Cast the First Stone

by K. J. Emrick

  His face pales as he notices my injuries for the first time. “That… that’s unfortunate and I’m sorry you got hurt but I don’t see what that has to do with…”

  “It was your ex-wife’s house on Dwyer Street that exploded,” I tell him, cutting through his BS. “She rigged it to blow up as soon as anyone opened the front door. Boom.”

  “Oh. Oh, I… oh.” Now he slumps against the wall as well, and he stops trying to argue with me or shoo me out of the building. “You think she’s the one who took Katarina. You think she’s the woman in the video from the bank. Seriously?”

  “Yes. Correct on both points. And, I think something else, too.” This was the idea that Harry had led me to. A simple fact, hidden in the debris of a burning house. “I don’t think Andrea set her house on fire to try and kill just anyone. She didn’t have a grudge against the police. If she wanted to keep the bank from taking the house away from her, she could have just set it on fire and left. No. She wanted someone specific to walk through that door, and die.”

  His eyes get really wide as my meaning sinks in. Beads of sweat pop out on his forehead. “You think… you think she wanted to kill me? But… but why?”

  “Simple, Barlow. She was jealous that you had moved on. From everything I’ve found out, her life after your marriage broke up has been a disaster. She’s been arrested for getting into fights, she’s nearly broke, she has nothing left and yet here you are, still wealthy, and now you’re bringing a stunningly beautiful foreign woman into your life. She hated you for it, Barlow, and she wanted to take it all away from you.”

  “By taking it out on Katarina? No… I mean, how? Why?”

  I’d figured most of it out, just not all of it. “Andrea has probably been planning this for a while now. My guess is the day Katarina went missing, your ex came knocking on your apartment door. She got Katarina to invite her in, and then forced her to leave with her. Probably had a knife or a gun with her. Then she forced Katarina to go to the bank and take all of your money out in cash. I’m guessing you never told Andrea about your other two accounts, just like you didn’t tell Katarina about them?”

  His nod is slow in coming, but it confirms another part of my theory. If she’d known about those other two accounts, she would have drained them dry, too. Andrea thought she was taking Barlow for everything he had. All his money, and his girlfriend, too.

  There was only one thing left that she wanted from him.

  “Is Katarina still alive?” he asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

  “Yes, she’s alive, because Andrea is using her as bait. She wanted you to come looking for Katarina. She wanted you to walk through the door of that house thinking you were saving the woman you loved, and then she wanted you to die a horrible death. Thankfully, she’s not a professional bomb maker. My police friend called her an amateur. Even so, it probably would have been enough to kill anyone rushing through the door when the device went off. Like you were supposed to do.”

  I can see his hands shaking now. This is a lot to dump on him all at once like this, but I just don’t have time to be nice about it. “So,” he says, licking his lips to moisten them. “So, Katarina’s alive now, but once I was dead? What then?”

  “Exactly. I have no doubt that Andrea would have killed Katarina as soon as she found out that her explosion killed you. It didn’t work. So for now, that buys us some time because you’re still alive. So. Work with me, Barlow. Help me save Katarina.”

  For a long moment, all he does is breathe. The slow, ragged breaths of a man who is watching his world crumble around him and realizing it’s all his fault. Then, finally, he stands up straight again and meets my gaze. “What can I do to help?”

  “Answer some questions. I need to understand your ex a little better. I need to know where she might be, right now.” That was a lot to ask. I need to simplify it down into specifics unless I want to be here all day, and frankly I wasn’t sure that Katarina had that kind of time. Even with Barlow being still alive, Andrea might decide that she was in over her head and try to get rid of the evidence… meaning Katarina herself. “What I don’t understand, is how Andrea expected you to walk into that house and get blown up, if you didn’t even know she was involved. It’s not like she invited you there.”

  If Barlow had looked pale before, now he looked downright sick. “Oh. Oh…” He just kept repeating that word over and over as he reaches into the pocket of his suitcoat and takes out his cellphone. I thought for a moment he was going to make a phone call, maybe to Andrea, until my future-sense showed me what he was really doing.

