"You passed," Ramp said.
"Good," I said. I suspected my trials weren't complete.
"You have a tall blond friend?"
God. He had Lucy. That's how he got my number. He was holding Lucy. "Yes," I said, "I do. Is she okay?"
Sam, I knew, was going to want to know every word, so I began to chart the conversation in my head to help me remember the details.
"As far as I know, she is."
"Do you have her? Is she with you?"
"I'd prefer to be the one asking the questions, if you don't mind."
"How can I help you?" I said. It was a variation on the line I used to start therapy sessions with new patients. It was similar to the line I'd used with Naomi Bigg only a couple of weeks before. I don't know why I used it right then.
"What have you told the police?"
"I've been talking to them ever since the bomb went off outside my office. I've told them a lot."
"Are they with you right now?"
"No. I'm standing by myself waiting for a taxi to take me home."
"Where?"
"I'm at the hospital in Boulder. Community Hospital."
"Were you hurt today? By the bomb?"
"Yes. I got a piece of shrapnel in my butt and had a minor concussion. I banged my head on the door."
"I'm sorry you were hurt. What do the police know?"
I hesitated. "I'd like to answer your question. But I've told them a lot of things. Do you want me to try to-"
He sighed. "Just tell me about the wouldn't-it-be-cool games. What do they know about those? Before you begin your answer, a reminder: Please don't forget about your tall blond friend."
I hadn't forgotten. "I told them everything Naomi told me about the games. They've put together a list of the people who they think might be on Marin's list and they've already searched all of those people's homes and offices for explosives." I remembered what Sam had said about Fox News letting the cat out of the bag about the bomb at Nora's house. "The police have already found one device. It was in a prosecutor's garage. They've disarmed it."
"They don't actually disarm them. They disrupt them. They blow them apart with water cannons."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I knew that. I'll try to be more specific."
"Did you say 'one device'?"
Did he sound relieved? I wasn't sure. "One," I repeated.
"What about any other wouldn't-it-be-cool lists? Besides Marin's?"
"To the best of my knowledge, they're still working on compiling the… other list."
I actually thought I could hear him smile over the phone.
"See you," he said, and the line went dead.
CHAPTER 44
S am wasn't officially directing the search for Marin Bigg. He wasn't actually officially investigating anything that had to do with any of the Biggs, or anything to do with Ramp, or with the explosion outside my office.
Sam was freelancing.
He was at Community Hospital in the middle of the night because he was looking for Lucy. In his mind, this gave him a platinum-plated invitation to stick his bulbous nose anyplace he felt like sticking it. When I tracked him down inside the hospital, he was in a first-floor corridor pacing on the periphery of a conversation other cops were having about the search of the interior of the hospital that was taking place in an attempt to find Marin.
I caught his eye and mouthed, "Come here."
He apparently saw something in my face that indicated he should heed my invitation. He walked right over. I led him around the corner into an empty hallway that was lined with closed doors.
"What? I'm busy. I can't give you a ride."
I held up my cell phone. "Ramp just called me, Sam. I was standing outside waiting for a cab and he called me."
Sam grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me down the hall, checking knobs until he found an unlocked door. Once he closed it behind us, he blurted, "Tell me everything."
"He asked me about my 'tall blond friend.' He said it twice. I think he has Lucy."
He leaned his face within six inches of mine and froze me with his glare. "Did he say that?"
"No. But he knows things that I told Lucy. Things about Naomi and Marin and Paul Bigg. And he knew my cell number. Almost no one knows my cell number. But Lucy does."
I watched the tendons at the junctions of Sam's jawbones squirm like fat worms under his skin. "Have you tried her cell phone number?"
"No."
He yanked his phone from his belt and speed-dialed Lucy.
No answer.
He returned his focus to me. "Now tell me every last fucking word of your conversation."
I sat down on a flimsy plastic chair, hanging my wounded buttock over the edge.
I said, "This whole conversation with Ramp is crystal clear in my head. You want to take notes?"
