Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  I grabbed the handle and wrenched the door open. My left leg had cramped up again, but I ignored the pain as I limped up to the tangle of manzanita. There was just enough space between clumps to pass through, although I’d have to do some fancy maneuvering to avoid the poison oak that wound its way up the thicket.

  I dimly heard the ding-ding-ding as Ken opened his door, then the clunk as he shut it again. I was focused on the overgrown greenery, trying to make out the front porch under all those thorns. The blackberries hadn’t quite enveloped the front door, or maybe someone had been here recently and had pushed them aside, because the door yawned open. Maybe it was my father’s ghost coming and going, forging a path for me in anticipation of my return. Not a cheerful thought.

  The front porch steps had rotted away. I had to pick my way along the supports, using blackberry vines for balance, jabbing my palms with the wicked thorns. With that pinprick pain, I was seven years old again gathering ripe berries in the stifling July heat. The sweet-tangy taste of blackberry juice settled on my tongue.

  I’d torn my shirt once berry picking, giving my father justification for punishing me. Of course, he could find justification in the phase of the moon or the color of his morning piss. There was nothing I could do to please him, and far too many ways to incur his wrath.

  I stood now in the center of the cabin’s main room, the late afternoon sunshine nearly obliterated by the dense vines shrouding the windows. Broken furniture littered the floor. Spider webs draped the remnants of the sofa. Blackberries intruded through holes punched in the walls, whether an act of my father or rowdy teens using the cabin to party I didn’t know.

  The place shouldn’t have smelled the same, but somehow it did, stale, sour beer permeating the sofa, the reek of cigarettes still clinging to the walls. Like a key thrust into a rusty lock, the scents, whether real or imagined, opened the lid on old memories. I stood there, helpless, while they pulled me back in time.

  Dimly, I heard my name called. Ken, I realized later. But in the throes of flashback, his voice morphed into my father’s. Thirty years vanished and I was that little girl again, as defenseless as a kitten.

  “Janelle!” Daddy shouted, cigarette bobbing in his mouth. “Where’s my damn beer?”

  “Right here, Daddy,” I told him, the can clutched in my hand. I’d torn off the tab just the way he liked me to, had kept it very still so it wouldn’t fizz over.

  I made my way toward him, the room an obstacle course of upended ashtrays and discarded wine bottles. I had to be very, very careful, because Daddy liked his beer just so.

  I nearly made it to the sofa, was just about to reach out to hand Daddy the open can. I didn’t see Daddy’s feet near mine. He might have moved them into my way. Sometimes he did that just because. I tried to keep the beer from spilling, would have turned myself inside out if it would have helped. But a fountain of foamy wet spurted from the can, landing on Daddy’s lap.

  With a roar, he jumped up, a dark avenging monster. I screamed and dropped the beer, tried to run as it rolled across the floor, emptying its contents. I didn’t get more than a few feet away before Daddy grabbed my arm.

  Even though I knew it would make it worse, I screamed and struggled to get away. Daddy pinned me against the sofa. He took his cigarette from his mouth.

  “Daddy, no. No!”

  He lowered the glowing tip toward my arm. I screamed again as I felt the pressure of it against my skin...

  “Damn it, Janelle!”

  Ken’s voice finally registered. It was his hand wrapped around my arm, not a burning cigarette I felt digging into my skin. I wrenched myself free of him, and stumbled from the cabin.

  On the porch, thorns hooked my T-shirt, catching me up short. Panic flooded me. It was my father reaching out, digging in to keep me from escaping the cabin. His clawed fingers raked an old burn scar on my belly, the one he’d given me for tearing my shirt as a seven year- old.

  All sanity lost, I fought back, a scream as corrosive as acid at the back of my throat, barely contained. I would have wriggled free of the shirt, abandoned it, but I knew that would enrage Daddy even more.

  I finally pulled free, blind from pain real and imagined. Tripped on a broken step, went down to my knees in the dirt. It felt as if someone had staked my left leg to the ground.

