Cast the First Stone Read online

“No problem, dude.” He gets out, slams the door and disappears into the night.

  I wait a few minutes, just in case there’s shouting, then head back to Uptown.

  I don’t want any more regrets.

  My own words are in my head, and I roll down the window, letting the night wind sweep over me, dislodge the carnal desires still stirring inside. I meant it when I said I wish I could do things differently with Eve, get rid of the myriad stops and false starts, but this isn’t quite what I was thinking.

  Okay, fine. I admit that’s exactly what I thought for a few minutes there, but now that I’m here, I’m afraid of screwing things up. Again.

  And, what I neglected to mention is that time seemed to be looping back around to a familiar song between Eve and me. Late night case, a beer in the kitchen, the sultry summer night wind teasing the curtains at the windows. More than once we let things spill over from the kitchen to her living room, then upstairs to her bedroom.

  That’s a couple years away, really, but it started a cycle that we couldn’t break, the hot-cold, on again, off again torrid romance that nearly did us both in. Eventually Ashley arrived. To my great regret, I still had to think about what to do as Eve handed me the little white stick with the plus sign, as if marriage might be a noose that would cut off air to the rest of my life. Practical Eve suggested we didn’t have to be married to make good parents.

  But, like I said, Eve is my compass, my anchor, and it took the thought of some other man—and Silas came to mind—raising my daughter, holding the woman I love late at night and the right answer took hold.

  I’d like to not have broken Eve’s heart a few go-rounds before Ashley came along.

  And okay, I’m a different man now, but like Eve suggested tonight, what if one small change makes everything worse?

  What if I screw everything up again…and this time I run out of second, third, even fourteen (I lost count how many times Eve took me back) chances?

  My head is pounding, the lateness of the hour, the beer, and even the list tucked into my back pocket of the three coffee shops with the Good Earth brand are aligning to make me want to go to my apartment, pull the covers over my head and wish to wake up. Really wake up and let it all be over.

  To be tucked up beside Eve in our fixer upper craftsman, my muse a cement block in my head, our towheaded daughter across the hall wishing for her Gomer.

  I’ll live with my nightmares if I can just be assured that I haven’t somehow screwed up everything I already have.

  But I have a terrible gut feeling that if I do that, tomorrow I’ll wake up to yet another morning with Burke pounding at my door, eight more lives lost.

  I tap my breaks at the light and while I wait, I pull out the list. Like Asher said, three stores, one of them in St. Paul. I know that one is out because I remember the bombing happening on this side of the river.

  So, that leaves the other two locations. I glance at the clock—a little before four a.m.

  Time enough to do a drive by, see if anything jogs a memory.

  I pass Webster with only a glance toward Eve’s house. I can’t see it from here, though, so I don’t know if she’s left a light on.

  The thought makes my entire body ache as I turn off highway 7 onto 100 and head south to Bloomington.

  The radio is no help to my decision. Aerosmith is singing I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.

  It’s a quick drive on the deserted highway, just a few cars out. I pass a couple of Minneapolis’ finest idling under overpasses, remembering the speed limit these days is 55.

  Highway 100 turns into Normandale, which turns into Old Shakopee Road and I head west, the area hazy in my memory. I’m not holding out hope for recognition.

  CityPerk is located in a strip mall sandwiched between a Chinese takeout joint and an insurance company. I pull into the parking lot, staring at the green awning, the brick exterior, the metal chairs outside, the folded umbrellas and especially the darkened windows.

  Nothing. Not a nudge, not an itch, it’s as if I’ve gone to Taiwan for all the familiarity of the place. (I’ve never been to Taiwan, for those wondering).

  The hours say 6 a.m.- 9 p.m.

  It occurs to me that maybe I should check in with Burke. So, while I sit there, I call him.

  He answers on the first ring, which tells me he’s on the job, and not happy about it. “What?”

  “So, no go on Ramses?”

  “He’s not here, probably picked up a girl and is getting a good night’s sleep. Which is what I should be doing. Where are you?”

