Cast the First Stone (The True Lies of Rembrandt Stone 1)

oice in her head. He’s not getting away with this…not on my watch.

Yeah, well not on hers, either.

Chapter 11

"I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, Rem. This is stupid.”

Burke has been muttering that for the last two hours as we’d driven up and parked outside one, after another, coffee houses in the West Minneapolis area.

I’m drawing a complete blank and that fact has me wanting to bang my head against the steering wheel. I try to picture the file, the names, but only the shots from the first bombing—and perhaps the last—stand out. The last was so much more devastating. Three other buildings evacuated, an entire city block destroyed, and eight lives lost.

I still can’t remember where either of them took place, however, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I focused so hard on the victims, their faces deep wounds etched into my soul.

I do remember snippets—a German Shepherd running the length of a chain link fence, barking. An ice cream truck—strange, right? Tiny bells, ringing as if oblivious to the sirens, the flames licking the sky.

I also remember mannequins littering the destruction. We panicked when we first arrived and thought they were bodies.

But as hard as I dig, I can’t place the location of either scene.

“We should have done this in daylight,” I grouse. We spent three hours after dropping off Eve tracking down the off-duty employees of the Daily Grind, interviewing them about other employees. Even had a sit-down with the managers and the owner at the station.

All the interrogations I know will lead to nothing. No one has a motive, even the means to pull off a homemade pipe bomb.

So I admit to standing against the wall, arms akimbo as Burke prodded them for clues.

Through another window, I watched John Booker meet with families—husbands, wives, parents…

Melinda Jorgenson has a name now, as does her son, David.

I shouldn’t have had that beer, because it’s been trying to come back up for hours. We finally left—I insisted on driving, and have been trying to jog my memory since then.

It’s dark, and the city is alive, lights splotching the pavement, the heat rising out of it from the day. A moon rose long ago, but a storm might be blowing in, the taste of it in the stir of the trees.

I’m tired. Bone weary, which is also weird because does that happen in a dream? The whole day has put me at odds with myself. I’m frayed and fighting a headache.

Burke’s grumbling doesn’t help. “Take me back to the station.”

“Fine by me,” I say and turn onto Minnehaha Avenue, heading east.

“I don’t get it. You practically ignore valuable questioning from potential leads, and now, what, you’re psychically trying to figure out where this guy—if this guy—is going to strike next?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Try and make me, pal, because I’m trying to be on your side here.”

That throws a little ice on my ire. But I have nothing for him because even in a dream, the truth sounds impossible.

We drive in silence.

“Okay, what’s eating you? You’re like a man possessed today, and it doesn’t add up. We’re all a little shaken, but…is this about what happened in Booker’s office?”

His question jerks me up, lands like a fist in my chest because I’ve forgotten.

My brother.

It happened so many years ago, the grief has a thick scab over it now, but twenty years ago, the news knocked me sideways, blurred the two events—the bombing and my brother’s body recovery—together.

Now, it feels like an old, dried wound that I am reticent to pick at.