Warning Signs

"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 pla

"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.

See, 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.

As 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

Cozier Maitlin's black BMW was parked in front of our house. Viv's purple Hyundai wasn'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 Adrie

Cozy said, "Oh."

He and our friend and neighbor, Adrie

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 Adrie

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."