  One breath, two, then I pushed to my feet, woozy and sick. Became aware of reality again, bit by bit. The ramshackle cabin, the thickets of twisted manzanita surrounding it, the Explorer parked nearby. Ken standing beside me, a witness to my disintegration.

  I wouldn’t think about that. Angling away from him, I tugged up the hem of the T-shirt to check for damage. Red streaks criss-crossed my stomach. I wondered vaguely if my father’s poison had infected them.

  I tried to cover up again, but Ken hooked his fingers in the knit. “Maybe you ought to have a doctor look at that.”

  “A little Neosporin and a bandage and I’ll be fine.” My voice shook. “I’ve patched up worse than this after Daddy got finished with me. He wasn’t much on doctors.” Heal or die was his unspoken motto.

  Ken tugged on the shirt again, pulling me closer, wrapping his arms around me. I grit my teeth so tightly my jaw ached, trying to fight back the weakness I felt lapping at me. If my father truly rose from the dead in that moment and flayed me alive, it wouldn’t have hurt as much as it did accepting Ken’s comfort.

  I thought I could hold it inside, could keep the agony at bay. But it erupted like the worst kind of nausea, when you’re empty inside but your body still convulses. My eyes were dry and I didn’t make a sound, but I thought my sobs would break me apart.

  And he just held me. Matched my silence, kept his large hands spread across my back while emotions gushed from me like blood from an open wound. I just wanted to die, to be seared to ashes on the spot. Anything but feel the pain burning inside me.

  When it was finally finished, I pushed away from him, keeping my head down as I headed back toward the Explorer. My hands shook as I swiped at my cheeks, the dampness telling me a few tears had escaped after all. Ken kept his distance as he followed me and I almost hated him for that kindness.

  Once I’d fumbled the seatbelt around me, I opened my laptop again. “We ought to check Greenville Hospital and the local doctors. Could be James or Enrique were brought in to be seen.”

  He stared at me. “The cabin... that was where-”

  “My own personal hell.” I’d tried for a light tone, but my throat was in shreds. “Could we just not...”

  Quiet ticked away for several long seconds. I squeezed my eyes shut, imagining myself suspended by a thread over a pit of excrement. If I stayed motionless, I wouldn’t fall. But one word, one touch from Ken would sever the thin support. I’d have to count on him to catch me. I wasn’t sure he’d even try.

  Finally, he started the engine. “We’ll stop by the hospital, make some calls from there.”

  Once he had his driving to focus on, I grabbed my cell and nearly dropped it when my fingers refused to work. With slow, deliberate stabs, I dialed my office.

  Sheri didn’t pick up, and my mangled brain recalled she was in class. She’d be pissed if I called her mobile. That anger would throw her off the scent, keep her from sensing my current fragility.

  I dialed her cell number. She picked up after four rings. “Hello?” she whispered.

  “I need some info,” I told her.

  “It couldn’t wait?” I heard muffled voices in the background, then footsteps and a slamming door. “What?” Sheri spat out.

  “Find everything you can on Paul Beck and Chuck Pickford. And start checking Lopezes in the Sacramento area, see if you can find someone who’ll claim Enrique.” I felt steadier now, almost myself again. “Anything on the eight month-old?”

  “I left for Hastings a few minutes after you called. When have I had time to check?”

  “Thanks anyway.” I said it politely as I could just to tweak her some more, then pressed the disconnect.<
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  “Is Fred Sykes still running that arcade in town?” I asked Ken as I stuffed away the cell.

  He gave me a once-over, maybe to assess whether my sanity had returned. “Fred filed for bankruptcy a few years ago. Then about a month after he died, the place burned down.”

  “Where do the kids go now?”

  “Greenville Electronics. They sell TVs, cell phones, home electronics. Owned by an out-of-towner. A guy named Rich McPherson runs it.”

  “What’s the attraction for the kids?”

  “They stock all the latest phones and tablets and run demo versions of the latest apps and computer games. The junior high set congregates there after school.” He pulled up to a stop sign and waved the cross traffic on. “Hospital first? Or the electronics store?”

  “The hospital can wait. Tell me about McPherson.”

