"Oh, I don't mind. It's only there for company. And I've already got company, today."
"Where's Jase now? In Denver?" Lucy asked.
"Mmm-hmm. Denver. He works for a welding company. It's something else that Herbert taught him. Herbert was always cutting metal and welding metal for his experiments."
"Shaped charges," Lucy said.
"That's right." One side of Ella's mouth elevated in a smile. "You don't know what they are, do you?"
"No," she admitted. "I don't. I don't have a clue what a shaped charge is."
Ella laughed so hard she started to cough from a place deep in the recesses of her lungs. When she finally controlled the spasm, she said, "You two are going to go talk to him now, aren't you? Once you leave here."
Lucy and I both nodded.
"Figured. Well, I'll save you some time and tell you where to find him, but I want to talk to him first. I should also talk to Pat, his father, let him know what you told me. Once I do those two things, I'll tell you where to find Jase. If he really did what you say, well… But I want you to remember something, too. I want you to remember that the boy was hurt by his mother's death. You'll remember that? We've all been hurt by what happened."
I said, "Of course."
Lucy wrote her phone numbers on a sheet of paper and gave it to Ella. She said, "That's fair, Ella. You give me a call after you talk to Jason and his father, okay?"
Ella looked back up at me before she spoke to Lucy. "Right now, you're acting like you're going to wait to talk to Jase until I call you. But you won't wait. You're going to go try to find him as soon as you leave here. You're going to go out to your fancy car and get on your cell phone and call your cop friends or you're going to use some computer whizbang and do some magic thing that the police do on TV and you're going to try and find him. Clear as dew, you'd lie to an old woman."
Lucy said, "To track down whoever has been setting those bombs, Ella, I'd lie to every old woman I could find."
Ella opened a drawer that was recessed into the side of the kitchen table. She reached in and slid out a huge revolver. I thought it might be a.45. It was clean and gleamed with fresh oil. Ella rested the weapon on the table, the barrel pointed only slightly away from Lucy.
My heart galloped.
"I like you both," Ella said. "I do."
I thought, Hell's another.
CHAPTER 31
Lucy dropped me off back at my car. I would've loved to have had some time to reflect with her over what we'd just learned-or, at the very least, to hear what she thought about Ella's revolver-but I had to rush to Boulder to have a prayer of getting back for my appointment with Naomi.
I held up my watch and said, "If I make it to my office on time, I'm meeting with her this afternoon." I was still reluctant to use my patient's name in conversation.
Lucy wasn't. She said, "You're seeing Naomi?"
"She said she had some news for me, something important. But what we just learned from Ella can't wait for that-Sam needs to know everything we heard right now. So do the Denver Police."
"I'll do that, don't worry," she said. "I know who to talk to. And maybe the fact that it comes from me will earn me some redemption."
I spent the long drive back to Boulder watching my mirrors for a State Patrol cruiser and trying to prepare myself for what I expected would be a difficult session with Naomi.
When I got to my office and entered through the rear doors, it was only four-twenty but the red light on the far wall was already beaming. Naomi Bigg wasn't only on time for her extra appointment, she was early. And, given what Lucy and I had discovered about Ramp earlier that afternoon, I was more than ready for the meeting. I took a deep breath and made long strides down the hall to greet her.
But the woman I found standing in the middle of the waiting room wasn't Naomi Bigg.
She heard me open the door and barely threw a glance my way before she demanded, "Where is she? Is she back there? Where is she?"
The voice was frantic and distinctly young. The speaker was, too. When I didn't reply right away, she immediately turned back to scan the street, spying at something through the window.
I guessed that she was in her late teens, early twenties. She was blond and overweight. How overweight was hard to tell; her clothes hung on her like curtains. One eyebrow was pierced and adorned with a thin gold ring. Her hair was cut, well, badly, and dyed even worse, though I suspected that the aesthetic impact of the coiffure was intentional. I thought that there was something unusual about her makeup as well but couldn't decide exactly what. Maybe it was the color around her eyes.
"May I help you?" I asked.
"You're her doctor? My mother's doctor? Is she back there? God, this is important! Is she fucking back there yet? I need to talk to her!"
She'd begun screaming at me.
"No, she's not here yet. You're Marin, aren't you?"
She nodded and returned her attention to the window. I could see her shoulders rise and fall with each rapid breath.
I said, "I expect her any minute. You can talk to her then. In the meantime, is there anything that I can do to help you while-"
She raised her arms up above her head and then dropped them quickly past her waist, as though she were signaling the start of a race. "Oh my God, where is she? I can't believe he'd do this. I never thought he'd do this. It's not what she thinks. It isn't what she thinks."
"Who'd do what?" Her terror was infectious. Naomi's message was still echoing in my ears. I was beginning to become aware of pressure building in my chest, my pulse pounding at the veins in my neck.
There's another bomb. That lawyer.
Marin shook her head, exasperated. "Does she park here? In front? Or do you have a parking lot?"
I stared at her, stammering in an effort to start a sentence.
"When she comes to visit you, goddamn it, where the hell does she park her damn car?"
"Patients usually park on the street. But I've never watched where your mother parks her car."
She looked up. "Is that a siren? Oh my God, oh my God. Do you hear that? In the distance. Is that a siren?"
I listened. I didn't hear a siren. I said so.
"What time is it?" she demanded. She seemed to have totally forgotten about the phantom siren.
I looked at my watch. Employing a voice that tried to reflect a pretense that I wasn't talking to a histrionic stranger, I said, "Four twenty-five. A little after."
"Is she late?"
"No. She's not due here for a few more minutes." I had no right to share that information, but I didn't even consider the possibility of not answering Marin Bigg's question.
Marin pointed outside and screamed, "There she is! There's her car. See it? That's it!"
I looked through the glass and saw the BMW that Naomi had been driving when she'd pulled up next to Lauren and me at the stoplight the day before. She was right out front of my building, backing expertly into a parking space that was only a few feet longer than her car. A cigarette dangled from her lips. Even from this distance I could tell that the ash was precariously long.
Marin ran out the door, waving her arms as though she were intent on bringing a runaway train to a halt. She started yelling, "Mom! Mom! Don't stop the car! Don't stop the car! Get out and leave it running. Mom! Mom!"
I was totally perplexed. I followed her outside.
Marin leapt off the little porch, still waving her arms. "Mom! Mom! Here! Don't stop the car! Mom! Don't-"