Sticks and stone, p.1
Sticks and Stone, page 1
What readers are saying about The True Lies of Rembrandt Stone
The next book can’t come fast enough. – Sarita
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Highly recommend this exciting time-traveling saga with romance, mystery, and suspense. You won’t want to miss this continuation of the story. – Kim
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No Unturned Stone shows what happens when powerhouses, Susan May Warren and James Rubart team up with David Warren to give us some of the best storytelling I have read in a very long time. – Jessica H.
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Oh my word! Where do I even begin? Love suspense? Read this book. Love time travel? Read this book. Love to have the unexpected happen? Read this book. Love going through the ups and downs with the characters? You know what I’m going to say, right? – Mimi
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So much happens in this book that you’ll be on the edge of your seat during your whole read – which will be quick, because you won’t be able to put it down! – Amy B.
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This book and series is just full of all the feels. It’s intense, with an intriguing plot and great characters. Definitely recommended! – Tressa
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If you enjoy suspense, murder mysteries, romance, and a small dose of speculative fiction grab this book and series and don’t look back! – Meagan
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The Rembrandt Stone books are a fascinating mix of the genres of detective/police procedural/time travel, woven together to create the most exciting suspense thriller I’ve read in ages! Don’t miss this incredible book. You’ll be in for a rollercoaster ride! – Wren
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Oh. My. Gosh. I have no words to describe this novel, other than the fact that it was incredible. Seriously, everyone who loves mysteries needs to read this book! I thought I liked the first one of the series, but that was nothing compared to this wild ride! – Beth
Sticks and Stone
David James Warren
Soli Deo Gloria
Tristone Media Inc.
15100 Mckenzie Blvd
Minnetonka, Minnesota, 55345
Copyright © 2021 by Tristone Media
ISBN: 978-1-954023-05-5
www.RembrandtStone.com
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher or as provided by US Copyright Law.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Set in Stone - Preview
Meet David James Warren
1
The pieces of two lives sit in my brain like they should fit together, but no matter how hard I press, I can’t get them to line up.
My life is broken into fragments that refuse to align.
All I know is that some mistakes you can never escape, no matter how you try.
And believe me, I’ve tried.
I’m standing on the muddy shoreline in the shadow of the Stone Arch Bridge on the east bank of the Mississippi River. The morning sun is low, just brimming the horizon, gilding the water a deep, fire-orange, and turning the skyline of Minneapolis a brilliant gold. I’m watching my crime scene investigators tape off a wooded area of the Historic Main Street Park just off Anthony and Main.
A woman’s naked body is covered, awaiting the CSI director—my former wife, although she has no memory of that—and the coroner is on his way.
I’m nursing my second cup of coffee, the first one downed this morning at o-dark hundred as I crawled out of bed to the text of my assistant, Inspector Zeke Kincaid.
My head is fuzzy because, as I said, I’m trying to fit together pieces that aren’t made for this puzzle.
This puzzle belongs to Rembrandt Stone, Bureau Chief Inspector for the Minneapolis Police Department and head of the task force overseeing the Jackson serial killings.
I am Rembrandt Stone, former investigator turned failed novelist, father to a seven-year-old daughter, gone missing in time, husband to a wife who can’t remember being married to him, and the owner of a time-traveling watch.
This is a lifetime I haven’t yet lived, and although the pieces are starting to form, I’m going to need a lot more coffee.
And help.
Here’s what I know—and you’d better write this down because I’m getting some of my facts mixed up as time folds upon itself.
Four days ago, while I was celebrating my daughter’s seventh birthday with my beautiful wife Eve, a box of cold case files was delivered along with an old broken watch, gifts bequeathed to me by Police Chief John Booker after his death.
Three days ago, I took said watch to a repairman who told me it was working just fine. Maybe it was, because as I looked over my cold cases—specifically the first one involving the bombing of three coffee shops over twenty-three years ago—I inadvertently wound the watch.
And ended up at the scene of the first bombing.
Back in time.
I know what you’re thinking—me too. Maybe I’d had too much Macallan whiskey for a night cap. But stay with me—I solved those bombings and prevented the third. And woke up in a new reality. One where my wife stood on my doorstep and handed me divorce papers.
One where Ashley had been murdered, two years before.
One I desperately needed to escape.
So, two days ago, I sought out the watchmaker, and he—and his daughter—suggested I’d overwritten the events of my previous timeline.
Intending to rewrite them yet again, yesterday, I traveled back to my second cold case, one involving a young woman murdered near a diner. I’ll be honest—my goal wasn’t to solve her crime, but to stop another…the drive-by shooting deaths of Eve’s father and brother.
