Warning Signs

by Stephen White

  "He maintains that what he did that day in Denver wasn't vengeance. He says it was simply an act of self-respect. In his mind, he did what he had to do as a father. That was all."

  "And you, Naomi, what do you think?"

  "Leo? He's kidding himself. What he did to the rapist was vengeance, pure and simple."

  "But he's satisfied? You just said that you wonder if vengeance is ever satisfying."

  "Leo's in prison, for God's sake. He'll rationalize anything to survive that. You would, too. Don't feign ignorance, Doctor; it's not becoming." She flipped her hair off her collar with the fingers of her left hand.

  As Naomi's admonition filled the space between us like a bad odor fills an elevator, it finally struck me that she and I had not spoken a single word about the bomb squad's arrival at Royal Peterson's house. We were talking about something else: high school slaughter and an imprisoned husband and father and teenage boys with enough vitriol expanding in their veins to explode their spleens.

  I stifled a relieved sigh, not unaware of the irony.

  "What?" she demanded.

  "You didn't actually answer my question earlier. About your reaction to Royal Peterson's murder."

  "You were asking me how I feel about not feeling anything? It's a preposterous question."

  I cautioned myself to portray more patience than I was feeling. "What I'm wondering is… how you understand… your reaction."

  Naomi crossed her legs. The toe of the dangling foot rotated side to side as though she were extinguishing an imaginary cigarette. "Don't talk to me like I'm an idiot. What I'm wondering is why I'm sitting here with you. If I understood my reaction to Roy Peterson's murder, why on earth would I put myself through this? You think sitting here with you is fun?"

  Fun? No. How about rewarding, at least. Therapeutic, maybe? I suspected she wasn't done. I waited.

  Suddenly, her eyes moistened and I thought she might be near tears. My immediate reaction was to consider the possibility that the sorrow I was witnessing was an act. I cautioned myself to be receptive to the possibility that the emotion was sincere. She leaned over and tugged a tissue from the box on the table by the sofa. The gesture was abrupt and fierce, as though she feared someone might be holding on to the other end of the tissue and she was determined to have it.

  She said, "God. I don't want to be this way with you."

  "What way?"

  "This way. Exasperated. Critical. It's how I am at work. It's how I am at home. I criticized the mailman today for putting two rubber bands around the bundle of mail when one would do fine. What's that about? All the time, I'm irritable, I'm critical… I'm bitchy. I swear it's my hormones."

  "You know, you have been under a little bit of stress, Naomi." I'd intended the comment to sound slightly sarcastic; Naomi's gentle laughter convinced me that I'd hit my mark.

  "Yeah, I guess I have," she said.

  From those hopeful words of conciliation my worst fears began to materialize. For the rest of the session I followed Naomi as she led me down the rocky path that took us back into the world of peri-menopause.

  My kingdom, I prayed, for some estrogen.

  I usually had no trouble generating empathy for the plight of women struggling with the assault of unbalanced hormones. But these circumstances were anything but usual. My impulse was to insist that Naomi prioritize. And insist that her number one priority should be helping me figure out what the hell Ramp and Paul were up to.

  Any relief I might have been feeling that my patient hadn't mentioned the discovery of an explosive device in Royal's home was simmering away in front of my eyes. Now that I knew that a bomb had indeed been stashed in the house, I needed to discuss it with Naomi, whether she brought it up or not.

  I batted the issue back and forth, back and forth, as Naomi tried to numb me with tales of mood changes, body temperature regulation problems, and menstrual irregularities. At one point she said, "And don't even ask me what this has done to my sex life."

  I didn't ask. Her husband was in prison. I assumed that fact alone should have greatly impeded her sex life. In my mind, Naomi and I didn't have ten minutes to waste, and I figured any expansive gripes about her sex life could easily devour ten whole sessions.

  Nor did I ever decide what to do about Ramp and Paul and the wouldn't-it-be-cool games.

  Just peri-menopause.

  When our time was up, Naomi and I found a time to meet on the following Monday. She composed herself enough to say thank you. I was surprised to discover that I felt that her sentiment was sincere. As she stood to leave, she picked up her big bag and performed whatever sleight of hand she did to produce her pack of cigarettes, and then she started toward the door to my office.

  Halfway there she paused and pivoted on one foot to face me. "By the way," she said. "Did you hear the news this morning? About that bomb?"

  By the time I was ready to stammer out a reply, she was out the door.

  CHAPTER 16

  T he neighborhood around South Dahlia Street in Denver is an urban oasis, sequestered in relative privacy between the suburb-mimicking big-box sprawl of University Hills Shopping Center and the always-congested multilane ribbons of concrete that comprise Interstate 25, which bisects southeast Denver like a bypass scar on a cardiac patient. Unlike Washington Park, Highland, University Park, and a dozen other old Denver neighborhoods, the area hugging South Dahlia Street had somehow escaped the infectious gentrification that accompanied Colorado's recent high-tech firestorm of population growth.

  The block of Vassar Lane that intersected with South Dahlia from the west was lined with modest, unrenovated houses that rested on decent lots and were shaded by mature trees. The home of Brad and Debbie Levitt was an especially nondescript blond brick ranch with a detached garage, a long driveway, and a crowded grouping of linden trees near the front door.