M y relating the details of the phone call and Sam's subsequent questions consumed about five minutes. He scribbled details in a notebook for the first sixty seconds or so.
After I was done and he'd asked his last question, he said, "Give me your cell phone."
At moments like this, Sam's intensity overwhelmed his civility, and the rules of polite discourse tended to escape him. I watched as he retrieved the number of the last person who had called me. In this case, that would be Ramp. He then pulled his own phone from a holster on his belt, called the department, and asked somebody to get a reverse listing for the number he'd taken from my phone. He waited for almost a minute before he said, "Figured. Thanks."
"Pay phone?" I said.
"At a 7-Eleven on Speer Boulevard near Federal in Denver. That was a mistake on the kid's part; it's a public place. Maybe there's a wit, somebody who saw him there a few minutes ago."
I couldn't see how that would help us much, unless the witness had thought that the guy talking on the phone had been so suspicious that the witness also decided to scribble down a license plate number or follow Ramp wherever he went after he made the call. I didn't share those thoughts with Sam. Although he was talking out loud, he was really talking to himself, and he was less than not interested in my opinion.
Sam handed me back the phone. "How's the battery on that thing?"
I looked down and checked. "Okay, maybe half charged. Why?"
" 'Cause we have to go to Denver. And when he calls again, I want to make sure the damn phone works."
"Sam, think. Think." I tapped my temple. "What are we going to do in Denver at this hour? We don't know anything."
"For starters, we're going to talk to the guy at the 7-Eleven. See what he can tell us about Ramp."
"What guy? You don't even know that there is a guy. You're guessing about there being a witness. You shouldn't be driving to west Denver on a wild-goose chase, you should be using your time arguing with your colleagues about ways to find Lucy."
With a defeated tone that I wasn't accustomed to hearing in his voice, he said, "I don't expect them to listen to me. There's a search on, but nobody wants to go out on a limb for her right now. Some cops are doing what they can, but to tell you the truth there are more people who believe she's hiding than there are that believe she's been kidnapped."
"You have to try to convince them, then. Tell them about the phone call I got from Ramp."
He stood up, towering over me. "You're right. Even though they're going to think I'm just trying to help Lucy with her defense, I need to try to convince them that Ramp has her." He reached down for the doorknob and added, "There's another bomb hidden someplace here in Boulder, isn't there? That's how you read what Ramp was saying to you?"
"Yeah. That's how I read it. At least one more."
"I agree. Somebody needs to find Marin. She's probably getting into position to set off another bomb."
"The question is, who's the target?"
There's another bomb. That lawyer.
He held the door for me, an act of graciousness that was quite unexpected given the circumstances.
I was a single step past him w
hen it suddenly struck me what Ramp hadn't asked me.
"Sam, Ramp never asked me how Marin's doing."
I turned in time to watch his eyelids drift closed. He said, "Shit."
"That means that when I talked to him on the phone, he either already knew that she'd run from the hospital or he didn't care about her condition. I don't think he doesn't care."
"Shit," Sam repeated. "He's already talked to her." He pounded the doorframe with the blunt side of his closed fist. "What on earth have the two of them got cooked up for us?"
I was about to say, More bombs, but I didn't. Sam didn't often wax rhetorical, but I suspected right then that that was exactly what he was doing.
CHAPTER 45
I kissed my sleeping daughter, inhaling her freshness, before I crawled into bed next to Lauren. I accomplished it all without glancing at a clock. It was a conscious effort to avoid learning the time-I didn't want to know how little sleep I was going to get. I did consider waking Lauren and telling her that I thought her one and only client had been kidnapped and was being held hostage by a mad bomber. But I quickly decided that would accomplish nothing.
My wounds and aching head combined to prohibit me from finding a comfortable place in the bed. The telephone conversation with Ramp kept playing in my brain as though it were on an endless loop of tape.
In the shallow water of my dreams the bomb in Naomi's bag didn't explode.
