Set in Stone Page 5

  I pause on her file, at her picture. A nurse practitioner. Ironically, she assisted the intern who sewed up my stitches after Leo and I threw down at the bar in Montrose.

  How did she get mixed up with him?

  And, weirdly, she doesn’t fit the profile, does she?

  And then I see the date of her death. December 1997. No, that’s not right. She should have died in January of 2000.

  Something happened that moved her death up by two years. I put her file aside and keep flipping through the other files. Honestly, I’m searching for Ashley’s file—it wasn’t here last time, but I’ve learned not to take anything for granted—and my gaze lands on a file with Booker’s name on it. I pull it out.

  Eve has come into the room holding a beer. “Your wings are getting cold.”

  I open the folder. “Booker saved my life.” I mean it more as a question, but of course I should know this.

  The police report is on the front page, and I read a quick summary even as Eve says, “I nearly lost you that day. If Booker hadn’t seen the guy coming out of the back room—”

  The summary says that it was late, and we were at a diner when we heard an alarm sound from a nearby liquor store. That I ran outside while Booker called it in. And that while I went to investigate and help the victim, the robber emerged from the back of the store, gun in hand.

  Booker arrived just in time to tackle me. The bullet grazed me on its way to his heart.

  I’ve lost my appetite, my hand over my mouth as I’m reading. And, when I look up, I’m wrecked. “He died in my place.”

  Listen, I know he’s been dead for years, but I just saw him two days ago and…it’s not supposed to end like this, right? My chest tightens, my throat thick.

  Sheesh.

  She crouches in front of me. Touches my face. It’s cold from her beer. “You were like a son to him. And I know how much you admired him.”

  She puts her other hand on my cheek. “He used to tell me that you reminded him of himself, when he was young. And how he wished he could have found your brother in time.”

  I’m studying her face, but really, I’m thinking of Booker, and a lecture he gave me, once upon a lifetime. Here are the rules. The biggest one, the one that is never, ever to be broken…don’t change the past.

  I can’t help but shake my head. You old dog, you. You totally went back and changed the past.

  Caught Mickey’s killer.

  “He used to say you had killer instincts. That you were born to be a detective. That it was a gift from God.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “He got a little religious after you were stabbed by Vega. I think it scared him.” She winks. “He was such a softie around you.”

  Softie? John Booker?

  “But I agree with him,” Eve continues. “Dad used to say the same thing. That justice was a sacred calling.”

  Huh.

  “Booker called me a coward, once. Did you know that?” I ask quietly. And of course, this happened in a timeline she hasn’t lived in, but still.

  She frowns, shook her head.

  “Yeah. I was going to…well, quit the force.” I don’t why I need to tell her this, but the story sits in my chest fighting to be coughed out. “I’d seen an officer killed, someone just shy of his retirement, and it…it got in my head, you know? And I’d seen someone I cared about grow up without their father, and I thought…I don’t want that to be me.”

  She is looking at me a little funny. “Was this before or after Miami?”

  Miami again, huh?

  “I don’t remember.”

  That seems to settle her, because she nods.

  “I told him I was going to resign, and he was…well, he was furious. I’d never seen him so angry.” I stare at her. “Maybe you’re right. He considered it a sacred calling, maybe.”

  “You’re far from a coward, Rem.” She shakes her head.

  “I know. He was angry. I was angry. I…regret that fight.” It’s the first time, maybe, that I’ve admitted that.

  Regret quitting, even.

  Because being back in the game has reawakened something inside me. Call it justice. Call it destiny.

  Maybe it is a calling. Nevertheless, I owe Booker an apology.

  I look away, out the window where the rain is lashing the pane. Lightning cracks, thunder rolls. And I know I sound a little crazy, but I can’t stop myself from asking, “Did he leave me anything?”

  I look back at Eve and of course she’s frowning. “Uh, no. I mean…what?”

  I sigh. “He had a watch. I was just wondering what happened to it.”