  I give him a short rundown of my activities. To his credit, he’s all, ‘uh huh,’ and ‘interesting,’ but when I finish with the fact I’m staking out one of the two locations, he’s silent.

  I know there is a why forming in his brain, but he doesn’t want to say it. So I fill in for him. “On the off chance there’s going to be a third bombing, I want to be prepared.”

  “You can’t stake out every coffee shop in the city.”

  “No,” I say, and I hold in the rest—the fact that if I’m at the right place, at the right time, this all ends. But I do add, “If, by a crazy chance, Ramses isn’t sleeping off a hangover, and is in fact, on his way to deliver bomb number three, I plan to stop him.”

  Silence. Then, “Sure.”

  I don’t expect that, but maybe Burke is still rattled by the deaths, the terrible task of informing families of the tragedy. It had to bring up his own not-so-quiet demons.

  “What’s the other location?”

  I turn on my dome light and read the address. “It’s downtown. CityPerk, on 10th Ave. In the warehouse district, by the river.”

  “I’ll meet you there if Ramses doesn’t show up by 6 a.m.”

  I agree, hang up, and pull out of the lot, back onto Old Shakopee Road, winding my way back to the city. Minneapolis at this time of night has lost its allure. The bars are closed, the streets inhabited by the weary, the homeless and the soused. I take 35W into the city, veer onto 94 and get off on Washington Ave.

  The Town Hall Brewery we ate at yesterday is only a couple blocks away, but it suddenly feels like years since I was there with Eve.

  Driving southeast would bring me into the University of Minnesota campus and more memories, but I turn northwest, along the river, past the hotels, the warehouses that, over the next twenty years will turn into high-end flats, and finally all the way to 10th Avenue.

  The shop is located on a soon-to-be revitalized vintage brick building, just down the road from the Minneapolis Public Works offices and across the street from a vacant warehouse.

  I’m starting to get my bearings. Now, and I mean in my now, in the stead of the warehouse stands a five-story parking garage.

  I have a feeling I know why.

  Because more is coming back to me. The coffee shop is the last in a line of tiny local shops, a florist, a bicycle repair shop, a café, and just down the street, an eclectic gym. They’re all located on the bottom level of a massive, empty warehouse. I’m standing in the middle of time here, that crest of hope that if you build it they will come. I have no doubt some contractor somewhere is drawing out plans for 900 square foot, open-beamed lofts.

  I get out and stand under the streetlight, getting a feel for the place. Maybe it’s the darkness, almost like the edge of a dream, but I can almost smell it, the singe of flame against wood, hear the shatter of glass.

  I make out faded lettering on the brick above the shops. A store supply center. Store supply means displays, racks and…mannequins.

  I see them in memory, just a flash through the back of my mind. Charred, their faces distorted, curled into themselves from the heat. Bodies that lay grotesquely on the pavement, jarring us into panic until we realize the truth.

  Bingo.

  I was here. I stood outside the rim of fire, watching the water a
rc, listening to the chaos.

  Eight people died. But worse, this time the bomber hadn’t spared the nearby buildings. Whether too enthusiastic, or simply unaware, he’d created a force that leveled almost half this city block.

  The reminder turns me ill and I bend over, gripping my knees, my stomach roiling. But it’s empty, save for the beer, so I gulp in breaths and clear my head before I make a fool of myself on the street.

  I climb back into my car, sweaty, trembling.

  This time, no one will die.

  I back up, out of the light, swaddled in the darkness with a good view of the shop, lay my head back on the rest, pin my eyes on the store, and wait.

  Chapter 18

  It always starts the same way. I’m standing in the middle of a lake—not a big lake, more of a bay, with a wooden bridge arching over a waterway into the larger expanse.

  This lake is surrounded by cattails and rushes frozen in January’s grip, some broken, turned mustard and brown in the crisp air. A thin layer of snow casts over the ice, thick and blue and rippled by the wind. People often believe ice freezes in pristine, skate-able smooth sheets when in fact it is scarred with thick runnels and often littered with the carcasses of unfortunate ducks and geese, trapped in its frozen grasp.