  Debbie Levitt had just returned from dropping off her two children at school and had started to turn her four-year-old Isuzu Trooper into the driveway when she thought she felt a fierce, levitating concussion somewhere below her. She was never able to confirm her suspicions about the acceleration taking place beneath her seat because her awareness of the immense force endured for only a few milliseconds before the brain structures that Debbie Levitt needed to process such simple sensory awareness disappeared in the searing flash that blew up and out through the Trooper.

  Right across Vassar Lane, Rosalyn Brae was the only witness to the aftermath of the explosion, which she saw in the rearview mirror of her two-month-old Honda Odyssey. Rosalyn had just strapped her toddler into his child seat and was preparing to back out of her garage to take him to preschool when she felt the force of the explosion as shock waves from the disintegrating Trooper rocked her car. The roar assaulted her ears, the concussion shook her bones, and she looked up at the mirror in time to see metal and plastic flying through the air, a billowing cloud of profuse smoke, and, seconds later, a wall of searing flame.

  When she'd recovered from her initial shock, Rosalyn could hear her son screaming from the backseat. She hit the switch that closed her garage door before she grabbed her son from his car seat, and she ran inside to call 911.

  She told the emergency dispatcher that something terrible had happened to Debbie Levitt across the street but she didn't know what. The dispatcher pressed her for details.

  Rosalyn sobbed, "Her car! Her car! It, it… Oh my God!"

  "What's wrong with her car, ma'am? Has there been an accident?"

  "No, no, it's like-oh God-it's just gone. The noise was so loud."

  "The car was stolen?"

  "No, no, it's… it's still there. But there's a fire. It's on fire."

  "A fire? Her car's on fire? Okay, the fire department is on its way, ma'am. Was anyone hurt in the fire?"

  "I suppose, I mean, I guess she was driving the car, right? I didn't see her… but I guess she was driving. It's still burning. I can see it from where I'm standing right now."

  "The fire depart
ment is on the way, ma'am. As we speak, they're on their way. Are you close to the car, ma'am? The one that's on fire? Because I would like you to step back."

  Rosalyn Brae took two steps back and bumped into her kitchen table.

  "Now, you think Debbie Levitt-is that her name?-was driving when the car caught on fire? I'll send the paramedics for her. But you hold on, okay? Keep talking with me, stay on the line until someone gets there."

  Rosalyn Brae had a sudden insight and told the dispatcher that she knew what it was that had happened: She thought maybe her neighbor's car had been hit by a meteor.

  Two days later, when the audio clips of the 911 call hit the local news, Rosalyn Brae was appropriately humiliated.

  B y Friday noon, the Denver Police had a pretty good portrait of the victim of the car explosion.

  Debbie Levitt was a thirty-one-year-old mother of two. She was someone who introduced herself to strangers as "a wife and mother." But the cops soon learned that, in addition to running her household, Debbie worked part time at The Bookies, a children's bookstore a few miles from her house, volunteered at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, ran a Girl Scout troop, and coached her older daughter's soccer team. She also coordinated her local Neighborhood Watch program.

  Almost everyone whom the police talked to commented about Debbie's size. She was "a whisper of a woman" according to one neighbor. "Four foot ten, ninety pounds, but as big as a redwood," was how the woman who owned the bookstore where she worked described her.

  The thought that Debbie Levitt might have had an enemy who was angry enough to blow up her car was absolutely absurd to every single person interviewed by the Denver Police.

  Debbie's husband, Brad, the manager of a retail store in Larimer Square, volunteered to allow the police to search the Levitt home and eagerly provided the family financial records to investigators. By midday police detectives had largely ruled out a drug connection or financial retribution as possible motives for the explosion.

  B rad Levitt picked up his two children about an hour before school let out that afternoon. He drove them to his parents' house on the Seventeenth Avenue Parkway in Park Hill. That's where he told the children what had happened to their mother.

  CHAPTER 17

  S am Purdy and I hadn't had a chance to talk since I'd left him orchestrating the arrival of the emergency response team at the Peterson home that morning.

  I'd called him Friday afternoon after Naomi had departed my office and left him a voice mail asking if he'd meet me after work. He called back and left a message that he'd meet me after he got home from the Avalanche playoff game in Denver, but that he had something he'd promised to do for his wife. He said he'd page me when he got back to Boulder.

  W hen I left home around ten-fifteen and drove toward the King Soopers on Thirtieth Street, Lauren and Grace were both sound asleep.

  I spotted Sam over in the produce department. He already had a cart in front of him. It took me three tries to find a cart without a wobbling or stuck wheel. Part of my general karma in life is that I don't have good luck with shopping carts. The wheels all worked on the one I ended up with, but it had something brown and sticky plastered all over the plastic flap that covered the leg holes of the little child seat.

  I didn't want to know.

  I walked over to join Sam. He was sniffing cantaloupes and tapping the ends of them as though the aromas and echoes told him something important. I said, "Isn't worth buying them before the Texas crop comes in at the beginning of May, Sam." I pointed at the big pile in front of him. "Those are the early season melons from Southern California."

