Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  Before I could stop her, she spilled the contents of the manila envelope on my desk. She pointed to the top photo. “This is James’s first baby picture.”

  I stared for a moment at the scrunch-faced infant in a hospital cap. “Mrs. Madison...”

  Setting aside the baby picture, she indicated the next in the stack. “Here’s James at his first birthday party.” Whipped cream frosting smeared across a grinning toddler face. “Here’s his kindergarten picture.” Tossing that on top of the first two, then held out a folded crayon-scrawled piece of construction paper. “That’s his first Mother’s Day card.”

  As her hand trembled, glitter floated from the construction paper onto my desk. She carefully slipped the keepsake back in the manila envelope and held out two small plastic bags. “Here’s the first tooth he lost. That’s hair from his first haircut.”

  I stared at the white enamel fragment and the curls of black hair. Sweet baby James smiled up at me from my desk.

  She put away the artifacts of James’s babyhood. “He’s eleven years old and an A student in school.” She handed over a report card, followed by an eight-by-ten of a grinning boy with his mother’s eyes.

  “The police won’t do anything/’ she repeated. “No one else cares. Even my own husband thinks he’s dead.”

  She wouldn’t want to hear the truth, but I had to deliver it anyway. “You might have to accept that he is, Mrs. Madison. A kid like him, unprepared for life on the streets, it’s a reasonable conclusion.”

  Her fingers crumpled the edges of the envelope. “But Sheri says you found so many children.” She glanced up at my photo gallery. “All those kids. She said if anyone could find my James, you could.”

  I contemplated all the ways I would torture Sheri before I killed her. I had no magic bullet to finding lost kids. It took time and damn hard work, the kind of energy already expended by Patti and the police. To say no would crush Mrs. Madison, to say yes would fill her full of cruel hope.

  But her silent plea stabbed me more deeply than the final cut to Tommy’s small chest. I would hate myself later—hell, I already hated myself—but I nodded. “Let me see what I can do.”

  The tears did spill from her eyes then, despite the tremulous smile on her face. I closed my ears to her thank yous as I rose to escort her from my office, focusing instead on the slash of pain in my calf.

  Mrs. Madison let me keep the photos, scanned copies of the originals. I stuffed them into Enrique’s file folder, then dropped into my chair, slapping shut the lid of my laptop. Sheri still lurked in the outer office, but I didn’t give a damn. I grabbed a fresh box of matches from my drawer—I’d gone through the others riding BART to my surveillance—and dumped them on my desk.

  The temptation to light them all at once surged through me, never mind the tinderbox status of the rattletrap building I leased space in. I hadn’t given in to that impulse since my teen years, had grown a little maturity along the way. And with Sheri only feet away, I would have to save my other, more perverse habit for later.

  I picked up a match and with a deft twist of the wrist snapped off the head. The sin of cowardice. I still lived in terror of the evils from my childhood, even though my own personal monster was dead.

  I set the head to my right, the stick to my left, and picked up another. Snap. The sin of guilt. When I lacked the courage to do, I justified my inactivity with remorse. All these years chasing philandering husbands when I could have saved lives.

  Snap. The sin of despair. I clung to blackness the way others clung to faith. Because it was easier than to hope.

  I went through the entire box of thirty-two. When I exhausted my transgressions, I continued to decapitate matches until all the blue and red heads sat stacked in their neat pile. I tossed the sticks in the trash and crumpled the heads in a tissue. I’d drop them in the toilet on my way out.

  I was nothing if not a sucker for empty ritual.

  * * * *

  That night I holed up in my tidy studio apartment off Mission Street, lining up burnt matches like miniature firewood on the coffee table. New red marks joined the dozens of others dotting my arms from wrist to elbow, one for each burnt match.

  I’d just struck another when the phone rang. I blew out the flame and grabbed the portable. Didn’t recognize the caller ID. “Yeah?”

  “This is Mrs. Madison.” I heard the excitement in her soft voice. “I have a lead.”

  A faint adrenaline edge from my recent catharsis lingered, befuddling my brain. “A lead for what?”

