You can’t win against time. Booker is in my head as I stare at my ceiling of my one-bedroom, third floor apartment. The orange glow of the sunrise is barely glinting my windowsill and the wind teases the blinds, smacking them against the screen.
I can smell rain.
I was here three days ago, in my time, and then the place was fairly immaculate, given my bachelorhood status.
When I arrived last night, the tiny vintage apartment looked like it had been hit by my college self, with a couple empty pizza boxes on the table and more than a few socks balled up and thrown at the television set, a stained white t-shirt hanging on a radiator.
I spent a few minutes tidying up for the young man inside me who seems to be having a hard time getting back on his feet. Take out the trash, wash the dishes, throw the clothes into the wash.
If I’m going to rewrite my life, I should do it in clean duds.
Mostly I had to work out of my system the desperate urge to return to Eve’s house, to find myself again on the stairs, kissing the woman who still believes in me.
I admit to losing a piece of myself, holding onto Eve as if she belonged to me—and enjoying way too much the fact she seemed to want me, too. She is young and compassionate and I’m a jerk because someday she’s going to sit on a picnic table and tell me it hurts her too much to love me.
Yeah, that thought was in my head, too, as she kissed me. And maybe I dove in because I wanted to expunge that impulse from her thoughts.
Then she said the thing that turned me cold. “He doesn’t know who pulled the trigger.”
No. Hassan might not know it was Danny who shot his brother.
He might even think it was me.
It was that thought that drove me out of her house to my tiny apartment. It settled in a dark and jagged place in my brain. Itched at my attempts at sleep.
What if I screw up, do something stupid here and die? Do I just vanish? Clearly if Art is right, and I’m overwriting time, then yes. Finito. I’m just a memory in Eve’s rear-view mirror.
Ashley never exists.
But that’s not why I can’t sleep. Well, not the only reason.
I keep running the fight with Booker through my head. The real fight we had in my very real past three years ago before I quit the force.
The night I watched Jimmy Williams get gunned down by a fifteen-year-old gang member in an ambush…twenty years from now.
He was one year from retirement, left behind two teenage children, and seeing his wife at his funeral made me return to the station and turn in my badge.
Yes, just like that. Ashely was four and I was shaken to the bone.
Booker tried to talk me out of it in a heated, you’re-a-cop-for-life argument. How being a cop is more than a job. It’s a responsibility, a calling.
That it was in my soul.
Maybe. But I had a family, a life.
Had being the key word for me, pounding in my brain as I tossed the night away.
I had a life.
And I came here knowing I would do anything to get them back.
But again, not if I’m dead.
The sound of the gunshot in the parking lot is also ricocheting in my head, along with the odor of blood on my hands, and the cold slick of horror that if Danny had listened to me, I would be dead.
I break out in a cold sweat every time that thought passes over me.
So, there’s a crowd of voices in my brain, and needless to say I don’t sleep well.
When dawn breaks through the high transom windows in my bedroom, I get up and take this body out for a run around the lake.
Might as well enjoy it while I can.
The run airs out my brain too, and I’m not quite so edgy as I climb up the three flights and enter my newly cleaned apartment.
Listen, I mutter to myself. No one died yesterday.
And no one is going to die today.
And as long as I save Danny and Asher, and manage not to get myself killed, everything will be just fine.
My machine is blinking and I retrieve my messages as I strip off my shirt and stick my head in my fridge, searching for sustenance.
Two cans of beer and a piece of moldy cheese sit forlornly in my fridge. I hadn’t realized that I had such serious issues with eating healthy.
“Rembrandt, this is Mom.”
Oh, boy. I throw out the beers and the cheese and close the fridge. I haven’t talked to Mom—well, maybe I have, but you know what I mean—since the police found my brother’s body a month ago. I left this time almost immediately after solving the cold case last time—and that realization hits me. Timing.
What if I save Danny and Asher’s life and never find Gretta’s killer?
“Aunt Joann and Uncle Bert have stopped by, and we’re all having brunch this morning,” my mother says from the machine.
My mother’s sister and her husband. Nice, God-fearing folks from Brainerd. I have a couple fond memories of ice-fishing with Uncle Bert. I check the freezer and find a burrito. It’s icy around the edges, having had a long quiet life behind the ice trays.
“We’re hoping you can stop by and join us. I haven’t seen you in weeks, not since the hospital…” She pauses, and I still.
They must have come to the hospital to visit me after the stabbing. Or maybe…what if, despite all I did, she still had her stroke? I can’t remember now, my memory foggy and I close the freezer door in a rush of fear.
“I hope you’re feeling better. I…we miss you.”
The message ends and I stare at the machine.
They miss me? This is new. After Mikey vanished, life simply halted while my parents searched, grieved, searched, grieved more…an endless cycle that I eventually stepped out of and watched.
They never really noticed my absence.
