Cast the First Stone

by David James Warren

  “I’m still around.” He slams his massive paw into the bag, a thud, a through-shot that could break ribs. “Where are you?”

  I’m waiting for the uppercut, how’s the book going, but Burke has mercy and gives it to me square, “You should have never left. Booker—”

  “John Booker made me leave.”

  “Your fear made you leave.”

  Oh. I’ve changed my mind. I want back in the ring.

  Burke never raises his voice. Ever. It’s freaky, but he actually gets quieter and that’s when you have to worry. Now, he’s just about whispering and frankly, if I had sense, my blood would run cold.

  “And your pride kept you from coming back.”

  I knew he was angry, but maybe I should stand back.

  “A cop died that day.” I put my hand on the bag, push it back to him. “I had a four-year-old daughter.”

  “Don’t give me that, Rem. You haven’t been afraid a day in your life. Then suddenly, you turn in your badge, and it’s over?”

  Yeah, well, maybe. But that day, three years ago when I saw Jimmy Williams shot in the head, I was afraid in a way I had never considered.

  It could have been me, easily, my blood spilled in the middle of Franklin Avenue.

  Burke grabs the bag, coming in close for body shots. I wonder if he wishes it was me.

  We’ve had a few go-rounds, Burke and I. That’s what happens when you’re partners for twenty years. Most of them happened in the early, hot-head, daring rookie days.

  A few, later. More consequential. The kind of fights that actually hurt. But mostly we took it to the ring, left a few bruises but stayed friends.

  Now, I see that maybe he pulled his punches back then.

  “You left because you couldn’t stand not being in charge. Booker told you to step back, take leave, but—”

  “A cop got killed on my watch. My investigation, my collar. My responsibility.”

  Burke catches the bag. “Our investigation. Our responsibility.”

  I say nothing. The place has filled up, a few more familiar faces and I cut my voice as low as Burke’s. “I couldn’t sit out for three months while IA investigated a clean shooting. The shooter’s partner was still out there, and I wasn’t going to—”

  “Trust me? Because I had your back, Rem. And you should have remembered that before you threw away a twenty-year partnership to write a damn book!”

  I’m just staring at him because he’s shouting. Every head swivels our direction.

  We’re breathing hard, and for a second, I glimpse the past in his eyes. Army brat, son of an angry father. Burke never had anybody but me to call family.

  That winds me down, makes me catch my breath. “Of course I trust you.”

  “Not enough.” Burke pushes off the bag and starts tugging at the gloves, one clamped between his legs. “Not like I trusted you.”

  I feel that hit. I don’t help him with his gloves and he doesn’t look at me.

  He finally works them off, throws them in the bin. Turns. He’s found himself again, his voice back to its even keel. “Listen. Those cold cases haunt me as much as they do you. Come back, and let’s solve them together.”

  His eyes are nearly black as they bore into me. Then he turns and heads over to the sparring ring to watch a couple rookies pummel each other.

  I take my shower cold, towel off and head home, still wired.

  Eve is in the kitchen, plating some fried chicken she picked up at a fast-food joint. She glances over her shoulder, frowns. “You went to work out?”

  I nod, and don’t mention that I actually spent the day chasing an impulse. “With Burke.”

  She sucks in a breath, nods. “Well, he’s got a good reason to be at the gym today.”

  I’m not sure to what she’s referring except the reason buzzing in my head, and I don’t want to talk about it so I head upstairs to drop my gear.

  Ashley is playing in her room with her birthday loot from her grandparents, a horse set reminiscent of all the promises I made her to buy her a pony. Someday. I sit down on her floor, in the middle of the pink carpet. “Hey baby, how was your day?”

  She gallops a horse up my leg. “Good. But I miss Gomer. Have you found him yet?”

  Perfect. “Not yet.”

  “But you will, Daddy.” She smiles at me, her blue eyes bright and shiny.

  “Yeah, I will.” I kiss her cheek and pry myself off the floor. I’m doing a cursory search of the laundry room, just in case, when Eve calls us downstairs.