  Eve shrugs. “You might want to ask Frankie.” She gets up and heads back to the kitchen.

  Frankie? I open my mouth, close it. Who is Frankie?

  Except, in the next instant I’m remembering the odd conversation with the reporter today after Booker’s funeral, aren’t you?

  “Why would Frankie know?” I follow Eve out and find her sitting at the counter, the foam container open, eating a wing. There’s an open beer for me on the counter.

  She puts down her half-eaten wing and grabs a napkin. “After her mom died, she got all his things, right? She probably donated most of them, but you could ask her.”

  I take a drink of the beer. Set it down. It holds no appeal for me anymore.

  I look at her. “Why would Frankie have Booker’s things?”

  Eve is looking at me now, and I’m in trouble. “Are you okay, Rem?”

  She has no idea how not okay I am.

  “Frankie is Booker’s daughter. Of course she’d get his things.”

  I sink down on a counter stool. Booker was never married in the worlds I knew.

  “Honey, you’re starting to scare me.”

  I go to the fridge and find a bottled water. Open it and drink it half down. If Frankie is Booker’s daughter, then maybe she has the watch. It’s at least a possibility, right?

  My thought is interrupted by a flash, and the almost immediate crack of thunder. Eve jumps. “That sounded close.”

  Then a terrible crack rips through the air, cutting through the rain and thunder and a sudden, dark premonition makes me reach for Eve.

  I take her to the floor under our big kitchen table just as the old elm crashes through our kitchen.

  It’s like a bomb has exploded, glass shattering, wood splintering, the implosion of tile and roofing shingles, electrical lines snapping, and behind it a roaring of thunder and rain.

  Eve is clutching my shirt, burying her head against my chest and all I can do is hold onto her.

  Just hold on.

  Because this, my friends, is my life.

  6

  There’s a sort of insulation that happens when your life implodes around you. A shock that forms a barrier between your actions and the explosion of your emotions, as if, without your permission, the words form inside your head…“I’ll pick up those pieces later.”

  At least that’s how I cope. Like when my brother Mickey went missing. I may have mentioned that he was with me that Saturday afternoon, and we were biking into town to go swimming at the lake.

  I went around a corner, maybe a hundred yards ahead of him.

  By the time I realized he wasn’t behind me, by the time I turned back and retraced our route, found his bike in the weeds, he’d been taken.

  Apparently, in this lifetime, John Booker found his murderer, shortly after the man dumped his body.

  Meanwhile, I raced home, and my family spun up into action, alerting the police, neighbors and the community.

  The insulation of activity.

  I relish it now as I stand in the street, drenched by the rain as the firefighters extinguish the flames ignited by the sparking electrical lines severed by the giant elm tree dissecting our house.

  Eve stands beside me, but I can still feel her in my embrace, shaking as the house collapsed around us as we huddled under the sturdy oak table handed down to us by my parents.

  I ha
dn’t noticed that until Eve pointed it out, as we extricated ourselves from the tangle of branches and debris. “Your parents’ table saved us.”

  Her voice trembled, and I said nothing, intent on finding our way through the dark rubble of our home. Tangled and broken branches clawed at us, a war zone of destruction, the night still stinging us with rain as we crawled down the hallway, then to our front door.

  It wasn’t until I stumbled off the porch and onto the street that I saw the fire.

  Old electrical lines, now broken, had lit the ancient insulation and ignited the garage roof.

  Eve wove her fingers through mine a second before a voice sounded behind us.

  “Are you guys okay?”

  I turned and found, coming out of the house across the street, my neighbor, Alex. He’s a good looking guy, short dark hair. A salesman, I think. Pharmaceuticals maybe. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. His wife, Gia, is behind him, a bathrobe thrown around her, her dark hair back.

  So, they’re still together in this timeline.

  “We heard the tree. Called 911.” He came up beside me, then. “Wow.”

