W hen I woke up, or cleared my head, or whatever it was that I did, I could finally hear the sirens. I wanted to tell Marin Bigg that I could finally hear the sirens.
I tried to stand up to go find Marin and Naomi, but a young man with a ring between his nostrils and a tattoo of a black flower on his throat kept a firm grip on my shoulders.
He said, "I don't think you should get up, man. Someone's coming to help you. I don't think you should get up, man. I'm serious, here. Come on, now. Cooperate with me."
"Where's Marin? Tell her I hear the sirens."
"Hey, whatever. I'll tell her. I'll tell her."
Up close, his nasal ring captivated me. I wanted to ask him what it had felt like to get that part of his nose pierced. Did they go through the cartilage with the needle or did they slide the metal in front of it in that soft skin that always got so sore when I had a cold? But it didn't seem like an appropriate question to a stranger, so I kept my musings to myself.
Then I recalled Naomi's message.
There's another bomb. That lawyer.
I tried to sit up. I said, "There's another bomb. That lawyer."
He kept his hands on my shoulders. "What? I don't think you should get up, man. You're not real stable."
That understatement was the last thing I recalled until the ambulance ride.
CHAPTER 32
T here's another bomb. That lawyer.
I spilled the beans about the wouldn't-it-be-cool games about five minutes after I arrived at the hospital. It took that long for me to collect my wits. Lauren had been called but she wasn't yet at my side, so Sam Purdy was my first confessor. For some reason, he'd been the one elected by the medical staff to inform me that what little was left of Naomi Bigg was dead.
Come to think of it, it was more likely that Sam's position as town crier was self-appointed. At that moment he'd be more concerned with bomb facts than with my feelings.
I asked him about Marin. The nurses and doctors who'd been treating me had been unwilling to tell me her condition.
Sam, on the other hand, didn't blink at my question. Marin Bigg was on her way to surgery. Her condition wasn't critical, though he didn't know the details. He'd let me know when things changed.
I proceeded to tell Sam about Naomi's message. There's another bomb. That lawyer. I tried to put it all in context by telling him everything I remembered about Paul and Ramp and the wouldn't-it-be-cool games. When I got around to mentioning Ella Ramp and Jason Ramp Bass and shaped charges and the explosives vault near Limon, he barked, "What?"
"The things that Lucy called you about a few hours ago. Ramp's grandmother is Ella. Jason Ramp Bass is Ramp's real name. Lucy and I met with the grandmother early this afternoon."
Sam's eyes shimmered with a frightening blend of anger and alarm. "I haven't talked to Lucy today, Alan."
"She didn't call you a few hours ago?"
"No."
"You don't know about our trip to Agate?"
"No."
"Oh, shit," I said. I tried to get up. "Oh… shit."
I told Sam that I thought Lucy must be out looking for Ramp on her own, and told him everything that she and I had learned that afternoon in Agate. As I related the story, he used his cell phone to repeat the information almost word for word to someone at the police department.
At his urging I offered him my guesses about the list of people that Paul Bigg might have been targeting in Boulder. Unfortunately, every one of the potential targets was a lawyer, so my list didn't narrow the realm of potential targets very much. Sam took careful notes and asked good questions. I made him promise to track down Lauren and to get Grace and her babysitter over to Adrienne's house right away. He said to consider it done.
When I was through with my story about the Biggs and Ramp and the Agate ranch, he told me in a soft voice that my judgment was "goofy."
Listening to Sam over the years, I'd learned that "goofy" is an all-purpose Minnesota word that includes connotations ranging from "odd" to "totally fucked up." In these circumstances, I was assuming Sam's intent fell somewhere at the very profane end of the spectrum.
Once he was convinced that he'd accumulated all the salient details about the bombs and the boys, Sam left me to go confirm that protection was in place for all the people who might possibly have been targeted by Paul Bigg in Boulder.
All the lawyers.