G race woke up with both nostrils plugged with green snot that appeared to have been mixed with Portland cement before it was spread in a thick layer across both of her rosy cheeks. She was as cranky as I was tired. I changed her diaper while I explained the natural history of colds and generic upper respiratory infections, though it didn't seem to placate her, especially when I used a suction bulb to aspirate the volcanic flows from her tiny nostrils. We moved to the kitchen and I mixed her cereal and warmed her formula while Lauren showered. When Lauren was done getting dressed, we would trade places. In between I gave her the headlines about Lucy, then I showered while Lauren fed the baby.
We were rushing. Though my first patient wasn't until nine, Lauren needed to meet Cozy in his downtown office at eight-thirty. Since her car was still in the shop, I was her ride.
Viv arrived right on time at eight-fifteen. Fortunately, Grace's copious snot didn't faze her. Lauren and I each kissed our baby before we headed downtown. Finding a comfortable way to sit on the driver's seat took some considerable imagination on my part. I was grateful I didn't have to deal with a clutch. On the way to work we finally had a chance to talk about the night before, about Marin leaving the hospital, about the call from Ramp, and my fears about Lucy's safety.
She listened with surprising patience. "God, I hope you're wrong about Lucy."
"Me, too."
"You know, Cozy's going to hate this. This morning's meeting? We're trying to figure out a way to control the damage from the story in the Camera about Susan Peterson being Lucy's mother. Now this. God, I hope she's okay. She should never have gone to Denver by herself."
I nodded agreement. "Sam said he'd stay in touch. I'm sure half the Denver Police force is looking for her by now. I promise I'll call if I hear anything." We were stopped at the light on Arapahoe at Twenty-eighth. An ancient Corvair idled in front of us, belching fumes that left me wondering what toxin it was burning for fuel. Lauren was fussing with her eye makeup in the vanity mirror. I decided to risk asking a question that frightened me every time it neared my lips. "You're feeling a little better, aren't you?"
She didn't look over. "Yeah, a little bit. The brain mud is better. I'm hoping it was a false alarm."
I swallowed. "But you're not sure?"
"Am I sure? With this disease? Sorry, sweetie. Hopeful is as optimistic as it gets, I'm afraid. The light's green."
After I'd heard the words I'd been praying for, my heart felt lighter as I ignored the horns honking behind me. A couple of minutes later I pulled into an empty parking space twenty or thirty feet from the lobby door of the Colorado Building.
Lauren kissed me and said, "I wish we had time for coffee. I'd love to talk more about last night."
"I have time for coffee. Starbucks is right around the corner. You know, it's the one where Paul Bigg never worked."
"I don't have time, babe, I'm sorry." She cracked open the door and added, "My car should be ready today."
"I'll give you a ride later to pick it up."
"Don't worry," she told me. "I'll get a ride from Cozy or I'll call a cab."
I spotted Cozy approaching from the north, taking long strides down the sidewalk on Fourteenth from the Pearl Street Mall. He had the kind of chin-in-the-air posture and regal gait that would have looked perfectly natural had he been tapping the sharp end of an umbrella on the sidewalk beside him. I pointed at him. "Cozy's hoofing it today," I told my wife.
We kissed again. "A cab, then. We'll talk later," she said, and hopped out of the car with her briefcase.
She waited for Cozy to join her on the sidewalk.
I checked the time and watched Lauren and Cozy disappear into the front door of the Colorado Building.
I adjusted the volume on the radio and slid the gearshift into reverse. When I looked up to check my rearview mirror again, a bakery truck that had been idling behind me was pulling forward a few feet so that I could get out.
Before I started backing up, I noticed with amazement and wonder that red bricks had begun raining off the side of the Colorado Building, about halfway up its eight-story height.
The glass doors at the lobby entrance blew apart and a muffled roar reached my ears. The car rocked gently as though a passerby had bumped against the fender.
A second or two passed before the thought careened into my head like a drunk turning a corner at high speed:
There's another bomb. That lawyer.
Lauren. Cozy.
