Warning Signs

by Stephen White

  "I'm not sure. I need to call all this in. Why don't you go back inside and check on your wife."

  "What's Denver going to do? Evacuate the whole city until this kid runs out of explosives?"

  "We have to find them."

  "What about the phone?"

  "If it rings again, run back out here like someone's life depends on it."

  I consciously placed one foot in front of the other and was mildly surprised when the automatic door sensed my presence on my way back inside the hospital.

  CHAPTER 52

  S am fiddled with the radio on the dashboard before he asked, "What's the pattern here? Red Rocks is an amphitheater, Elitch Gardens is an amusement park, Coors Field is a baseball stadium. What's the pattern? Where does he go next? The new football stadium? The Pepsi Center? What?" He grunted. "If this asshole does anything to the Pepsi Center and I have to miss any Avalanche games, I swear…"

  He left the threat unfinished.

  We were on the Boulder Turnpike, heading southeast toward Denver, just opposite the Interlocken office park. The morning rush hour was over and the traffic on 36 was merely heavy. Sam was driving his detective mobile. A red beacon on the dash flashed notice of our presence to other cars. I thought the strobe was an inadequate herald, considering our obvious haste. Sam was speeding mercilessly and changing lanes a lot and his driving was making me nervous.

  It had been my idea to turn down the offer of a ride to Denver in the Denver Police helicopter. I'd argued that the noise in the chopper would interfere with our ability to hear what was going on if Lucy was able to make another cell phone call. So we were speeding to Denver in Sam's car and I was having second thoughts about not taking the chopper.

  I was feeling many things; one of the most prominent was discomfort about leaving Lauren in Boulder.

  When I'd told her what was going on with the bombs in Denver and with Lucy and Ramp and the cell phone, she told me to do whatever I had to do, that she'd be fine. I told her Sam wanted me to accompany him to Denver. She encouraged me to go. Adrienne promised to drive Lauren home whenever she was released from the ER, and Viv promised to stay at our house until I got home.

  My bases were covered, but my ambivalence was pronounced.

  As Sam used the right lane and a good chunk of the shoulder to pass an eighteen-wheeler full of Mercedes SUVs, I said, "I don't think what Ramp's doing is about the buildings, Sam. I think it's about the people. The wouldn't-it-be-cool games that Naomi described were always about people."

  Sam scoffed. "He's hit, or tried to hit, three of the most identifiable landmarks in Denver, Alan. You think that's an accident?"

  "Not accidental, Sam. But maybe it's incidental."

  "I'm too tired. What?"

  "He's not after buildings. He's not after body count, either. He could have done any of those buildings when they were full of people, right?"

  Sam touched a button on his radio before he replied, "Right. I thought of that, too."

  "Well, he didn't. All the venues were basically empty. The bomb he set at Coors Field was actually in an office, not in the stadium itself."

  Sam argued, "But people died both times that a bomb went off."

  "Exactly. And those are the people we should be paying attention to. I would guess that they were the targets. He's using these bombs to kill specific people, not random people."

  Sam looked at his notepad and steered with his knees. I prayed he wasn't going to try to change lanes again, not with his knees. When he looked back up, we were closing on the butt end of a cement mixer. Sam steered around it as though he'd expected it would be in his way. His voice betrayed his skepticism about the hypothesis I was making as he said, "Let's see, three dead so far. And who are they? A couple of ride testers at Elitch Gardens. A bookkeeper for the Rockies and her boyfriend, a…" He flipped a page in his notebook. "The boyfriend was an assistant manager in group ticket sales."

  "One more, Sam. Don't forget the woman who died in the car explosion last week."

  "Okay, four dead. I'll throw in the housewife from last week. I don't care. Look at the list, Alan; these aren't the kind of people that terrorists usually salivate over eliminating."

  "Then we're missing something."

  Sam rubbed his eye with his knuckle. "There's no doubt about that. How's your phone?"

  My cell was resting in my lap. "What do you mean?"