I assumed he was also doing whatever had to be done to make sure that every possible stone was being turned in the search for the man named Jason Ramp Bass in Denver.
A drienne joined me in the ER minutes after Sam departed. When she saw my name on the ER board, she had just finished doing some emergency urological procedure that I was sure would make me cross my legs if she shared the details.
She didn't. She merely shook her head at the sight of me.
"Hi," I said.
She actually laughed. From anyone else the reaction would've struck me as inappropriate. From Adrienne, it was comforting.
She said, "You're alive. That's good. The board outside says 'laceration, shrapnel.' Leaves an awful lot to the imagination. I thought my surgical reconstruction skills might be required."
I shuddered at the thought, then told her about the bomb outside my office.
She had a few questions. I answered them before I asked her if she'd heard from Lauren.
She hadn't.
"Will you page her for me?"
"Right now? Sure." She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and entered a long string of digits while she said, "I'm not supposed to use this in here, you know. Could be short-circuiting a heart monitor or screwing up a CAT scan or something. Anything else you want?"
"Call your nanny and have her go get Grace and Viv and take them back to your place. I don't want them in our house. Sam said he'd call, but could you double-check?"
"And the dogs," she said.
"Yes, and the dogs."
She made that call, too.
"Mi casa es su casa, and, even better for me, su nanny es mi nanny. Now, you want to tell me what's going on?"
I nodded and began to tell her about the Biggs and Ramp. Being in a peculiarly confessional mood, I proceeded to fill her in on almost everything that I'd just told Sam Purdy. I was just about to get to the part of the story where I went to Agate with Lucy when Adrienne raised her hand and extended an index finger straight up. She said, "Alan, what did the neurologist tell you?"
"What do you mean?"
"About your… mental status?"
"She said I have a minor concussion. I may have headaches for a while. Told me not to exercise for a few days. Said I was real lucky with the leg wound. The shrapnel almost hit a major vessel. But that wasn't the neurologist. That was the guy who sewed me back up. I think it was an ER guy, a new guy, somebody I don't know."
Adrienne nodded knowingly at my comments even though she didn't really know a thing about my condition. I hate it when doctors do that. My patients probably hate it when I do that.
"What?" I demanded. "Don't just nod your head like I'm some imbecile. What are you thinking?"
"This thing you just told me about Paul Bigg? And his friend-what's his name, Ramp?"
"Yes, Ramp."
"You're sure about it?"
"Yes." Suddenly, I wasn't sure.
She nodded again.
"Adrienne, what?"
"I'm afraid that there's no gentle way to put this. But Paul Bigg is dead, Alan. Very dead."
"Oh God," I said. "They found his body, too? Where was it? At their house? The Bigg house?" For some reason, I immediately suspected suicide. After he'd placed the bomb that killed his mother, he'd gone home and killed himself.
Adrienne shook her head and lowered her voice, making it so soft that her northeast accent almost evaporated. "No, hon. Paul Bigg died playing Little League baseball when he was twelve years old. He got hit in the chest by a ball and died from a heart rhythm abnormality."
I felt as though I'd been punched in the
gut.
"What?"
"Paul's been dead for, like, five or six years. I told you the other night that Leo's family has had way too many tragedies, even before he went to prison. Don't you remember?"
I stared at her with my mouth in the classic O sign. It took me a few moments to form my next sentence. "That can't be right. No way. She told me he worked at Starbucks. On the Mall, down near Fifteenth Street. Naomi did." I almost argued that Naomi had said that Paul made the best mocha on the planet. I thought she'd said "on the planet." Maybe it was just that he made a "killer mocha." It bothered me that I couldn't remember exactly what she had said. She certainly hadn't said that her son was long dead and that she'd been making everything up.
"He doesn't work at Starbucks, Alan. He probably died before he ever laid eyes on a Starbucks. Paul Bigg is dead." Adrienne was being uncharacteristically gentle, as though she were speaking to somebody with severe mental instability.