  My breath puffs out smoky, then clears in the frigid air. I can almost feel it—the numbing grip of the below-zero temperature stinging my nose, but as dreams go, I can’t really feel anything. I can only hear. The wind, moaning through the willows and behind it a voice.

  Always the voice, haunting, calling.

  I turn, searching the shore. Empty. Just the skeletal arms of birch and poplar reaching to the gunmetal gray sky.

  Then I hear the crack. It’s sharp, like a shotgun, fracturing the air, and although it’s expected, I flinch. Ravens startle and lift from the rushes. The wind whips the snow into a dervish at my feet and only then do I think to look down.

  A vein has fissured open below my feet.

  I start to run.

  I’m fast. I can feel it, running with my mouth open, breathing hard. I pump my arms, careening across the ice, but my feet betray me and I slip. I fall, slam hard. My wind explodes out of me.

  Another crack, and this time the report shatters my bones. Shaking, I lift myself off the glass. The ice webs under my mittened hands.

  As I scramble to my feet, I’m no nearer the shore.

  Now, a voice is calling.

  I’m gasping, my breath labored, fatigue weighting each step.

  The cycle repeats. I run, I fall hard, and it knocks my world sideways. Then the crack, the voice and in my soul, I know I’ll never reach shore.

  The lake will open, and I’ll slide into the dark, murky, frigid depths. Disappear.

  They’ll never find me.

  Rembrandt!

  I wake with a rush, as if the voice is right beside me and I’m trembling, my breathing rough. If I were at home, next to Eve, she would have her hand pressed to my chest, her voice in my ear. It’s just a dream.

  I lean my head back into my headrest. I might be able to travel through time, but clearly I’ve brought my demons with me.

  Sweat slicks my body and I run my hand across my mouth, find it dry.

  The dawn has peeled back the night, sun hovers just above the horizon, filtering light along the dusky streets. Gold dew speckles my windshield and a chill slinks through my car. June in Minnesota can still find the temperatures in the low sixties and I shiver, now free of the horror of the dream.

  I need coffee. Ironic, I know, but I glance at the shop across the street, wondering if it’s open.

  The windows are dark. A car drives up and pulls into the alley, to what I assume is parking in the back.

  I glance at the watch. A little after 5:30 a.m. It must be the owner, up at the crack of dawn to care for the early risers. The shop is still dark, the place locked up. I sit up, scrub a hand down my face, the other on the steering wheel. Burke hasn’t called, and I pick up my phone just in case he texted.

  Nothing.

  Then it hits me.

  5:30 a.m. Up at the crack of dawn.

  Right now, my father is heading to the barn to feed and milk his small herd of dairy cows before he takes off for work.

  Mom is in the kitchen, making his breakfast. By six a.m., Sheriff Rickland will have arrived, and with my father still in the barn, Rickland will accept the cup of coffee my mother offers.

  But she’s suspicious, and doesn’t need to wait for my father to know the truth. She’ll guess that Rickland is there with news of my brother’s body recovery, and then time will repeat itself.

  Her high blood pressure will burst a vessel in her brain, and she’ll collapse with a hemorrhagic stroke.

  Maybe it’s just naive, but I’ve always believed that if my father—or I—had been with her, maybe the stress would have been easier to bear, and she wouldn’t have collapsed.

  Wouldn’t today—or at least in my today—be walking with a cane, struggling to speak.

  The light in the coffee shop flickers on.

  The street is still empty. But I know, and it’s not just my gut, but history, that tells me the bomber will be here. The bomb explodes shortly after 7 a.m. Before, I was in bed, sleeping.

  Before, I was awakened by Burke.

  Before, I didn’t answer my father’s frantic call as he rode in the ambulance with my mother because I was counting bodies outside 10th Avenue Brew.

  I pick up the phone and dial, my gaze scanning the street. Please.

