Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  Ken eyed the parents clinging to one another, the mother sobbing. “Be right back.” He headed over to the paramedic truck, closing the door to the Subaru on the way and silencing the tinny warning bell.

  Done with his radio call, Alex pointed his grin at me. “You’re still here.”

  I ignored the implied question of why I was still hanging around. “When I left Greenville, the Office of Emergency Services had about a half-dozen foot search volunteers and two guys mounted.” One of whom, my father, was usually drunk when notified of a call-out. Just as well, since he never attended the training anyway. “What have you got now?”

  “Greenville OES has fifty-eight foot search, eleven mounted. Only two trained dogs, one experienced, one new. Six guys on the swift-water team. Well, one of those is a girl. A woman, I mean.”

  The color rose in his baby face as he recognized his political incorrectness. Of course, I didn’t give a rat’s ass whether he called me woman, girl, broad or dame. It didn’t matter as long as he respected me. If he didn’t, I’d just whip his Kid Deputy butt.

  I moved close enough to the shore to get a better look at the river through the willows. Water crashed into boulders, blue-green turning to creamy white in the river’s frantic rush to race down the canyon.

  It reminded me of my one whitewater rafting adventure. Got dumped in the drink with the first rapid, smashed my shoulder into a boulder and had to sit there for an hour, shoulder aching, waiting for rescue. Not my idea of a fun afternoon. I didn’t want to think about what it might have felt like to Brandon, without a vest, without a helmet.

  Ken returned, sober-faced from his no doubt fruitless effort at comfort. “I’ll take over coordination while you give Janelle a lift back to her car.”

  The vicious flow of water mesmerized me. “Any chance in hell he hasn’t drowned? That he pulled himself out?”

  Ken shook his head. “You know as well as I do the river’s damn cold and damn fast with snowmelt. Barring a miracle, an eight-year-old boy wouldn’t have a chance.”

  I knew he was right, that this exercise would be less a rescue operation and more recovery. If I left with Kid Deputy, I wouldn’t be here when they found that small, still body. I could maintain the fantasy that maybe he was still alive a little longer.

  But for some reason, my guilt-o-meter was on overdrive. Maybe because I’d been so impotent so far in the search for James and Enrique. Maybe because I just hadn’t burned away enough sins. Or maybe because I was sure I could see Tommy standing beside a willow at the river’s edge, his sad, upturned face expectant.

  I turned my back on him. “I’d rather stay, help with the search.”

  Before Ken could respond to my offer of assistance, another arrival in the turnout snagged his attention. “Damn. Channel 9, already. The SAR teams aren’t even here yet.”

  The van parked on the far end of the turnout, then raised the ten-foot antenna on the van’s roof. I looked up at the sheer canyon walls on either side of us. “They won’t get much signal here.”

  “Alex, put Janelle on a foot team.” Ken started over toward the news van. “I’d better handle these idiots.”

  Another vehicle pulled in, and men and women in orange search and rescue vests climbed out. I followed Alex over to the SUV. “I knew the way this one would go from the start,” Alex told me. “I called these folks myself.”

  Alex introduced me to the seven foot team members, the four men and three women welcoming and accepting of my addition to their number. Ordinary folks, volunteers supporting the sheriff’s department, they likely harbored the same irrational fantasy as me, that Brandon Thompson would be found alive. And just like me, they hoped fiercely they would not be the one to find him dead.

  CHAPTER 11

  Sergeant Russell, the deputy in charge of the office of emergency services, set up a command post in a larger turnout about a quarter-mile downstream. The remains of a stone and concrete bridge, washed out by time and high water, jutted out on either side of the river, the middle ten feet missing.

  The rest of the SAR team trickled in a few at a time, those who lived farthest out in the county reaching the command post last. Swift-water had located a relatively calm stretch of the river another half-mile down from the command post and were setting up shop there. The two dog handlers had gotten the call-out, but since were both out of the county, they wouldn’t be able to join the party for another hour.

