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CHAPTER SIX

I ’m trying to focus, really, I am. On the scene, taking in the crowd, on the activity of the firefighters. And especially on the witness statement of the middle-aged woman seated on the curb, her eyes rounded as she keeps glancing at the shell of the building, still sizzling, the smoke graying the sky. I’m listening to Burke ask her the pertinents—when, where, what did she see—but frankly, I’m reeling.

Everything feels so real. The odor of creosote, the acrid pinch of burned metal and rubber. The wind picks up ash and blows it at our feet. The air is thick with smoke and the humidity of the firemen’s spray.

The crowd is still murmuring, some people crying. Firemen are shouting, and sirens rend the air.

We interviewed her before, Laura Stoltenberg, a pretty blonde who looks like she might shatter, so I put my hand on her shoulder to keep her together. I don’t offer platitudes, but Eve has told me how sometimes it’s good to connect with people, to show them kindness, and while I know that, it’s taken me a few years to let it out.

I give her shoulder a squeeze of comfort.

Burke glances at me when I do this, and frowns, but turns back to her.

“Do you remember the people in the shop, anyone who might have looked out of place? Or was acting suspiciously?”

Bombings are still rare in 1997. It’s been two years since the Oklahoma bombing, only a year since the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, and it’s the current thinking that bombings are personal, that the perpetrator has a political agenda against this particular store. But in the twenty years since, I know that they can be as unpredictable as the weather in Minnesota. People choosing random places to make a point.

Of course, this is fourteen years before 9/11 and that was hardly random, so maybe things haven’t changed that much. And, my memory of two more bombings of coffee shops reminds me that there is a connection we never solved.

Not the first time.

Although, again, I don’t have a clue what is happening here. If it’s a dream, it feels painfully real. But like always, in every dream, I want to change things. And in the back of my mind, I’m hit with the crazy thought that if I can solve the crime, I might finally put a lid on my nightmares.

It’s a long shot, but as dreams, or nightmares go, this is the mother lode, so it has to mean something .

I’m not sure when I’ll wake up, but until I do, I have routines, habits, and a job that keeps me pinned to the moment.

“I don’t know,” Laurie says. “I stood in line like everyone else, trying to understand the menu. I only just heard of this place. I visited a Starbucks in Seattle, and I thought…” She shook her head. “Why would someone blow up a coffee shop?”

It hits me then that coffee mania is just beginning to hit the nation.

“Okay, Mrs. Stoltenburg, we’ll call you if we have any further questions.” Burke is helping her to her feet.

My gaze, of course, returns to Eve. She’s wearing her kinky, beautiful auburn hair down, the way I like it, and it looks like she’s let it air dry. I love her curls. It’s the one thing about her I always notice—how she wears her hair. Down, straightened, up, it has an allure to it I find fascinating.

That, and her eyes, green, with crazy amber highlights and yeah, I’m being poetic, but let’s not forget I’m a writer, or trying to be. I’m supposed to notice those things.

Let’s face it, everything about Eve can level me. Funny that only just last night we were talking about how we met. If I hadn’t slammed into Burke at the Cuppa, dousing him with the vanilla latte (he pulled out a clean shirt from the trunk of his car, of course), I would have repeated the past, the dream I can never seem to escape.

Until now.

In the standard version of my dream-slash-past, my coffee would have drenched her, she would have dropped her camera.

And— oh crap —I would have had a reason to see her again, to show up in her office with an apology coffee and an offer to buy her a new camera.

Instead, not only did I catch the camera, but I want to cringe at the words I now hear replaying in my brain. I forgot how beautiful you were—are.

Shoot, why didn’t I keep my mouth closed? This is why I never really dated long term. Because I wear my heart on my sleeve and frankly, my words get me into trouble.

Eve was the only one who could plow through my impulsiveness, my stupid words, to hear what I was really trying to say.

Truth is, I do better with the written word. Until recently, apparently, if the blank pages on my laptop are any indication.

The fire is out, and the guys in turnout gear are doing a walk-through, testing the place for hot spots. The EMTs and paramedics have triaged the victims and Eve and her crew are taping off the area for the evidence collection to begin.

Eve shoots pictures, directs traffic. She doesn’t know it yet but she’s about to become a legend in our department for her ability to dissect and analyze the scene, to piece together the evidence, and aid me in solving crimes.

We’re about to become a team that will last for the next ten years before we make it permanent.

Burke has left me—I didn’t notice that—but now he’s walking back, holding the little notebook that he’ll soon replace with a tape recorder. And eventually, his smart phone. Burke is into technology that way.

I try to put myself back in the game and scramble to say something halfway intelligent. “There’s a pretty big crowd here. Let’s make sure we talk to everybody.” Who knows but key witnesses might have slipped away last time.

I talk like a man who is not caught in a dream, but the actual past. Like I’m not going to wake up any moment, a scream on my lips, my body covered in sweat.

“I interviewed a man on a bicycle who was riding past,” Burke says. “He didn’t see anyone standing outside, watching the place. And I talked to the fire chief. He can’t be sure—they’ll get the arson guys out here, but he says the blast looks like it originated from inside the building, as opposed to one of these charred cars. I’ve got officers talking to other witnesses.”

I know all this, but I nod, because I’m not sure if I’m supposed to let on that I know it. If it’s a dream, does it matter? Maybe I should simply mention that we need to track down the next location, camp out and wait.

But for whom?

Burke. He doesn’t seem any different than twenty years ago. Sure, he has hair now, but when it comes to investigations, he’s still the all-business, let’s-get-it-done guy who follows every rule, crosses every T.

Me, I’m more of an instinct fella, and right now I’m scanning the crowd. Because I’ve always felt like the bomber was a voyeur—that he stuck around to watch his handiwork. In fact, there was evidence the bomb was on a clock, a situation that gave him time to find the perfect location.

Eve is taking pictures of the crowd. That fact lodges in my brain and sticks there. I know she took pictures before, but the bombings happened so fast—three within forty-eight hours—we didn’t have them developed in time to use them. CSI barely had the evidence bagged from the first, only a few of the families notified when the second happened—tomorrow morning, early.

I can’t remember exactly where. I know it’s in the Uptown area, but it’s not a Daily Grind.

I’m wracking my brain for the place when I spot John Booker.

The sight of him turns my mouth dry. He’s exactly how I remember. And he’s heading my direction.

It’s always been my contention that Booker was born a century too late. He reminds me more of a gunslinger than a detective, the way he sizes up a man before he speaks. He doesn’t look like a cowboy, not dressed in his uniform; it’s more the sense of him, the aura of the long arm of the law reaching out to strangle the truth from you.

He’s tall, solidly built, keeps a regular appointment with his barber for his graying brown hair, stands six foot four, and although no man has ever scared me, a stare from John Booker’s gray eyes comes close.

He finds me and I am shaken with a strange rush of emotion. Wow, I miss him.

“You’re lead on this, Rem.”

This ancient, pivotal conversation is slowly coming back to me. I try and act surprised. “Why?”

“Because you’re ready—you and Burke. Run your investigation by me and I’ll give you my input, but we gotta find whoever did this, and fast before the city freaks out.”

Not to mention, stop the next one. I’m seriously debating adding that, but I’m not sure if that will emerge quite the way I intend it.

I might get a look from John like I did from Eve. The one that suggests I didn’t make a stellar first impression.

But, yes, this time, we’ll catch him. I make that promise to myself and, in an amended version, to John who nods and walks back to the horror.

I take a breath, keenly aware that I’m back to the beginning.

And this time, at least in my dreams, everything will be different.