Cast the First Stone

by David James Warren

  “You can’t keep dodging me. Grow up. I shouldn’t have to ambush you to get you to accept these.” While she’s talking, she’s dug out a manila envelope. She hands it to me. “Take them.”

  I admit that because of the way she says this, I’m slow to reach out and take the envelope. But I do, because she’s Eve and I’ll do just about anything she asks. I look at her and she glances away.

  Her eyes glisten.

  Silas stands behind her, glares at me, and I have the strangest sense he’s here to protect her.

  Ignoring the urge to put a hand to his chest, push hard and drag Eve off the stoop and into the house for a private chat, I open the envelope. My breath leaks out as I read the header.

  “Divorce papers? What the hell, Eve?”

  She wipes her hand across her cheek. “It’s time, Rem, and you know it. I’m tired of waiting for you to get better, to snap out of it. We’re both hurting, but you—I can’t watch you destroy yourself.”

  Her words are like fists, each one slamming into me. “What are you talking about?”

  “This.” Her jaw tightens as she waves her hand at me. “The fact you won’t admit you have a problem.” She shakes her head. “I can smell the whiskey on your breath, Rem.”

  “That was hours ago.” I’m not sure why, but I’m so desperate to find the Eve I know inside all that anger that I say, “I think I finished my novel. And it’s good—really good.”

  She wears a strange expression, then her face crumbles and she presses her hand to her mouth, turning away.

  “What?”

  Silas moves a few inches closer to Eve. “Do you work at being the jerk of the century, Rembrandt? Or does is just come naturally? Please. Stop dreaming and start living in the world you created.”

  He puts a protective arm around Eve, my Eve.

  I stand there, feet nailed to the cold entry way floor, bare chested and wet, the world spinning off its axis.

  Especially when Eve looks up at me. “Just sign the papers, Rem, and let me go. Let Ashley go. It’s over.”

  Ashley. The name rushes through me like wildfire. “Let her go? What are you talking about?”

  I’m about ready to turn and sprint up the stairs to Ashley’s bedroom when Eve gives me such a horrid, broken look I freeze. She draws in a breath and for a second, looks like she might slap me, venom in her eyes.

  “I really hate you, Rembrandt Stone.”

  My jaw tightens, my throat raw. “Hate me all you want, but you’re not taking my daughter away from me—”

  “You’re sick.”

  “Where is she, Eve?” My voice is louder than I want it to be, but fear is sneaking up from my gut and I can’t help it.

  “She’s dead, Rem. She’s dead, and you can’t bring her back. So wake up!”

  Her words sear through me.

  No. No— “What are you talking about?”

  She shakes her head, turns away.

  “Rembrandt,” Silas says, and his voice is oddly soft, as if I might be a hostage taker and he the friendly negotiator. “Ashley’s murder was two years ago now. It’s time to let go. I’m sorry.”

  My mouth opens, but nothing emerges. The urge to hurt him is gone, leaving me with nothing at all.

  “Sign the papers,” Eve says softly, tears cutting down her face. Behind her grief, I see the Eve I know, the Eve who has gone missing, the Eve I left behind last night. Strong, beautiful Eve who loves me, believes in me. Who sees exactly what this impossible news has done to me.

  I stand there, mute, as Silas turns her, his arm curling around her shoulders, and walks her down our front steps. Helps her into the car. Drives her away from our home. Our family. Our life.

  Taking the answers with her.

  I back away from the door, glance at the envelope, then drop it onto the floor.

  I take the stairs two at time.

  I stop at Ashley’s door, my hand on the knob, and close my eyes. Please, no.

  My breath shudders as I swing the door in.

  The shade is pulled, but the morning light cascades into an empty room. No wrapping paper from yesterday’s gifts. No ponies cast about on the floor. Her stuffed animals are piled up on her bed, as if wondering, too, what happened.

  My gaze falls on a teddy bear. Black, with a white star on its chest, the fur not yet rubbed off, the eye still intact.

  Gomer.

  My knees buckle and I crawl to the bed, yank it from the pile. Press it to my face.

  No. No…no…

  I’m shaking now, the world coming at me in splinters.

  The wound.

  The missing swing set.

  My empty bed.

  Eve on the porch with Silas.

  And, on my daughter’s shelf, a picture of my mother and father, grinning in a cruise line photo frame. They look happy, not a hint of my mother’s stroke in her eyes, her smile.

  She’s dead, and you can’t bring her back.

  No.

  I close my eyes and cling to the only fragment of all of this that makes any sense.

  The only thing that offers the slimmest filament of hope.

  Oh, God, please.

  Let the watch work.

  The epic series continues with Rembrandt Stone in two months. Turn the page to check out a sneak peek of book two. Join us in April for the next installment.

  Chapter 1 - Sneak Peak

  Just try and outrun your demons, I dare you.

  I sit in my daughter’s upstairs bedroom, in my half-remodeled craftsman, the morning bright against the window, holding a black teddy bear in my shaking hands. Gomer, a throwaway gift to my then four-year-old daughter, almost an afterthought I picked up from a drugstore as I raced home from work on a long-ago birthday.