  He turned the phone so I could see his emails.

  “That’s my trash folder,” he clarifies. “Those are all… they’re all from Andrea in just the last week. I recognize her return email address.”

  There’re dozens of messages here. Several a day, in fact. “She was trying to talk to you.” I scroll down through the list and notice something else. “You didn’t open any of them. You just sent them over to your trash.”

  “Well, of course I did.” His bluster is short lived. Anger comes and goes behind his eyes. “Andrea isn’t part of my life anymore. I didn’t want anything to do with her. My life was with Katarina now and I didn’t want to look back.”

  Fantastic. All this time the answer to the case was right there in front of him and he sent it to the trash because he wanted to stay faithful to Katarina, a woman who was working a con job on him.

  Remember a while ago when I said that love is in the eye of the beholder and it’s usually not what the person thinks it is? Well. Here’s my Exhibit A. I sincerely hope that most people have better luck with their love life than Barlow here has had. Maybe I’ll have the better kind of luck with it someday, too. Maybe then my opinion will change. Until then… love got Barlow and Katarina into this mess.

  I’m going to get them out.

  If Barlow hadn’t seen fit to open up those emails from his ex-wife, then I would. Here was the missing puzzle piece, the key to everything, and he’d had it in his pocket the whole time.

  A simple double tap of my finger opened up the top, most recent email. It’s subject line simply read “Open NOW.” Maybe if Andrea had put something more along the lines of, “I’ve got your girlfriend and she’s going to die if you don’t start opening these damned emails,” then Barlow wouldn’t have been so quick to send them in his trash folder. I’m just lucky his folder hadn’t been automatically emptied yet.

  The email opened up, and I use my two fingers to enlarge the image so I don’t have to squint down at it. This one was sent to Barlow yesterday, while I’d been running around trying to figure out who had Katarina. The answer had been right here.

  I have your new girlfriend, Barlow. She’s pretty. I have your money, too. I’m not sure which one is more important to you but if you ever want to see this immigrant whore again, you’ll come to my house on Dwyer Street. You know the one. Come soon and don’t involve the police or your new girl dies. I just want to talk.

  That last part was obviously added as an afterthought. Andrea was trying to make Barlow think there was a chance he would walk out of the Dwyer Street house with Katarina and everything would be just fine because hey, she just wanted to talk. Yeah, right. Like those aliens who tell you they come in peace, so you won’t see that they’re really here to harvest your organs and eat your brains.

  What? I watch a lot of sci-fi.

  “She wanted you to go to that house,” I say to him, laying it all out. “The bomb wasn’t for the police at all. It was for you. Andrea wanted you dead. Katarina’s the bait.”

  “No… no…” He grabs my hand in both of his and I feel how cold and clammy his skin is. The poor guy’s going into shock. He could have prevented all this if he’d just read these emails. At least that’s what he’s thinking. More likely, though, he’d be dead. “You have to save her, Miss Stone. Please. Forget what I said before. You’re not fired. Just… don’t let her die…”

  “Barl
ow, listen. You need to sit down for a minute. You need to relax and just take a breath.”

  He nods, and although I’m not sure he really heard me, he slides down the wall and plops onto the floor. At least now I don’t have to worry about him fainting and crashing down on the floor.

  I kneel down with him because he’s still got a death grip on my hand. “The fact that she’s bait,” I explain, “is a good thing.”

  “What! How can you possibly say that? She’s in danger. Andrea tried to kill me and now she’s going to kill Katarina. What can we do? What can we do?”

  “Andrea isn’t going to kill Katarina. Not yet. Not until she’s served her purpose. My guess is she’ll keep Katarina alive until she gets another chance to kill you. So. We have time. If you can help me, I think I can find her.”

  A little bit of hope sparks in his eyes. “You think so? Yes, yes I’ll do anything. Just name it.”

