Stephen White - Warning Signs

She didn't call Sam Purdy.

Instead, she made a phone call to a police department colleague who'd made no secret of the fact that he was eager to get into her pants, and asked him for help tracking down Jason Ramp Bass's current address in Denver. She didn't tell the man why she wanted the address. And he didn't ask.

As she killed the call she figured that she'd know exactly where to find Ramp before she was done with her sandwich.

S he was wrong.The return call with Ramp's address didn't come for almost two and a half hours. Her contact had been yanked into a meeting before he'd been able to get back to her with the information. When he finally did phone, he dangled the address like a carrot at the end of a stick until she agreed to have a drink with him after work. She picked a day for the rendezvous that was almost a week away. It left her plenty of time to cancel.

Once she had the address, she thought once more about calling Sam Purdy with the day's news. If she called him, he'd make her back off, wouldn't even let her close to the case. That wasn't okay.

She reached the same decision she'd reached every other time she'd pondered the problem since Agate. She decided to find Ramp by herself.

C apitol Hill inDenver is just south of the Uptown neighborhood where Jason Ramp Bass once lived with his parents. Although it bears some resemblance to Uptown, Capitol Hill is more densely populated, is even more diverse, and suffers from fewer pockets of acute gentrification than does its northern neighbor.

The apartment building where Lucy thought Ramp lived was in no danger of going condo, and nobody in their right mind was ever going to mistake it for a loft. It was a postwar brick rectangle that looked as though it had been modeled after a shoebox. It was flanked on each side by gorgeous stone mansions.

She parked her car just down from Ramp's building on Pennsylvania Avenue and walked back toward it. The doorbell to apartment 3B was marked "Bass." Lucy smiled and shook her head. All day long, given the kind of day she'd expected to have, it had all been too easy. It was just about time, she thought, where something should go wrong.

To ring or not to ring, that was the next question.

She rings and he's not home, nothing's lost.

She rings and he's home-that's when things could get complicated. What would she say to him? Sam Purdy had always taught her to walk into any interview she conducted with the cards stacked in her favor. And with at least one ace tucked up her sleeve. Her favorite ace in the hole was her detective shield, and she'd had to give that up when she was suspended.

What else did she have?

Her wits. And her personal handgun. That was about it.

She backed down the concrete steps and started strolling away from the building to give herself time to rethink her options. She considered calling Cozy to see how bad the fallout had been from the Daily Camera story about her and Susan Peterson but decided that she could wait to learn about that. No matter how bad it had been, she was sure it had been bad enough. She also second-guessed her decision not to call Sam until she was absolutely certain that Jason Ramp Bass was the man they were looking for.

She reminded herself to think like a cop. There was no way she should approach Jason Bass alone without notifying somebody what she was up to. Ella Ramp may have already called her grandson and warned him that Lucy was on his tail. The young man could be armed.

Lucy stopped and used her cell phone to call Alan. She got his voice mail. "Alan, listen, it's Lucy. I think I found Ramp. He lives in Capitol Hill in Denver." She recited the address on Pennsylvania. "I'm heading up to his apartment to try and talk to him now. If for some reason I don't get back to you later today or this evening, call Sam and tell him what I was up to."

She hung up, squeezed her left triceps against her rib cage to feel the reassuring pressure of her holstered weapon, returned to the front door of the apartment building, and hit the bell marked "Bass."

No answer.

She tried the knob on the front door of the building. Locked.

One more time she tried the bell. As she waited for a response she backed away from the door and stared up at the fourth floor, trying to guess which apartment was Ramp's.

R amp was halfway to the Water Street location of the welding supply company where he worked when he realized that he'd forgotten his inspiration. He turned his car around and headed back to his apartment.

The elusive alley parking spot was filled. He double-parked and ran up the back stairs. He retrieved the framed photograph of his mother from on top of the bookcase and was just about out the door when the buzzer sounded from downstairs.

Ramp froze momentarily, then slowly walked to his front windows. The buzzer sounded again.

He waited. Half a minute or so later he watched a blond woman back slowly away from the door, looking up toward the fourth floor.

Who is she?

Ramp said, "Shit," and stepped away from the window. "Here or there?" he asked himself. "Up here or down there?"

If I let her up here, he thought, whatever happens will leave evidence. Trace. Can't have that. Out loud, he said, "The correct answer, therefore, is down there." He bounded out the door of his apartment and flew down the stairs like a kid afraid to miss something. Only slightly winded, he grabbed his bag from his car, stuffed the photograph of his mother inside, circled his building, and was on the sidewalk behind the blond woman before she got all the way back to her car.

The red Volvo had the old, traditional, white-sky-over-green-mountains style Colorado license plates. The lettering on the plates read "MST." Ramp knew that designation meant the car was registered in Boulder County. The new green-over-white plates lacked a county code; you couldn't tell where the car was from.

Who the hell would be visiting him from Boulder? Nobody he wanted to see, that's who.

He noted the absence of a uniform and the presence of the leather blazer the woman was wearing on a warm afternoon. If the cops were after him, they wouldn't send a patrol officer. They'd send a detective, he thought. Probably two. He wondered about a gun under the blazer. He wondered about a partner. He couldn't spot anyone.

If she was a cop, she had a gun. Either under her blazer or in that purse. But why would they send a solitary cop?

Ramp was five feet behind her when he said, "Detective?"

She turned to face him.

He saw the look of resignation on her face when she realized she'd been duped. He smiled, and he said, "Thank you. That was easy. Go ahead and get in your car, Detective, but slide all the way across to the driver's side. I'll be right behind you. Once you're in the car, put your hands under your thighs. I'll take that purse, now, if you don't mind."

Ramp recognized the woman from the news. She was the Boulder cop who was the prime suspect in killing the Boulder DA. She was on leave from the police force. There'd been something in the news all day long about her mother, too. Ramp hadn't really paid attention.

She didn't seem frightened. Certainly wasn't jumping to obey him.

He said, "Do what I say. Hand me the purse, please, then slide into the car." He lifted the satchel he'd just retrieved from his apartment. "I have a weapon in this bag-actually, it's an explosive device-a bomb-that will kill both of us instantly. Although I'm willing to set it off, I'd really rather not do that."

He watched intently as the cop began to lower herself onto the car seat. When she was seated on the passenger's side, Ramp said, "Stop there for a second." He leaned in toward her and with his left hand pulled back the lapel of her blazer, exposing the butt of her handgun. Careful not to brush her body with his fingers, he removed the weapon and added it to the bag. "Now scoot over to the other side."