Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  Ken clicked on the details link and read the report. “This was ruled accidental. Why did the program pull it up?”

  “Same accelerant. They found traces of kerosene.” I scanned the report for other common elements. “There was flashover.”

  “How did it start?”

  “The investigators determined the kerosene had been stored too close to a gas water heater in the service porch.” I stared at the screen. “This seems familiar. I must have read about it at the time.”

  “A house fire in Victorville? Maybe two column inches on page nineteen in the Chronicle.”

  “Yeah. It reminds me of...” Thoughts bubbled up to the surface. “The Nguyen’s Laundromat,” I murmured.

  “Sounds like the title of a Vietnamese art film.”

  I laughed, too dead tired to resist the sick humor. “Place around the corner from me. Burned down a few months ago. The Nguyens stored kerosene in a storage room near a gas water heater. Fire investigators determined that someone, likely kids, had broken in overnight, made a mess with the kerosene. Some malfunction in the water heater started the fire.”

  Another spark of inspiration struggled to ignite. I shut my eyes and willed it to consciousness. The fire at the Arco. The fire at the river. A fire in the dumpster at the Hangman’s Tavern. And...

  Ruth Martinez’s words came back to me. When the landlord checked on Enrique’s apartment. Vandals had set fire to the sofa.

  “Oh, my God,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “Fires and missing kids.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “Someone set a fire at Enrique’s place around the time he went missing. Someone set a fire at the service station where James disappeared. Brandon went into the water and vanished, and someone set a fire.”

  Ken narrowed his gaze. “Except vandals set the fire at Enrique’s. Likely the same at the service station. The fire by the river is the only one that connects to the others in Greenville County.”

  I scrubbed at my face, shoulders sagging in exhaustion. “You’re right. The fires in the Bay Area have nothing to do with yours.”

  But if there were a connection, no matter how slim, between my missing boys and fire, wouldn’t it be a worthwhile avenue to follow? It was dangerous territory, and I’d damn well have to keep my mind on finding the boys rather than catering to my hell-born obsession. But it would be worth the struggle if fire was the key to break the logjam in discovering James’s and Enrique’s whereabouts.

  I groped for my phone, intending to call Sheri’s cell. Luckily, I squinted at the time on the display before I dialed. It was nearly midnight.

  I called the office instead, leaving a message. “Sheri, do a search cross-correlating that missing eight month-old with fires. Dumpster, structure, whatever.” I disconnected, slumping in my chair. “Damn, I’m tired.”

  I scrubbed at my face. My eyes closed, I tensed at the first feather light touch of Ken’s fingers in my hair. When he brushed along the curve of my ear, I ordered myself to move away, but just sat there, frozen, slave to emotions that should have been dead.

  “Why don’t you stay the night?” he said softly.

  I let myself enjoy the forbidden a moment more, then pushed back my chair. Since I was doing such a lousy job fending off Ken’s advances on my womanhood, I needed my own personal IED to keep him away.

  I shoved up my T-shirt’s long sleeves and thrust my arms out to him, exposing the decorations dotting my skin. “You know I didn’t do all these myself.”

  His gaze flicked down to the staccato pattern reaching from an inch above my wrist to the bunched up sleeve. “Your father-”

  “Not just him, either.”

  He might have seen where I was going, because he took my hand and tried to tug the sleeve back down. I pulled out of reach. “Listen to me, Ken.”

  He looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.” I turned his face toward mine. “I’m a sick puppy, Ken. You knew that three years ago when we stomped on your marriage vows. Let’s just say I’ve gotten a little more twisted since you left.”

  “I don’t want to hear this.” He started to rise.

  I grabbed his arm and yanked him back into his chair. “Sometimes, I ask a guy to do it. A cigarette, a hot match head. Right before we do the deed. Sometimes that’s the only way I can get off.”

  The horror in his face drove a spike into my stomach. As god-awful as what I’d told him was, it was the truth, although I hadn’t done it in a good long while.

