Warning Signs

by Stephen White

  I was guessing that she'd lost her husband. Divorce or death? I glanced down to check for a wedding ring, but her left hand was covered by her right. My money was on divorce. My second guess was that she'd lost a child. I really hoped not; I knew my heart would resist hearing that story.

  "Columbine," she said.

  Had Naomi lost a child at Columbine High School? God.

  I instantly started considering which colleague I could refer her to, a colleague without a new baby, a colleague who would be able to listen to her grief without terror filling the part of his own heart that cherished a new life.

  She was right, of course. That week was the anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School. Which meant it was also the week of the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. A couple of tragic days in April and a lot of lives for which the beauty of spring would never be the same.

  Never.

  She gazed at me briefly. "My confusion? I think a lot about the parents, you know?"

  "The parents…?"

  "The Harrises and the Klebolds."

  I'd been wrong, 180 degrees wrong. I thought she'd been talking about the parents of the victims. Instead, she was talking about the parents of the killers.

  She went on. "I think about whether they should have known what was going on. Whether they should have known what was in their children's hearts. Even whether they should have turned their own children in to the police. I think about all those things all the time."

  The late-day fog in my brain had finally lifted. Suddenly the sunlight was so bright that I couldn't see for the glare.

  Sometimes new patients need prompting, and sometimes their stories have such internal force that the words spew forth like fluid from a cut hydraulic hose. The tennis match between us was over and Naomi needed no further prompting. She'd ripped the lid off the Pandora's box that she had carried into my office and snakes were slithering out unfettered.

  "Sometimes parents know when their kids are angry, they do. They see it, they feel it. But it doesn't mean they know the depth of the rage, the sense of injustice their children feel, or what awful things their children might do. How could they even have imagined it? The Klebolds and the Harrises? How could they ever, ever have guessed what evil was in their children's hearts? Even with the clues, the term papers, everything. How could they possibly have guessed what their children were going to do that awful day at Columbine?"

  The words were so poignant, so potentially revealing, but the tone was impersonal, distant. My new patient was much more comfortable talking about someone else's struggle than she was talking about her own. I glanced again at her left hand. With her thumb she was twirling a platinum wedding band around her ring finger. Good-sized diamond on the matching engagement ring. Married? Separated? I didn't know. But Naomi was about the right age; she could certainly have kids the age of the Columbine assassins.

  She lifted her left arm and focused her attention on her fancy watch. "Oh my, the time. We have to stop already, don't we?"

  I looked at the small clock on the étagère behind the sofa. We had only two minutes remaining in the session. "In a couple of minutes," I said. "You were talking about how the Harrises and the Klebolds should or shouldn't have known about what their kids were going to do."

  Her eyes closed and her breathing became shallow. "It's a hard question to answer from a distance, isn't it? When the tragedy is so terrible, people are so quick to judge."

  "Is that how it feels to you?" I asked.

  "Can I come back for another session? Now that I've started, I think I'd like to continue talking about all this," she said.

  "Of course. We'll find another time before you go." I was rushing my words, husbanding the few remaining seconds. I forced myself to slow down. "Do you have children, Naomi?"

  "Work is… difficult. I'd need something late in the day. Or maybe I can get away over lunch."

  "We still have a minute or so."

  "I need to go."

  I considered pointing out the resistance she was demonstrating, but it was too early in the process. Anyway, I knew I was being aggressive with my questions. I checked my book. "Thursday at five-thirty?"

  "No, not on Thursday. There's a… Never mind. I'm sorry, anything else?"

  "The only other time I can offer is twelve-thirty tomorrow."

  "That's fine. I'll do a late lunch, sure. And yes, I have two children. A boy and a girl."

  I couldn't help myself. I asked, "Are you struggling with some of the same questions?"

  She was searching her purse for something, perhaps a pen. She said, "Same as… what?"

  "As the Harrises and the Klebolds? As the parents of Eric and Dylan?"