  "The battery."

  I didn't even have to look. "It's fine."

  "Check."

  I checked. "It's fine."

  Sam said, "You're thinking about something, aren't you?" He made it sound like an accusation.

  I said, "Somebody needs to cross-check the list of people involved with letting Ramp's mother's murderer out on parole with the list of the casualties of the explosions so far."

  In a monotone, he replied, "Ride checker, bookkeeper, assistant manager, housewife. Those people don't make decisions about sentences and parole. That dog don't hunt."

  His argument was academic. He was a professor trying to keep a debate going in a seminar. I was happy to play along. I said, "Look at Marin's list, Sam. The first bomb was found in Royal Peterson's house. He was the DA who signed off on the plea bargain on her rape. Second was in Nora's garage. She was the prosecutor who negotiated the deal. Third was in Cozy's office. He was the defense attorney who represented Marin's rapist. The progression is purely logical. The wouldn't-it-be-cool games targeted people directly involved with the decision to offer Marin's rapist the plea bargain. Why would Ramp proceed differently? Everything we know tells us that he's the brains behind this thing."

  He argued, "It's not that complicated. The brain obviously decided to do landmarks instead of people."

  "I don't buy it. It's inconsistent."

  Sam shrugged. The shrug said, "Tough." But I surmised he didn't want me to stop arguing with him. I held my breath as we whizzed past a Ford Taurus being driven by someone whose head looked like it was all felt hat and gray hair.

  I said, "Humor me. You're already in touch with someone at the Denver Police Department, right? I mean, this morning-whoever it was who offered to send the helicopter for us."

  "Yeah."

  "Walter?"

  "Don't go there."

  "Whatever. Call whoever it is and find out where the husband of the woman who was killed in the car bomb last week worked and where he parked his car. Will you do that?"

  "Why?"

  "Just make the call. You certainly aren't using much of your attention driving this car."

  I expected resistance but he flipped open his phone and made the call. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see how he was going to maneuver the interchange at I-25 one-handed. Or no-handed.

  I feared it would involve the steering wheel and Sam's fat knees.

  When he was done talking to Denver, he turned to me and said, "Her husband owns a tourist shop in Larimer Square. Sells western shit. He parks right behind his store."

  We were merging onto I-25. "See, there you go," I said. "He was the target, not her. That keeps the pattern intact. He was the one who was supposed to get killed in the explosion. It should have gone off this morning while he was parking his car behind his store in Larimer Square."

  "Seems to support the landmark theory, not the wouldn't-it-be-cool-to-kill-people theory. We're talking Larimer Square, tourist central. Assuming you're right, and he was the target, and assuming the bomb hadn't gone off prematurely, there would have been one more blown Denver landmark this morning. That's how I read it."

  I couldn't believe how fast we were approaching the Mousetrap, the legendary bottleneck interchange of Interstates 70 and 25. I chanced a glance at the speedometer. We were doing over ninety. My pulse was doing twice that, easy. The scariest part was that there were a couple of cars going so fast that we had trouble passing them.

  "It's the people, Sam. Don't get distracted by the landmarks. Columbine was about the kids, not the building."

  That last com
ment quieted him. He slowed as we approached the exit that would take us to Coors Field.

  He said, "Then why the landmarks?"

  "To confuse the situation. To exaggerate the press coverage. I don't know. There could be a dozen reasons. To get the cops to waste time having arguments like the one we're having."

  Sam said, "I'll ask them to cross-check the list."

  A Denver patrol car was waiting to escort us down the viaduct to the baseball stadium. Sam fell in behind the car while he chatted on the radio with someone about the cross-check. A minute later we pulled to a stop along the curb on Blake Street. We were right in front of the brick walkway beside Coors Field. The Denver Police had established a wide perimeter. The TV stations' microwave trucks were sequestered at least a block away.

  Sam threw the phone onto his lap. He said, "The Denver cops are already there. The bomb squad detectives are working under the assumption that the victims were targeted because they were relatives of people involved with Ramp's mother's case. You're smarter than you look."

