first few repetitive apologies took place while I was still at the hospital. The neurologist who was assessing me for closed head injuries actually expressed concern to Lauren that my perseveration might be ample evidence that I'd suffered brain trauma. Soon, however, my wife concluded that my refrain was merely a recurring prayer seeking psychological absolution for my mortal sins against good judgment.

A s the shadowswere fading and darkness was sealing the end of the day, Lauren drove me home. On the way down North Broadway, I heard birds singing that had probably been singing the evening before and smelled flowers that had certainly smelled just as sweet that morning. But, after surviving the explosion, my senses felt sharper. I wanted to test the hypothesis further and taste my wife's kiss, but she was in no mood to indulge me. As we cruised past the new Bureau of Standards building on South Broadway near Table Mesa, Lauren used an oh-by-the-way tone to caution me that serious discussions were probably ongoing in the district attorney's office about whether or not I could be charged with a crime. Something about withholding evidence.

Like what? I wondered, though not aloud. For some reason, Lauren's warning didn't particularly alarm me. What were they going to do to me?

Maybe I'd be arrested for not blowing the whistle on a kid who had been dead for six years.

I decided that it would almost be worth going to trial just to hear the opening statements on that one.

P rior to makingElla Ramp's acquaintance in Agate that afternoon, the act of rationalizing my willingness to disclose confidential information to the Boulder Police had taken some significant gymnastics. Because patient privilege survives patient death, even the fact that Naomi was now dead wasn't actually enough to free me from my legal restrictions to keep quiet. What finally liberated me to open my mouth to the authorities about all the things I'd learned from Naomi in psychotherapy was the now undeniable reality that Naomi's fears about bombs and explosives weren't the product of her imagination, and my near one-hundred-percent assurance that the bomber was a kid in Denver named Jason Ramp Bass. My assurance that Jason Bass had set a bomb off in the Louis Vuitton bag that Naomi always carried slung from her shoulder was as close to one hundred percent as it could get.

The leap from those realizations to the acceptance that other people were still in danger from other bombs was all that I needed to free myself from the bounds of confidentiality. Lawyers and practitioners could argue whether the circumstances actually constituted legally enforceable Tarasoff conditions, but the truth was that I had lost any remaining interest I'd had in debating the finer legal and ethical threads.

I ran my belated rationalizations by Lauren. She made it clear that she thought I'd jumped through the progression of ethical hoops in a peculiarly tardy fashion. Although it was clear she was admonishing me, I was relieved that she was at least trying to be nice about it.

S am called aroundnine o'clock that evening. He had news. The Boulder Police had discovered an "explosive device" during a sweep of the home of the woman who ran the District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit. The bomb was found in Nora Doyle's garage, well hidden among some gardening supplies that were stored directly opposite the driver's side door of her Honda Accord. Had the bomb gone off, Nora might have been impaled on a hoe.

The bomb squad thought the initiator was radio controlled. Sam promised to tell me more when he knew more.

There's another bomb. That lawyer.

Cozier Maitlin's office, car, and Mapleton Hill home had been swept with extreme care, with negative results. The evacuation of the Colorado Building on Fourteenth Street had apparently been quite an inconvenience for quite a lot of people. Sam reported that at least one passerby voiced her hope that if there was indeed a bomb, she was praying it was big enough to bring the damn ugly place down.

The home and chambers of Superior Court Judge Richard Bates Leventhal, who had approved the plea bargain in Marin Bigg's rape, were swept, too. No bombs were discovered.

Lauren and I already knew, of course, that our property had been re-searched without result before I'd left the hospital that afternoon.

A t times ofstress, I ride my bike. The more stress I feel, the harder I ride. The amount of stress I was feeling the day Naomi died would have necessitated a fierce climb-a muscle-burning, ass-never-touches-the-saddle ascent that few mountain ranges in the world can offer on paved roads. But the eleven stitches high on the back of my leg near the imaginary line where butt becomes hip and my quasi-concussion conspired to keep me housebound and off my bicycle. My stress relief would have to come from baby Grace, who, bless her heart, handled the job effortlessly, and from the dogs, who, though generally amusing, weren't quite as reliable a tranquilizer as Xanax.

I tried to read. Couldn't concentrate. I tried to nap. Couldn't sleep. Mostly I spent the evening thinking.

Pondering.

Okay, perseverating.

P atients lie tome all the time.

All the time.

Most of the time I accept the mistruths as being part of the process that people go through while they're coming to terms with the myriad of ways that they are lying to themselves. I don't, as a rule, take it personally when I learn that I've been served untruths by patients. And I'm usually not even embarrassed when I discover that I've fallen hook, line, and sinker for the prevarications.

I've heard colleagues say that they know when their patients are lying to them. I find the contention preposterous. I can't usually tell, and even when I think I can tell, I'm not usually sure. And I'm almost always unconvinced that it matters. I try to make it my job to learn as much from my patients' lies as I do from the truth. Either way, the therapy benefits.

But Naomi Bigg had lied to me.

She'd really, really lied to me. And I'd fallen for her creative story like a four-year-old stuffing a tooth beneath his pillow believes in visions of an impending visit from a dental fairy carrying a twinkling wand and dressed in white organza.