Cast the First Stone

by David James Warren

  I slide back into the Camaro, take a sip and nearly spill my macchiato down my shirt when knuckles rap on my passenger side window.

  Burke.

  I reach over and unlock the door and he folds himself inside.

  “No luck with Ramses?”

  He shakes his head, eying my coffee. “What are we doing here?”

  “I have a hunch.”

  “Perfect.” He closes his eyes, as if in pain.

  I take another sip.

  The street is coming alive. Another bicycler, and a car parks in front of the florist. A bus pulls up, coughs and eases to the curb at the end of the street. The neon light in the cafe flickers on and the sign is turned over.

  Burke sighs, rubbing his finger and thumb into his eyes. “I need some coffee—Rem…There he is.”

  I would have spotted him, given another second. He’s gotten off the bus and stands at the stop, waiting to cross the road. Ramses is a handsome, unassuming bomber, wearing a gray T-shirt, a pair of jeans, tennis shoes. Brown hair, a hint of a beard, just a guy stopping in for coffee.

  Burke reaches for the door handle.

  “Wait. Let’s see if he’s carrying anything.”

  He is. A satchel over his shoulder. It bumps against his leg as he looks both ways, then treks across the street.

  I set my coffee down. “Let’s get him.”

  Burke is already out of the car, and I admit to a silent huzzah that he believes me. Because why else would Ramses be here?

  I follow Burke out and we scuttle across the street, not wanting to alert Ramses before we can get close enough to grab him.

  But also not wanting whatever is in that satchel to go boom.

  Ramses is just about to reach the door when Burke calls his name.

  There’s a moment, a hiccup, when Ramses turns on instinct, when he sees Burke, then me, advancing on him.

  He hesitates. I can almost read his mind.

  It’s over.

  Or, he could die a martyr for his cause.

  In a second he’s swung the door open and disappears inside. I take off in a sprint, a plan forming. “Burke! Evacuate the coffee shop. I’m going around the back!”

  I angle toward the alley, shooting past the door, but in a blinding second of terrible luck, it slams open.

  I plow into the bicycler, and we sprawl together hard on the pavement.

  “Hey!” he growls.

  I glare at him and untangle myself, hoofing it around back.

  I hear Burke, now inside the shop, yelling. Please, God, don’t let Ramses pull a trigger.

  I’ll come in from behind and trap him.

  I find the back door propped open. I sneak inside, picking my way past shelves of supplies—cups, napkins, sweeteners, bags of Good Earth coffee.

  When I emerge, it’s behind the counter and I spot Burke standing in front of Ramses, hands up, talking in low tones.

  Ramses has—you’ve got to be kidding me—a gun. He’s got Katia by the arm and holds his weapon against her head.

  Burke is staying back, but I know he sees me.

  And I smile.

  Because I know exactly what to do, and I’m hoping, praying even, that Burke knows it too.

  An imperceptible nod.

  I move behind Ramses.

  It happens in synchronicity, almost like a dance. But that’s how we are, Burke and I. Partners. Brothers. We’ve always been able to read each other’s minds.

  He dives at Katia, tackling her away from the gun as I simultaneously grab Ramses and slam him onto the floor.

  I haven’t forgotten yesterday, the fact that he’s big, wiry, and athletic. But don’t forget I have that twenty-eight-year-old body.

  I’m also big, wiry, and athletic.

  We land together, and he elbows me, but I’m quicker. I dodge the attack, get a knee in his back and grab for his hand, hoping for a submission hold.

  Not in time. He rolls, knees me and lands a blow in my gut. But I shake it off, and hit him with everything I have inside me. My fist meets his face and pain shudders through both of us.

  He howls out a curse and grabs me around the neck, pulling me down.

  But my fists are free and I land two solid shots in his ribs. He grunts.

  I don’t stop.

  I know I should, but he’s still holding me down, still writhing and I have twenty-four years of fury roiling through me. I reach for his free hand, but it’s grappling for something between us.