Me.
"Adrienne, that can't be true. Naomi just talked with him. A few minutes before she died. I heard her tell Marin about it. She was mad at him about something. He can't be dead."
Adrienne said, "I think you're mistaken."
I protested. "He has this friend. Ramp."
"Maybe he did, Alan, back then. But not now. Paul's dead. Peter and I went to his funeral. I promise you that he's dead."
"I don't understand. I know all about him. His school, his friends. Everything. I know what psychiatrist he went to, Adrienne. What he was treated for, everything."
Adrienne began to nod again, but she caught herself. In retrospect, I'm sure she was fighting an urge to ask me if I knew my name, knew where I was right then, what day it was, who was the current President of the United States.
She didn't ask. She said, "Well, maybe you don't know quite everything that you think you know."
Duh.
CHAPTER 33
R amp felt the flash from the bomb the same way he experienced the sun as it broke through a thick cloud cover. The light and heat washed over him and warmed him, licking at his exposed skin all at once. He raised his chin an inch or so to greet the energy as it pulsed and engulfed him. Since it was the first time he would be around to see one of his devices go off in public, he desperately wanted to keep his eyes open to record the visual landscape as it settled in the aftermath of his work, but his reflexes overwhelmed him.
The plastic box with the toggle switch in his jacket pocket was moist from the sweat on his hand. He fingered the slick plastic as impulses flooded him. The energy it consumed to control the urges thwarted his enjoyment of the consequences of the blast. He wanted to thrust his hands into the air and yell, "Yes!" He wanted to pull the transmitter from his pocket and thrust it to his lips and display it to the stunned citizens around him.
He didn't.
He monitored his excited breathing by forcing each deep breath to pass through his nose and go deep into his gut. Despite the chaos that was stirring in the aftermath of the explosion, he could hear himself snort and was afraid he sounded like a horse eager to canter.
Ramp had detonated the bomb from where he'd been standing on Walnut in front of the aging house that old-time Boulderites would probably forever consider to be the second home of Nancy's restaurant. As the echoes of the detonation stilled, Ramp heard people in front of Café Louie, the restaurant that had replaced Nancy's, screaming, "Did you hear that?" "What was that?" "Was that a car that blew up?" and "Oh no, oh my God! I think it was a bomb."
The sounds were all on separate tracks in his consciousness, laid down methodically, distinctly. They were the kinds of details that he knew he'd want to remember later.
As people ran past him toward the location of the blast, he wanted to follow them. He wanted to see for himself what havoc the explosive had wreaked. What carnage the metal splinters had wrought. Did he kill one? Or two? Or even three? But he didn't follow the throngs to the source of the damage.
He was sure he didn't want to see the bodies.
There were bodies. He knew that. The bodies meant casualties. The casualties were necessary, but he feared that each would remind him of the day he discovered his mother's body.
He turned and walked the opposite direction down Walnut, crossing Ninth and moving at a measured pace to cover the short blocks to the Downtown Mall. The plan called for him to linger for a while with the crowds on the Mall before he returned to his car.
He remembered something his grandfather had said about explosives: Maniacs destroy maniacally. Engineers destroy scientifically. You are the engineer.
"I am the engineer," he said, barely moving his lips, hardly making a sound.
"And how was it?" he asked himself, adopting a gravelly, deeper voice. The voice of someone who'd inhaled the poisons of way too many Camels. The voice of his grandfather.
"Better than I would have guessed, Granddad. The best, the absolute best. It's so much better when you're there."
The deeper voice responded, "Wait. They only get better. The better you get, the better they get. I liked the last one I did better than I did the first."
"I wasn't really sure I could do it. The first one went off accidentally, you know. So I wasn't sure I could actually detonate one myself. One that counted, I mean."
"I was sure. I was sure."
At the corner of Eleventh, outside the Walrus, a woman approached him on the sidewalk and Ramp ended the conversation he was having. The last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself a block and a half from the crime scene.