  “Hello?” My mother’s voice is cheery and for a few seconds, it jars me to hear it so pure, so unblemished.

  I swallow, clear my throat. “Mom. It’s me.”

  “Rembrandt. It’s so early—are you okay?”

  She doesn’t mean to, but she wears in her voice the terrible fear that something might happen to her only remaining son. “I’m fine. Actually, I’m sitting outside a coffee shop, about to go to work, but…” And my brain is groping for something, anything— “Is Dad around?”

  “He’s on his way to the barn—”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “I’ll tell him to call you back—”

  “Mom?” My voice shakes a fraction. No one else would have noticed, but I know Mom does. I swallow again. “I need to talk to him right now.”

  She’s quiet because we don’t do big emotion in our family, but after a second, “All right. Hang on.”

  A car pulls up outside the shop and parks in front. A man gets out, in a pair of track pants, a T-shirt, running shoes, and I agree with him. Coffee before exercise, right? He carries nothing, so I let him go.

  One minute, two, then, “Hello?”

  My father is out of breath, and a streak of guilt goes through me. I don’t want to lie, but I’m not sure what to say. Stay with Mom.

  “Rem?”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “You okay?”

  They were good parents to me, despite the grief, the complete shutdown of our family after Mickey went missing. And they never said it out loud—you should have stayed with him. This is your fault.

  They didn’t have to. It was carved into my DNA.

  “I’m okay. But Dad—” I draw in a breath and say the only thing that makes sense. “Happy Birthday.”

  Silence.

  “What?”

  “It’s your birthday today, right?” I’m grimacing.

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, then, Happy Birthday.”

  And then, thank God, I hear my mother’s voice in the background. “Vin, there’s a police car pulling into the drive.”

  I lean my head back, my heart punching my sternum. “A police car?” I ask in my very best impression of light concern. “What’s that about?”

  “I’m not sure. Um.
Thanks for calling, son.”

  “I’ll be over as soon as I can,” I say, but he hangs up.

  I fight this crazy urge to weep for the pain they’re about to experience. But I’m holding onto a feeble, impossible hope that this time, things won’t end quite so badly.

  Across the street, a bicyclist has pulled up, parked and has gone into the shop. It’s still early, a little past 6 a.m.

  Over an hour before the blast.

  I want coffee. And I want to get eyes on the shop.

  I get out and cross the street. Glass windows, a planter out front that overflows with geraniums. A sandwich board with specials sits just outside the door, calling people inside with freshly made butterscotch scones. My stomach is a monster.

  The place is small, homey. Groupings of wicker chairs circle low round coffee tables, two slipcovered sofas facing each other, a blackboard with the menu chalked on it, the ceiling high and open to the pipes. Freshly roasted java seasons the air. I would have liked this place.

  It’s possible Ramses left a package here last night, so I look around. Three thermoses of coffee, their names hanging in tags are lined up along the bar, but I see nothing out of place. A middle-aged blonde, her hair tied back with a handkerchief and wearing a tie-dyed apron fills a glass case. Her name tag reads Katia.

  I spot the scones. And a couple of old-fashioned donuts. And fresh pumpkin bread.

  Yeah, I would have found a writing niche here. Maybe I will, someday.

  “Can I help you?”

  I study the board and decide on today’s special, a macchiato. I order it with extra espresso.

  The runner sits in the corner, reading a newspaper. He glances at me, and I notice he has blonde hair cut short, military style, and a tattoo peeks out of his shirt, on his upper arm. He looks away from me and stares into the paper.

  The bicyclist is seated at the counter on a high top, talking to the barista. He has his dreadlocks pulled back into thick blonde chunks and is trying to bargain for a free donut.

  Katia makes my coffee and I debate sitting inside or out, then decide to head back to the Camaro. If Ramses sees me it’s possible he won’t drop his bomb. Which, of course, saves lives, but also means that I’ll be fresh out of historical leads. I realize I’m cheating, but like I said, I don’t care.