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CHAPTER FOUR

Q uincy’s Boxing Gym is located in north Minneapolis in an old warehouse, with a rolling garage door for the entrance. It’s hip, with exposed piping, metal beams and tiny boxed warehouse windows that give it a vintage feel. With two sparring rings, ten hanging bags, a free weight room, pull-up and dip bars and plenty of graffiti, the place smells of cement, sweat, and raw, hard work.

The Who is playing at ear piercing volumes as I walk in.

I’ve been coming here for twenty years, and frankly, it’s not for the atmosphere, or the music.

It’s because Burke shows up every day at exactly 4:12 p.m., after his day shift ends and once upon a time, it was the one place where we could work off the day.

Now, like I said, I want answers.

It’s early so I change, do a few sets with the jump rope, popping a sweat.

I drop for a set of polymeric push ups, flip over and add in some sit ups, then end with a few squat thrusts.

I’m sweating, my body buzzing and I’m ready to hit something.

I tape up and work the speed bag. The Doors sing about lighting my fire, and I’m breathing hard when I see Burke stroll in.

He glances at me, nods, and heads to the locker room.

I finish my speed bag sprint and do some shadowboxing. Then I glove up and I’m at the heavy bag when he emerges.

He steps up to the bag, just to tame it.

I imagine the bag is John Booker and land my fist in the center. I’ve been at this enough to know how to keep my balance, but I’m still a little unfocused, maybe, so I dig down. I lean in and feel the sharp smack of my fist against the bag, a snapping punch, not a push.

I’m not trying to take myself out, just work off those words. Because what can a watch do if it doesn’t tell time?

The bag swings hard, back at me, and I keep my feet light, following it. I don’t wait to throw the next punch, because that’s for beginners, but dive back in.

I feel Burke at my side before I see him. He catches the bag. “My turn.”

I’m breathing harder than I thought and sweat saturates my shirt. Burke works off my mitts, tosses them aside and gloves up.

“What I don’t get is why Booker gave me the files. And his watch—did you know about that?”

I don’t need a preamble with Burke. He nods and says, “I wondered what this was about.”

“Why couldn’t he just leave it?”

Burke lifts a shoulder, throws a punch. I’m aware that he hasn’t warmed up, but his hit stuns the entire bag, a massive force, and I’m sorta glad we’re not sparring.

I’m clearly out of shape and that makes me even more perturbed.

“I’m surprised you’re surprised,” Burke says, dancing with the bag. “Clearly, he thinks you have unfinished business.”

“Half those files are yours.”

“I’m still around.” He slams his massive paw into the bag, a thud, a through-shot that could break ribs. “Where are you?”

I’m waiting for the uppercut, how’s the book going , but Burke has mercy and gives it to me square, “You should have never left. Booker?—”

“John Booker made me leave.”

“Your fear made you leave.”

Oh. I’ve changed my mind. I want back in the ring.

Burke never raises his voice. Ever. It’s freaky, but he actually gets quieter and that’s when you have to worry. Now, he’s just about whispering and frankly, if I had sense, my blood would run cold.

“And your pride kept you from coming back.”

I knew he was angry, but maybe I should stand back.

“A cop died that day.” I put my hand on the bag, push it back to him. “I had a four-year-old daughter.”

“Don’t give me that, Rem. You haven’t been afraid a day in your life. Then suddenly, you turn in your badge, and it’s over?”

Yeah, well, maybe. But that day, three years ago when I saw Jimmy Williams shot in the head, I was afraid in a way I had never considered.

It could have been me, easily, my blood spilled in the middle of Franklin Avenue.

Burke grabs the bag, coming in close for body shots. I wonder if he wishes it was me.

We’ve had a few go-rounds, Burke and I. That’s what happens when you’re partners for twenty years. Most of them happened in the early, hot-head, daring rookie days.

A few, later. More consequential. The kind of fights that actually hurt. But mostly we took it to the ring, left a few bruises but stayed friends.

Now, I see that maybe he pulled his punches back then.

“You left because you couldn’t stand not being in charge. Booker told you to step back, take leave, but?—”

“A cop got killed on my watch. My investigation, my collar. My responsibility.”

Burke catches the bag. “Our investigation. Our responsibility.”