  “Someone thinks they saw him. Saw James.”

  I’d done nothing since this afternoon, not so much as a Google search for James Madison. Guilt had me itching for another match. I nudged the coffee table farther away. “Tell me.”

  “I got a call,” she said. “Friend of a friend. Her daughter works at a McDonald’s near Greenville. That’s about thirty miles east-”

  “I know where Greenville is.” Damn, what was this? Old home week for all my personal ghouls? “When was this?”

  “Right after James disappeared. Three months ago.”

  A damn long time. “How sure is this girl that it was James?”

  “She seemed sure.” Now doubt seeped into her tone. “Could James be in Greenville?”

  “He could be anywhere.” Or nowhere. Dead like her husband said.

  “A black kid in South San Francisco wouldn’t stick out,” she pointed out, “but Greenville’s as white as Beverly Hills. If he’s there, someone’s seen him, noticed him.”

  I couldn’t deny that. Greenville’s minority population consisted of a few enclaves of Mexican immigrants who worked the orchards and vineyards and the handful of upper-middle class Asians and African-American transplants from the Bay Area.

  “What if you went up there?” she asked.

  “I have a business to run, Mrs. Madison.” Even as I said it, I didn’t give a damn about whatever miscreant spouse I was scheduled to chase that week. The dual link between James and Enrique intrigued me, made me want to put the pieces together. Even if it meant returning to Greenville.

  Fending off a sense of doom, I told her, “I could probably go over there for the day.”

  My stomach clenched at her profuse thanks. I’d likely be destroying that happiness soon enough. Before she signed off, she gave me the girl’s name—Emma—and her cell number.

  Since Sheri had delivered this problem to me, I had no qualms about calling her this late at home. “What have I got tomorrow?” I asked without preamble, then waited while she fumbled for her iPhone.

  “The Billings surveillance, then you’re meeting with Mrs. Spitzer.”

  I picked up a matchstick, jamming it in my mouth instead of lighting it. “Try to reschedule Mrs. Spitzer. Call Patti and see if she has someone to cover for me on the surveillance.”

  “Should I say thank you?”

  “You damn well shouldn’t,” I told her. “This will probably end badly.”

  If not for Mrs. Madison, then certainly for me.

  CHAPTER 2

  James scrunched deeper into the corner of the basement, the cinderblock cool against his back, the thin mattress barely padding his butt against the concrete floor. The candle he held tight in both hands had burned within an inch of the bottom. The heat from the flame wasn’t quite hot enough yet to burn him, but the melted wax was. If he wasn’t quick enough to tip the candle when the wax spilled over, he’d end up with blisters again.

  Like he had the first time Mama had made him hold a lit candle. That had been before he’d learned it was best not to fight Mama, best to let her do exactly what she wanted.

  The day she’d taken him, they’d driven for what seemed like forever until they were far away from the city. After bouncing around on an old dirt road in the middle of nowhere, Daddy had stopped the car and told him they had to walk the rest of the way to the cabin.

  James knew once they left the road, he might never find his way out again. So he’d tried to e
scape, taking off into the trees, running as hard as he could. Mama had caught him, then hit him so hard, it had knocked him out. He woke up in the basement the next morning. Soon after, Mama brought the candle.

  She’d wrapped his fingers around it and lit it, then sat on the stairs watching him. She never moved, even when the baby cried, even when Sean tried to climb in her lap.

  He remembered everything about that first time. The nasty smell of the basement, the way the window up near the ceiling hardly let in any light. How hot the drops of wax had felt on his fingers. When the candle had burned half-way down, Mama finally blew it out. The wax had only dripped on James’s fingers twice before he figured out how to tip the candle.

  He tried hard to be good so Mama wouldn’t get out the candle again. But it seemed he always needed punishment, because he hadn’t changed the baby’s diaper when she needed it or because Sean wet his pants during the night. Other times, like now, Mama made him do it just to make him stronger, better able to fight the sin. And she let the flame burn lower each time before she blew it out.