  He’s right. Even now, as the firefighters spray the fire—most of it consuming the garage contents, and dying with the rain, the place looks devastated. Not a clean hit, we’d say in football—the tree left a chaos of debris in its wake. The old roof is caved in over the garage and kitchen, my office probably also destroyed.

  The front porch hangs from its foundation on one side as if trying to escape, and all the windows on the upper floor are shattered, probably from the force of the blow.

  The elm was massive—probably eighty feet, with four or five thick branches.

  Like I said, not a clean hit and I just hope I’ve kept up with my insurance payments.

  See, like I said, insulation. But I need it as a wall caves in on the garage, as the firemen redirect their spray to the upper floors of the house, trying to save them.

  I think the house is a goner.

  Gia has come out with a couple umbrellas for us, but it’s useless. In the meantime, she’s talking to Russell, our other neighbor, an ex-NFL lineman turned lawyer. She’s got her rain jacket pulled around her but is peering at him with something that looks a little too neighborly.

  Alex is talking with one of the cops on the scene. I have a pretty clear memory, still, of a loud domestic fight between he and Gia a couple lifetimes ago.

  Given the way his wife is looking at Russell, I think I know the reason why.

  “It’s a good thing we never started that remodel,” Eve says, wrapping her arms around herself.

  I look at her. She’s drenched and shivering. I put my arm around her. “Why didn’t we?”

  She looks up at me. Shrugs, but I think there’s an answer in her eyes. “It never felt like the right time.” Maybe, but Eve has always been a remodeler, you know that, so there’s something more.

  A car pulls up, parks in the fog of a lamplight and a man gets out.

  It’s strange to see Danny Mulligan in the now. Strange… but good. That he’s here proves that I haven’t destroyed every life I’ve touched with this time travel business. He hasn’t changed much—spare frame, still has a bit of a swagger when he walks. He’s wearing a baseball hat, a raincoat and comes up to us with a grim look. “Got a call from dispatch,” he says answering the question I didn’t ask. “You guys okay?”

  I nod, but Eve scoots over to him quick and gives a hug.

  He holds her but looks over her head to me. “You can stay with us while you get back on your feet.”

  Admittedly, it does feel a little like I’ve lost my footing.

  We stand there for another hour while the firemen put out the blaze in our home. The police tape it off and Eve and I are finally able to take a look inside.

  In the shadows and smoke of the house, still dripping with water, the floors destroyed and soggy, I manage to break through to my office.

  I hope I’m still smart and have backed up my files from my drenched computer to the cloud. But what I want, what I need, is the box.

  The cold case files.

  Just in case this world isn’t permanent.

  I dig out the box, and then head upstairs to our bedroom.

  The window has been blown out, and although the carpet is saturated, the furniture is still intact.

  Eve has piled some clothes and toiletries in a couple pillow cases near the door. But she’s not in the room.

  I find her down the hall, in the empty room that in a different lifetime, was pink and filled with stuffed animals and horses. And the laughter of my … I yank myself out of a thousand memories and focus back on Eve.

  She’s opened the closet door and is wrestling out a box. I go to help her. “What’s this?”

  She looks at me and frowns. “What do think it is? It’s Ashley’s box. I just…” She takes a breath. “I just don’t want to leave it behind.”

  Ashley’s box.

  It’s like she’s put a fist through my chest, but I manage to breathe through the wound and lift it into my arms. “Of course.”

  I carry it down the stairs and add it to my cold case files. I guess they belong together.

  Then I retrieve the pillowcases with our worldly belongings and join Eve in the foyer. She’s holding a satchel stuffed with what looks like pictures. She offers me a brave smile.

  I’m dying to know what happened to Ashley, but the truth is, I’m too afraid to ask. And not just because how Eve will react, but what if it’s something I can’t change?

  If you haven’t guessed it by now, the truth is I’m hoping I can find the watch. That Booker has left it in Frankie’s hands.

  At least then I’d have options.

