CHAPTER 18
Ramp flipped among the Denver news channels about a hundred times between the hours of four and six-thirty Friday afternoon. The only breaks he took from thumbing the remote control were to check his computer to see if any of the TV stations had updated their Web sites with fresh information about the explosion in Denver's Dahlia neighborhood.
Two mistakes in one job.
Ramp couldn't figure out what had gone wrong.
When the local news programs were over, he retrieved a Zip disc from its hiding place in a hollowed-out section of the trim that skirted the floor around the perimeter of his small apartment.
He inserted the disc into his computer and retrieved a Microsoft Word document he'd labeled Log 7.
He didn't really need to see the written record; Ramp could have recited the data that was recorded in Log 7 from memory. But he checked the log anyway. It took him no more than five minutes to review the details of the series of trials he had done at the ranch near Limon.
The device had worked properly all four times that he'd tested it.
All four.
"So what went wrong with number five?" he said out loud. "And why was she driving his car?"
He called Boulder.
"It's me," he said when his call was answered. "You saw the news?"
While he listened to the answer to his question, Ramp stood and moved back to his computer. He linked to the KCNC Web site. It hadn't been updated. He clicked over to KUSA and then to KMGH. Nothing had been added to either site.
You call this news?
Ramp tried to keep the irritation out of his voice when he spoke out loud again. "Like I told you, I followed him twice before I placed it. Both times he was in that car. It was definitely the car he drives to work. I don't know why she was driving it this morning. Bad luck for her is all I can say. I don't feel bad I got her. I only feel bad that I didn't get him and that the message was lost. I'll have to make up for it."
He tucked the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he removed the Zip disc from the drive and tucked it back into its hiding place in the floorboard trim. The trim slid back into place like a hand into a glove.
He shook his head as he said, "No, it was almost all solid state. It shouldn't have shorted. I don't think that's it. I'm thinking it was a rogue radio signal that set it off. The odds are astronomical that another device would be on that frequency in that vicinity, but that's all I can come up with. I've been glued to the news all afternoon. It doesn't look like the police understand the target. And the ATF will waste some time piecing together the device. I'm thinking we're okay. What about the thing at your end? Any fallout from them discovering the bomb in that guy's house?"
Out the front window, Ramp watched a white Denver Police cruiser crawl slowly down the road in front of his Pennsylvania Street apartment. He tracked it with his eyes as it moved south and turned the corner.
"Yeah, I think so, too. Finding the device in Boulder won't point to us at all. I think we're still on track. My guess is that we've had as much bad luck as we're going to get. I say that we both go ahead with tonight's work. You agree?… That's right, we should keep the faith."
Ramp pressed the button disconnecting the call. To no one in particular, he said, "Wouldn't it be cool?"
In this phase, Ramp had one more device to place. The schedule called for him to install it that night.
He decided not to alter his plans.
CHAPTER 19
Saturday morning brought Lauren, Grace, and me back to our weekend routine. We left the house early, met our friends Diane and Raoul for breakfast, and did the usual round of errands on North Broadway. During breakfast I tried to maintain a conversation with Raoul, pretending I gave a whit about his newfound passion for fly-fishing while I was simultaneously eavesdropping as Lauren responded to a question about her health from Diane. Raoul was rambling about feathers and string and tying flies; Lauren was saying that she was in less pain and that her brain mud had eased, but that her vertigo was still giving her fits, and, fearing that she might fall, she wouldn't carry Grace more than a few feet. Lauren usually didn't go into such detail about her health with friends.
Or with husbands, for that matter.
When I said "Yes" in answer to a question I didn't really hear from Raoul, he seemed pleased. He said, "Diane didn't think you'd come with me. I told her I thought you would."
I was afraid I'd just agreed to go fly-fishing.
Although April had been warmer and dryer than usual along the Front Range, the weatherpeople were predicting the midday arrival of a cold front from the north preceded by strong winds. It turned out that the meteorologists were wrong by at least a couple of hours. As we were driving home from our errands the winds began to sluice down from Cheyenne with a force that would cause alarm in most places on the North American continent. But not in Boulder. Winds in the fifty- to one-hundred-miles-an-hour range were frequent events in the winter and spring seasons. Only in the upper reaches of the range did the populace seek shelter. In the moderate, fifty- to seventy-five-miles-an-hour range, the primary impact of the winds was inconvenience.
Lauren and I agreed that although these gusts were no stronger than sixty miles an hour, my hopes for a late-morning bicycle ride were shot. As I pulled the car into the garage, Lauren suggested a trip up the turnpike to Flatiron Crossing to buy Grace her first pair of shoes.
"They sell baby shoes in Boulder, don't they?" I asked naively.
"I'd rather go to Flatirons," she replied. Lauren, like many Boulderites, said "Flatirons," not "Flatiron," when referring to the new mall, intentionally refuting all efforts of the huge facility's marketing people to modify the local vernacular. "I want to check out Nordstrom's baby department."
As we entered the house, I was still struggling mightily to find a reason not to go to a suburban shopping mall on a windy weekend morning when everyone else in Boulder County would be looking for an indoor haven to escape the gales. I was actually considering offering to clean the garage when I heard the telephone ringing as we walked in the door.
"I'll get it," I said.
"You're too eager," Lauren said. "If you don't want to go to the mall, just say so."
I didn't want to go to the mall. But what I said was "Hello."
"Alan, Sam. Something's come up about Lucy and the bombs. Can you meet me?"
"Now?" I tried to keep the glee out of my voice.
"Yeah, now."
"Sure, where?"
During my drive back downtown to meet Sam, I counted three resounding whacks as the wind lifted rocks and launched them into my windshield. It was one of the reliable melodies of springtime in the Rockies.
The only problem with Sam's plan was that at ten-thirty on Saturday morning the restaurant where we were supposed to meet, the Fourteenth Street Grill on the eastern end of the outdoor Downtown Mall, was closed. I stood for a minute cursing my friend, and had just pulled my cell phone from my pocket to call him when I heard a silky smooth, slightly husky "Thanks for coming."
The voice had no trace of Sam's Minnesota Iron Range accent.
I turned and found myself looking directly into Lucy Tanner's amber eyes. With whatever she was wearing on her feet, she was almost exactly my height. "Lucy," I said, "what a surprise."
"I thought if I called, you'd refuse to meet me, or you'd argue with me or something. Sam said he loved to play around with your head, and he volunteered to make the call."
I was wondering why she thought I would be so resistant to talking with her, when a gust of wind strong enough to cause us both to lean erupted from the north. "Want to get in my car?" I asked. "It's right across the street."