  After a reporter from the Sacramento Bee and two additional news vans showed up, Ken sicced his communications officer on the press and took refuge in the command van with Sergeant Russell. Since crappy reception in the canyon would interfere with communications with dispatch, Ken offered me the option of driving one of the patrol cars to a higher elevation so the team could use the cruiser’s radio as a repeater.

  Glutton for punishment that I was, I wasn’t inclined to sit in the comfort of a cruiser when I could be out hiking the wilderness. One of the other foot team members took the communications job, heading off to the isolated fire road where she’d relay calls between the searchers and dispatch.

  Alex teamed me with Charlotte, a tall, mid-fifties woman with a long salt-and-pepper braid and buffed out arms that put mine to shame. She took my hand in a death grip to shake it, smiling with all the enthusiasm of the supremely confident. I had a sneaking suspicion I’d be collapsing at her feet long before she was even winded.

  After a quick brief in the command van, we were signed out with a map and our marching orders for the search. Sergeant Russell had paper-clipped a photo of Brandon to the map, although I made it a point to give it the most cursory glance. I didn’t want to make him too real in my mind.

  Charlotte drove us to our starting point, down to where the swift-water team was setting up. She handed me a life vest. “Swift-water won’t let us anywhere near the water without a PFD.” She dug in the back seat, producing a helmet. “This too.”

  “No problem here.” If I took a header into that icy river, I wanted something to keep me afloat and protection for the few brain cells I had left.

  Our helmets and vests in place, Charlotte and I made our way down the rocky bank to the riverside. “I’ll search for items of interest,” she told me. “I’d like you to look for footprints and handprints along the river’s edge. We’ll mark or photograph as needed. Someone should be at the place where the boy was last seen to take us back to my car.”

  At her direction, I positioned myself behind and to Charlotte’s right, keeping my focus in front and to my right, on the rocks and mud closest to the shore. Charlotte scanned in front and to her left, searching the brush at the foot of the steep bank.

  It didn’t take long to realize that running on pavement in the city was a stroll in the park compared to taking my gimpy leg over shifting riverside rock. I had to take care where I put my feet to avoid disturbing potential clues, any indications that Brandon might have touched shore.

  The unfamiliar exercise put an unexpected strain on my left calf. No amount of being a big brave girl and gutting it out allowed me to walk like a normal person would. When my foot slipped sideways between two rocks and torqued my knee, I nearly collapsed in agony. Charlotte couldn’t help but hear my colorful exclamation.

  She turned and waited while I leaned over, hands on knees, gasping for breath. “Stub your toe?”

  I laughed. “Old war injury.”

  We moved on. She’d slowed her pace imperceptibly. I chose to believe it was to better assess the terrain for clues. “How’d it happen?” she asked.

  I briefly considered fabricating a heroic story where I saved the life of a hostage nun. I went with the ordinary truth. “Rookie partner’s backup gun fell out while he was getting out of the patrol car. After I’d told him to stay put.”

  She glanced back at me over her shoulder. “I thought Ken was your partner.”

  “He’d left the department by then.” And I’d be walking on two good legs right now if Ken and I had still been a team. As
always, it didn’t bear thinking about.

  She stopped, bending to more closely examine something wedged between the rocks. She pulled a small orange flag from her backpack and marked the spot. “A candy wrapper. Looks old, but you never know.”

  She took a photo with her digital, then we moved on. “What are the odds we’ll actually find this kid?” I asked her.

  “His body will turn up eventually,” she said matter-of-factly. “Best case scenario, he washes ashore and foot search finds him or he’s wedged under a rock and the swift water team locates him. Sometimes it isn’t until the end of summer when the water level gets low enough and a hiker gets an unpleasant surprise.”

  We continued in silence, the shooting pain in my leg retreating to a sullen ache. My powers of observation had always been sharp, but Charlotte’s were preternatural. She’d spy out a speck of something from a distance of several feet that I likely would have missed. We each marked and photographed a number of areas of interest, but she had me beat two to one.