Not that I blamed them. No one actually pointed any fingers at me, at the fact that we were out biking together, me, the older brother, and Mikey, three years younger, struggling to catch up to me.
Then he was gone, and you know the rest.
Probably I need to check in with my family and see what damage I’ve done to them. See what I can do to fix it.
You can’t win against time.
Yeah, yeah I heard you.
I shower and dress, pulling on a pair of clean jeans—thank you fresh laundry—my favorite band t-shirt, a relic I picked up while attending a Journey concert, slip on my Cons and I’m out the door.
I’ve forgotten, really, the ebullient sense of youth, how it fills your pores and makes you believe you’re invincible. Maybe the young me is in here somewhere, because my panic from Eve’s words last night has dissolved.
Journey reminds me to keep the faith as I crank Don’t Stop Believin’ and I take Highway 7 out to Waconia, a small town about thirty minutes from the city. My parents live on a small hobby farm, with a barn my father uses for his vintage car repair. My 1988 Porsche sits under a tarp, waiting for a rebuilt carburetor and a number of other problems, and I suddenly miss it.
Truth is, I kept the car at the farm as an excuse to see my parents. I would come out to work on the car mostly when Eve and I were in our off-again moments and it became a time when my father and I talked about everything that didn’t matter, but of course it seriously mattered.
Because at least we were talking.
Now, as I pull up to the yellow, two story house with black shutters, the grass is mowed, the front garden has been weeded, the rose bushes cut back and red geraniums spill out of planters on the wide porch.
The place looks downright cheery.
I pull in next to a dirty caravan with a Brainerd International Raceway sticker on the back window.
By the time I climb out, my mother has emerged onto the porch.
The sight of her causes me to brace my hand against the roof of the Camaro. Mom?
She’s wearing a pair of jeans, a sleeveless shirt and flip flops. She’s lost weight. Put on makeup. Her dark red hair is down around her face and she’s sporting a tan.
My mother hasn’t worn makeup since she attended my high school graduation.
More importantly, she’s smiling. “Rembrandt!” She holds open her arms and I resist the urge to look around, maybe to spot another version of myself who she’s excited to see.
She comes off the porch and her arms circle my neck before I know what to do. “You got my message!”
She feels strong and bright and radiating an energy that stirs up Booker’s words. This…gift…is to help give people closure. To let them live in peace.
Peace. Maybe that’s what it is. A release of the lethal, dark grip of living in limbo.
I hug her back and she gives me a kiss and yes, maybe Booker is right. This might be enough.
Might.
“Your uncle and aunt are inside, but your father is in the barn. I think he’s working on your car.” She pats my cheek. “Go say hi.”
I’m now, apparently, a member of the Cleaver family. “Sure,” I say and head out to the barn.
Once upon a time, my father and I, along with Mikey, would spend Saturdays covered in grease, rebuilding engines, taking apart carburetors, and changing the oil in whatever beaters my father was currently rebuilding. He had a fling with a few VW bugs, then upgraded to Audis.
No wonder I fell in love with Porsches.
All of my memories include sweaty cans of grape Fanta, my father’s cloth-covered Panasonic radio screaming out Seger, and Mikey trying to sword fight me with one of my father’s Pittsburgh 1/2 inch torque wrenches.
I step into the shadows of the barn with some trepidation.
He’s got the tarp off the Porsche, the trunk is up and he’s leaning inside, looking at the motor. “What happened to this thing anyway?”
“The engine died after a high-speed chase.”
“It’s running rough. Sounds like it’s hitting only a couple cylinders.”
The familiar smell of engine oil mixes with the scents of dirt and age in the barn, and I almost hear the echo of Mikey’s voice. Ghosts. I stick my hands in my pockets, fighting a shiver.
“Yep. The timing belt is loose.” Dad leans up. “My guess is that it jumped a tooth on the right bank. We’ll have to loosen it up and take a look.”
Dad is wearing a pair of old work pants, an oily flannel shirt and his cap on backwards over his thinning hair. He goes to his work bench and lifts a cup of coffee from the ancient green thermos. “It’s a pretty car, though. I can see why you like her.”
It’s like we’re continuing a conversation I can’t remember. “Thanks.”
He returns to the car. “Hand me a 10mm ratchet.”
I walk over to his standing toolbox and pull out the drawer with the ratchets. My father is an electrician, but he knows cars and keeps his tools immaculate.
I find the ratchet and hand it to him. The transistor is belting out a little Steely Dan—Do It Again—and suddenly I’m twelve.
“You look like you took one on the chin, Rem.” He takes the bolts off the timing belt cover and removes it.
“Had a little scuffle chasing a suspect last night.”
“Give me the 22 mil.”
I find it and he uses it to turn the crank shaft to align the timing marks on the pulley with the engine pointer.
“Are the left cam shaft timing marks aligned?”