  I said, "One relative worked at Elitch's. Another for the Rockies. What about Red Rocks?"

  "No connection they know of. They're still looking."

  "And the guy who managed the store in Larimer Square? The one whose wife died in the car bombing?"

  "His father is on the parole board. Let's go talk to the people in charge. Compare some notes."

  I got out of the car.

  Sam asked me, "Why relatives?" This time he seemed genuinely curious about my opinion.

  I felt confident about my answer. "Ramp wants the people he believes are responsible to know how it feels to see a loved one killed. It completes the circle for him. The people he wants to hurt now will know exactly what it's like to feel what he felt when his mother died."

  "Killing them would be too easy?" Sam was edging close to sarcasm. Close, but not quite there.

  "Killing them would spare them the pain they're feeling right now. Ramp doesn't want to do that. He wants them to suffer his pain. The loss he feels."

  Sam grunted. This time I translated the grunt to mean that he approved of my argument.

  "How's your phone?" he asked.

  I glanced down at the battery meter. "It's fine. No problem. It has hours left. Stop worrying."

  "You see Lucy sitting pretty anywhere around here? Until you do, I don't stop worrying."

  A Denver patrol officer was pointing Sam down the sidewalk, indicating a stocky man with a starched blue shirt and a navy blue tie. The shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the tie was far from tight, and the shirtsleeves were folded up near the man's elbows. The shoes were polished like a Marine's dress pair.

  "You Purdy?" the man asked as we approached.

  Sam said, "Yeah. This is Alan Gregory, the guy with the phone."

  "That's the phone?" He pointed at my hand.

  "Yes," I said.

  Without asking permission he took it from my hand and plugged a small tape recorder into it. "It'll kick on automatically. It's a backup in case the phone company doesn't capture the call. Notify me the second it rings.

  "I'm Rivera, by the way. You're not going to believe this, but we just took a nonemergency call from somebody warning us about some bombs at East High School."

  Sam said, "East High School? Bombs? It's in session, right? The school's full of kids, right?"

  "Yeah, it's full of kids. They've started evacuating the buildings. We're sending as many people out there as we can and we've asked the surrounding cities and counties for help from their bomb squads and SWAT teams. The way this morning is developing, we need five bomb squads."

  Sam asked, "You getting all the cooperation you want?"

  "Anything we need. Except from Boulder. They seem to need help almost as much as we do."

  "Did you ID the caller on the warning?"

  "The call came in on a nonemergency line, so we didn't get an automatic ID. Anyway, it was blocked, and it was too short a call to trace. We have a tape of the entire call; it's like ten seconds. I'm sure the RP was the kid. They played it for me over the phone. I'm sure it was the same kid. East High School. Damn."

  Ramp was "the kid."

  My phone rang. I almost dropped it. At first I gaped at it as though it had given me an electrical shock.

  Sam stopped in his tracks. He looked at me like he'd just discovered he was standing in the center of a minefield.

  Recovering my wits, I hit a button and listened for a count of two before I whispered, "Hello, this is Alan Gregory."

  I didn't really expect a reply.

  CHAPTER 53

  R amp's gesture as he climbed back into the truck after initiating the explosion at Coors Field was both nonchalant and innocuous, but it was sufficient to fracture the fragile skeleton of hope that Lucy had been constructing.

  He removed the windbreaker he'd been wearing and tossed it over the center console of the truck, burying Lucy's cell phone below it.

  She wanted to cry. She'd already noticed that her earlier call to Alan Gregory, although live for a while, had been dropped. She'd been waiting for an opportunity to hit the redial button once again. To get a chance, she knew that she'd have to wait for Ramp to make another sojourn from the truck. With the jacket covering the phone, she didn't know how she was going to get her bound hands to the button quickly and she wasn't at all confident that the phone's microphone would pick up sound through the insulation of the jacket's fabric, anyway.