  As we passed the command post, I heard a dog barking. Apparently a canine team had arrived. The antennas of a couple of news vans were visible through the brush and trees on the bank and I wondered if the networks were interrupting the afternoon’s soaps with the breaking story.

  About a quarter-mile downstream from the place last seen, the river turned especially ugly. The bank on the opposite side rose high and sheer, granite thrusting from the water like a massive wall. Boulders jutted from the river bottom, an impossible obstacle course for a raft, let alone an eight-year-old boy.

  The roar of water canceled any traffic noise from the highway above us, the sound digging into my ears. “Does anyone live out here?”

  “It’s all Bureau of Land Management on that side of the river,” Charlotte said. “There used to be some old cabins on leased land, but most of those leases have run out by now. BLM hasn’t been renewing them.”

  Up ahead, an oak had ripped its roots from the near bank and fallen in the river. Its base a good three feet in diameter, what was left of the branches reached ten feet into the river.

  Charlotte climbed partway up the bank to see if there was a way around. “Be easier to just go over.” Charlotte picked her way through the roots to the gnarled trunk. She gave me a hand up, then steadied me as I slid down the other side.

  Her hand on a stout branch, Charlotte studied the water where it foamed and crashed through the branches. “A good chance he’s down there tangled in the tree. I’ll have to contact the swift-water team.”

  As she made the radio call, I took up her post by the tree. It didn’t take much imagination to picture the eight-year-old’s terror as he struggled to surface, trapped under water. If there was a God, Brandon would have already drowned by then. Better that than be bashed on the boulders just downstream.

  As I scanned the length of the tree, my gaze fell on the raw edges of what was left of a broken branch. It looked as if it had struck a rock as the tree fell, then snapped off in the rush of water. It was probably half-way to Jenkins Lake by now where Greenville River spilled the last of its wrath.

  Charlotte moved up beside me and gave the water another look. “They’ll send the team up this way next.”

  We resumed our search, just as attentive for clues, but despair burned a hole in my stomach. Tommy always seemed to hover in my mind’s eye by the river, recrimination clear in his sad-eyed face. Forgetting I wasn’t alone, I muttered an imprecation under my breath of what Tommy could do with his guilt trip. Charlotte’s quick look back told me she’d heard. No doubt she was wondering if I’d forgotten to take my medication.

  As Tommy’s imagined face dissolved in the river’s mist, a glint of something shiny caught my eye. I made my careful way over, then crouched to take a better look. A pair of little boy glasses, one of the temple pieces missing, lay half-buried in mud.

  “Shit.” I backed away, struggling to wipe the memory of that smiling eight-year-old face I’d glimpsed in the school photo. As brief a look as I’d given the photo, I remembered the brown hair, brown eyes and Harry Potter glasses.

  “What?” Charlotte asked.

  I pointed wordlessly at the mud. Charlotte noted the spot with her GPS, then turned away and pressed the button on her radio. “Sergeant Russell, we have an item of interest here.”

  She took a photo, then stabbed an orange flag into the mud next to the glasses. She had her lips pressed tightly together and her eyes looked suspiciously wet. She wouldn’t look at me.

  We resumed our slow progress back to the PLS, passed one of the dogs on our way. The black shepherd’s handler, a beefy mid-forties guy with a spare tire around his middle, kept up with the enthusiastic canine with surprising agility. The dog had her nose riveted to the ground, and swept from side to side as she followed the scent.

  I dragged my sorry self up the bank to the turnout, muttering my favorite four-letter words under my breath with each excruciating cramp of my leg. Still unsettled by the discovery of Brandon’s glasses, I didn’t see Ken until I’d reached the top. I nearly fell over backwards when he stepped out from between the willows.

  I pushed past him. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  “I’ve got to get back into town. I can take you to your car now or you can stay and catch a ride with someone else later.”

  Considering the state of my leg, I wasn’t really fit to continue searching. Still, I hated being a wimp.