Those lawyers.
I threw the gearshift into park and popped out of the car in a single motion.
There's another bomb. That lawyer.
Lauren.
Two steps toward the main doors. Frosty kernels of safety glass sprinkled the sidewalk in front of the building. The brick veneer that had adorned the sheer wall high above the lobby continued to tumble to the concrete alley, falling like bloody hail.
What I noticed from the corner of my eye was the bandage. If it weren't for the bandage, I don't think the fact that a young woman with her head down was walking from the lobby of the building would have registered in my consciousness. The bandaged person climbed into the driver's seat of a white Dodge Neon. She was wearing a floppy hat and sunglasses, and the steel-blue reflection of the lenses mirrored the cold terror I'd begun feeling in my soul.
The fresh white bandage had a tiny stain at the lower edge, close to her nose. The stain was rusty-red and shaped like a crescent moon.
Marin Bigg.
Almost without thinking, I slowed my run to a gentle walk and retreated between the cars toward the street. I climbed into the bakery truck, slid behind the wheel, and dropped it into gear, allowing the big van to roll forward about twenty-five feet until it blocked the rear end of the white Dodge Neon. Pocketing the keys, I climbed down from the truck, and jogged back to the sidewalk.
Sirens had begun to fill the air in downtown Boulder, the shrill squeals reflecting off the faces of the taller buildings until the urgent sounds were squeezed tighter and tighter.
The sirens were apparently Marin's cue to exit the scene. I watched her begin to back up her car. She was still leaning forward on her seat, gazing skyward, watching to see if the fat red bricks would continue to rain from the sky, so she wasn't looking behind her as she backed up. She ran smack into the bakery truck. The impact rocked both vehicles. She'd hit it pretty good.
The impact stunned her. She pulled off her reflective shades and stuffed one of the earpieces between her teeth while she shook her head. Shock and panic bubbled up into her eyes.
Solitary cop cars were appr
oaching down the alley from both the east and the west. The cop coming in from Thirteenth skidded to a stop before his vehicle was directly below the slowing cascade of tumbling bricks. A cop hopped out of the passenger side waving his arms at me. He yelled for me to get farther away from the building.
Marin, too, was climbing out of her car. I walked three steps until I blocked her path to the sidewalk and said, "I don't think you're going anywhere, Marin."
She looked at me as though she didn't quite remember me. I wanted to reintroduce myself by hitting her in the face with my fist. I didn't. She tried to run past me. With malicious intent I grabbed her on her bandaged hand and squeezed until she screamed at a pitch that began to cause me pain.
She stopped running.
The cop approached us with his gun drawn, the barrel pointed at the sky. His eyes betrayed his confusion at the circumstances. Before he could decide what to bark at me, I said, "This woman set off the bomb that just exploded. Her name is Marin Bigg. I think you guys are looking for her."
The cop was busy deciding whether or not to believe me when Marin said, "Fuck you," and spit on the cop.
It ended his indecision. He reached behind his back for his cuffs. As soon as he stepped forward I sprinted toward the lobby of the Colorado Building.
CHAPTER 46
T he dust was silky and light, the color of fresh concrete after a rain. It hung in the air like a gentle fog.
Dust or no dust, I'd been in the lobby of the Colorado Building often enough to know where I was heading. The lobby was small, maybe fifteen feet by thirty feet, and it was unfurnished. The only two elevators were side-by-side in the northwest corner, far from the front doors.
One of the mantras of my psych ER training days entered my head as I scanned the space. The first thing to do during an emergency is to take your own pulse. Heeding the dictum, I tried to stay calm and was surprised that the chaos in front of me was offering an insistent conclusion about what had occurred.
The two pairs of elevator doors had been blown outward in the center like envelope flaps puffed out by a sharp burst of air. Across the lobby, the glass wall of the brokerage was decimated, the shattered glass fragments blown into the offices, not back into the lobby. The doorway that led to the fire stairs and the lobby's alley exit seemed undamaged.
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