A nother saying from Granddad: You don't hurry to meet deadlines. You change deadlines so you don't have to hurry.
Not this time, Ramp thought as he climbed into the driver's seat of his blue RAV 4. Most of what the old man had said was true. But not that, not this time. Ramp knew he'd have to accelerate the whole timetable. He knew that they'd be looking for him now.
Maybe they even knew who he was already.
He had to act now before it was too late. One quick stop at his apartment and he'd be ready to go.
The sign above the workbench in the explosives shed: Safety is the product of planning, discipline, and control. If you plan well, deploy with discipline, and control your charges, you will be safe.
But what if you don't care if you're safe? What if you're willing to go out with the blast?
The old man couldn't have imagined it, so he had never had an aphorism for that.
Ramp started the car.
He tuned the radio to AM and hit the scan button, listening for the sound of breaking news.
Before he made it to the edge of town, he was gripped with a hunger that was as tight as a choke chain. He stopped at the McDonald's on Baseline and ordered a Big Mac Extra Value Meal. As he pulled forward to the pick-up window, a young kid in the required bad clothes and polyester hat asked him if he'd heard about the explosion downtown.
"No," Ramp said. "What happened?"
"Don't know, but somebody got smoked. Did you say you wanted a Coke with that?"
Somebody got smoked. Ramp had trouble finding the skills necessary to continue to breathe. "Yes, I want a Coke with that."
He'd wanted to demand the facts. He'd wanted to ask the kid if only one somebody had been smoked. But he didn't.
Ramp stayed east on Baseline, pulling french fries from their red cardboard sleeve one by one, feeding them into his mouth like severed branches into a shredder, finally turning onto the Foothills Parkway toward the turnpike that would return him to Denver.
He continued to scan the radio stations for news. He was halfway to Denver, driving through a speed trap on Highway 36 in Westminster, before he heard the first bulletin about the explosion. Initial reports listed one victim dead from the explosion in downtown Boulder, three injured.
Three meant at least one innocent bystander.
Ramp shrugged and took a long draw from his Coke.
"Shit!" he said suddenly and yanked the wheel hard to make the exit at Federal Boulev
ard. He steered with one hand and began patting furiously at the pocket of his jacket with the other.
There it was. He still had it with him. What if he'd been stopped? What if a cop had found an excuse to search him?
He heard the words in his head as clearly as he'd heard them the first time his grandfather had spoken them to him: Careless is just another word for failure.
"Shit!" he repeated before silently repeating the old man's mantra over and over again, using it as a way to flog himself back into control.
He drove around the back of the bowling alley that was adjacent to the freeway on the southwest side of the Federal off-ramp and pulled up next to a row of three Dumpsters. He stepped out of the car, pulled the radio controller from his pocket, dropped it to the asphalt, and crushed the plastic box with one sharp thrust of his heel. He divided the shattered electronic remains between the three Dumpsters, saving the tiny joystick as a souvenir.
Ramp spent the next couple of miles on the road trying to devise a way to attach the joystick to his key ring.
F ifteen minutes later he was turning into the alley that ran behind his apartment building. The building has six alley parking spaces for twelve apartments. Ramp was shocked to find one available. He let himself in the back door and climbed the three flights of stairs to his fourth-floor unit.
The first thing he did once inside was to boot up his computer and check the Internet for fresh news of the Boulder bombing. Not much had been added to the radio bulletin. The three living victims had been taken to Community Hospital; one was in critical condition. Police weren't commenting on a possible link to the explosive device that had been found hidden in District Attorney Royal Peterson's house.
"Let them comment all they want," Ramp said aloud. "They won't find a single similarity in materials or design. Signatures are for fools."
Done with the Internet connection, he began the series of keystrokes that would format the hard drive of his computer, erasing all his digital tracks. Getting the process started took him less than a minute. He'd practiced the procedure before. None of it was new to him.
Warning Signs Page 21