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

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