  “You do that now?” he asked, his voice so low I could

  barely hear him.

  I could have told him the rest of the story, that I’d grown some self-respect and avoided intimacy altogether, but knowing how noble Ken was, that would take us back to square one. “Would you burn me?” I whispered, bile rising in my throat. “If I asked you, would you take a match-”

  “You know damned well I wouldn’t.” He jumped to his feet and stalked off toward the kitchen.

  I pulled my sleeves back down, my hands shaking. “You still want me to stay?”

  He stopped, took a breath, then turned back toward me. “You can sleep in Cassie’s room.”

  I ought to head back to the motel, take a cold shower, go for a run. Set my room on fire. Anything but stay in Ken Heinz’s house.

  But I seemed to have lost all judgment between Ken’s first touch and my loathsome confession. “Sure,” I said calmly, as if I hadn’t just ripped open my soul. “Thanks.”

  After I’d shut down and packed away my computer, I dutifully followed Ken upstairs to Cassie’s room. Her decorating scheme was pink and posters, completely at odds with the Cassie I’d met.

  “Those boy bands are a little out of date.” I pointed to the largest poster that hung over the bed. “That kid’s been in and out of rehab the past two years. This one just announced he’s gay.”

  “She’s been bugging me to repaint.”

  “Let me guess, black? With a glow-in-the-dark pentagram on the ceiling?”

  His mouth curved in a faint smile. “Something like that.”

  Together we remade the narrow twin bed with fresh sheets. “I put clean towels in Cassie’s bathroom. Next door over. I’m at the end of the hall.’’

  “Hoping for a little get-together during the night?”

  He walked out without further comment. I waited until I heard his bedroom door shut, then found the bathroom. A T-shirt lay across the two haphazardly folded towels, a faded Greenville County Fair logo on it.

  I stripped and showered, then threw on Ken’s castoff shirt. It hung to mid-thigh, but the short sleeves didn’t provide much coverage to my arms. No one to see the scars but me and God.

  I gave my tidy-whities a quick wash in the sink, then hung them over the shower rod. I carried the rest of my clothes back to the bedroom and dumped them in a pile by the door.

  I hadn’t spent the night in a chaste twin bed like Cassie’s since my first year in the dorm at SFSU. As I slipped under the covers and rested my wet head of hair against the pillow, I wondered if it had crossed Ken’s mind that maybe my sins would rub off on the flowered sheets. I wasn’t so sure myself that the darkness of my soul might not leak out during the night.

  My nightmare du jour was a reworked version of my flashback the day before at the old homestead. Daddy on the sofa, his cigarette hanging from his mouth. Him yelling for a beer, me, dutifully toddling off to what passed for a kitchen in our house to fish one out of the cooler. My careful passage back, eyes fixed on the floor and the obstacle course of crap Daddy had left there.

  I tripped, stumbled, spilled the beer. Daddy grabbed my arm, plucked the cigarette from his mouth. He lowered the tip to my arm. The familiar nightmare barely raised my heart rate.

  Until I looked up at Daddy and saw his wicked face morphing, changing into Tommy Phillips’s. Tommy pressed the glowing cigarette to my skin, grinning and wild-eyed, the sweet boy transformed into an avenging
evil.

  I must have screamed. Next thing I knew I was bolt upright in bed and Ken was barging into Cassie’s room, lit by moonlight, bare-chested in boxers. For a moment, I didn’t know him, my addled brain turning him into my monster of a father. I screamed again, then felt like a right idiot when I came to my senses.

  I struggled to breathe. “Sorry. I thought you...”

  He stood over the bed. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just a dream. Just...” Now my heart hammered, almost too loud for me to think. I looked up at him, at that acre of bare chest and the main attraction under boxer shorts at eye level. I considered how nice it would be to have someone else to hold the nightmares at bay for once.

  And I caved. I scooted over, pulled back the sheets. “Just stay with me,” I told him.