  She’s crafty, that Eve. She’s dished up the entire meal—chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans—as if it might be homemade, and set it on the table. It’s important to her to eat like her family did, all six of them at 6 p.m. sharp. Her mother is old school—vegetables, bread, starches, pot roast—it can make Eve a little crazy to try and keep up.

  She does well enough for my tastes. I don’t remember a home cooked meal beyond the age of twelve.

  We sit and Eve makes us pray—it’s the Lutheran in her—and we dive in.

  She’s silent, lost in her thoughts as she flattens her mashed potatoes.

  “What?” Instincts.

  She glances at Ashley, gnawing on her chicken leg. “It’s nothing.”

  Oh. It’s that kind of case.

  I turn to Ashley, our talker. She can fill all the gaps between us and she tells me a story about her day that involves something on the playground I probably should be paying attention to, but my gaze is on Eve. And the way she just keeps pounding those mashed potatoes.

  Her deep sighs.

  The catch of her lower lip between her teeth when she thinks I’m not looking.

  Every once in a while, she looks up and feigns a smile.

  Something terrible happened.

  “Can I be excused?” Little Miss Manners asks and I nearly shoo her away.

  Eve has reason to look worried the moment Ashley leaves.

  “What is it, babe?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Eve—”

  “No, it’s…” She sighs again and shakes her head. “It’s not good timing.”

  I frown.

  “Another teenager was gunned down today, in the Phillips neighborhood.”

  Oh no. When she meets my eyes, I see compassion. Okay, so the timing sucks and the Somali brotherhood was getting bolder by the day. “How old?”

  “Fourteen.”

  I bite back a swear word because Eve has rules, but yeah, there’s a darkness that stirs inside me when a kid gets killed.

  She runs her hands down her face. “That’s the third girl in three weeks.”

  I knew that, but hearing it from Eve, the fatigue in her voice, sets a fire deep inside.

  Come back, and let’s solve them together.

  “Listen, Batman, you’re off watch. I can handle it.” Eve says as she gets up. “I’m going for a run. Make sure Ash doesn’t watch any television. I don’t want her seeing the news.”

  I carry my plate to the sink, run water. Dots bead up around the temporary patch I made in the seal around the faucet.

  Ashley is sprawled on the sofa, playing some pony video game so I head into my office and sit down at the computer. What kind of idiot promises his agent he’ll have something decent in five days?

  I pull out the watch, still in my jeans and set it on the desk, then open the screen, and stare at the words.

  Nothing.

  Eve’s footfalls land on the stairs and I hear the front door opening.

  “Be careful!” I say, but it closes before I finish. It’s daylight, the sun up for at least another hour. And, if I know Eve, she has her phone, her pepper spray and like I said, she grew up with brothers. She knows how to handle herself.

  Still, I watch her through m
y window, her lithe body running down the sidewalk until she disappears from view. Turning back to the computer, my gaze falls on the file box, the lid askew.

  Even if I can’t go back and solve the cases, maybe they can give me writing inspiration. Yeah, I know, but desperate men reach for desperate options.

  Mine includes opening up the bottom drawer of my desk and pulling out the mostly full bottle of Macallan twenty-one-year-old fine oak single malt whiskey.

  Don’t judge me. The bottle’s been here for three years, and it’s only four fingers down. I empty another finger into a high ball and shoot it down.

  Not a hint of muse stirs inside me so I go over to the file box, paw through the files and find the first one. The coffee shop bombings.

  Bring the file back over to my desk. Open it. There, on the front page is my typed summary of the first bombing.

  7:06 a.m., Monday morning, at a Daily Grind. Seven lives lost. The store was located just off Franklin Avenue, over the highway from the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.

  The first case John mentored me on. I’d forgotten that, how he showed up on the scene and assigned the case directly to me, a young Inspector.

  The memory makes me reach over and pick up the watch. I put it on, adjusting the band to fit, and it’s oddly warm, as if he just took it off. The fit is right, though, settling in to the groove between my hand and my wrist bone.