  As we made our way back to town, the Explorer exceeded the speed limit by a good twenty miles an hour. “He’s from somewhere in Southern Cal. I think he’s married, but I’ve never met his wife. No children, but the kids seem to like him.”

  I narrowed my gaze on Ken. “Could he be a member of Pickford’s club?”

  Braking at the stop where Pleasant Creek crossed Main, he turned to me. “If McPherson was taking anyone into a back room, I’d know about it.”

  “Things could slip under your radar. You can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “I’d know,” he said again, goosing the accelerator and turning onto Main. “Cassie hangs out there in the afternoons.”

  “But would she tell you?”

  “Of course she would,” he said with all the confidence of the completely clueless.

  “How old is she?”

  He parked the Explorer in front of the electronics store. “Thirteen last month.”

  I managed not to laugh, although he may have caught my smirk. I scanned the length of Main Street as I climbed from the Explorer. The Greenville Pharmacy still shared space with the post office and Greenville Gazette. Mel’s barber shop had survived the passage of time, although it looked as if Mel hadn’t. A Korean woman swept the sidewalk out front while her husband snipped hair inside. Emil’s Cafe still promised the Biggest Burgers in the West, the neon hamburger in the window sputtering as it always had. And the National Hotel, a Gold Rush- era holdout, had a new coat of brick red paint.

  Greenville Electronics had taken the place of the hardware store, a town icon that had no doubt been erased out of existence by the big box home improvement store just twenty minutes down Highway 50. The front window displays of shovels, pickaxes and gold panning pans had given way to smartphones, iPads and Android tablets. Posters hawked cellular service and equipment.

  Five boys and one girl—Cassie—clustered around two giant HD TVs and the massive display of a computer, zapping space aliens or kung fu fighters or whatever videogame demons they battled. Cassie had commandeered the computer, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, a small black box strapped to her waist.

  The man behind the glass sales counter—Rich McPherson, I presumed—looked to be about my age. He was a clean-cut Everyman with neat brown hair and a red “Greenville Electronics” polo shirt. When a kid went over to ask for change for the soda machine in the back, McPherson smiled at him and looked him in the eyes.

  Ken headed toward his niece. McPherson likely wasn’t going anywhere, so I figured I’d talk to the kids first. I zeroed in on a skinny, pimply-faced boy on the Xbox to Cassie’s right. “Do you know either of these boys?” I asked, waving the pictures in his field of view.

  His dancing thumbs never stopped their jig as he gave the photos a once-over. “Nope,” he said eloquently.

  I flapped them in his face again. “Are you sure? You barely looked at them.”

  He jabbed at the buttons, right-left, in quick succession. “Black kid, maybe eleven, twelve years old. Short hair. Scar above his left eye. Hispanic kid, two or three, a booger in his nose.”

  I scrutinized the picture. Damn it, the kid was right. I’d just thought it was a flaw in the photo. “Thanks.” I walked behind Cassie to the boy on her left.

  As I interrogated the heavyset kid, Ken and Cassie started a ping-pong match. “Is your homework done?”

  “Why are you always hassling me?”

  “Did you finish your homework?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Don’t have any because you finished it?” Ken’s voice rose. “Or because you’d rather play video games?”

  “There’s one little page of math. I can do it later.”

  As they continued to bicker, I moved along the line of intrepid game players, striking out at each one. Cassie had fallen into sullen silence by the time I turned to her. She flicked a cool glance in my direction before focusing on her game again.

  No smoke pouring from Ken’s ears, but it was a near thing. “I asked did you check your blood sugar?”

  She stamped her foot when her gambit with a nasty puce space alien failed. “It’s fine, Uncle Ken. I just tested it. Lay off.”

  “Turn off the game a minute, Cassie. I want you to meet someone.”

  She huffed with impatience. “You can’t just turn off the game, Uncle Ken. I have to get to the next level first.”

  “Pause it or I’ll pull the plug.”

  She scowled, but she did as he asked, turning toward us to give me a dismissive examination. “Finally picking brains over beauty in your girlfriends, Uncle Ken?”