Really, it’s not that hard to change history when you know the time and place history is going to happen. Danny and Asher lived. Unfortunately, Eve’s mother, Bets, was shot in the crossfire and I was sucked back to the present before I knew whether she lived or not.
Yesterday, when I returned to this reality, I found Eve married to my partner, Burke.
Former partner Burke. I’m still figuring out that glitch.
And dealing what feels like a serious gut punch.
And, worse, Ashley doesn’t exist in this timeline. Has never existed.
Are you keeping up?
Maybe we should simply rewind time to yesterday when I arrived back—or should I say forward?—to now, and discovered, as bad as it is, my life isn’t in complete tatters.
I’m not a drunk, I’m not on the verge of divorce, my daughter isn’t among the victims, strangled in her pajamas, torn from our lives as she slept in her upstairs bedroom.
On the contrary, I’m successful. Published.
And I still have my Porsche.
I have an okay life.
It’s just not a life I want. In fact, without Eve and Ashley...
My house is the same—the 1930s Craftsman, off Drew Avenue, close enough to the lakes for us—me—to feel like we’re near a park, but with the skyline of Minneapolis just a stone’s throw away.
My house hasn’t been remodeled, and that’s probably because I no longer have Eve in my ear, drawing out her dreams on graph paper. Inside, my office bookcase is filled with a row of bestsellers, my name on the spine, so now I know what I do on my nights off.
I share the house with Asher Mulligan, Eve’s kid brother. Or at least he was twenty years ago. I nearly tackled him as he came in the door, mostly because I didn’t recognize him, having never known Asher as an adult. Because, you know, he died. Until he didn’t.
Oh boy.
He’s apparently my roommate, a white-hat hacker and someone with whom I’m friendly, if not close.
I don’t know who I’m close to, really, because the only two people in my life I’d put in that category have each other now.
Eve, my wife, and Burke.
Andrew Burke, my former partner. Who now hates me and bears a terrible burn scar across his face. I’m going to get to the bottom of that.
My office is still a conference room, but now, instead of twenty-three horrific murders, thirty-eight cases line the board.
Thirty-eight women killed by a man we—I?—have dubbed the Jackson killer, because of his calling card, a twenty-dollar bill.
What no one knows is that inscribed on each twenty are the words, “thank you for your service.”
Sick.
The only anomaly in the lineup of cases is still the murder of my old boss, John Booker.
My daughter’s case, however, is absent, because, like I said, she doesn’t exist.
Never existed.
See why I need to write things down? Because I sound a little crazy when I say it out loud.
“Rem. I thought I’d find you here.”
The voice turns me and just like always I’m blown over by the sight of Eve walking onto a crime scene.
Her auburn
She’s not mine. And she probably just rolled out of the bed she shares with Burke and I need to not let that find root in my brain if I hope to survive in this world.
Time is cruel. Or maybe it’s fate. I’m not sure, but frankly, Eve belongs to me. And I know that sounds rather Neanderthal, but that’s just where I am right now.
I’m not sure why the idea of her, happy, with my best friend is worse than her divorcing me. I just can’t believe she moved on after what we had. Or maybe we, like Ash, never existed because Eve looks at me with a friendly smile, nothing of a spark in her eyes, and my throat thickens.
I probably need more coffee.
No, I need to rewind time, rescue my old life, and throw the watch into the Mississippi.
She is carrying a pair of gloves, but she doesn’t do the heavy lifting anymore. Not as director of the crime lab.
She stands at the edge of the crime scene and stares at the body. “What do we know?”
This information is recent, handed to me by Zeke. “Female, early twenties. From the marks at her neck, she was strangled. She’s naked, but in her hand is—”
“A twenty-dollar bill.”
“Yeah.”
“Is it marked?”
“Yes,” I say and finish off my coffee.
“I hope we can get some DNA off her.”
“Maybe, hopefully, she fought him,” I say. “Look under her fingernails.”
Eve gives me a look. “We’ll get him, Rem,” she says. “By the way, why did you want me to pull the DNA off the Delany case?”
I stare at her, a coil tightening around my chest.
The Delany case?
Eve is snapping on her gloves. “Although, admittedly, I realized we didn’t pull DNA the first time, so it’s a good thing. I’m running the match through the CODIS database just to see if we get a hit on Fitzgerald.”
That’s right. Lauren Delany. The working girl killed outside Sonny’s Bar. She had a twenty in her pocket. Did I identify her as a Jackson murder? The first go-round, she was just an unlucky girl who’d been picked up by the wrong John.
Until now, that John was unnamed. But now, it’s Leo Fitzgerald. The name is a recent acquisition to my memory, and it takes me just a moment to nail it. Leo Fitzgerald, the lead suspect in the Jackson murders. Former military, bomb-maker and the man whose explosive ambush killed John Booker.