  I could go back, cut down the tree, stop Leo and maybe even save Booker’s life.

  My list is getting complicated.

  Danny is waiting on the porch and I hand him the pillowcases, then go back for the boxes and we trek out to his car.

  The house is forlorn and dark as we leave, the sky still spitting on us.

  Danny and Bets Mulligan live in the suburbs, in a little community on the lake in a farmhouse Bets inherited from her family. The place is over a hundred years old but was updated when Bets took a sledgehammer to her kitchen wall. Now the former galley kitchen opens up to a massive great room that overlooks the lake.

  Tonight, the lake is angry, waves frothing on the shoreline as I stand at the window of Eve’s upstairs bedroom.

  We’re sleeping in her childhood double bed, which feels weird, right? But it’s safe and dry, a bastion in the storm, so to speak.

  She’s showered, changed into dry clothes and is curled under the blankets, quiet.

  Not asleep.

  I’ve showered too, but I still feel grimy, frayed and rattled.

  The insulation is wearing off.

  “I should have cut down that tree,” I say, more to myself, the list of woulda-coulda-shouldas cluttering my brain.

  “You were going to put a swing on it,” Eve says.

  I glance at her. Yes, I was. But then a storm, not unlike this one, broke off a branch and I realized the danger of such a large tree near our house.

  I’m not sure why I wasn’t paying attention this time around.

  I’m starting to think that no matter what I do, what timeline I’m in, how many times I go back to fix my past, I’m going to forget something.

  Screw up something.

  It’s like that game in the arcade, the one with the moles. Only my version is Whack-A-Rem. And I’m not sure it’s possible to win.

  “Come to bed, love,” she says. “I need you.”

  And of course, that’s exactly the words that stop the clutter in my brain. I crawl in beside her and tuck her body next to mine, spooning.

  She takes my hand and holds it close. “We lived. That’s the important part. That’s enough.”

  Yes, I guess it is.

  Maybe it’s the exhaustion that makes me sleep,
or Eve’s warmth, but I tumble into sweet oblivion.

  I land hard, however, in the middle of a familiar dream. You know the one—I’m on the ice in the middle of a lake. It’s the dead of winter, everything crisp and brown, cattails and marshland that edges the lake stiff under the brutal cold.

  I can nearly feel it too—the cold that seeps into my pores, turns my body frozen. I’m shivering.

  The ice is clear, thick and scarred with the carcasses of birds and branches caught in the freeze. A slight wind bullies the snow off it, catching in my eyes. They water.

  And the wind. It’s moaning, a deep howl behind me, as if gathering.

  In it, I hear a voice. Rembrandt.

  I feel I know that voice, but I can’t place it as I stand there, the wind filling my ears.

  It’s then I hear a gunshot. A sharp report that scatters birds, spears the air.

  Beneath my feet, a fissure has opened. I look down and the crack is webbing out.

  Run.

  I scrabble over the ice toward shore, my rubber boots slipping, and I fall.

  I catch myself on the ice with familiar red mittens. The ice spiders out in fractures under my grip. I scramble to my feet and keep running. But the shoreline has slipped away, reset.

  I’m further than when I started. My breathing is labored now, and as the ice opens behind me, the water black and lethal, I am screaming.

  Help!

  Because I know if I don’t keep running, the water will find me.

  Pull me under.

  I’ll disappear and never be found.

  “Rem!”

  The voice lifts from the shore and I thrash around, trying to find it.

  “Rembrandt!”

  I’ve fallen again, bracing myself on the ice, and look back.

  The ice breaks open beneath me, and—

  “Rem, wake up!”

  The voice, a hand on my arm frees me and I gasp awake, my heart thundering, a cold sweat sheeting my body.

  Eve is leaning over me, one elbow on the narrow mattress. “You’re dreaming.”

  I press a fist to my forehead and stare at the ceiling. A thin shadow of golden-red light streaks across the ceiling through the blinds.