  “Rem!”

  Burke’s shout coincides with a blinding flash of pain in my side.

  Ramses has gotten his hands on a knife and speared it into my side.

  The pain takes me apart, blinds me, and I suck wind.

  He pushes me off. But I still have hold of his satchel and heaven help me, I’m not letting go.

  Then there’s Burke. Where he’s been all this time, I don’t know, but as I grip the satchel with everything inside me, he trips Ramses, lands on his exposed back and gets him into that hold I longed for.

  And I’m bleeding like a freakin’ stuck pig.

  I still have a hand on the satchel and I drag it off him, scoot back to the wall, forgetting for a second my wound as I scrabble for a look inside.

  For once, I’m glad to be right. Inside is a metal cylinder, like a thermos, and my guess is it doesn’t hold coffee.

  My look of relief must transmit to Burke because he smiles as he begins to cuff Ramses.

  “I told you to trust me,” I mumble, but my voice is strained. I just need to lay down.

  “Call 911!” he shouts to Katia and moves to catch me. “Rem, stay with me—”

  The room spins and as I crumple to the floor, strange ringing sounds echo through the shop, almost like an alarm. Or, maybe sirens.

  A loud wind bullies the room and finds my bones, thundering through me. Drowning me. Time, spinning up. I close my eyes, letting it take me.

  Then everything around me shatters, and I’m falling.

  Voices sound a short distance away, but muffled, and when I open my eyes, I half expect to see paramedics, or even the glare of an ER.

  It takes me a long moment—blinking into the fading sunlight cascading across a desk, leather chair and credenza—to realize I’m back. In my office.

  Back to the life I worried I might never return to.

  I’m still clutching my side, and now sit up, expecting the pain to tentacle around me, cut off my breathing, blind me.

  But it’s vanished. I’m fine.

  Not sitting in a pool of my own blood.

  Not holding a satchel that contains a thermos filled with ammonium nitrate, fuel oil, and antimony sulfide.

  Not watching Burke cuff Ramses Vega, the Coffee Shop Bomber.

  My legs shake as I climb to my feet, my entire body trembling with the force of the dream. It had to be a dream, right? My empty whiskey glass sits beside my keyboard and I pick it up.

  Smell it.

  I don’t feel drugged.

  On the contrary, every nerve is lit, the layers of my subconscious alive and vivid in my mind.

  I remember the smell of the night seeping into the Camaro, the salty taste of Eve’s skin, the burn of Ramses’s fist in my gut, the explosion of my knuckles against his face. I can describe in detail my old apartment, along with Eve’s, and the expression on Booker’s face as he watched the second bombing. I even remember Laurie Stoltenberg, the witness from the first bombing.

  Rich, vivid details to an event that feels as if it happened yesterday.

  The kind of details that belong in my book.

  My muse is back with a fist pump, and it’s lit my brain with what-ifs and twists.

  An ending that just might work.

  Voices draw me to the door, and I open it, listening.r />
  The television. I picture Ashley, curled up on the sofa, where I left her, playing a video game, or maybe now she’s watching one of her kids’ shows. I debate going to her, pulling her into an embrace, but I know it’ll lead to tickles and my hunkering down with her to watch something animated and I’ll forget the muse for something richer.

  I have a deadline, promises to keep.

  I softly close my door.

  I don’t hear any of Eve’s footsteps creaking across our bedroom above me which means she’s probably out on her run. I check my watch.

  Booker’s watch. The hands are unmoving, stuck at three and seven, like before. I fiddle with the dial, but they remain lifeless.

  Maybe it was all a dream.

  My screen saver is spinning, so I return to my desk. I cap the whiskey bottle and shove it back into the drawer.

  Powerful stuff, that Macallan.

  Then, I pull up my manuscript.

  The cursor is blinking, taunting.

  But the muse is mine, and I’m right beside her as long as she wants to run.