  “Good. What I need to know is this. Did Andrea have children before you married her?”

  The hope fizzles to confusion. “Kids? No, she never had a family. I mean, we talked about having kids. She wanted them, I didn’t, it was just one more thing that led to our divorce.” He laughs nervously. “She even made me buy a house out in the suburbs that she said was going to be perfect to raise our family. After we divorced, I moved into my apartment and she said she couldn’t stand to look at that house. I didn’t want to think about it, either so… it’s just been sitting there… abandoned… for years… oh, dear God.”

  Yeah. Praying was a good idea, because there it was. A house meant for a couple to have children, but left abandoned when that dream disappeared. A rusted-out swing set in the backyard where children were supposed to play. Pink, flowery curtains in a room meant for a little girl. Yeah. That’s exactly the house I was in.

  I squeeze Barlow’s hand before gently extricating my fingers. “Give me the address of the house. I’ll make sure Katarina comes home safe.”

  “Do you promise?”

  What else can I say? “Yes. I promise.”

  He tells me where it is, and I repeat it to make sure I don’t forget. It’s even further out in the suburbs than the house on Dwyer Street had been. It would take me a little bit to get there, so I needed to leave if I was going to keep the promise I had just made.

  There was a big question in my mind about how I would make that happen, but I knew I was going to try. Katarina had been playing Barlow and she had planned on leaving him with his heart broken, but that didn’t mean she deserved what was happening to her now. Okay, well, maybe she deserved it a little. If I didn’t do everything I could to save her, though, I’d be the one in the wrong. I’d be acting against my own moral code just because I didn’t like the way Katarina lived her life.

  Was it possible that there was good reason for the way she was using people?

  Maybe. I wouldn’t ever know, unless I saved her from someone even worse than she was. At least Katarina didn’t try to bomb people to death.

  “Mister Michaelson?” the secretary for C and R Trust and Fiduciary asks hesitantly. She had poked her head out through the business door, only to find her boss sitting on the floor and me down here on one knee.

  He looks up at her, and realizing that he must look ridiculous he pushes himself back to his feet using the wall as support. “Sorry, Maggie. Go back to your desk.”

  “Is… is everything all right?”

  “No, it’s not. But it will be.” And then, he actually manages a smile for me. “Miss Stone is going to take care of it.”

  “And I’d better get started now.” I wipe off the knees of my jeans from being on the floor as I talk. “Go home, Barlow. Keep the door locked. You’ve got my phone number. Message me if you get any more emails, okay?”

  No need to say what emails. Not with his secretary standing right there and listening. He nods and puts his phone away in his pocket again. “I will. As soon as I get one, I’ll let you know. But… how did you know to ask about house? The children?”

  On my way to the elevators, I put my finger up to my lips to tell him the answer’s a secret.

  “Magic. That’s how.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  On my way back to my car I crossed against the light twice, jogging between the slow-moving traffic, because I don’t have time to wait for walk signals. I know where I’m going now.

  I told Barlow that Katarina would be safe, so long as Andrea wanted to use her for bait. I only said that to make him feel better, though. The truth was that I didn’t know that. I couldn’t know what was going through Andrea’s mind. She might just decide that since the bomb at Dwyer Street had failed, she needed to cut and run.

  If that was the case, I might already be too late.

  I hand my tag over to the attendant at the EZ Park and he gives me back my keys, pointing with a thumb over his shoulder at where he’d put Roxy in the row with the other cars. “So tell me something,” he says, “why do you have a rug in the backseat?”

  “Simple,” I tell him. “Because it wouldn’t fit in the glove box.”

  When we’re out on the street again, merging into traffic that will take us out of the Financial District and up onto West Fort Street, I adjust the rearview mirror down until I can see the tasseled carpet rolled up and crammed in the back. It barely fits. It was not fun getting it in there, I can tell you that.

  “We’re alone. You can come out now.”