I stick my head into the engine. I know he can see these for himself, but maybe he also thinks I’m still twelve. “Yep.”
“So, did you get him?”
“Nope.” I don’t want to tell him the rest. “He’s still at large. The right timing marks are off.”
“It’s what I thought—timing belt’s jumped. We’ll have to re-align it.”
It occurs to me in a not-funny way that that’s why I’m here—to realign time. Or, rather, to make it run better.
“Funny that just one tooth off can make a car run so rough and send it out of commission.”
I stare at him. That’s it, of course. One tooth is off in my spectacular plan to fix time. Maybe I already fixed it, though. If Hassan doesn’t know Danny is the shooter, then maybe he never sends the drive by.
As for me, well…I’ll just have to watch my back. Funny, the chill of death seems to have dissipated with the sunlight.
Dad glances at me. “You okay?”
“Yep.”
“You working on any big cases?” He’s loosening the timing belt tensioner to allow slack.
“A murder case. A young woman—runaway, we think. Her parents have been searching for her for three months.” The words are out before I can snake them back, and I’m suddenly keenly aware of my father’s own fruitless search for Mikey. But he just nods as he slides the belt off the right cam shaft sprocket.
“The poor parents. It’s terrible to wonder every night where your child is. You spend all your time trying to figure out if you could have done something different, rewriting your responses, imagining a different outcome.” He loosens the timing belt tensioner to get slack, then turns the cam shaft back a tooth. “At least now they know.” He puts the belt back on and I watch in silence, my heart a fist in my chest.
I take a breath, not sure if I want to ask the question.
Frankly, not sure if I want the answer either. “Would you do things differently, Dad? Now that you know.”
He pauses for a sec, then stands as he gingerly pulls his wrench out, relaxing the tension on the old motor.
“I don’t know, son. As a father, you can’t ever give up. It’s in your bones. You can’t stop caring. The only way you survive is to hang onto hope. Otherwise, your life becomes despair.”
He bends back over the engine. “But I also believe that everything happens for a reason, and to ignore that reason and start over is to miss the lesson.”
I shake my head. “What lesson can be learned by Mikey’s death, Dad. C’mon.”
He glances over and meets my eyes. “Even in tragedy there are lessons, Rem. Everyone has something in their past they'd like to redo. It doesn't mean it should be redone. Our mistakes, our tragedies, our suffering make us better, stronger, more compassionate people. And those are lessons we learn by going through the pain, not around it.”
He leans up again, grabs a rag to wipe the wrench. Looks away. “But if I had to do it over, I might not have obsessed so long on finding the son I lost, to the detriment of the one I still had.”
A hand has pressed my chest and I can’t breathe. I nod, and also look away—
“I’m going to crank the engine over a couple times, then align the marks again. Take a look and see if all three line up.”
Somehow, I do, although my eyes are blurry. “Yep. All aligned.”
“Let’s fire it up. You left the keys in the ignition.”
I get inside and crank the engine over. It catches, but sputters and hiccups, as if trying to die.
Dad comes around. “I think we have a bigger problem here.” He wipes his hands. “We’ll have to pull the spark plugs and do a compression test. But I’m fresh out of coffee and I’ll bet your mother’s cinnamon rolls are ready.”
I have a vague memory of those, and it’s enough for me to climb out of the car.
“We can tackle it after breakfast.” He turns to put his tools away. And for the first time I notice that he still has hair, blonde and thin, yes, but sticking out the back of his hat. Blue eyes, but they hold a peace that I don’t recognize.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t get one of those new fancy Lexus models. Toyota.” He shakes his head. “At least a Porsche has good bones.”
His automotive prejudices coming through. But I grin and nod.
His words from before, however, ping back to me. It’s terrible to wonder every night where your child is. As a father, you can’t ever give up. It’s in your bones. You can’t stop caring.
In my head, I’m getting out of the Camaro at HCMC, noticing a Lexus in the lot.
The one that belongs to Jeff and Karen Holmes.
And I’m remembering Jeff’s strange behavior at the morgue. Despair? Or something else?
Maybe a desire not to live in limbo anymore.
Enough to park his Lexus outside Lulu’s? Maybe force his daughter to come home?
“Dad. I gotta go.” I take him by the shoulders and give a quick squeeze. “I’m so sorry. Tell mom I’ll give her a call later.”
He stares at me, still holding the rag. “Thanks for coming by, son. We’ll get your car running, even if we have to take out the head, replace the valves, and rebuild it from the bones up. It’s just a matter of staying the course, reading the clues the car is giving you.”
What he said.
I stalk toward my car, pulling out my cell phone.
Burke picks up on the fifth ring, his voice groggy. That’s right, he had a gig last night.
“We need another go-round with Jeff Holmes. I think I know why he looked like he wanted to murder someone.”
I just hope it wasn’t his own daughter.