  Once more she focused on her watch. "You know, I think our time is up," she said, stealing my line. She stood and quickly walked toward the door, pausing only long enough to say, "See you tomorrow."

  I didn't want her to leave yet. I needed my questions answered. What were her children planning? What did she know? "We have some paperwork to do before you go," I said to her back.

  "Tomorrow, okay? We'll do it then. I promise I'll be on time."

  CHAPTER 7

  I didn't recall locking up my office after Naomi Bigg departed, nor did I remember climbing into my car.

  It wasn't the first time in the past few months that the passage of time had escaped my conscious awareness. I feared it wouldn't be the last.

  I knew it wouldn't be the last.

  S ee, the previous autumn I'd killed a man.

  I'd used a handgun, a silenced.22, and I'd shot him in the head from a distance of about thirty inches. The little slug had entered the man's cranium through his cheek, just below his left eye. The little round of lead had never exited his head.

  My own eyes had been closed when I pulled the trigger.

  I don't regret pulling the trigger. The man was intent on killing me, my wife, and my then-unborn baby. I don't regret killing him. That's not to say I didn't relive the moment constantly. But every time I replayed it, I once again closed my finger over the metal wand of the trigger, and every time I squeezed gently.

  It never changed with the replaying. Every time, I killed him.

  It was the right thing to do.

  But righteousness failed to quiet the replays. The chaos of the moment still cascaded into my waking thoughts and continued to infiltrate my dreams.

  Pieces only. Fragments.

  Not the sound of the.22, though. With the suppressor on the barrel, the surprisingly heavy Ruger made just a heartbeat of a sound. Instead, what I still heard during my private nights was the roar of the man's gun as he tried to shoot me. That night the roar had exploded only four times.

  But in my relentless dreams the events of the killing continued to explode all night long.

  And his grip. The night that I killed the man, I'd felt his hand close around my ankle as though I were his safety line and he was falling off a cliff. When the dreams came, I found myself shaking my leg in my sleep to free myself from his grasp. I'd wake up and he'd be gone. But the next night, or the one after that, his fingers were back on my leg, locked on my skin like leeches.

  And Emily, our big dog-I knew she was barking even though I couldn't hear her. She'd barked furiously at the man I killed that night, her jaws clapping open and closed, her eyes orange and fierce in the dim, dusky light. Now she visited in my dreams, too, sounding her clarion all over again. Warning, imploring. Fierce, silent.

  The morning after the dreams, I would wake knowing in my heart that I'd done the right thing and knowing in my soul that I'd never be the same man again.

  A s I drove home after my first appointment with Naomi Bigg, I told myself that the intensity I was feeling after hearing her fears was due to the incessant echoes of that night the previous autumn.

  The night that I shot a man with a silenced.22.

  CHAPTER 8

  C ozier Maitlin's black BMW was parked in front of our house. Viv's purple Hyundai was
n't.

  Our Bouvier, Emily, greeted me at the door. Inside I found Lauren on the couch with Grace and Anvil sharing her lap. Cozy was sitting on what I liked to think of as my chair. In navy suit trousers, a white shirt that had no business looking as crisp as it did this late in the day, and a solid burgundy tie, Cozy offered a much less maniacal portrait than he had the day before when Sam and I had rousted him out of bed before dawn.

  A smile to Grace earned me a smile in return. A kiss to my wife did the same. "So I take it you guys are a team?" I asked.

  Lauren's grin told me she was happy with the decision she'd made. "Congratulations," I said. "What does Lucy think?"

  "She's thrilled," Lauren said. "Or as happy as someone could be in her circumstances."

  Cozy said, "I apologize for invading your home. The media doesn't know that Lauren is on board, yet, so for now we're safe up here. They have my house and office staked out, cameras and microphones everywhere. What do they do with all that equipment in between sieges? I was just asking Lauren-you guys control that little road out there?"

  "Kind of. We share ownership of the lane with Adrienne."

  Cozy said, "Oh."

