"You'll go in the morning?"
She nodded. "Yeah. One of them lives all the way out near Agate."
"Where's Agate?"
"Out east on I-70, just before you get to Limon."
I blurted, "Limon is where Ramp and Paul played around with the explosives."
She cocked her head. "You didn't tell me that."
"I thought I did."
"Well, you didn't."
"My patient told me that Paul went out to some ranch near Limon and he and Ramp blew up a car or something."
"You didn't tell me any of this." The suffix "you idiot" was understood by both of us.
"I'm sorry."
"There's a listing out near Agate for a man named Herbert Ramp. Herbert's dead, but his widow, Ella, answered the phone. When I asked about a son or grandson, she kind of hung up on me."
"So it may be him?"
"You say the two boys played around with bombs out there? Damn right it may be him. I'm definitely going to go talk to her tomorrow."
"Maybe I should do it instead, Lucy. She may be wary of a cop showing up at her door."
"But a shrink from Boulder won't raise her suspicions at all?"
The tendons in the back of my neck felt like rebar. "I'm not sure what's best, which one of us should meet her. Let me think about it overnight, okay? We'll talk in the morning?"
"Yeah. Call me around nine; I think I'm going to try to sleep in a little bit. Use my cell; I'm not going to be answering my phone."
I stood to leave and opened my arms to give Lucy a hug. First, she dropped the pillow, then she leaned into the embrace with a hunger I didn't expect. When she finally released me, I turned toward the door. My hand on the knob, I stopped and asked, "Lucy, were you having an affair with Royal?"
The silence that followed was eerie. For the first few seconds, I suspected that she wasn't going to respond, and I wasn't surprised. I was already questioning my judgment in asking the question. Finally, I turned my head to look at her to examine the impact of my question.
The cuckoo clock chirped twice.
Lucy had spun away from me. Although I couldn't be sure from the reflection she made in the glass doors, I thought she was crying.
Our eyes met in the black glass. She said, "I wish it was that simple, Alan. I wish it was that simple."
Outside, the snow wasn't sticking to the streets, but the sidewalks were wet. The tree buds and flowers looked as though they'd been frosted.
CHAPTER 29
The alarm clock cracked me awake at six-thirty. Lauren was already up with Grace. Before I climbed in the shower, I wasted a minute trying to decide how many hours of sleep I'd had. Before I reached a number that felt correct, I concluded that the answer was simply "not enough."
After a quick shower and shave I joined my family in the kitchen. I was most of the way through a condensed rendition of the previous night's events for Lauren's benefit when my pager went off. Moments later, I was back in the master bedroom closet trying to simultaneously get dressed and maintain a conversation with Naomi Bigg.
She wasted no time. "Can I see you today? Any time at all. I'll leave work. Please."
"Just a second," I said while I zipped up my trousers and began to thread a belt around my waist. "I have to go get my calendar." I moved from the closet to the bedroom and retrieved my schedule from beside the bed. I was still undecided about trying to run out to Limon or Agate to see Ella Ramp. I didn't know where I could stick an emergency appointment.
She said, "Please, please. What we've been talking about with the kids? It's come to a head, I think. What you've been-what I've been… you know. Anyway, this morning, I found a… I found something that's convinced me that I need to…" Her voice faded away. "Please," she repeated.
Almost impulsively, I said, "Four-thirty this afternoon. I'm afraid that's all I have, Naomi."
"Four-thirty? Is that right? Okay, okay."
I could feel the pressure building. "Can it wait till then? Do you want to take a minute right now, Naomi, and tell me what-"
She hung up.
"I guess not," I said aloud.
"You guess not what?" Lauren asked from the doorway. Grace was asleep in her arms.
"A patient hung up on me in the middle of our conversation."
"Oh," she said, disinterested. She tilted her head back toward the kitchen. "The story about Lucy's mother is on the news. They make it sound awful. As though the fact that Susan is Lucy's mother gives Lucy a reason to murder Royal. It doesn't make any sense."
"They don't know about the wet spot?"
Lauren covered Grace's ears.
"No, they don't know about the wet spot."
"Well, I'm not surprised the press is making it look bad. That seems to be their job," I said. "I'm late-I need to get downtown. You're okay with Grace until Viv gets here?"
"I'm fine," she replied. She kissed the top of the baby's head. "We're great."
The previous night's snow was history. The faintest reminder of the storm still clung as transparent white frosting feathering the highest reaches of the Flatirons, but otherwise the morning was brilliant and warm and the city bore no evidence of the midnight flurries.
Lucy didn't answer her cell when I tried her a few minutes before nine, nor when I tried again at nine forty-five.
I finished with my nine forty-five patient right on time at ten-thirty. As soon as he was out the door, I checked my voice mail and retrieved two messages. One was a cancellation by my one o'clock, the other another call from Naomi.
"It's me again. I'm sorry I'm so scattered. You said four-thirty, didn't you? If that's not right, call me at the office. I can't tell you how much I need to see you. There's another bomb. That lawyer."
That was it.
There's another bomb. That lawyer.
I replayed the message to assure myself that that was what she had said.
There's another bomb. That lawyer.
Shit. I decided that I couldn't wait any longer to find out what Ramp was up to. I called Lucy one more time. Finally, she answered. She was already far from Boulder-at a diner outside Fort Lupton where she'd stopped to have a late breakfast-on her way to the eastern plains. She didn't argue when I told her that I wanted to meet her. I jotted down directions to Ella Ramp's ranch, which was almost precisely halfway between Limon and Agate, and I hustled out the door. From my car I canceled lunch with a colleague and all my remaining therapy appointments until my four-thirty emergency session with Naomi.
It took me almost an hour to plunge through the northern congestion of Denver's metropolitan area and intersect with Interstate 70 on my journey toward Limon, the little town that is the geographic bull's-eye in the center of Colorado's eastern plains.
Many people who have never visited Colorado have a mental image that the state consists predominantly of mountains. Sharp juvenile peaks, high meadows, glacial faces, deep canyons. Travel magazine stuff.
But if a driver heads east away from the Front Range, especially if he's beyond the boundaries of Denver's metropolitan sprawl, and if he doesn't glance back into his rearview mirror, the state of Colorado is hardly distinguishable from Nebraska or Iowa or Kansas. Less corn, more wheat, but mostly mile after mile of mind-numbing Great Plains high prairie. Some people love it, others don't. Either way, the broad expanse of endless horizon and infinite sky takes up roughly half the state.
I'm convinced that if highway planners hadn't chosen the Limon-to-Agate spur for Interstate 70's northwest traverse across the eastern prairie toward Denver, virtually no one would have any reason to be aware exactly where either Agate or Limon is. Nor would anyone care much. In fact, absent the wide ribbon of interstate, Colorado's eastern plains are geographically pretty close to nowhere, and one look at the map confirms that Limon and Agate are about as close to the middle as is theoretically possible.