Cast the First Stone

by David James Warren

  Burke glances at me when I do this, and frowns, but turns back to her.

  “Do you remember the people in the shop, anyone who might have looked out of place? Or was acting suspiciously?”

  Bombings are still rare in 1997. It’s been two years since the Oklahoma bombing, only a year since the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, and it’s the current thinking that bombings are personal, that the perpetrator has a political agenda against this particular store. But in the twenty years since, I know that they can be as unpredictable as the weather in Minnesota. People choosing random places to make a point.

  Of course, this is fourteen years before 9/11 and that was hardly random, so maybe things haven’t changed that much. And, my memory of two more bombings of coffee shops reminds me that there is a connection we never solved.

  Not the first time.

  Although, again, I don’t have a clue what is happening here. If it’s a dream, it feels painfully real. But like always, in every dream, I want to change things. And in the back of my mind, I’m hit with the crazy thought that if I can solve the crime, I might finally put a lid on my nightmares.

  It’s a long shot, but as dreams, or nightmares go, this is the mother lode, so it has to mean something.

  I’m not sure when I’ll wake up, but until I do, I have routines, habits, and a job that keeps me pinned to the moment.

  “I don’t know,” Laurie says. “I stood in line like everyone else, trying to understand the menu. I only just heard of this place. I visited a Starbucks in Seattle, and I thought…” She shook her head. “Why would someone blow up a coffee shop?”

  It hits me then that coffee mania is just beginning to hit the nation.

  “Okay, Mrs. Stoltenburg, we’ll call you if we have any further questions.” Burke is helping her to her feet.

  My gaze, of course, returns to Eve. She’s wearing her kinky, beautiful auburn hair down, the way I like it, and it looks like she’s let it air dry. I love her curls. It’s the one thing about her I always notice—how she wears her hair. Down, straightened, up, it has an allure to it I find fascinating.

  That, and her eyes, green, with crazy amber highlights and yeah, I’m being poetic, but let’s not forget I’m a writer, or trying to be. I’m supposed to notice those things.

  Let’s face it, everything about Eve can level me. Funny that only just last night we were talking about how we met. If I hadn’t slammed into Burke at the Cuppa, dousing him with the vanilla latte (he pulled out a clean shirt from the trunk of his car, of course), I would have repeated the past, the dream I can never seem to escape.

  Until now.

  In the standard version of my dream-slash-past, my coffee would have drenched her, she would have dropped her camera.

  And—oh crap—I would have had a reason to see her again, to show up in her office with an apology coffee and an offer to buy her a new camera.

  Instead, not only did I catch the camera, but I want to cringe at the words I now hear replaying in my brain. I forgot how beautiful you were—are.

  Shoot, why didn’t I keep my mouth closed? This is why I never really dated long term. Because I wear my heart on my sleeve and frankly, my words get me into trouble.

  Eve was the only one who could plow through my impulsiveness, my stupid words, to hear what I was really trying to say.

  Truth is, I do better with the written word. Until recently, apparently, if the blank pages on my laptop are any indication.

  The fire is out, and the guys in turnout gear are doing a walk-through, testing the place for hot spots. The EMTs and paramedics have triaged the victims and Eve and her crew are taping off the area for the evidence collection to begin.

  Eve shoots pictures, directs traffic. She doesn’t know it yet but she’s about to become a legend in our department for her ability to dissect and analyze the scene, to piece together the evidence, and aid me in solving crimes.

  We’re about to become a team that will last for the next ten years before we make it permanent.

  Burke has left me—I didn’t notice that—but now he’s walking back, holding the little notebook that he’ll soon replace with a tape recorder. And eventually, his smart phone. Burke is into technology that way.

  I try to put myself back in the game and scramble to say something halfway intelligent. “There’s a pretty big crowd here. Let’s make sure we talk to everybody.” Who knows but key witnesses might have slipped away last time.

  I talk like a man who is not caught in a dream, but the actual past. Like I’m not going to wake up any moment, a scream on my lips, my body covered in sweat.