  He and our friend and neighbor, Adrienne, had been in a hot and heavy romance until Cozy made the mistake of introducing her to his ex-wife and Adrienne decided she preferred to navigate the romantic possibilities with Cozy's ex. So the mention of Adrienne's name was not uncomplicated for Cozy. She represented the second woman in a decade who had chosen to leave him for a chance at the fairer sex. Even to someone as pathologically noninsightful as Cozier Maitlin, that fact caused some considerable dis-ease.

  He jerked his attention back to the question at hand. "But if you needed to, you could block off the lane? What I'm getting at, of course, is a way of keeping the press at a reasonable distance, should that become necessary."

  "That's an oxymoron, Cozy. 'Press' and 'reasonable distance'-it doesn't compute. But the answer to your question is yes. We could block off the lane anytime we wanted. I'm sure Adrienne would happily go along. You know Adrienne; she loves mischief."

  He said, "Hopefully it won't be necessary to involve her."

  "What are you guys hearing about the case? What's the mood downtown?"

  Lauren responded. "Lucy's been on the police force a long time and apparently she has some loyal friends. It looks like the chasm that already existed between the Boulder Police and the DA's office is in danger of growing into the Grand Canyon over this case."

  Cozy smiled at the thought. "Tension between the police and the prosecutor's office has been brewing for a long time. You know that Royal's proclivity for pleading out cases has infuriated the cops. And now the DA's office thinks a cop murdered their leader. The rank-and-file cops are already lining up behind Lucy. The brass, not so much. But the lines are drawn. It can only work to our advantage."

  "If this doesn't go to a special prosecutor," I said.

  Lauren said, "Before I even asked him to extend my maternity leave, Mitchell told me that he's going to try to keep this one in-house. I don't think there's any doubt that he's going to resist the appointment of a special prosecutor even if we ask the court for one."

  I took Grace from Lauren's arms. I was wondering about Mitchell Crest's reaction to Lauren's decision to assist Cozy with Lucy's defense. I was taking my lead from my wife, though. She hadn't brought it up, so I assumed that she and I would discuss it later. I said, "And I take it you and your new partner are not going to press for a special prosecutor, are you?"

  "Not immediately, no," replied Cozy. "The conflicts within the DA's office and the tension between the district attorney and the cops will work to our advantage. At least in the short term."

  "Witness the Ramseys," I said.

  "Exactly," he said. "If I'm wrong, Lauren and I can pick and choose the time to demand a special prosecutor. Certainly we'll wait until after Lucy is charged."

  "I'll leave you guys to work. It smells like Grace's diaper needs my attention. You want dinner?"

  Lauren answered, "Viv left some Asian noodle thing that smells wonderful. Lots of fish sauce. We'll have some of that later on."

  Before Grace and I were out of the room, Lauren asked, "How was your day, sweetie?"

  I stopped and looked back, recalling how my day had ended with Naomi Bigg. I said, "Fine. Long. I had a new patient this afternoon that was interesting. Nothing like your day, though."

  CHAPTER 9

  N aomi Bigg wasn't true to her word. She wasn't on time for her second appointment; twelve-thirty on Tuesday came and went and the red light on my office wall never flashed on. Since the appointment wasn't my last of the day I didn't have to ponder how long I'd wait for her. She had me captive for the entire forty-five minutes, whether she was here in person or not.

  I t's rare, very rare, that a patient's story interests me. Don't misunderstand-it's also rare, very rare, that a patient doesn't interest me. The distinction is crucial.

  After doing psychotherapy for as long as I've done it, I've listened to a lot of stories told in a myriad of different ways by an incredible variety of storytellers. Bad childhoods, wonderful childhoods; tumultuous adolescence, silky adolescence; heavenly marriages, devilish divorces. Isolation, attachments, losses. Health, illness, heartbreak, death after death after death. The stories almost always take a familiar form and the facts almost always lose narrative interest except for what they tell me about the molecular structure of the storyteller.