  ***

  Butcher found Gabby leaning over her microscope, her eye pressed to the lens, a dozen slides lined up beside her.

  “Any luck?”

  “You’d better have coffee when you slink in this late,” she said, not looking up.

  “Why aren’t you at home?” He didn’t mean his tone. It just wasn’t always easy to keep his thoughts straight around Gabby. She wore her dark hair back in a ponytail, no makeup. Still captivating despite her shapeless medical garb.

  “I found something.” She got up and went over to a table of twisted black wiring, plastic and other bomb debris, all labeled.

  “The bomb was on a timer. I found the remnants of an alarm clock. It’s a simple design, but effective.”

  Butcher took it apart. “He planted it, then walked away to watch.”

  “Mmmhmm.” She leaned a hip against the table. “So why do you think he watched?”

  “A bombing is a particular kind of crime. It’s not easy, building a bomb, and a bomber is a meticulous kind of person. He’d want to make sure it went off.”

  Butcher wished he’d brought her coffee now, because he liked the way her face lit up when he did. If he played his cards right, they could work all night.

  “It gives them a sense of power,” she said, riffing off his theory.

  “Even vengeance. It satiates the frustration boiling up inside.”

  “What if it’s all of the above?” Gabby said. “What if he’s both meticulous and has an agenda? What if this is about changing the world, making it fit what he wants?”

  “And he does this by destroying the thing he hates and starting over?”

  “A clean slate,” Gabby said. “He rebuilds the world as he sees it.”

  “Without the mistakes that were made the first time.”

  “Isn’t that what 9/11 was about? Wanting to remake the world, starting with vengeance, then a takeover of the world with radical ideology?”

  I sit back, hands behind my head, eyes sweeping the ceiling.

  Yeah, Ramses might have stuck around for vengeance, but Eve’s words—probably my subconscious, let’s face it—linger with me. “I was thinking about the coffee shop bombing, and I was wondering how Ramses or Gustavo might know how to build a bomb. What if they had an accomplice?’”

  It’s an interesting thought—one I’ll talk to Eve about in the morning.

  I like where the muse is taking me. The idea of rewriting the world, starting over—it feels like my story has a new beginning, this time with an ending I can live with.

  And Butcher and Gabby are headed out for a long-awaited dinner.

  Chapter 19

  My muse is a fickle lover. When she’s on, she’s heat and fire and lightning in a silo and she infuses my body with a sort of ethereal creative power that takes over, rules and defies time.

  I’m cast into my story for hours. Lost. The words pouring forth in a creative rush, a frenzy of insight, inspiration, and prose. I feel like I’m in the center of the universe, the exact place I’m supposed to be.

  When she is done with me, I’m wrung out and wasted, yet the taste of her leaves me longing for more. But she will not be cajoled, and I know when I’m spent.

  The night has waxed into dawn, the finest string of rose gold creeping into my den. I am stiff, and when I rise, I groan.

  I love being a writer, the triumph of finishing something that is at once raw and brilliant, almost more satisfying than the thumping gavel of justice. At least with a book, I can write the ending I want; an ending we all want.

  This time.

  My muse has given me her best. My imagination takes a quick jog and I let the thought settle. I just might have a bestseller on my hands.

  When I get up and pad to the door of my office, I notice the voices are gone, but light pulses from the family room. I wander in and see the television has gone to sleep, just the screen saver scrolling up the latest news. Eve forgot to turn off the volume, however, and when I click off the power, the buzz of the late night station vanishes.

  I’m tired, but my body hums with the still too vivid memories so maybe I just need a hot shower.

  And Eve. But I don’t want to wake her at 5 a.m. Too early. There’ll be time to tell her everything later.

  The den used to be a guest room, and the bathroom off the entry is equipped with a shower. I heat it up, get in and stand under the spray, my arms braced against the wall.

  Images assault me. Burke, young and with hair, that stupid soul patch.