  Charlotte solved my problem for me. “We’re pulling back some of the foot search team to give the dogs a chance to work. If you have to go, now would be a good time.”

  I nearly wept as I climbed into the Explorer and relaxed my leg. It clamored at me as I tried to knead out the knots. I told Ken about Brandon’s glasses, about swift- water’s plan to investigate under the fallen tree.

  We’d nearly reached the exit for Greenville when Ken’s radio spat out a call. “Residential structure fire at 9003 Old Ranch Road,” the anonymous dispatcher said, followed by a series of tones. “Engines 21, 25, 49, Battalion 7604, Medic 24 and 28 respond. One victim with burns. Another possible victim inside the structure.”

  “Shit.” Ken hit lights and sirens. He gunned the engine, roaring past the Greenville exit.

  “Do you know the place?” I asked.

  “That’s the Double J Cattle operation. If it’s Abe or Mary trapped in that shed...” His hands tightened on the wheel as he turned off the highway. “They’re both in their seventies and Abe has a heart problem.”

  The Explorer bumped along a rugged gravel road through pasture dotted with cattle. The rolling hills were still lush green, the oaks dotting the landscape giving the place a picture-postcard look. Except for the column of smoke off in the distance.

  “You think this is another arson fire?” I asked.

  “That remains to be seen,” he said grimly.

  “But you think it is.”

  He didn’t answer as an ambulance closed on us from behind. Ken veered off the narrow track as close as he could to the barbed wire lining the road to give the EMT clearance. Once the paramedic had passed us, Ken pulled back onto the track, spitting gravel. We banged into a pothole, and my fillings jiggled in my molars.

  One last rise and we drew in sight of the old homestead. The house sprawled on top of the next hill, an authentic ranch style with a front porch that ran its full length. Late afternoon sunshine spilled over an ancient barn, a sprinkling of newer sheds and outbuildings.

  Smoke belched from the shed nearest the barn, oily and silky black, a thundercloud demon towering over the structure. Fingers of flame decorated the demon’s waist, red gold baubles flung skyward. The hell-born creature expelled embers in all directions, and they floated gracefully from the sky, their brief, searing heat dissipating as they settled on the dirt and green grass surrounding the shed.

  It was glorious. It was beautiful. If not for the man trapped inside, the hysterical screams of the seventy- something woman Alex struggled to restrain, I
might have begged the firefighters to leave the thing to burn.

  Ken parked the Explorer beside Alex’s Crown Vic. The three fire engines and the battalion chief’s truck were already on scene. Firefighters worked to knock down the fire, inundating the structure with a steady stream of water from 2 1/2-inch hand lines. A firefighter in full rig wielded his ax on whatever blocked the doorway.

  A second ambulance pulled in, stopping beside the first. An EMT was working on an Hispanic man at his rig. From the bandages on the Hispanic man’s hands, I guessed he’d burned himself, maybe trying to rescue whoever was still inside.

  The firefighter disappeared into the smoke and flames. The woman stopped her screaming, maybe letting hope take hold, maybe praying. She extended her hands toward the shed, as if to pull her husband from inside.

  It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds, but it seemed forever before the firefighter emerged with Abe over his shoulder. I could see charring across Abe’s back, down his left arm. When the firefighter put enough distance between himself and the fire, Alex let the wife go, and she ran screaming toward her husband.

  The fire company continued to dump water on the nearly extinguished flames. Alex leaned against his patrol car, shoulders hunched. He’d lost his ready smile. “Any luck with the kid?”

  “Found his glasses,” I told him.

  He nodded as the ramifications sank in. “I knew his mom in high school. Was a couple of years ahead of me.”

  “You got here fast,” I said.

  “In the area,” Alex said. “On my way to another call.”

  “How did Abe end up in the feed shed?”

  Alex’s expression grew grimmer. “He thought one of the ranch hands was inside. Abe saw the smoke and went after him.”

  I glanced over at the Hispanic man. He stood staring at the other ambulance as the EMTs worked on Abe.