  She wondered if Alan had figured out anything from her earlier call. Maybe he hadn't even bothered to listen when he'd discovered that there wasn't anyone at the other end of the line.

  R amp headed down Blake across Broadway into the part of Denver's old warehouse district that hadn't yet been converted into lofts, restaurants, and galleries. He stopped the truck in the middle of a block that was swarming with trucks making pickups and deliveries. He told Lucy, "I have a little time to kill. Try to get some rest."

  She watched him lean back in his seat and settle a baseball cap over his eyes. As though he could read her mind, he added, "Don't try anything, Lucy. I'm tense. Try to relax."

  She yelled at him into her gag. He slid the hat away from his eyes and glanced down at her. She raised her bound hands as though she were going to remove the gag herself.

  He said, "I told you, if you touch that, I'll move your arms behind your back. You won't like that."

  She screamed again.

  He stared at her for a moment, then lowered the gag so that it rested on her chin. The tape tore at the skin on her jaw. She spit fragments of cotton into the air and tried to speak. The first attempt came out in a rasp.

  Finally, she managed, "Why are you blowing up those buildings?"

  He didn't answer right away. "I used a lot of explosives to knock down the ride at Elitch's, but the rest of the bombs aren't that powerful. All I'm doing is creating chaos. When the dust settles, hopefully people will wonder why. Dialogue will fill that void. The more people care about the buildings, the more they will wonder why I blew them up. That's why I chose people who work in buildings that people might care about. That's why I didn't do it at their homes. Believe me, that would have been much, much easier."

  "You're not just bombing buildings, though. You're killing people, too, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "So that… some people, particular people… will know how it feels to lose someone they love to stupidity."

  "You're not done?"

  "No."

  "Why?"

  "So the people in power will care."

  "I don't get it."

  "For this to be effective, it has to get personal. People, especially powerful people, have to realize that they are just as vulnerable as I was. They have to believe that in their hearts. Deep in their hearts. There's no other way for me to be certain that I'm getting my message across and that they'll pay attention. You cause somebody enough pain, you get their attention. Trust me, I know. The people
in power have to know that, too."

  She fought a swell of compassion for him. She said, "Jason, stop. Please, stop now."

  He scoffed. "Why?"

  "I'll help you."

  "I don't need your help, Lucy. Unless they catch up with me before I'm done, I don't need your help."

  "I know a good lawyer."

  He laughed. "I know you do. Your lawyer's the one who got Marin's rapist a slap on the wrist. For me, he's part of the problem, not part of the solution. Anyway, it's irrelevant. Your lawyer's dead, too. He was on Marin's list this morning. I set a charge against the counterweight cable in his building's elevator. Marin was supposed to wait until he climbed into the elevator, then she was going to set it off."

  She vaulted to her knees. "You little-"

  He raised his wrist, curling his fingers so that the tips rested on the switch that was taped to his arm.

  She stilled. He pushed the gag back into place. "Why don't you get some rest? Please don't make me sorry I brought you along."

  A fter twenty minutes or so, Ramp exited the truck without a word. Lucy couldn't see which way he went, and didn't know how long he would be gone. She fought the temptation to go for the phone, but suspected that he was testing her, so she remained in place.

  He was back in a minute, maybe two. "Just a little diversion," he told her. "I'm sending the bomb squad over to East High School. I have some surprises planted there that should get everyone's attention for a little while. Oh shit, I left the number sitting by the phone. Be right back."

  She screamed into her gag and almost choked with the effort. Not a high school. Please, God, not a high school. Not in Colorado. Not again.

  Ramp climbed out of the truck.

  She scrambled to get some balance, threw back the windbreaker, fumbled with the phone until she identified the tiny redial button, and pressed it. She could hear Ramp's footsteps approaching the truck as she tossed the jacket back into place and dropped back onto the floor.

  He climbed into the cab and said, "We're off again. Short drive this time. But fasten your seat belt anyway." He looked at her and said, "Just kidding."