  He didn’t know what time it was. Night-time, but not too late, since Mama was still here. The candle’s glow lit enough of the darkness so he could make out the baby in the playpen on the other side of the basement. He thought she was sleeping, but sometimes Lydia would just lie there, her thumb in her mouth, awake and staring at him.

  Mama was on the stairs. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was there. Sometimes, the candlelight caught her eyes as she stared at him.

  The candle was nearly to his fingers. Melting wax dripped down and onto his skin before he could tip it away. Tears filled his eyes from the pain.

  He tried to be quiet, to endure the pain. But the words slipped out. “I want to go home.”

  He held his breath, waiting for Mama’s wrath. But she didn’t speak, didn’t move. Her inaction made him brave. “I won’t tell anyone if you let me go home now.”

  Still no response from Mama. Was she still there? Had she somehow crept up the stairs without him hearing her? The door was noisy, but maybe she’d found a way to open and close it without making a sound.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore!” he called into the darkness. He blew on the flame and it went out. The tip glowed a moment more, smoke drifting from it, then the room went black.

  James had only an instant of joy before the slap of Mama’s feet across the concrete floor sent terror crashing down on him. She grabbed his ankles, yanking him flat on the mattress, his head banging against the cinderblock wall as he went down. Her hand on his chest made it hard to breathe.

  “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry,” he gasped out.

  He thought he’d die right there. Mama’s rage burned him like a white-hot flame.

  But after what seemed like forever, Mama let him go. She fumbled around for something, then the bright flame of Mama’s lighter blinded him in the darkness. She lit the candle in her hand, watched its flame for a moment.

  Then she wrapped his fingers around it and returned to the stairs.

  CHAPTER 3

  Thursday morning, with the decks finally cleared for a day away, I went into the office to tie up a last few loose ends. I wasn’t in a rush to get an early start. My meeting with the girl at McDonald’s wasn’t until one, but I wouldn’t be lollygagging either, not with Sheri glowering at me and checking her watch every two minutes. I’s dotted and T’s crossed, I left at ten, stopping in Emeryville on the other side of the Bay Bridge.

  As expected, I didn’t learn much at the Arco. Rodney, the greasy-haired attendant, vaguely remembered James coming in for a candy bar around noon on December 29th. Rodney saw him eating the candy bar over by the pumps one minute. The next, James had vanished. I left my card with a request that he call if he thought of anything else.

  Back on the road with a coffee refill and a fat-laden cinnamon roll, I hit the Yolo Causeway east of Sacramento around 11.30, then stopped in Rancho Cordova for lunch. After the cinnamon roll, I didn’t have much of an appetite for the coffee shop burger and fries I ordered, although the three glasses of Coke I downed polished my caffeine edge nicely.

  The Micky D’s where Emma worked was another half hour up Highway 50, ten miles southwest of Greenville. I’d called her last night to arrange our little gab fest, the crack of her chewing gum pinging in my ear with every other word. Since it was her spring vacation, she was working the day shift and would take her break around one.

  My mental picture of sixteen-year-old Emma proved accurate—spiky black hair, seven earrings lined up along the outer edge of her left ear, only two in her right. I saw the faint mark of a brow and lip piercing, but apparently Emma had made some effort to uphold the McDonald’s image by leaving those adornments at home. She’d covered most of the tattoo on her neck with a T-shirt under her uniform shirt.

  A light drizzle had started up as we stepped outside the restaurant, the parking lot misted with moisture. I would have suggested we sit in my car, but I saw that pack of cigs in her hand. No way was I sullying my upholstery with tar and nicotine. Not to mention that temptation to brush against that searing heat in the close quarters of my Escort.

  Instead we sat on the edge of a planter spilling over with impatiens and pansies. The building’s overhang did a half-assed job of keeping us dry.

  Her cigarette lit and dangling from her right hand, Emma took a look at James’s photo. “Yeah, that’s him. They were calling him Junior though, not James.”

  “Then how do you know for sure it was him?”

