"The evidence is pretty compelling that she was there. A witness saw her car around the corner. It's a bright red Volvo. Her prints are in at least two different rooms in the house. None of the police at the scene remember Lucy being inside without gloves during the investigation of the murder. And there's lots of video-all of it shows her wearing gloves.
"So… when she heard what they had, Lucy finally admitted to Cozy and me that she was at the Peterson home, but she maintains that it was earlier in the evening. That she left around eight-thirty, quarter to nine. And she said Roy was fine when she left."
I had a hundred questions.
I started with, "Why was she there?"
"She won't tell us. She says that we just have to accept the fact that if we knew why she was there, we'd be convinced she had a reason to kill Roy. She's absolutely certain that talking about why she was at the house will only hurt her. She says she'll reconsider if she's arrested. But not until then."
"She admitted to you that she had a motive to kill Roy?"
"In so many words, I guess she did."
"What could possibly-"
"I don't know. But apparently she's been to his house before."
"She told you that?"
"She's not saying anything about it. But the witness who saw her car remembers the Volvo. Said he's lusted after one forever. He's noticed it parked in front of his house before. He said it's a turbo." She shrugged her shoulders and rolled her violet eyes as though she couldn't imagine being able to tell a turbo from a non-turbo, and certainly couldn't imagine coveting one.
"Had he seen it frequently?"
"A few times, always in the evening."
I asked, "Why did she park on a different street?"
"Obviously she didn't want to be seen going into Royal's house. Maybe she went in through the back. There aren't any fences that would keep her from getting to Royal's back door."
"Does the witness remember what time the Volvo was gone from in front of his house on Saturday?"
"We haven't talked to him yet but the police say no. He told them he was out for the evening, got home after eleven. The car was gone when he got home. Cozy and I have an investigator going out to talk to him and to try to corral more neighbors, see if someone saw the car leave before ten o'clock."
"What's Lucy's connection to Royal? Did they have a case together, something they were working on?"
She made a groaning noise to communicate her frustration with my questions. "We don't know. Even if they did have a case, it wouldn't give Lucy cause to have direct contact with the district attorney himself. If it had to do with an investigation, it would be Sam doing the talking, not Lucy, and he'd be talking to someone like me, an assistant DA, not with the district attorney. I can't think of a single reason why someone like Lucy would be dealing with someone like Roy on a direct basis about a case. It just wouldn't happen."
I thought about the details Lauren had shared with me so far. I wasn't a lawyer, but it didn't seem to add up to probable cause. "There must be something else, babe. So she was in the neighborhood-a lot of people were in the neighborhood that night. I don't think Sam would have picked up Lucy based on what you just told me."
"Sam was following orders, that's why he picked her up. But there is more. Murder weapon was a brass lamp. It had been wiped. But Lucy's latents are on pieces of a ceramic dish or something that was found busted on the floor."
"Jesus. What does Lucy say to that?"
"She seemed honestly perplexed. That's all I can say, that she seemed surprised."
We rolled over at the same time and ended up facing each other in the middle of the bed. I rested a hand on her naked hip. "How are you holding up?"
"Okay, I think. I think I'm doing okay."
"No exacerbation?"
"Not so far."
"How's the brain mud?"
"Not so bad. Maybe a little better."
I felt as much relief as multiple sclerosis ever seemed to permit. I said, "So much has happened since last week. I can't believe it's only Tuesday."
She moved my hand to her waist and slid close enough to me that her nipples brushed my skin.
CHAPTER 11
N aomi Bigg was-finally-right on time for the Wednesday session. I let the red light glow on the wall for a good minute before I walked out to the waiting room to invite her back to the office.
S he knew exactly where she wanted to start. "Paul has a friend named Ramp. He's older-I don't know for sure, but he's got ID, so I'd say he's twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Of course, it's possible the ID is fake." She crossed her legs and smiled coyly.
The little grin caught me completely off guard. I didn't know what to make of it. Had it been seductive? Mocking?