  Too bad it doesn’t work. Almost on impulse, I reach over and twist the dial, like I’d seen John do countless times.

  It ticks. Just a heartbeat, soft, as if coming to life. I press it to my ear.

  Another tick.

  I stare at it, and the second hand moves.

  Tick.

  Weirdly, the other hands begin to spin. As if possessed of their own power, they turn, counterclockwise, winding backwards in time.

  The hour hand settles on seven.

  The minute hand lodges just beyond the five.

  7:06.

  In the distance, an engine roars. I look up, searching for the sound as it grows, sweeps over the room. It’s darkening as if a storm cloud has moved in, and as if in evidence, thunder rolls.

  I get up and move toward the door. “Ashley!”

  I’m not sure what I trip on, but the floor rushes up at me. Something beyond me shatters. Instinctively, I want to duck, but I don’t know where the sound issues from. “Ashley—!”

  Then it all vanishes. The sound, the darkness, the engine—a hiccup of utter silence, of white, as if I’ve blinked, except my eyes are open.

  I’m standing in a cafe. No, a coffee shop—the deep, earthy scent of freshly ground beans, the churning sound of the grinder, and conversation rising all around me.

  I can’t place it, but in my bones I know this place. It’s an eclectic shop, with a tin ceiling, vintage couches, a brick wall with a graffiti menu, and giant hanging chandeliers.

  Eve buys her coffee here. I know this in my gut, and the name of the place is starting to form in my disbelieving brain. The Cuppa…

  “Sheesh, Rem. Give the ladies a break.”

  I spin at the voice. Too fast, because the coffee I now realize I’m holding in my hands slams right into—

  Oh God, what is happening? Because I’ve just doused Andrew Burke with some version of a latte, given the color soiling his shirt.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Burke says and I can’t get my eyes off him because he has hair. And he’s slimmer, by about twenty pounds, wiry, and wearing a hint of a soul patch, a dusting of black fuzz.

  I mocked it until he shaved it off.

  Now it’s like a tether, reeling me in.

  I scrape up words, anything that might sound coherent when the radio at his belt crackles and a voice scratches through the line.

  I don’t catch it all, but one code sears into my brain.

  10-80.

  Explosion.

  Just off Franklin.

  It’s only when Burke grabs my jacket—I’m wearing a freakin’ suit—and pulls me toward the door that the recognition locks in.

  I’m in 1997, and somehow my nightmares have found me.

  Chapter 5

  Eve Mulligan did not want to live in a war zone one more minute. The chaos of remodeling—the current casualty being the plumbing—just might drive her to murder.

  Or at least bodily harm, directed at her younger brother.

  “Sams! Turn the flippin’ water back on!”

  Eve fumbled for the towel, her hand snaking outside the flimsy curtain of her claw-foot tub, suds running into her eyes. She found the towel, grabbed it and shoved it into her face, cleaning out the soap, then turned to fiddle with the faucets. Yes, full on, but not a drip of water from the overhead spigot. “Samson Mulligan, turn on my water!”

  She nearly fell out of the tub, grabbed her robe and tied her hair up before flinging the door open. Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass transom, casting light down into the upstairs bedroom of her story-and-a-half bungalow. The sound of a saw rumbled up from the kitchen. The dust and the odor of plumber’s glue, not to mention freshly stained wood, could turn her woozy.

  Her feet ground into the sawdust despite her recent sweep of the stairs, and she barreled down, one hand holding her towel and barged into the kitchen to find—oh no. Not her brother Samson bent over his workbench but an unknown plumber, crack and all, leaning over a piece of plastic piping.

  A stranger.

  In her house.

  At 6-freaking-o’clock in the morning.

  Her father would have a coronary. And right about now, he might agree with her decision to get a conceal and carry. After all, just because she worked CSI didn’t mean she wasn’t a cop.

