Cast the First Stone by David Warren (booksvooks txt) 📕

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 arc, 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