  “I interviewed a man on a bicycle who was riding past,” Burke says. “He didn’t see anyone standing outside, watching the place. And I talked to the fire chief. He can’t be sure—they’ll get the arson guys out here, but he says the blast looks like it originated from inside the building, as opposed to one of these charred cars. I’ve got officers talking to other witnesses.”

  I know all this, but I nod, because I’m not sure if I’m supposed to let on that I know it. If it’s a dream, does it matter? Maybe I should simply mention that we need to track down the next location, camp out and wait.

  But for whom?

  Burke. He doesn’t seem any different than twenty years ago. Sure, he has hair now, but when it comes to investigations, he’s still the all-business, let’s-get-it-done guy who follows every rule, crosses every T.

  Me, I’m more of an instinct fella, and right now I’m scanning the crowd. Because I’ve always felt like the bomber was a voyeur—that he stuck around to watch his handiwork. In fact, there was evidence the bomb was on a clock, a situation that gave him time to find the perfect location.

  Eve is taking pictures of the crowd. That fact lodges in my brain and sticks there. I know she took pictures before, but the bombings happened so fast—three within forty-eight hours—we didn’t have them developed in time to use them. CSI barely had the evidence bagged from the first, only a few of the families notified when the second happened—tomorrow morning, early.

  I can’t remember exactly where. I know it’s in the Uptown area, but it’s not a Daily Grind.

  I’m wracking my brain for the place when I spot John Booker.

  The sight of him turns my mouth dry. He’s exactly how I remember. And he’s heading my direction.

  It’s always been my contention that Booker was born a century too late. He reminds me more of a gunslinger than a detective, the way he sizes up a man before he speaks. He doesn’t look like a cowboy, not dressed in his uniform; it’s more the sense of him, the aura of the long arm of the law reaching out to strangle the truth from you.

  He’s tall, solidly built, keeps a regular appointment with his barber for his graying brown hair, stands six foot four, and although no man has ever scared me, a stare from John Booker’s gray eyes comes close.

  He finds me and I am shaken with a strange rush of emotion. Wow, I miss him.

  “You’re lead on this, Rem.”

  This ancient, pivotal conversation is slowly coming back to me. I try and act surprised. “Why?”

  “Because you’re ready—you and Burke. Run your investigation by me and I’ll give you my input, but we gotta find whoever did this, and fast before the city freaks out.”

  Not to mention, stop the next one. I’m seriously debating adding that, but I’m not sure if that will emerge quite the way I intend it.

  I might get a look from John like I did from Eve. The one that suggests I didn’t make a stellar first impression.

  But, yes, this time, we’ll catch him. I make that promise to myself and, in an amended version, to John who nods and walks back to the horror.

  I take a breath, keenly aware that I’m back to the beginning.

  And this time, at least in my dreams, everything will be different.

  Chapter 7r />
  I can’t shake this eerie voodoo. It isn’t quite like déjà vu, but close enough, the hiccup inside that says you’ve said that, seen that, heard that, done that before. And you have, it’s just…

  I just burned my mouth on the bitter, too hot coffee.

  You don’t dream that, do you? The fatness of your tongue as it absorbs the heat?

  Or the way it burns my hand as I jerk back, the liquid sloshing over the edge of my Styrofoam cup.

  Burke looks over at me, frowns. We’re standing in the community room of the shiny new 3rd Precinct, with the bullet proof, floor to ceiling windows that overlook 31st Street. Our usual haunt, located downtown in the ancient City Hall building, is under renovation. Along one wall of the community room, I’ve pinned all the faces of the deceased, some of them already identified. Seven total. Two of them are men, who carried their identification with them. The rest are women. And one toddler. I grit my teeth.

  Melinda Jorgensen is the third picture in, on the top row. She hasn’t yet been named, and it’s a gut punch to see the word “unidentified” next to her picture. Down below, on the bottom is her towheaded son, and with everything inside me I want to unpin him, place him next to his mother.