  He didn’t move. “Janelle...”

  “Nothing else. Just sleep with me.”

  Another hesitation, then he crawled into bed beside me. The moment his skin hit mine I realized the insanity of “just sleep.” I ignored the warmth that crept inside me and its whispered suggestions. Not to mention Ken’s little buddy at full attention against my hip.

  I don’t know how long we were both awake. I do know we didn’t move an inch all that time.

  * * * *

  I snapped to consciousness at 6am and discovered my mouth smashed up against his shoulder and Ken’s hand cupped tight as a barnacle over my left breast. I managed to dislodge his Fingers without waking him, pretended I didn’t feel his morning hard-on when I disengaged my leg from between his. I snagged my clothes and hobbled from the room, expectation that he’d catch me sneaking out knotting tension between my shoulders.

  I dressed, then coped with a nasty case of bed head before creeping downstairs. Ken scared the crap out of me when he popped out of the kitchen, still bare-chested, although he’d had the decency to pull on a pair of jeans.

  “Just starting the coffee,” he mumbled as he passed me. He cleared me by inches, our mutual keep-away vibes colliding between us.

  I was shoving my feet into my Nikes, hoping to make a speedy escape, when my calf locked up. Huffing like a woman in labor, I hopped to a chair in the dining room and fumbled into it.

  As I tried to massage the tortured muscle, my cell chimed out its Jim Morrison tune. It was barely 6:30am, so Sheri’s chipper hello surprised me.

  Phone wedged against my ear, I bent to tie my shoes. “Don’t tell me, aliens have landed in San Francisco.”

  “Old news,” Sheri said. “They’ve been here for years.”

  Finished with my laces, I tried again to stretch out my left calf. It didn’t. “You’re quitting law school to become a rabbi.”

  “Are you interested in what I’ve dug up on Pickford and Beck or would you rather keep busting my chops?”

  Abandoning the effort to recover my useless leg, I found a pad of paper in my computer bag. “You got my message from last night?” She assured me she had. “Okay, what have you got on our friendly neighborhood SOs?”

  “I emailed you Beck’s arrest records and some additional info on Pickford. Pickford was into pretty standard stuff, if you can call that sicko stuff standard. He’s been everyone’s favorite neighbor or soccer coach, always glad to give extra special attention to any kid that needs it.”

  “I picked up that much from the court records you sent before. Was it just boys? Or girls too?” I asked. “And what ages?”

  “Boys exclusively. The youngest was seven, the oldest ten. He drops them when they hit puberty.”

  I tapped my pen on the pad. “Doesn’t quite fit either Enrique or James.”

  “Speaking of which...”

  “You know as much as I do.” I wasn’t about to mention my latest theory to her. It sounded even more preposterous in the light of day.

  “I just thought when you left that message-”

  “Just a wild hare. Probably won’t pan out.” I gave my leg another try, wincing as invisible demons used my calf for target practice with a white-hot poker.

  “I’ve told Mrs. Madison there’s nothing new,” Sheri said. “But if you could call her-”

  “And say what? That I know bupkis about where her son might be?”

  I propped my foot up on the trestle table, hoping to give myself more leverage. I couldn’t hold back a wussy little whimper.

  “What’s wrong?” Sheri asked.

  “Leg,” I told her, knowing I would need no further explanation. “What about Beck?”

  “That’s more interesting. He’s a collector.”

  “Child porn on the computer?” I gasped as I leaned forward.

  “No evidence of that. He collected things.”

  Ken entered the kitchen, decked out in his uniform, and headed straight for the coffee pot. He glanced over at me, scowled at my foot on the table, then pulled two mugs from their hooks above the Mr. Coffee. He clunked a mug in front of me, the cup of brew doctored perfectly with a scoop of creamer and two sugars.

  He stood over me, sipping his coffee as I finished up with Sheri. When I set down the phone to suck up some caffeine, he stared at my foot as if it would levitate from vision power alone.