"This would be a lot easier if you'd let me smoke."
I didn't say, It's not my job to make it easier. I didn't say, It's the law in Boulder. I didn't say, I can't stand cigarette smoke.
I said, "Sorry." But I wasn't.
I'd already realized that I didn't especially like Naomi Bigg. I'd tried telling myself that her message was so frightening that I was unable to refrain from blaming the messenger. For whatever good it would do, I was making a conscious effort to monitor the reflexes that my dislike was generating.
Shrinks call this "dealing with the countertransference."
Naomi went on. "I like Ramp. He's pleasant, polite, has a good sense of humor. But I'm not sure he's the best influence in the world on… Paul. They've only been friends for a few months, maybe longer than that. Last summer, actually. Paul met Ramp on the Internet, on a bulletin-board-type thing where they were both complaining about the criminal justice system. Ramp has a family situation kind of like ours. His mother was killed by a man who was released on parole after serving four years for murder. The guy got four years for murder, can you believe it?"
"Ramp lives where?" It wasn't like me to demand a fact like this from a therapy patient, but this bit of data seemed important.
"Denver somewhere, I don't know. The truth is that Ramp is even angrier about the justice system's inequities than Paul is. Maybe even more furious than I am."
"You've met him?"
"Oh sure. They hang out at our house a lot, which I encourage. Keeps Paul from driving to Denver so much, and I'd rather have the kids close by, you know, where I can keep an eye on them."
She repeated the coy little smile. I was still unsure what to make of it.
"Every time he comes to the house, Ramp brings papers. Sometimes magazine articles or clippings from the newspaper. But mostly things he's printed off the Net. Stories from around the country about all the things that infuriate him. Plea bargains, mostly. Psychotic parole decisions. Or absurd sentences, like putting murderers on probation. Or giving rapists a few months in jail or no jail at all. He keeps this binder that he calls his 'Hall of Shame.' It's full of pictures of prosecutors, judges, slimy attorneys, expert witnesses who will say anything to get people off. You know what I'm talking about. Everybody knows.
"The stuff Ramp brings keeps Paul stirred up. Now Paul's started collecting stuff on his own, too. They trade it like Paul used to trade baseball cards when he was little."
"Go on," I said. I shouldn't have said anything but I was an impatient audience. I was aware that there was a possibility that my need to hear this story was getting ahead of my patient's need to tell it. In almost all circumstances in psychotherapy, that was a problem.
Naomi said, "Ramp thinks that Leo is a hero."
I tried to remember who Leo was. After half a week of therapy appointments, I sometimes discovered that all the names I'd heard had blended together like the fruit in a smoothie.
"Paul, of course, thinks it's great that there's somebody who understands what his father did."
That Leo. The one who pummeled the rapist with a tire checker. The one doing hard time in a small concrete room in Buena Vista.
"Most of his friends deserted Paul after Leo was arrested for attacking the… scum
who raped Marin. With Ramp, Paul has a friend who thinks what Leo did is the absolute coolest thing in the world. Ramp actually wants to go up to Buena Vista and visit Leo." She shifted her gaze from the window, to me, and back to the windows and the soft light at the end of the day.
"Yes?" I said.
"Ramp's the one who keeps bringing up retribution. 'Wouldn't it be cool?' That's what he says all the time. 'Wouldn't it be cool if somebody raped the judge's daughter? Maybe then he'd know how it feels.' Or 'Wouldn't it be cool if something bad happened to that lawyer's family? Then he'd know the pain.' Or 'Wouldn't it be cool if so-and-so's house blew up?' That's what Ramp always says."
"And Paul plays along?"
"It's like a parlor game. When I ask him about it, he tells me it's just their version of fantasy baseball."
She sounded skeptical. I stated the obvious by saying, "But you're not so sure it's so innocent?"
"I was." For a moment, Naomi appeared uncomfortable. "I didn't like it, that kind of talk. I mean I don't wish tragedy on any family, especially after what we've been through. And then I heard that Royal Peterson had been killed. Since then I haven't been so sure."