  With a haze of smoke and the smell of freshly cut flowers, Harry appears in the passenger seat next to me, grinning ear to ear, peering through the windshield like a little boy on the ride of his life.

  “Oh, I love riding in cars! I haven’t had much chance to do this. Most of my masters have kept me housebound. My last master did not even own an automobile but if I could, I would just ride for hours and hours and hours. The speed. The freedom! This might possibly be the finest invention of the modern age.”

  “Sure,” I half-heartedly agree. “Except the exhaust from all these cars is ruining the air and the fossil fuels we use to fill our tanks are polluting the environment. But yeah… I like to go fast, too.”

  I shift Roxy’s gears and switch lanes, driving more than just a little over the speed limit, risking that a State Police cruiser won’t notice me. In no time at all the exit I need is coming up and I’m cutting off a big rig and squealing my tires to take us back onto the surface streets.

  “Excellent! Excellent!” Harry cheers, clapping his huge hands together with glee. “Do it again!”

  “Harry, calm down. Put your seatbelt on.”

  He looks at me blankly until I pull at the strap of my own belt to demonstrate. He looks down at his seat and finds both ends of his own belt, holding them up uncertainly. “I have no idea how this contraption works.”

  “You buckle it together by clipping the two ends… you know what? Just forget it. I doubt you’ll get hurt if we crash anyway. You’ll just turn to smoke, right? No harm, no foul.”

  Rolling his heavy shoulders, he drops the seatbelt straps again. “Sometimes, Sidney Stone, I barely understand the words you say. Has English changed so much since I was last out of my carpet?”

  “This isn’t a joyride, Harry. You’re here to help me. That was the deal. I get you out of my apartment for the day, and you give me advice. So, advise me already.” At a stoplight I try to remember the quickest route to the address Barlow had given me, and then take a left. “Katarina is in that room on the second floor of this house where we’re going. Andrea will be there, keeping watch on her all the time without leaving. So how do I get in without, you know, shooting the place up?”

  “Hmm. Wouldn’t using your gun be a viable option? If you shoot Andrea Michaelson dead, then she will no longer be able to harm you or Katarina.”

  I grimace, focusing my eyes on the street. “Easier isn’t always right.”

  There was a time, just before I left the Marines, when I had been stationed in this little unheard-of town in Syria. Insurgents
had infiltrated the area and we had no idea who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. Everyone looked the same. Everyone smiled and offered us a kind word to our faces, but someone was shooting at us from windows, and passing cars, and from the trees. We couldn’t catch them, and two people from my squad were already dead. My Sergeant had ordered us to shoot first, ask questions later. Easier that way, he said.

  The results of that ‘easy’ order were now part of my nightmares. I wasn’t going to go down that road again.

  “I see,” Harry mutters, almost as if he could read my thoughts from my stony expression. “Then may I suggest calling for assistance? Perhaps this Christian Caine you speak so highly of?”

  There it was again. That note of jealousy that made no sense from a nearly all-powerful genie. “I would trust Chris with my life, any day. But like I told you, he’s in the hospital. I know a few other cops well enough that I could call them but by the time I explained what was going on it might be too late. Plus, any cop I call will have to tell their superiors what I’m asking for and they’ll call other people and by the time I get to the house there will be thirty cars and a helicopter in the air, and Andrea might just take that as reason enough to kill Katarina and herself, too. No. This has to stay quiet. I’ve gone into crazy situations by myself before. I’ll be careful.”

  I didn’t bother to add that I was not going to call Lieutenant Webb. As much as I trusted Christian Caine, I distrusted Webb that much more.

  Harry rubs a hand over his chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. Then I have only one other suggestion.”

  “Great. Let’s hear it.”

  “If you can’t shoot your way in, and you can’t barge your way in with the police, then you need to get yourself invited inside.”

  I stare back at him. That was a crazy idea. Absolutely insane.

  And… it was brilliant.

  “Harry,” I tell him, “when this is over you and I are going for the longest joyride you’ve ever had. You just earned it.”