  Emma studied the photo again. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure. Thing is, it was weird seeing a black kid with a white family. He stood out. Kinda stuck in my mind.”

  “So what did you see?” I took a notepad from my pocket.

  “I was taking a smoke break, you know? We get ten whole minutes. Big deal.” She took a long drag, then blew smoke from the side of her mouth, away from me. “I saw the whole thing.”

  “Saw what?”

  “There was like, a fight or something.”

  “James was fighting?”

  She flicked an ash. “Well, he like, got out of the car, started to walk away.”

  “What kind of car?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a Honda. Dark. It had four doors, cuz the kid got out of the back seat. Anyway a lady in the car yelled, told him to come back.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Couldn’t see her. Just heard her hollering. Mostly I saw the guy. He was older, like your age.”

  I wrote, white male, late-thirties. “Describe him.”

  “Kind of like... I don’t know.” She stared at the burning tip of her cigarette for inspiration. “George Clooney in that brother movie. The one he sang in.”

  I had to scratch my head over that one. “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?”

  “Right. The guy had long raggedy hair and beard. I didn’t like that movie. Too weird.” She rubbed the empty hole of her lip piercing.

  “About how tall, do you think? Dark or light hair?”

  “Kind of average.” She shrugged and the two-inch long pendant hanging from her right ear swayed. “Brown hair, brown eyes.”

  “But you didn’t see the woman.”

  Down to the filter, she lit another cigarette with the butt of the first. “She never got out of the car.”

  “What did the bearded guy do when James took off?”

  “He goes and talks to the kid.” She ground the spent cig into the dirt of the planter.

  “Did James get back in the car?”

  “Didn’t look too happy, but he did.”

  I fished Enrique’s photo out of my pocket, shielded it from the drizzle as I showed it to her. “I don’t suppose he was with them.” It wasn’t even a long shot. It was mere whimsy. But as long as I was here...

  Emma took a look. “Nah. Just the baby the guy had.”

  “He had a baby?”

  “Yeah. Like, I don’t know, eight, nine months old. The ba
by was black, too.”

  I didn’t know what to make of that little oddity. Was the baby adopted and they snatched James to give her an older brother? That was just plain goofy. “You’re sure they were headed to Greenville?”

  “Heard the lady ask the scruffy guy how much farther it was.” She pinched the end of her half-smoked cigarette. “Oh, yeah. One more thing. It was beyond strange.”

  “What’s that?”

  “As they pulled out, I saw fire in the back seat.”

  A tremor shivered down my spine. “The car was on fire?”

  She shook her head. “Just a flame. Like a lighter or candle or something.”

  “Could the lady have been lighting a cigarette?”

  “If she was, it took her an effing long time. I could see the flame burning all through the parking lot. And they drove slow.” She got to her feet. “I gotta go.”

  I dug a twenty from my pocket, handed it over. “Thanks.”

  “Hey, anytime.” Emma grinned as she stuffed the money down her bra. There wasn’t a whole lot there to hold it in place.

  I climbed back into the Escort, relieved to be out of the wet, and grabbed my cell. As I punched in my office number, I tried to ignore the sense of impending doom.

  “Sheri? I need you to check on any missing six- to ten- month olds in the Bay Area and greater Sacramento area. African-American.”

  “Is this where I talk you down from the ledge?”

  “Just do it.” I chewed on the inside of my mouth, too damn intrigued by the puzzle Emma had laid out for me. I pressed a thumb to the bridge of my nose. “Don’t give me any crap,” I said preemptively.

  “What?”

  “Get me a room in Greenville. The Gold Rush Inn isn’t a complete dump.”

  “What happened to just one day?” She was laughing at me. Silently. I could sense it.

  “The day’s half over. I need a little more time.”

  I hung up before she started snickering, then switched off the phone and tossed it back on the seat. Besides the emergency mini-toiletries bag I kept in the trunk, there was a plastic Safeway bag stuffed with old T-shirts I’d planned to take to the thrift store. They were stained and full of holes, but there might be one decent enough to wear tomorrow. I could rinse my unmentionables in the bathroom sink.