I say nothing. The place has filled up, a few more familiar faces and I cut my voice as low as Burke’s. “I couldn’t sit out for three months while IA investigated a clean shooting. The shooter’s partner was still out there, and I wasn’t going to?—”

“Trust me? Because I had your back, Rem. And you should have remembered that before you threw away a twenty-year partnership to write a damn book !”

I’m just staring at him because he’s shouting . Every head swivels our direction.

We’re breathing hard, and for a second, I glimpse the past in his eyes. Army brat, son of an angry father. Burke never had anybody but me to call family.

That winds me down, makes me catch my breath. “Of course I trust you.”

“Not enough.” Burke pushes off the bag and starts tugging at the gloves, one clamped between his legs. “Not like I trusted you.”

I feel that hit. I don’t help him with his gloves and he doesn’t look at me.

He finally works them off, throws them in the bin. Turns. He’s found himself again, his voice back to its even keel. “Listen. Those cold cases haunt me as much as they do you. Come back, and let’s solve them together.”

His eyes are nearly black as they bore into me. Then he turns and heads over to the sparring ring to watch a couple rookies pummel each other.

I take my shower cold, towel off and head home, still wired.

Eve is in the kitchen, plating some fried chicken she picked up at a fast-food joint. She glances over her shoulder, frowns. “You went to work out?”

I nod, and don’t mention that I actually spent the day chasing an impulse. “With Burke.”

She sucks in a breath, nods. “Well, he’s got a good reason to be at the gym today.”

I’m not sure to what she’s referring except the reason buzzing in my head, and I don’t want to talk about it so I head upstairs to drop my gear.

Ashley is playing in her room with her birthday loot from her grandparents, a horse set reminiscent of all the promises I made her to buy her a pony. Someday. I sit down on her floor, in the middle of the pink carpet. “Hey baby, how was your day?”

She gallops a horse up my leg. “Good. But I miss Gomer. Have you found him yet?”

Perfect. “Not yet.”

“But you will, Daddy.” She smiles at me, her blue eyes bright and shiny.

“Yeah, I will.” I kiss her cheek and pry myself off the floor. I’m doing a cursory search of the laundry room, just in case, when Eve calls us downstairs.

She’s crafty, that Eve. She’s dished up the entire meal—chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans—as if it might be homemade, and set it on the table. It’s important to her to eat like her family did, all six of them at 6 p.m. sharp. Her mother is old school—vegetables, bread, starches, pot roast—it can make Eve a little crazy to try and keep up.

She does well enough for my tastes. I don’t remember a home cooked meal beyond the age of twelve.

We sit and Eve makes us pray—it’s the Lutheran in her—and we dive in.

She’s silent, lost in her thoughts as she flattens her mashed potatoes.

“What?” Instincts.

She glances at Ashley, gnawing on her chicken leg. “It’s nothing.”

Oh. It’s that kind of case.

I turn to Ashley, our talker. She can fill all the gaps between us and she tells me a story about her day that involves something on the playground I probably should be paying attention to, but my gaze is on Eve. And the way she just keeps pounding those mashed potatoes.

Her deep sighs.

The catch of her lower lip between her teeth when she thinks I’m not looking.

Every once in a while, she looks up and feigns a smile.

Something terrible happened.

“Can I be excused?” Little Miss Manners asks and I nearly shoo her away.

Eve has reason to look worried the moment Ashley leaves.

“What is it, babe?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Eve—”

“No, it’s…” She sighs again and shakes her head. “It’s not good timing.”

I frown.

“Another teenager was gunned down today, in the Phillips neighborhood.”

Oh no. When she meets my eyes, I see compassion. Okay, so the timing sucks and the Somali brotherhood was getting bolder by the day. “How old?”

“Fourteen.”

I bite back a swear word because Eve has rules, but yeah, there’s a darkness that stirs inside me when a kid gets killed.

She runs her hands down her face. “That’s the third girl in three weeks.”

I knew that, but hearing it from Eve, the fatigue in her voice, sets a fire deep inside.

Come back, and let’s solve them together.

“Listen, Batman, you’re off watch. I can handle it.” Eve says as she gets up. “I’m going for a run. Make sure Ash doesn’t watch any television. I don’t want her seeing the news.”

