Stephen White - Warning Signs

Ramp was silent for a long stretch before he asked, "Were you? Were you sleeping with him?"

To Lucy, his words sounded reluctant, as though he didn't want to find out that it was true. She wasn't sure how to answer but didn't want to lie. "Yes," Lucy said. "I was. It's funny to say it. I haven't admitted that to anyone before right now. Not even my friends or my lawyers."

"But you didn't kill him."

"No, I didn't kill him."

Lucy recalled the conversation she had recently had with Alan Gregory and what he had said about intimacy. That true intimacy required not only disclosure, but also vulnerability.

Jason had just admitted a murder and she'd just admitted an affair with her mother's husband. That was disclosure.

If she got away, Jason Ramp Bass was on his way to life in prison or even death row in Cañon City. If she didn't get away, Ramp was probably going to kill her.

That was vulnerability.

She looked over at Ramp and thought that they were so intimate at that moment that they may as well have been sleeping naked in the same cot.

Ramp said, "In a way, we both lost our moms."

Lucy felt a flutter in her heart and thought that he'd made the words sound like the lyrics for a song.

He murmured, "Good night, Lucy. Get some sleep."

And she knew she was going to cry. But she wasn't sure why. Just that it had something to do with mothers.

T he night before,when Lucy had walked unannounced into the master bedroom of the Peterson house on Jay Street, she'd said, "Susan, we need to talk."

Susan had looked up and greeted her without surprise. She'd said, "What? You think things have changed? Just because Royal's dead?"

"Everything's changed, Susan. You know that."

"You still call me Susan, not Mother. That hasn't changed. I still have this damn disease. That hasn't changed. Royal's not here anymore-that's all that's changed."

Lucy didn't bite. "I haven't told the police that you're my mother, Susan. I came here to talk with you because I think we should leave it that way."

Susan scoffed back. "Why? So your life isn't complicated by the fact that you have a disabled mother? Sorry, if they ask me, I'll tell them. I don't care who knows. I just lost my husband-nobody will care what happened with us, Lucy. They'll forgive me for what I did to you. They might not understand why you're so callous now, but they'll forgive me ."

"Susan, what do you want from me?"

She straightened the sheets on her bed and hit the mute button on the remote control before she said, "Just do what's right, Lucy. Isn't that what I always taught you?"

I can't sleep. Can you?"

Lucy's eyes had been tracking the linear shadows that were making a picket fence of light appear across the ceiling of the construction trailer. She was wide-awake. In response to Jason Ramp's question, she said, "No."

For a moment both were silent. Lucy finally stammered, "Is it because you killed somebody today?"

"Yeah," Ramp said. "That, and I keep going over what's going to happen tomorrow."

"You want to talk about it?"

"Maybe, I'm not sure. I don't know if I do. More people are going to die tomorrow. I'm sure of that much. So I'm not sure why I'm so weirded out by Marin's mom dying today."

"Maybe that's it-that she was somebody's mom."

"Whoa, I hadn't thought about that. That's something to think about, isn't it?"

"Why did you do it, Jason? Blow her up?"

"She figured out what we were up to. I'm not exactly sure how. I think probably Marin left some stuff around the house or was careless on the Net or something. Doesn't matter now, I suppose. Marin said that her mom was going to tell everything to that shrink she was seeing. I had to keep her from doing that. One more day, that's all we needed. One more day."

Lucy sensed a vulnerability. She tried to exploit it. "You ever kill anyone before?"

"That woman who died in the car bomb in Denver? I caused that. She wasn't the intended victim. Her husband was. I guess you could say I killed her. But the bomb I put under their car went off by accident. I wasn't going to set it off until… until the right time came. Her husband should have been driving, not her."

"Why him?"

He ignored her question.

Lucy spoke into the darkness. "Maybe you feel troubled because you knew Marin's mother. I imagine that it makes a difference, killing someone you know."

He parried with his own question. "Have you been angry enough to kill your mother?"

The question felt like a physical blow to Lucy. She had trouble catching her breath. "I've never thought about it."

"Think about it now. Please."

"I don't know, Jason. I don't know. My God, what a question."

"You might be surprised what you can do when you've been hurt enough. You might be surprised."

"Have you been hurt enough?"

"Have you?" he countered.

Lucy looked away from him. "Are the others all going to be strangers?"

"What others?"

"The ones who are going to die tomorrow."

Ramp's voice softened. "I don't know them, not personally, if that's what you mean. I know who they are. I picked them because of who they are, but I don't know them. Others will get hurt or die, too. Unintended victims. No matter how careful you are, bombs tend to be a little indiscriminate when they go off around people. I've accepted that risk."

"So what is it then?" She was trying to feed his self-doubt.

Ramp stood up and crossed the distance between them slowly, his body emerging from the shadows the way a lover might approach the bed. He straddled a metal desk chair three feet from her.

"I'm telling you a lot. You tell me something about you. Something personal, private."

Lucy almost laughed. She looked up at the grimy ceiling before staring into his cool eyes. "I already told you I was sleeping with my mother's husband. How much more private you want me to get?"

She could only see half his face. The eyelid that she could see was heavy, and a soft beard had emerged on his chin. She thought she recognized something unexpected in his glare.

She double-checked her impressions and decided to take a chance. Lucy said, "My boobs are two different sizes."

He laughed and pounded a boot on the dirty carpet.

She joined him laughing.

"My mom told me that all girls' boobs are two different sizes. That's not a big deal."

"Mine aren't a little different, they're a lot different. More than a whole cup size different."

"That's a lot?"

"Yeah, that's a lot. It made for some tough times in the locker room at school. And it complicates shopping for lingerie." She said the final word wistfully, hoped it hung in the room like perfume.

He crossed his arms on top of the chair back and sprawled his legs out in front of him, smiling to himself. "Which one do you like more?"

She laughed with him again, trying to draw him along. "What kind of question is that?"

"If you could have them both be the same size, which one would you choose?"

"The left one."

He looked down at her chest and laughed again. "That's a good answer."

His appraisal of her chest left her questioning her decision to flirt with him. She said, "Thank you."

"You know," he said, "when I was like nine or ten, I used to think they had bones in them. Boobs. Breasts. I didn't know they were soft. I thought they had like a cone of little bones holding them in shape. One time I was in a swimming pool playing some game and I accidentally kicked a girl in her chest and her breast just squished underneath my foot. I remember that I thought I'd broken it."

"So how did you find out the truth about boobs?"

"Personal research."