  The plumber stood up, eyes wide as he took her in—fluffy bathrobe, her hair dripping water down her neck. And not a hot plumber, either, although that might not have changed her indignation. This guy looked about fifty and nursed a beer paunch.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Your brother sent me. Told me to get working on your kitchen plumbing…”

  Nice. Now she would have to murder her brother. And she wouldn’t escape because they’d easily pin motive on her.

  She turned, ignored the debris of her unfinished living room, and took the stairs two at a time. Twenty minutes later, she pulled into her parents’ driveway. Samson’s construction truck took up most of the space.

  She took a breath. Tried to remember he was helping. Giving her a cut rate.

  And inviting strange men into her home at ungodly hours.

  Eve got out and headed toward the door, glancing at her watch. Not late yet, but she was cutting it close for her first day on the job in her new precinct. But a girl couldn’t let life bully her—especially if it came in the form of her kid brother-slash-kitchen remodeler.

  However, one step inside would rope her into breakfast, including a bright-lights-third degree interrogation about the new job. And promises to attend the annual Fourth of July barbecue.

  Maybe she didn’t—aw, she also had the tile issue…

  The crunch of tires in the drive told her she’d hesitated too long for escape.

  She turned and lifted her hand to her father, just climbing out of his truck. At least he hadn’t driven the cruiser home—not anymore. The fact that he’d parked his patrol car in their suburban driveway her entire high school career had pretty much terrified and run-off every male who’d shown even the slightest interest in her. Even now, she might have to move across the country to get a date without her father doing a background check.

  Frankly, even across the country, her father knew the right strings to pull. Deputy Police Inspector Danny Mulligan, twenty plus years on the job, head of the department of Violent Crimes Investigation for the city of Minneapolis knew everybody. Decorated, accommodated—he’d
even made the papers more than a few times.

  It made it difficult for a girl to slide out from under his massive shadow. His legacy had followed her right into her recent job opportunity, working for one of her father’s best friends.

  Chief John Booker, commander of the 5th Precinct.

  And with everything inside her, she didn’t want to let Booker—or her father—down.

  “How’s my Evie Bear,” her father said, holding his arms open. At six foot, her father wasn’t physically big, but he had a presence, a confidence that filled up the room. His auburn hair thinned on top, but at fifty-eight he was still lean, broad-shouldered and in shape. Nobody messed with Danny Mulligan.

  “Dad, I’m twenty-six, I have a master’s degree and I own my own home. It’s just plain Eve.”

  “Not to me.” He hopped up on the steps and pulled her into an embrace. “But I’ll keep it Eve on the job.”

  “Dad—” She leaned away.

  He grinned, his pale hazel-green eyes shiny with pride. “I was talking to Booker—he said you were one of his favorite crime scene rats. Can’t wait to have you work for him”

  “I’m a full Crime Scene Investigator now, not a rat. I’m leaving the bagging of evidence to Silas.”

  Her father opened the door, shooing her inside. “When are you going to date that young man? He’s got a clean record—I’ve done my homework.”

  She shook her head. “He’s just a friend, Dad. It would be like dating my brother.”

  “Evie!” Her mother came from the kitchen, wearing an apron, a pair of jeans, her dark red hair tumbling out from a headband. “I was hoping you’d stop by!” She kissed her daughter, then headed for Dad, who pulled her close. “Thank God, you’re home.”

  Her father kissed her forehead. “Always, Bets.”

  Eve stepped away, into the kitchen. A year ago, her mother had declared war on the wall between the kitchen and their family room in the 1920s farmhouse—one of the original homesteads on Lake Minnetonka—and taken a sledge to the wall. To which her father and younger brother, Samson, finished demolishing, then took out the entire kitchen for a remodel.

  Now, Eve grabbed a mug from the cupboard, poured herself a cup of coffee, black, then turned and stole a muffin from the plate on the long island that overlooked the family room and dining area. She paused, gazing through the massive wall of windows to the rippling blue of Lake Minnetonka. A beautiful morning, uncluttered by clouds. Not a hint of trouble on the horizon.