  Weird, I know.

  Everything about this is weird, though, right? In the gathering crowd, I recognize faces, men I haven’t worked with in years. Including Jim Williams, the beat cop who I lost—will lose?—my job over in about seventeen years. And in the far corner, in the back, Inspector Danny Mulligan, who’s come over from downtown to help us sort this out.

  It’s exactly like seeing a ghost. Danny, Eve’s dad, along with her brother, Ash, were murdered just a few weeks after we met. A Fourth of July shooting that forever shut down that holiday for us. We never shoot off fireworks, never barbecue hot dogs.

  I caught Danny’s gaze on me today as I walked in, as if sizing me up. I don’t remember that from before, but maybe I’m not as shook up this time around.

  Or maybe I just know that all this chatter won’t matter. Not unless it leads to a perp in the next sixteen hours.

  We’ve interviewed twelve witnesses, just Burke and I, and I’ve outsourced the rest of the interviews to others in my department. None of the witnesses, so far, saw anything unusual, but this is before the if-you-see-something, say-something era, so no one is actually looking.

  Wow, we thought we were safe back then. Or now. Whatever.

  I’m standing off to the side, holding up a wall with my shoulder while the fire chief gives us an update. On the overhead is a diagram of the attack, and Dayton is drawing on the view film, indicating the preliminary scene reports.

  “The arson investigators will confirm, but we believe the blast came from inside the shop.” He points to the layout of the store. “Given the damage to the front of the store, the bomb was probably placed near the brewed coffee machines.”

  He draws a line across one side of the store. “There was a row of help-yourself coffee thermoses here, with overflow under the counter. The current theory is that one of those might have been a decoy.”

  “And housed the bomb?” Burke asks. “So, how did the bomber get it there?”

  “Could have been someone who works there,” says Danny from the back where he’s standing, his arms folded and hands tucked under his armpits. He’s radiating a sort of fury fed by the energy in the room. We’re all angry, and getting more so with every victim identification. “Maybe a disgruntled employee?”

  “We’re running down the backgrounds of all the current employees, but it would need to be someone who knew explosives, like a Gulf War veteran, perhaps?” Booker interjects this from his position near the windows.

  We tracked down every surviving employee over the course of the year after the final bombing—no one had the background that Booker is suggesting, but maybe we missed something, so I stay silent.

  However, I’m antsy, because none of this conversation hastens the suspicion that the bomber was on a timer. That he might have been nearby.

  We don’t know to look at the…photographs. The photographs Eve took. This time, we can get them developed.

  “This is taking too long,” I say under my breath to Burke. I dump my coffee in the trash bin and am pushing out the nearby door when I hear Burke stifle a word and fall in behind me.

  We’re out in the hallway when he grabs my arm. “Where are you going?”

  Because this is just a dream—a very rich, vivid dream, for sure, but a dream nonetheless, I say, “We’re running out of time. There’s another bomb out there, and we have to find it.”

  Burke’s mouth opens, and he stares at me like I’ve just told him the Vikings are going to win the Super Bowl.

  Burke drags me toward the men’s room. He pushes me inside, and I sort of bounce off the tile, rounding on him fast. “What’s your problem?”

  “What’s yours?” Burke says. “You’re running this investigation, but instead of helming it, it’s like your mind is somewhere else. And I’m starting to figure out where. Did you get a tip that you’re not sharing with the rest of us? About another bombing? Why are you keeping the rest of us in the dark? A toddler died, Rem. If you know something—”

  “Step back.” I give him a shove. “I don’t know anything.” Which, frankly, isn’t a lie. We just didn’t get that far into the investigation before the trail went cold, just like that, nothing else to go on.

  We have stop him this time, because I can’t wake up to another case gone frigid. “I just…I have a hunch, okay?”

  Burke’s eyes narrow.

  And that’s when I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

  You’ve gotta be kidding me.

  I’m staring at the twenty-eight-year-old version of myself.