  A white star is embedded in the toy’s fur, and this version of Gomer still has both eyes. They stare at me, black, glassy.

  Shocked.

  It’s all wrong.

  Please, God, let me wake up.

  It’s a fear that stalks every man, at least the ones like me, middle aged, married, a father of one, trying to frame his life into something that resembles success. A fear that, despite his heroic attempts, and as much as he tries to live in the light, his mistakes will find him.

  And the price of those mistakes will cost him everything.

  The voice that confirms it is seven years old, a deafening memory deep inside my head. “But daddy, you’re a detective. You know how to find things.”

  Overnight my life has imploded.

  My house is now a war zone, the product of fury and panic, the drawers opened, dumped out, my office bearing the wreckage of my disbelief. I spent the past hour digging through my belongings—our belongings—to find anything that might give me answers.

  My seven-year-old daughter, Ashley, has vanished. No, that’s not accurate. She’s been murdered. Two years ago.

  My beautiful wife, Eve, has left me. She wants a divorce from the man I’ve become.

  A man I don’t know.

  And I haven’t a clue how to get them back.

  But I’ve jumped too far ahead. Ironically, I’ll have to rewind time, return to the moment when the demons knocked on my door in the form of my ex-partner, a box of cold cases and a gift—an old watch bequeathed by my boss, Chief of Police, John Booker.

  No, maybe I’ll start later that night, when, after shaking awake from a nightmare, I stumbled downstairs to my office, the one with the less-than-inspirational leather chair my wife gave me when I left the force three years ago, and began to work on my unfinished novel.

  Eve found me in the middle of the night as I sat there, barely dressed, trying to find words to add to my unfinished manuscript. She dragged out the cold cases and pulled the first one, the coffee-shop bombings of 1997, the one where we first met.
>
  The catalyst for this entire nightmare.

  That’s when I put on the watch.

  I couldn’t believe Booker left me his prized possession. I don’t remember a day he didn’t wear it. An old watch with a worn leather wristband and a face like a vintage clock, the gears visible through the glass.

  The hands didn’t move, stuck on the five and the three, even when I wound it. On the back two words etched into the steel: Be Stalwart.

  I hope so because this morning, when I realized what the watch had cost me, I threw it against the wall, snatched it off the floor and threw it again when it refused to work.

  And you might think, calm down, Rembrandt, just get another watch.

  But it’s this watch that has somehow loosed the demons.

  And I must find a way to send them back.

  Now, as I sit in the wreckage of my life, I wiggle the dial again, shaking the watch, pressing it to my head. Please, please—

  I don’t really know what I’m asking for, because the truth is, well, unbelievable.

  I dreamed—or did?—travel back in time. Solved the coffee shop bombing case. Woke up and everything…everything…

  Oh, God—

  “Rem?” A knock sounds on my open door—I didn’t close it after Eve left, just an hour ago after handing me divorce papers. I remember dropping the packet on my rush up the stairs to Ashley’s room to confirm Eve’s wretched words.

  “Ashley was murdered, remember? Two years ago.”

  I don’t remember much after that.

  “Rembrandt?” The voice makes me look up and probably it’s a good thing the law just walked into the room because this is a crime scene.

  My life has been stolen.

  “Burke,” I say, and I’m not even a little embarrassed that I’ve been crying. That my house looks vandalized. That I want to shake him for answers.

  Andrew Burke was my partner for the better part of twenty years. A tall, bald, dark-skinned detective of the Minneapolis Police department, he’s my best friend and sparring partner, even now.

  Answers. He’ll help me find them—

  “Don’t tell me you’re on a bender again.”

  What?

  Burke is wearing a suit, of course. I ditched mine after a few years on the job, but he always looked good in them. I was more of a sweater and jeans guy, and back then, I wore my hair long, with a hint of a beard, Don Johnson style. It was a thing. And Eve liked it.

  Eve. The scene flashes through my mind again—Eve on the doorstep with her assistant, Silas. Eve handing me a manila envelope, Silas’s arm around her. My insane urge to sink my fist into his mouth. Then the words—oh, God, the words—She’s dead, Rem. She’s dead, and you can’t bring her back.

  “No, I—” I stare again at Gomer, still in my grip.

  “Aw, shoot,” Burke says, his tone softening. “Eve told me you weren’t doing well.”

  “Eve told you…”

  “You fought again didn’t you?”

  My mouth opens and his words find the air around me, but don’t land. Eve and I don’t fight. At least, not about anything important. Sure, the occasional missed pickup at school, and she hates when I leave my socks on the stairs, but—

  “I told her to wait and give you the divorce papers at work. I know yesterday was a hard day for you.” He sighs, and I look back up at him. “I’m sorry man, but you knew this was coming.”

  I knew…

  I can’t breathe, my chest actually constricting, and I press my hand to it. Because twenty-four hours ago my wife was in my warm bed, my daughter in the next room surrounded by freshly unwrapped birthday gifts and my biggest trial was suffering from writer’s block.