There are rare moments in psychotherapy where my practiced façade is tested to the extreme. I think of those moments as slugs that slam into my bulletproof vest. Usually, the lead doesn't pierce the protective shield, but sometimes the bullets rock me back on my heels. This was one of those times.
"What?" I said, as though I was feigning an acute hearing loss. To a casual observer my state could probably just as easily have been mistaken for a brief interim of idiocy.
"Roy Peterson's murder? The boys won't talk about it. Not a word about it since it happened. That alone made me suspicious. The truth was that I half expected them to be celebrating when they heard that Peterson had a dose of the medicine he was dishing out."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Peterson was like a drug lord. DAs like him all are. With their plea bargains and sentence recommendations they put scum back on the street just like a drug lord ships crack or heroin into town. They think they're doing the right thing but they're really just making things worse. Do you know what percentage of charged crimes went to trial in the last ten years under Peterson? One percent. That's it. One percent."
"I didn't know."
"Do you know that pedophiles, and I mean active pedophiles-pedophiles who have actually touched children-have received deferred sentences in this county? Do you know that?"
I didn't answer. Part of me knew that it might be true, though. Some cases kept Lauren up at night. They were the ones I heard about at breakfast. I fought an impulse to defend the DA's office.
"Their good-old-boy networks and their political connections-it's disgusting. The excuses, God. When Peterson died, I thought the kids would be celebrating that maybe he choked on some of his own filth."
What did I want to say right then? I wanted to say, Holy shit! You think your son may have murdered Roy Peterson? But I kept my mouth shut until I could think of an alternative that might actually keep Naomi talking and not cause her to keep her mouth shut.
"What I talked about that first day? About sympathy for the Klebolds and the Harrises? I think sometimes that I know how they felt in the months before the attack. Maybe even how they feel now. Are you finally beginning to understand what it is I mean?"
I can't say how much time passed before I spoke again. It might have been only a few seconds, but I'd guess it was most of a minute. I broke the silence with a question: "Naomi? Was Royal Peterson ever the focus of any of Paul's wouldn't-it-be-cool games?"
"They were Ramp's games."
The distinction was obviously important to Naomi. Essential, even, as far as our therapeutic alliance was concerned. "Okay-was Roy Peterson ever the focus of any of Ramp's wouldn't-it-be-cool games?"
"I don't really think they did it."
We both recognized that she hadn't responded to my question. I said, "You don't?"
"No." She shook her head for emphasis. "No, I don't think they did it. But, obviously, I'm not sure, not totally sure. So I'm not willing to say anything to anybody about my concerns."
"You just did. You told me you're not convinced that the games the boys are playing are innocent."
"I meant say anything to the police. Or whomever. The question I struggle with all the time is: How much does a parent have to know in order to turn her child in to the police?
"Do you know that before Columbine, Eric Harris's parents failed to notice that their son had an arsenal in their house, for heaven's sake? And that one of them-Eric or Dylan-wrote an essay that predicted what they were going to do? And sometime before the two kids made their assault, Mr. Harris actually took a call for his son from a gun shop? Well, it wasn't enough for him to do anything at all; it certainly wasn't enough for him to turn his son in.
"And the police?" she scoffed. "The sheriff in Jefferson County was informed that Harris had threatened to kill a student a year before the shooting. They even suspected him of detonating a pipe bomb. And they were aware that he had this violent, awful Web site. Some deputies even wrote a request for a search warrant. But the sheriff did nothing with the suspicions. Nothing.
"So I ask you, what does it take to get a parent to believe that her child is planning something evil? What should it take? Believe me, I've thought a lot about it and I don't know the answer to that question. But I do know that it's going to take a hell of a lot more than I know so far."
Softly, I said, "What do you know so far, Naomi?" I didn't say, Have you found an arsenal, too? But that's what I wanted to know.