  As I listen to the life tales of most patients, inevitably I'm left with the feeling that I've read this book before.

  But as I waited for the red light to flick on announcing her arrival, I suspected that Naomi Bigg's story was going to be one of the exceptions. The prologue to her tale had been so provocative that I'd actually had trouble concentrating on anything else during the time between her first two appointments. Grace's charms could capture me for a few moments, but my thoughts would soon drift back to the long shadows cast by Harris and Klebold and my concern-no, fear-that the shadows were darkening the space where Naomi Bigg was standing.

  Lauren's obvious excitement about working with Cozy to defend Lucy Tanner sparked my curiosity and distracted me for a while, but I was soon struggling anew with my trepidation about how I'd handle the news that I expected to hear: that Naomi Bigg suspected that her adolescent children might be planning some unspeakable atrocity à la Columbine.

  Ten times I reminded myself that she hadn't said so.

  Eleven times I convinced myself that that was exactly where her story was heading.

  T he light glowed at 12:51. I did the math: Our session would last only twenty-four minutes, a few of which we were going to waste filling out forms.

  Naomi didn't bother to apologize. She filled out the forms and signed the state-mandated disclosure statement in record time.

  She smoothed the fabric of her pink skirt and straightened the sweater of her twinset. The shell beneath the sweater was cut in a slightly less-than-modest V. The tops of her breasts swelled noticeably as she took a deep breath. "Where were we yesterday? My daughter? Is that what we were talking about? Want to help me here? I don't know if I told you, but her name is Marin. She's nineteen."

  I wanted to correct her. I wanted to tell her, No, we were talking about the Klebolds and the Harrises, and the Columbine anniversary and about how parents couldn't know what evil lurked in their children's hearts.

  I said nothing. Naomi and I had only nineteen minutes left to talk about Marin Bigg. One minute for each year of the young woman's life. I inhaled slowly, tasting stale cigarette smoke, and I reminded myself to be patient, to follow this woman, not to lead her.

  She said, "You've been in Boulder a while, haven't you?"

  In psychotherapy, few patient queries are uncomplicated. Was Naomi checking on my experience? My familiarity with the town? Making conversation? What?

  I chose an obtuse answer. "I've been practicing in this office since the late eighties."
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  "I thought so," she said. "Then you may remember what happened to Marin. Four years ago. She was fifteen." She began spinning her wedding ring with her thumb. "Do you remember?"

  I knew that if I said I didn't remember, for Naomi Bigg it would be as if I were failing to recall Pearl Harbor or Kennedy's assassination or… the shootings at Columbine.

  I said, "No." I said it softly, so that she could uncover a covert apology there if she chose.

  "She was raped by a CU student. You didn't read about it?" Her tone was slightly incredulous that I hadn't remembered without her prompting.

  "I don't recall it specifically, no." During my time in Boulder the local paper had reported way too many rapes. I usually didn't study the stories. The meager details she had provided didn't separate Naomi Bigg's story from the herd.

  She looked away from me. "It would be easier if you remembered. I was hoping that you would have." In that moment, I thought I witnessed sadness, and not just the edgy anger that she'd demonstrated thus far.

  "That way you wouldn't have to tell me?" I said.

  "Yes."

  One of the nineteen minutes crept by.

  Naomi said, "The details aren't important. She was raped. They called it date rape. Which means what? That she'd agreed to go to a movie first? Anyway, the police arrested the rapist. To make a long story short, the district attorney decided that the rapist deserved a year in jail and cut a deal with him. Without, I might add, the consent of the victim. Or the victim's family."

  I noted that Naomi's breathing had grown shallow and rapid. Her eyes had narrowed and the muscles in her face had hardened into something sinewy. I didn't speak.

  "He got out of jail in seven months. Seven months. He raped my baby and he got out of jail in seven damn months. She didn't get over the rape in seven months. She hasn't gotten over the rape in four years. She won't get over the rape in another forty years."