  Then I had a dream—

  No, then I…

  I put my head between my knees.

  “Rem! Sheesh, breathe.” Burke leans down in front of me, his hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, don’t do this to me again.”

  Again? But at least Burke is still my best friend, still the guy who won’t let me drown.

  “Dude. Listen, I get it. You’re not the only one who wanted to forget yesterday’s anniversary. But, it’s been two years. Two.” He draws a long breath. “It’s time to at least try to move on.”

  I stare at him. “Ashley’s dead.” I am just trying out the words because, you know, she’s not dead, not in my, um, timeline, my real timeline, but here— maybe here is all I have—

  Now I can’t breathe again.

  “Yes,” Burke says. “Yes she is.” He sighs, and concern fills his dark eyes.

  “How, when?” Because maybe if I have answers—

  “No, Rem. We’re not doing this again. You’ve read the file a thousand times.”

  The file. The file. In the box of files Booker gave me, all cold cases from my time on the job.

  Maybe it’s still here, sitting on the floor by the chair where Eve left it last night.

  I toss Gomer aside, scramble past him, down the stairs and into my office.

  I kneel beside the box, stacked high with folders, and rifle through them.

  Stop, a coldness surging through me.It’s gone. The file from the bombing case, the one I went back to solve—and yes, that still sounds crazy to me—

  It’s gone.

  But of course it is. Because I, you know, solved it.

  So it’s not there. It can’t be. But …

  “What are you doing?” Burke says as he comes in and crouches again beside me.

  “I’m just looking—” I see the cases I know too well. The working girl found near one of my favorite bars. A nurse, found in a parking lot in the middle of January. A waitress outside an uptown diner, and the worst—yes, it’s still here.

  I pull it out and groan.

  The death of Eve’s father, Minneapolis Deputy Police Inspector Danny Mulligan, and her kid brother, Asher. Skinny kid, smart, a hacker.

  Asher saw me kiss Eve, and for a second the taste of her is on my lips. I kissed her last night, in her house, the smell of sawdust and summer in the air.

  Real. The dream felt, smelled, and tasted real.

  “It’s not here.” I set down Danny and Asher’s file and keep looking, just to confirm.

  “What’s not there?”

  “Ashley—where’s her file?”

  Burke is looking at me and now he shakes his head. “Get your head on and get down to the precinct. The Jackson murders aren’t going to solve themselves.” He turns away, runs his hand over his smooth head.

  Last time I saw him, he had hair. That thought slides into my brain, and yes, maybe I’m having a nervous breakdown, a split with reality. He looks at me. “I know you’re hurting, Rem, but you’re freakin’ me out.”

  Yeah, well, I’m freaking myself out too. But, “Where is Ashley’s file?”

  “C’mon, Rem.”

  “Tell me!”

  “It’s where it’s been for the last two years! With all the other Jackson murders.”

  Who’s Jackson? But I don’t ask, because Burke is wearing a thin look. “Listen, I can’t afford to have the head of the task force laying on his bathroom floor, drunk.”

  Again, drunk? Although, my gaze goes to my empty glass on the desk. One lousy shot of Macallans and suddenly I’m drunk?

  Burke looks a little desperate now and it’s an uncommon expression that unnerves me, too. “We finally caught a break—a survivor—and we need you on your game for this afternoon’s press conference. We’re close, Rem, you told me that yourself.”

  I did? But I nod. What I really want to do is bang my head on something, dislodge the memories that are stuck deep inside of a world I don’t know, don’t understand, but have clearly lived in.

  He heads for the door. Pauses. “Come in, get to work. Please don’t make me fire you.”

 
Fire me? Burke is my boss?

  I guess that feels right—I always knew he had leadership in him.

  He leaves me there, and in a moment I hear his car drive away.

  Work? Oh, I’m going to work all right.

  To a job I remember quitting three years ago.

  So the demons couldn’t find me.

  But apparently, I’ll have to face those demons, if I want answers.

  Pre-order No Unturned Stone here!

  Meet

  David James Warren

  Susan May Warren is the USA Today bestselling, Christy and RITA award–winning author of more than eighty novels whose compelling plots and unforgettable characters have won acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. The mother of four grown children, and married to her real-life hero for over 30 years, she loves travelling and telling stories about life, adventure and faith.

  For exciting updates on her new releases, previous books, and more, visit her website at www.susanmaywarren.com.

  James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He’s the best-selling, Christy Hall of Fame author of ten novels and loves to send readers on mind-bending journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s dad to the two most outstanding sons on the planet and lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in eastern Washington.

  More at http://jameslrubart.com/

  David Curtis Warren is making his literary debut in these novels, and he’s never been more excited. He looks forward to creating more riveting stories with Susie and Jim, as well as on his own. He’s grateful for his co-writers, family, and faith, buoying him during the pandemic of 2020-21, and this writing and publishing process.