He’s been in the wind for three years.
He’s been the primary suspect since his DNA was found on his dead girlfriend, Gretchen Anderson, who was strangled, sexually assaulted and marked with the first of the Jackson bills. But that doesn’t happen for two more years…or rather two years after Lauren Delany’s case.
So what was I thinking? And by I, I mean the Rem who occupied this body in the timeline I jumped into. He asked Eve to dig up the old case and run the DNA tests.
I hope he’s onto something.
Eve starts down the hill toward the activity, but I can’t help myself. “Hey—how’s your mom?”
She looks up at me. “She’s good, Rem, thanks. But you just saw her two days ago at my dad’s memorial party.” She frowns.
The Danny Mulligan Annual Birthday Party, the precinct-wide bash Bets has every year to celebrate her husband’s life, even in death. So, I’m still invited to that? “Right. Yeah, I just…I don’t know.” Two days ago, she lay bleeding in the sidewalk of Eve’s childhood home. Catch up, Rem!
I need a time travel assistant, someone who reminds me where I am, and why. But the right words form in my soul. “It’s just been a long time since Danny’s death, and I…you just don’t get over losing someone you love, right?”
She gives me a smile, and it’s sweet. “Sometimes, Rem, you remind me of a guy I used to know.” She winks then and heads down the hill.
I can’t breathe.
It was real. What we had. I saw it flash in her eyes—me, holding her in my arms, she, smiling up at me a second before she kisses me.
It was absolutely, no question, we-were-made-for-each other real.
So, then…It’s me. I’m the reason we’re not together. I’m the one who colossally screwed up.
My heart seizes. I need to sit down—
“Boss, we found some clothes.” The words from Zeke shake me out of the spiral of despair and back to the investigation. “It looks like a T-shirt.”
Zeke is young, maybe mid-twenties, with a man bun and built like a guy who works out after hours. He sort of reminds me of me, back when I lived for this job. He’s wearing a pair of dress pants, an untucked striped shirt, his sleeves rolled up, and purple evidence gloves. I really don’t know much about him, but I like him. He’s eager. And right now, he’s the closest thing to a friend that I have, so I’m on him like Velcro.
Someone, anyone, needs to point me in the right direction.
Zeke is directing one of the CSIs to take a picture of the evidence he’s pointing to.
I take a breath, give one glance back at Eve, walk over and crouch next to him as he holds up the underbrush around the shirt. “What, the killer tosses this away as he’s fleeing?”
“Or maybe during the crime, and he didn’t have the time to find it?”
Zeke holds the shirt up. “Pillsbury Diner. It’s a place just across the street. Great burgers, live music.”
I know the place, and the thought sends a strange heat through me. A conversation is forming in the back of my head. I can’t quite make it out, but I will, give me, ahem, time. “Turn it over.”
Again, I’m not sure why, but something in my gut just knows…
He turns the shirt over.
Great. I puff out a quick sigh
A footprint.
I know I’m cheating, because I remember now a victim from a different time, laying in a hospital bed…“It happened so fast. I was coming out of work at Pillsbury’s and I heard someone behind me. I started running, and he tackled me. He put his foot in my back and held me down…
I’m scrambling for her name, but it’s buried under layers of other memories.
“I wonder how she got here,” Zeke says.
“He surprised her after work, as she was coming out into the parking lot.” It’s not a hunch—I’m remembering my bedside conversation with the victim. Her name…her name. It’s lodged in the back of my brain.
But deep inside, I hope I’m wrong. That this woman is not the blonde I met in the hospital, the only daughter of a couple from the suburbs. “She probably ran, and he caught up to her.” I gesture to the footprint. “He held her down.”
“We’ll get this tread into the database and see what we can find.” Zeke bags the evidence.
I walk over to the edge of the yellow tape, duck under it and hike down to the crime scene. Eve is looking at the body, the strangulation marks at her neck, the evidence of assault. She picks up the girl’s hands. “She chews her nails. Nothing to grab skin,” she says. “And the DNA might be washed away. It looks like her body might have been pushed into the water, then pulled out.”
Her hair is wet and muddy, her lower lip gray, split. My memory flashes, but it’s too brief to capture.
“I found her purse!” Zeke shouts. He’s standing near a park bench. Eve follows me as we hike up the hill. We wait for the photographer, then I glove up as Eve picks up the purse. It’s small, the kind that a woman wears over her shoulder, to her hip. What does Eve call that—a clutch?
“It’s a crossbody bag,” Eve says as she opens it. “So it’s funny that it would have fallen off. Unless she was surprised, and it fell off her shoulder as she ran.” She pulls out a small wallet.