  Ouch. Before Ken could scold, I smiled and put out my hand. “Janelle Watkins. I was your uncle’s partner in San Francisco.”

  “She profiled the Samantha Trenton kidnapper,” Ken told his niece. “Caught the SOB an hour before he would have killed her.”

  Cassie shook my hand, faint interest glinting in her blue eyes. “Cool.”

  “I’m looking for a couple of missing kids.” I held the photos out.

  “How about a missing grownup?” Cassie asked, chin tipped up, mouth set as stubbornly as her uncle’s. “My mom’s MIA.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  Her gaze skated over the photos an instant before she turned back to her video game. “No. I don’t hang out with little kids.”

  I could see Ken getting wound up again, and decided it would be best to give them a little family time. I moseyed over to the sales counter where McPherson had a phone tucked against his shoulder, a catalog open on the glass display case. He smiled and held up a finger as I approached.

  He wasn’t much taller than me, maybe five-nine, and slightly built. He had one of those kind faces that always seemed to be looking the other way as I was growing up. I caught the faintest whiff of alcohol mixed with breath mints wafting from him.

  He hung up the phone. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for a couple of missing boys. James Madison and Enrique Lopez.” I laid the photos on the counter. They were already dog-eared from handling. “Any chance you’ve seen either one of them?”

  I watched for a reaction as he carefully studied James’s and Enrique’s pictures. I saw nothing but honest concern and genuine sympathy. Damn, where was this guy when I was a kid?

  “I know I haven’t seen the older boy,” he said finally, pushing James’s picture toward me. “The little one... Have you asked Cassie? She does some babysitting. Maybe she’s seen him.”

  “Did you know Mrs. Lopez?”

  Something passed across his face, a moment of confusion. “No, I don’t think... Wait, I’ve seen her name in the files. Hang on.”

  He opened the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet behind the counter and dug through the tightly packed files in the back. I could see the neck and cap of a gin bottle near the front of the drawer.

  Unearthing an invoice, he set it on the counter. “She bought an HD TV and Blu-Ray player.” He scrutinized the order then set it on the counter for me to see, a cloud of minty gin mixing with the paper and ink of the hardcopy. “Looks like she paid extra to have them delivered and set up.” />
  I scanned the faint writing on the NCR paper form. “Did you do the work?”

  “That was before I moved here. We contract that work out anyway.” His gaze flicked down to the invoice, fixed briefly on something on the bottom. What looked like a phone number was written there, the digits barely legible. I could make out what could have been the prefix—306—but before I could decipher the rest, Rich took the paper back.

  He returned the invoice to the file. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  I wanted another, closer look at the invoice, but the phone rang and he excused himself to answer it. Ken had taken a time-out on his harangue of his niece and ambled over.

  “Find out anything?”

  “Mrs. Lopez bought a television and a Blu-Ray. Had it delivered to the same address as the one you gave me.”

  “I don’t suppose she paid by check or credit card.”

  “Cash.” I tried to catch McPherson’s eye, but he was engrossed in his conversation, his back to me. “How old was Mrs. Lopez?”

  “I only saw her in town a few times,” Ken said. “Sixty, maybe?”

  We moved back toward Cassie and her fellow game fiends. “Why would a sixty-year-old woman suddenly buy a new TV and player?”

  “For her grandson, maybe?” Ken suggested. “Enrique may well be with her.”

  “But the timelines don’t mesh,” I pointed out. “The woman from Head Start said the kid was gone as of three months ago. You said Mrs. Lopez moved a month before that.”

  Ever vigilant, Ken kept one eye on Cassie. “So Enrique went to his grandma’s new place.”

  “But his mother said he’d gone to Greenville.”

  “She got it mixed up. You said she was a tweaker.”

  The box on Cassie’s waist started beeping, a red light flashing. Ken moved in for a closer look. Cassie tried to sidestep him, but he hooked a finger in a belt loop on her jeans.

  “Your insulin cartridge is low. Where’s your spare?”

  Cassie tried to wriggle free. “You’re messing up my game.”

  “Is it in your backpack?” He picked up the vivid purple book bag at her feet and got the zipper half open.