His hands were locked behind his head and he was staring up at the trailer's ceiling. "You ever notice how this country doesn't seem to pay much attention to anything important until somebody dies? It's the funniest thing. Whether it's putting in a traffic light after a kid gets killed on the way to school or something like Columbine or the terrorists who blew up that ship-what was it, the Cole? Then it seems we forget about it just as fast as we remembered. Is that human nature, you think? I wonder about that a lot. The more spectacular way somebody dies, though, the longer we seem to talk about it. It's a peculiar thing in this country but I'm willing to take advantage of it. That's for sure.
"Tomorrow's going to be spectacular. There's no doubt about it. People will talk for a while. I just hope it's the right kind of dialogue."
Lucy was aware of parallel instincts. The part of her that was the hostage wanted the captor to fall asleep. The part of her that was a detective wanted to burst from her bonds, overwhelm him, and interrogate the bastard to find out his plans.
Ramp continued. "I don't feel good about what I did today, in case you're wondering. I didn't know how I'd feel if it came to that. But I do, now. I don't feel good about it."
Lucy wondered if he was talking about kidnapping her or if he was talking about something else.
"You mean kidnapping me?"
"No, no, no. I mean, I haven't even thought about how I feel about that. Not yet. I don't know if I will think about it for a while. I'm talking about the bomb in Boulder. Killing Marin's mom."
Lucy's heart felt like it hiccupped. "Marin's mom? You killed Naomi Bigg with a bomb?"
He sat up on his elbows. "You hadn't heard? It's been all over the news since this afternoon."
Her voice was fragile. "I hadn't heard anything about it. I've been avoiding the news because of…"
He finished her sentence. "The thing with your mother."
"Yeah, the thing with my mother."
"What is that? I don't understand. What is that thing with your mother? You've been like ignoring her or something? Pretending she wasn't your mom? I can't… imagine it. I'd give anything for a chance to spend another day with my mom. Anything."
"I envy you that. That she was so special to you."
"Your mom wasn't?"
"She left me and my dad when I was little."
"She just left?"
"I didn't see her or even hear from her for years, then I tracked her down when I was an adult, hoping for a reconciliation. But it didn't work out the way I wanted. We never got along. The police think that the fact that she and I had such a difficult relationship might have given me a motive to kill her husband. He was the Boulder County district attorney." Lucy suspected that Ramp knew all about the murder of Royal Peterson, but she kept her suspicions to herself.
Ramp lowered himself back down on the cot. "That doesn't make sense. Why would you kill him for that?"
Lucy sighed. "They think I was sleeping with my mother's husband. That maybe I killed him to shut him up or something, you know, so that she wouldn't find out about the affair."
Ramp was silent for a long stretch before he asked, "Were you? Were you sleeping with him?"
To Lucy, his words sounded reluctant, as though he didn't want to find out that it was true. She wasn't sure how to answer but didn't want to lie. "Yes," Lucy said. "I was. It's funny to say it. I haven't admitted that to anyone before right now. Not even my friends or my lawyers."
"But you didn't kill him."
"No, I didn't kill him."
Lucy recalled the conversation she had recently had with Alan Gregory and what he had said about intimacy. That true intimacy required not only disclosure, but also vulnerability.
Jason had just admitted a murder and she'd just admitted an affair with her mother's husband. That was disclosure.
If she got away, Jason Ramp Bass was on his way to life in prison or even death row in Cañon City. If she didn't get away, Ramp was probably going to kill her.
That was vulnerability.
She looked over at Ramp and thought that they were so intimate at that moment that they may as well have been sleeping naked in the same cot.
Ramp said, "In a way, we both lost our moms."
Lucy felt a flutter in her heart and thought that he'd made the words sound like the lyrics for a song.
He murmured, "Good night, Lucy. Get some sleep."
And she knew she was going to cry. But she wasn't sure why. Just that it had something to do with mothers.
The night before, when Lucy had walked unannounced into the master bedroom of the Peterson house on Jay Street, she'd said, "Susan, we need to talk."
Susan had looked up and greeted her without surprise. She'd said, "What? You think things have changed? Just because Royal's dead?"
"Everything's changed, Susan. You know that."
"You still call me Susan, not Mother. That hasn't changed. I still have this damn disease. That hasn't changed. Royal's not here anymore-that's all that's changed."
Lucy didn't bite. "I haven't told the police that you're my mother, Susan. I came here to talk with you because I think we should leave it that way."
Susan scoffed back. "Why? So your life isn't complicated by the fact that you have a disabled mother? Sorry, if they ask me, I'll tell them. I don't care who knows. I just lost my husband-nobody will care what happened with us, Lucy. They'll forgive me for what I did to you. They might not understand why you're so callous now, but they'll forgive me."
"Susan, what do you want from me?"
She straightened the sheets on her bed and hit the mute button on the remote control before she said, "Just do what's right, Lucy. Isn't that what I always taught you?"
CHAPTER 40
I can't sleep. Can you?"
Lucy's eyes had been tracking the linear shadows that were making a picket fence of light appear across the ceiling of the construction trailer. She was wide-awake. In response to Jason Ramp's question, she said, "No."
For a moment both were silent. Lucy finally stammered, "Is it because you killed somebody today?"
"Yeah," Ramp said. "That, and I keep going over what's going to happen tomorrow."
"You want to talk about it?"
"Maybe, I'm not sure. I don't know if I do. More people are going to die tomorrow. I'm sure of that much. So I'm not sure why I'm so weirded out by Marin's mom dying today."
"Maybe that's it-that she was somebody's mom."
"Whoa, I hadn't thought about that. That's something to think about, isn't it?"
"Why did you do it, Jason? Blow her up?"
"She figured out what we were up to. I'm not exactly sure how. I think probably Marin left some stuff around the house or was careless on the Net or something. Doesn't matter now, I suppose. Marin said that her mom was going to tell everything to that shrink she was seeing. I had to keep her from doing that. One more day, that's all we needed. One more day."
Lucy sensed a vulnerability. She tried to exploit it. "You ever kill anyone before?"
"That woman who died in the car bomb in Denver? I caused that. She wasn't the intended victim. Her husband was. I guess you could say I killed her. But the bomb I put under their car went off by accident. I wasn't going to set it off until… until the right time came. Her husband should have been driving, not her."
"Why him?"
He ignored her question.
Lucy spoke into the darkness. "Maybe you feel troubled because you knew Marin's mother. I imagine that it makes a difference, killing someone you know."
He parried with his own question. "Have you been angry enough to kill your mother?"
The question felt like a physical blow to Lucy. She had trouble catching her breath. "I've never thought about it."
"Think about it now. Please."
"I don't know, Jason. I don't know. My God, what a question."