She glared at me as though my question was a trap. "Nothing. I don't know a thing. I haven't found any smoking guns in my house, and I haven't intercepted any calls from gun dealers, and I've checked my child's Web site and it's nothing but the same kind of stuff I hear around the house. I don't know a thing. I know less than the Klebolds and the Harrises knew. I definitely know less than the Jefferson County sheriff knew."
"But don't you think that the Klebolds and the Harrises and the sheriff all should have said something to prevent that tragedy?"
"The sheriff, sure, of course. But the parents? That's easy for us now, isn't it? We know what happened. They didn't know what was going to happen. Who could've guessed what those two boys were about to do?"
I tried empathy. "It's a tough place for a parent, Naomi."
For a long interval she stared at me, swallowing once or twice, and then she found a place where her composure was more assured. When she spoke again, she took me someplace else I didn't want to be.
We actually spent the rest of the session talking about Naomi's aging parents in Michigan and her fears about the onset of menopause.
I wanted to scream.
CHAPTER 12
T he eastern rim of the Boulder Valley was growing dark as I made the final turn onto the lane that led to our house. My headlights immediately illuminated the side of my neighbor Adrienne's big blue Suburban, which was parked at an angle across the narrow width of the gravel lane, just beyond the permanent tin placard that identified the path to our little piece of paradise as a "Private Road." Taped to the side of Adrienne's huge vehicle was a poster-board sign that read NO PRES.
I recognized the artist, and the spelling. The poster was the work of Jonas, Adrienne's son. I was left with an inescapable conclusion: The kid shared not only his mother's aversion to the media but also her spelling challenges.
I pulled around Adrienne's behemoth and drove through the dry grasses until I could ease back up on the lane. In front of our house I found exactly what I was expecting to find, and I also found one surprise. Cozy's BMW was the expectation.
Lucy Tanner's red Volvo turbo was the surprise.
I said quick hellos to everyone, retrieved Grace from her bouncy chair in the center of the coffee table, and retreated from the living room so that Cozy and Lauren could continue to huddle with their client.
&
nbsp; Dinner was in a dozen white boxes that were spread all over the kitchen counter, an amazing variety of take-out Chinese, all courtesy of Cozy. But as attractive as the buffet looked, I wasn't hungry. My appetite hadn't recovered from Naomi Bigg's provocative wouldn't-it-be-cool revelations or from her numbing menopause lament.
I stood with Grace in my arms, contemplating a spring roll, but grabbed only a beer on my way to the far end of the house.
T he day after Grace was born, Lucy Tanner had stopped by Community Hospital and dropped off a gift, a charming, developmentally appropriate, black-and-white stuffed Gund musical clown with a garish face. Grace loved having the thing hanging above her crib. I didn't think I'd seen Lucy since that day in the hospital.
Although I'd crossed paths with her from time to time over the years during various misadventures I'd had with Sam Purdy, she and I had never grown close. She was a personable, friendly woman with a quick mind, a gentle wit, and an admirable tolerance of her quirky partner. She knew when to let Sam be the boss and she knew when to draw a line across his nose and dare him to cross it. I didn't recall ever seeing her misstep with Sam Purdy, which wasn't easy. I couldn't say the same thing about my own interactions with our mutual friend.
Lucy was uncommonly pretty. Not remarkably pretty, but uncommonly so. With the exception of her glistening blond hair there was nothing conventionally attractive about her features, but the constellation that the individual stars created was alluring, even magnetic. Many men embarrassed themselves when Lucy was in their vicinity, and Lucy was not at all reticent to take advantage of the phenomenon, either personally or professionally.
Over the years, I'd seen her in leather; I'd seen her in a little black dress; I'd seen her in brand-new Donna Karan, but-with the exception of her hours on the job-I'd never seen her dressed to blend in. Lucy always managed to stand off by herself. I suppose that I perceived her as living her life surrounded by a fence. Not chain link topped with razor wire, but more like a good strong wrought-iron barrier with an imposing gate.
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