  A very young, bright-eyed, and way-too-confident version, thanks to my New York Times bestseller run. My hair is shaggy and top-heavy, with a oh-so-90s lock over my face. I’m wearing a black suit jacket and a white shirt, but my tie—it’s wide, red and it has baseballs on it. Whose idea was this? Yeah, probably mine, but Burke is wearing a normal gray, striped number that I barely noticed.

  I rip off the tie and shove it in the trash, but the next thing I notice is…I have my body back. The one I spent way too much time honing.

  I liked this body.

  And, I very much like this dream.

  Especially the second chance I’m getting. I turn to Burke. “I just have a hunch that this is only the first bomb. And that maybe the bomber was in the crowd, watching.” I close my eyes for a second. “I need to talk to Eve.”

  Burke is frowning. I still can’t get over that hair. Or that stupid soul patch.

  “Eve?”

  “Eve Mulligan, the CSI at today’s scene? She was snapping pictures—”

  “The redhead? Danny Mulligan’s daughter?”

  Yeah, the redhead. And if Eve heard Burke call her that, he’d be so very dead.

  Burke is shaking his head. “You’d better stay away from that one, Rem.”

  I don’t know why, but a spurt of cockiness makes me say, “Naw. I’m going to marry her.” Well, it’s true, isn’t it?

  Burke stares at me like I’ve taken a hit too hard. “Right. Okay, Rem, whatever you say.”

  I push past him. Because I’ve just come up with a reason to see her. And a way to stop bombing number two. I’ll get the photos, go to the next scene and simply stake it out. Wait.

  Stop the carnage and get the bomber.

  Unless, of course, I wake up first.

  So, right now, I’m sloughing off the eerie voodoo of this dream and diving in, tasting the sweet sense of justice, of triumph.

  While I’m stopping the crime of the decade, maybe I’ll also take this body for a spin at the gym, one more time. Climb into the ring with Burke, now that I know his moves. I hide a smile, wishing on stars th
at whatever took me down and into this dream has me out for a long winter’s nap.

  “I’m going over to the crime lab to see if Eve has downloaded her pictures—”

  “Downloaded?”

  “Uh … developed. But first, I’m going back to the Cuppa. I need a white mocha with a berry shot.”

  “A what?”

  I try not to smile. “It’s coffee. Like an upgraded latte.” Oh, the nineties. “Don’t you watch Friends? Man, I forgot how sheltered you are. You need to live larger, dude.”

  “Hey—”

  I grin, because I’m seeing the Burke I knew, and our friendship is still intact, the sparring fun, the laughter easy. Back when he didn’t consider me a traitor.

  “Take a breath, Burke. I’ll text you if I find anything.”

  The frown is back on Burke’s face. Deeper this time.

  I push past him, unbuttoning the collar of my shirt at the neck as I leave the restroom.

  “I’m coming with you,” Burke says, on my heel.

  I turn, walking backwards. “Actually, you’re not. I need to talk to Eve alone. You go back in there. Tell Booker I’ve got a lead. And keep an eye on Danny Mulligan.”

  Burke stops in the middle of the hallway. “Stay away from her.”

  “Not a chance.” I turn back just in time to hit the door, and find myself outside, in the glaring hot sun. A couple of Rollerbladers skate by, along with a car pumping out Puff Daddy’s “Bad Boys for Life.”

  Funny how songs come back to you, as if they’d just been tucked away on a shelf.

  I head around back to the lot and stand in the middle of the pavement, searching.

  My car isn’t here. Sure, I rode in with Burke, in his Acura Integra, but I thought for sure I’d left the Porsche at the station.

  I turn, baffled and I see Burke come out. I ignore the fact that he’s ignored me, and say, “Where’s my 911?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “I hope, in the junkyard, where it belongs.”

  Huh? “It’s…” Not yet repaired. Because now I remember. At the time of the bombing, I’d parked the car in my father’s garage, on his hobby farm out in Waconia, because I live in a one bedroom apartment four blocks off the lake, in a three-story walk up brownstone on Holmes.