The elusive alley parking spot was filled. He double-parked and ran up the back stairs. He retrieved the framed photograph of his mother from on top of the bookcase and was just about out the door when the buzzer sounded from downstairs.
Ramp froze momentarily, then slowly walked to his front windows. The buzzer sounded again.
He waited. Half a minute or so later he watched a blond woman back slowly away from the door, looking up toward the fourth floor.
Who is she?
Ramp said, "Shit," and stepped away from the window. "Here or there?" he asked himself. "Up here or down there?"
If I let her up here, he thought, whatever happens will leave evidence. Trace. Can't have that. Out loud, he said, "The correct answer, therefore, is down there." He bounded out the door of his apartment and flew down the stairs like a kid afraid to miss something. Only slightly winded, he grabbed his bag from his car, stuffed the photograph of his mother inside, circled his building, and was on the sidewalk behind the blond woman before she got all the way back to her car.
The red Volvo had the old, traditional, white-sky-over-green-mountains style Colorado license plates. The lettering on the plates read "MST." Ramp knew that designation meant the car was registered in Boulder County. The new green-over-white plates lacked a county code; you couldn't tell where the car was from.
Who the hell would be visiting him from Boulder? Nobody he wanted to see, that's who.
He noted the absence of a uniform and the presence of the leather blazer the woman was wearing on a warm afternoon. If the cops were after him, they wouldn't send a patrol officer. They'd send a detective, he thought. Probably two. He wondered about a gun under the blazer. He wondered about a partner. He couldn't spot anyone.
If she was a cop, she had a gun. Either under her blazer or in that purse. But why would they send a solitary cop?
Ramp was five feet behind her when he said, "Detective?"
She turned to face him.
He saw the look of resignation on her face when she realized she'd been duped. He smiled, and he said, "Thank you. That was easy. Go ahead and get in your car, Detective, but slide all the way across to the driver's side. I'll be right behind you. Once you're in the car, put your hands under your thighs. I'll take that purse, now, if you don't mind."
Ramp recognized the woman from the news. She was the Boulder cop who was the prime suspect in killing the Boulder DA. She was on leave from the police force. There'd been something in the news all day long about her mother, too. Ramp hadn't really paid attention.
She didn't seem frightened. Certainly wasn't jumping to obey him.
He said, "Do what I say. Hand me the purse, please, then slide into the car." He lifted the satchel he'd just retrieved from his apartment. "I have a weapon in this bag-actually, it's an explosive device-a bomb-that will kill both of us instantly. Although I'm willing to set it off, I'd really rather not do that."
He watched intently as the cop began to lower herself onto the car seat. When she was seated on the passenger's side, Ramp said, "Stop there for a second." He leaned in toward her and with his left hand pulled back the lapel of her blazer, exposing the butt of her handgun. Careful not to brush her body with his fingers, he removed the weapon and added it to the bag. "Now scoot over to the other side."
She did.
She noted that he wasn't using her weapon against her and asked, "Can I use my hands to raise myself over the console?"
"Sure," he replied. "Thanks for asking. I don't think either of us wants to be surprised right now."
She said, "You're Jason?"
"I am. You're the cop from the news?"
"Yeah, that's me."
"Nice to meet you," he said.
Despite herself, Lucy thought that Jason Ramp Bass was charming. She also thought that the fact that he was charming explained a lot.
CHAPTER 37
Lauren waited until we were in bed to ask me who I thought had killed Naomi Bigg and severely injured Marin. Her question came after I filled her in about my conversation with Sam.
I'd been thinking about that exact question-who had set off the bomb?-all day long, of course. Prior to the moment when Adrienne informed me that Paul Bigg had been dead for six years, I'd been assuming that it was Paul who had placed the bomb that had killed his mother and maimed his sister. I figured that he'd somehow managed to slip the device into Naomi's Vuitton bag during their confrontation in the parking lot outside her office.
I said, "Before my visit to that ranch today I would've thought it was Paul. After I met Ella Ramp, I would've guessed that it could've been either Ramp or Paul."
"But it wasn't Paul." Lauren spoke gently, wary perhaps of the unpredictability of the reaction of someone with closed head trauma. "We know that. Why do you think Naomi did that? Why did she keep Paul alive the way she did?"
"I don't know. I'm not convinced that Naomi actually lied-not in the sense that she was trying to fool me by creating a grown-up version of her son. I think Naomi was just inviting me into her delusions. Maybe she'd split Marin in two and given half her daughter's life to her son in order to keep him alive. I'm not sure. But we know that Ramp is real and that he's connected to Marin in some way that's not clear.
"I am convinced that before Naomi came over to my office, she had just spoken with somebody in her office parking lot."
"Ramp?"
"Yes, has to be."
"And you think he placed the bomb then, right?"
"She carried this big Vuitton bag around with her all the time. It always looked like it weighed a ton. I think he met with her at her office and managed to get the device into her bag."
"Why?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe Ramp wanted to kill her because he found out she was talking to me about her fears about the wouldn't-it-be-cool games. She'd called me and implied that she was about to do just that. So Ramp met her at her office, and he placed the bomb. The alternative is that Naomi was carrying the thing around on her own. I don't see that."
"Maybe the person who put the bomb in there was trying to kill both Naomi and Marin," Lauren suggested.
"If Marin recovers, maybe we'll know the answer to that. She was terrified that her mother was in danger. She'd come to my office to warn Naomi about something. Marin was frantic, hysterical. She yelled at her mother not to turn off her car. It makes me think that she expected that the car was wired with an explosive."
She asked, "Did Sam say how the bomb was set off?"
"No, he didn't say. Hopefully the police can figure that out from examining the debris. The one they found in Nora's garage had a radio control. They blew it apart with that thing, that-"
"Disruptor. The bomb squad calls it a disruptor. And it will be ATF and CBI doing the figuring, not the police." Lauren gazed at me warily, watching my reaction. I think she was still unconvinced that the condition of my brain would permit me to recognize either the acronym of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Administration, the federal agency responsible for investigating bombings, or that of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
"I know what the letters stand for," I said.
"I heard from Elliot that the ATF is mobilizing a Special Response Team. That means that they're taking this seriously. A forensic chemist deploys as part of the team, so we should know something soon about the explosive residue. I've been thinking, from the way the bomb went off outside your office the fuse had to be connected to either a timer or a radio signal. Do you see it that way?"
I'd considered the options, of course. "That, or some kind of motion switch. She'd just thrown the bag over her shoulder when the explosion happened. Aren't there switches that respond to that kind of thing?"