  He didn't look up. "Actually, isn't worth buying any of 'em before the Rocky Fords show up at the end of the summer. Now, those Rocky Fords," he said, pausing for emphasis, "… now those are melons."

  A few feet away from us, a tall young woman, her brown hair piled haphazardly on her head, was busy selecting strawberries. As soon as Sam finished speaking, she turned toward him and smiled, her shoulders retreating and her posture straightening just the slightest bit.

  Sam Purdy didn't appreciate the irony. I didn't think he'd even noticed the woman's flirtation. He certainly didn't appreciate the fact that in Boulder-after his comment about the melons-she was three times as likely to have hit him over the head with a pineapple as she was to smile at him.

  "I didn't want to say anything this morning, but you really look like shit," I told him.

  "Avs lost tonight. Sloppy play behind the goal. They gave up two power play goals. Two. There's no excuse for that, none, not in the playoffs. I ever tell you that I hate turnovers?"

  "Pastry? You hate those kinds of turnovers?"

  He shook his head at me and stepped away from the cantaloupes. "What about kiwis? I like the way they taste but I've never figured out how to get the damn fuzzy stuff off without throwing away half the fruit. How do you do that?"

  "You've lost weight, Sam."

  "You gonna buy anything or you just gonna yap?"

  "I think I'm just gonna yap," I said.

  "I don't know why I agreed to do the grocery shopping again. I hate it. Sherry said it would be a growth experience for me. All I'm growing is another hemorrhoid. I keep thinking maybe I shouldn't be a cop in Boulder at all. I should be a cop in some real town where men don't meet their friends on Friday night to do the grocery shopping."

  I laughed. "King Soopers is where the girls are, Sam."

  "The single ones, yeah. In Boulder, the married ones all send their husbands. This is probably the place where half of the extramarital affairs start in Boulder. I swear we live in a city of wusses. You ever notice that?" He fingered his list, moving his reading glasses down from the top of his head so he could have a prayer of reading the scrap of paper. "Sherry said I should ask you about garlic. She said you'd know how to pick out garlic. I can't believe I have a friend who can't bait a hook but knows how to pick a bunch of garlic."

  I couldn't bait a hook. Not a prayer. "A head of garlic, Sam. But that's not important."

  "You got that right."

  I led him over toward the onions and garlic.

  He fumbled with a plastic bag, but his fat fingers couldn't quite get it open. He said, "In case you're wondering, I don't really want to know about garlic. Don't even think about lecturing me about garlic. Just pick one."

  "You've lost weight," I said for the second time. "Are you worried about Lucy? Or is something else going on?"

  He tried to separate the folds of the bag with his teeth. "You heard the details about the device we recovered at the Peterson home?" he mumbled.

  I'd been waiting patiently for him to get around to it. I said, "I heard what's on the news, that's all."

  "It was a pipe bomb, rigged to a radio controller. Just needed a signal and it would have gone off."

  "Jesus."

  "Nothing fancy about it, apparently. X-ray didn't show any booby traps. Guy who made it wasn't trying to hurt anybody who found it."

  "How did they disarm it? Did they take it out of the house and put it in that little round trailer you always see on the news?"

  He shook his head in disdain at my ignorance. "The little trailer is called a total containment vehicle, and no, they didn't use it. In situations like that they use a robot with a disruptor on it. Blows the thing apart with water. It's like a little water cannon. That way nobody actually has to get close to the device."

  "That's it? Couldn't doing that make the bomb go off?"

  "There's a risk of sympathetic detonation but it's more theoretical than real. I've never seen it happen."

  "How do you know all this?"

  Sam ignored me, instead asking, "You done with your questions? Because my supervisors in the department are curious how I knew that there was a bomb in the house."

  "First, tell me how you know so much about the bomb squad."

  "I took an FBI course. Now, how did you know it was there?"
r />   "What did you tell your supervisors?"

  "I told them I got an anonymous tip."

  "They believed you?"

  He shrugged. "What are they gonna do?"

  "How does this all bode for Lucy?"

  We'd moved from the produce department to the back of the store. "Is there a right way to do this?" Sam asked. "Should I go all the way across the back and then do each aisle? Or should I just go up and down each aisle and see a little bit of the dairy case each time? How do housewives do this? It seems to me I should do the freezer part last. That makes sense."

  "You're free to improvise."

  He made a noise. "Don't know if anyone told you but Lucy's prints are on that ceramic thing. The one that was used to bash Royal in the face? We found it in pieces all over the floor in the living room."

  "Lauren told me a few hours ago. When I was in the house this morning with Dorsey and Shadow I saw a collection of fancy ceramics downstairs in Royal's office. There was one space empty on the shelves. I was thinking that that's where it came from."

  "We reached the same conclusion. Somebody grabbed it downstairs, carried it upstairs to whack Royal."

  "Anybody else's fingerprints on the ceramic?"

  "Roy's and Susan's."

  "The fact that her fingerprints are on it isn't good news for Lucy. But… I thought the murder weapon was the brass lamp."