  Asher, and his Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, it’s your funeral. Clearly my imagination is conjuring him up to play a role in my subconscious.

  There’s Danny Mulligan and his warning. Maybe a remnant sliver of guilt. I did, technically, get her into trouble.

  My mother’s voice, fresh and bright and unslurred on the phone.

  Happy Birthday, Dad.

  Finally, John Booker. Alive, believing in me.

  All pieces of my past, shattered, remade. My subconscious crafting a happy ending.

  I soap up, rinse off and when I close my eyes, Ramses is there, his knife slicing into my kidneys.

  My hand finds its way to where the wound was in the dream, as if it might be real.

  I touch a rumple of flesh, and jerk.

  What?

  No. Not possible.

  I twist my body to see it, but it’s behind me, just above my hip. My hand seeks it again, and yes, something is there. A ridge of flesh, puckered up, but smooth.

  Turning off the water, I step out into the humid, steamy air. Take a towel, wipe the sodden mirror and turn around, looking over my shoulder.

  I just stare, my brain looping round and round, trying to make sense out of the scar. It’s three inches wide, running at an angle from my hip into my back, thick and jagged and old. Nearly faded, reddened only by the spray of the shower.

  Definitely a wound that could have been made by Ramses’ dagger thrust just above my kidney.

  My pulse has found my throat.

  I grab a towel and wrap it around my waist and take the stairs fast. Ashley’s door is closed, and I head straight for my bedroom.

  I know Eve is asleep, but how can I not have a memory of being stabbed?

  The bed is dark, just a form huddled along her side, Eve, as usual, wrapped up like a burrito. I tiptoe in and sit down on the edge. Put a hand on her shoulder. “Honey? Wake up.”

  My hand sinks into the body-sized wad and it takes only a second to realize that these are pillows, mounded up, as if pushed into a row.

  I flick on the light.

  On my side of the bed, the pillow is sunken, the sheets a wreck. As if I’ve torn them out, tossing and turning.

  I’ve shoved the pillows
to Eve’s side of the bed.

  “Eve?”

  No answer.

  The bathroom door is shut. I look for the thin strip of light that should be showing at the bottom of the door. Dark.

  Where is she?

  I grab a pair of jeans and get partially dressed, foregoing a shirt, and barrel downstairs, expecting to see her in the kitchen, maybe huddled up with a cup of coffee. She does that when she’s brooding over a case, and I remember last night how she left the house for a run, restless and perturbed over a missing teenager.

  But the kitchen is empty.

  I stand at the window, staring out at the backyard.

  It takes me a bit, but what I’m seeing—or not seeing—is dawning on me.

  The swing set I spent last weekend building for Ashley is gone. Vanished.

  Just grass, wild and unkempt, needing a mow.

  Huh?

  Behind me, a clock chimes. 6 a.m.

  Eve has to be out for a run. I think this even as my brain shouts outs an unintelligible answer. Like my dream, I look around for it, as if the answer might materialize.

  The doorbell rings, and my heart restarts.

  It’s Eve, and she’s forgotten her keys.

  I open the door and a rush of relief swills through me at the sight of Eve standing on the stoop. Except she’s not wearing her running gear but a pair of dress pants, a crisp white shirt and she’s carrying her satchel over her shoulder. Her beautiful hair is pulled back, tight, and her eyes hold age, stress, and not a little weariness.

  The image of the younger Eve flashes through my mind. Bright, her hair down and flowing through my fingers. “Did you go back to work?” I ask and shift to my right to let her come inside. “Why didn’t you text me?”

  A car door slams and beyond her Silas is coming up the walk.

  He has a scowl on his face, but I’ve secretly always thought that Silas wanted to kill me and bury me in a dumpster. What’s strange, however, is that usually he hides it.

  “Are you working from home today?” She isn’t coming in.

  “Stop it, Rem,” she says, and her tone could peel skin.

  Huh? I make the sound and she sighs.