I carry my plate to the sink, run water. Dots bead up around the temporary patch I made in the seal around the faucet.

Ashley is sprawled on the sofa, playing some pony video game so I head into my office and sit down at the computer. What kind of idiot promises his agent he’ll have something decent in five days?

I pull out the watch, still in my jeans and set it on the desk, then open the screen, and stare at the words.

Nothing.

Eve’s footfalls land on the stairs and I hear the front door opening.

“Be careful!” I say, but it closes before I finish. It’s daylight, the sun up for at least another hour. And, if I know Eve, she has her phone, her pepper spray and like I said, she grew up with brothers. She knows how to handle herself.

Still, I watch her through my window, her lithe body running down the sidewalk until she disappears from view. Turning back to the computer, my gaze falls on the file box, the lid askew.

Even if I can’t go back and solve the cases, maybe they can give me writing inspiration. Yeah, I know, but desperate men reach for desperate options.

Mine includes opening up the bottom drawer of my desk and pulling out the mostly full bottle of Macallan twenty-one-year-old fine oak single malt whiskey.

Don’t judge me. The bottle’s been here for three years, and it’s only four fingers down. I empty another finger into a high ball and shoot it down.

Not a hint of muse stirs inside me so I go over to the file box, paw through the files and find the first one. The coffee shop bombings.

Bring the file back over to my desk. Open it. There, on the front page is my typed summary of the first bombing.

7:06 a.m., Monday morning, at a Daily Grind. Seven lives lost. The store was located just off Franklin Avenue, over the highway from the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis.

The first case John mentored me on. I’d forgotten that, how he showed up on the scene and assigned the case directly to me, a young Inspector.

The memory makes me reach over and pick up the watch. I put it on, adjusting the band to fit, and it’s oddly warm, as if he just took it off. The fit is right, though, settling in to the groove between my hand and my wrist bone.

Too bad it doesn’t work. Almost on impulse, I reach over and twist the dial, like I’d seen John do countless times.

It ticks. Just a heartbeat, soft, as if coming to life. I press it to my ear.

Another tick.

I stare at it, and the second hand moves.

Tick.

Weirdly, the other hands begin to spin. As if possessed of their own power, they turn, counterclockwise, winding backwards in time.

The hour hand settles on seven.

The minute hand lodges just beyond the five.

7:06.

In the distance, an engine roars. I look up, searching for the sound as it grows, sweeps over the room. It’s darkening as if a storm cloud has moved in, and as if in evidence, thunder rolls.

I get up and move toward the door. “Ashley!”

I’m not sure what I trip on, but the floor rushes up at me. Something beyond me shatters. Instinctively, I want to duck, but I don’t know where the sound issues from. “Ashley?—!”

Then it all vanishes. The sound, the darkness, the engine—a hiccup of utter silence, of white, as if I’ve blinked, except my eyes are open.

I’m standing in a cafe. No, a coffee shop—the deep, earthy scent of freshly ground beans, the churning sound of the grinder, and conversation rising all around me.

I can’t place it, but in my bones I know this place. It’s an eclectic shop, with a tin ceiling, vintage couches, a brick wall with a graffiti menu, and giant hanging chandeliers.

Eve buys her coffee here. I know this in my gut, and the name of the place is starting to form in my disbelieving brain. The Cuppa …

“Sheesh, Rem. Give the ladies a break.”

I spin at the voice. Too fast, because the coffee I now realize I’m holding in my hands slams right into?—

Oh God, what is happening? Because I’ve just doused Andrew Burke with some version of a latte, given the color soiling his shirt.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Burke says and I can’t get my eyes off him because he has hair . And he’s slimmer, by about twenty pounds, wiry, and wearing a hint of a soul patch, a dusting of black fuzz.

I mocked it until he shaved it off.

Now it’s like a tether, reeling me in.

I scrape up words, anything that might sound coherent when the radio at his belt crackles and a voice scratches through the line.

I don’t catch it all, but one code sears into my brain.

10-80.

Explosion.

Just off Franklin.

It’s only when Burke grabs my jacket—I’m wearing a freakin’ suit —and pulls me toward the door that the recognition locks in.

I’m in 1997, and somehow my nightmares have found me.