  “It’s dead meat this morning,” I told him. “Apparently Paul Beck is a collector.”

  Ken pulled up a chair opposite me. “Porn?” he asked, taking my foot into his lap. He slipped off the shoe and sock, then pushed my jeans up to my knee. He pressed his thumbs into either side of my calf.

  I shook my head, gritting my teeth to keep from moaning in agony. “Trophies and souvenirs. A boy’s sock. A candy bar wrapper. One kid’s retainer.”

  “Yuck.” He dug deeper, hitting the mother lode of pain.

  “Pictures the boys drew. A pencil.” At his questioning look, I added, “It had the kid’s teeth marks on it.”

  Ken grimaced in disgust. “So, if we could take a look at his place...”

  “We might find some kind of indication that Enrique’s been there.” I sighed as his prodding fingers released a knot.

  “Not James?”

  “He’s too old.” I sagged in my chair as the last of the pain subsided. “He liked having lots of kids around. Invite them over for video game parties, that sort of thing. His favorites he’d have over for special, private games.”

  He kept rubbing my leg, his hands warm against my skin. “But did any of those kids disappear?”

  “No.”

  My foot rested alongside the placket of his khaki trousers. Just an inch to the left and I’d see just how much he was enjoying the massage session.

  He stroked from knee to ankle. “About last night...”

  I tried to pull my leg free, but he held on tight. “We should go back to Beck’s place today,” I said, trying to launch the conversation in another direction. “Can you get a warrant?”

  “Probably,” he said. “I know it’s none of my business...”

  Another play for freedom, but he had me in a death grip now. “Pickford knew something about Enrique. It might be worth another visit to him.”

  He leaned toward me. “Janelle-”

  “Uncle Ken?”

  I hadn’t heard the front door open. Obviously Ken hadn’t either, which was why he was caught flat-footed, so to speak, when Cassie suddenly made an appearance in the dining room.

  “Charlie horse,” I told her as I slipped free, grateful my leg would support me now.

  Ken pushed to his feet, hands in his pockets. “I thought you were staying at the Hamptons all day.”

  Cassie’s avid gaze ping-ponged from Ken to me and back. “My insulin cartridge ran out. Mr. Hampton dropped me off on his way to work so I could get a fresh set.”

  Turning away from Cassie on the pretext of grabbing his coffee, Ken slurped down half the cup. “Are you going back?”

  “I’d like to. Can you take me?”

  “Sure.” He sidled around his niece into the kitchen. “Get your set. I’ll meet you outside.”

  Cassie gave me another look,
then left the room. Ken dumped his coffee in the sink, then pulled keys from his pocket. He started to take one off the ring. “Finish your coffee. Lock up when you’re done.”

  “Hell, no. I’m getting out of here before she comes back.” I slid the mug across the breakfast bar. “Her wheels are turning fast enough as it is.”

  I slung my computer over my shoulder and made a beeline through the kitchen. Ken followed me into the living room. Cassie had left the front door open, maybe had tiptoed up the porch steps as well after seeing my car cozied up to Ken’s Explorer.

  Ken pushed the screen door open. “I’ll call you when I have the warrant.”

  I ducked under his arm, flapping my hand in a farewell wave. Cassie appeared as I started up my car. She was grinning now, no doubt thoroughly enjoying Ken’s discomfort at the situation.

  I had to back up around Ken’s truck to get myself pointed down the driveway, so I spotted Cassie’s smirk as she and Ken headed out to the Explorer. I rolled down my window a few inches as I pulled around and heard Ken’s heated defense to whatever Cassie had asked him. “Not any of your damn business,” and, “Nothing’s going on,” filtered over to me as I took my time shifting into drive. When he caught me listening, Ken speared me with the evil eye before he climbed in the Explorer.

  Facing his wife, Tara, after she discovered our affair had probably been a cakewalk compared to being busted by his thirteen-year-old niece. I ought to have a little sympathy for him.

  I really shouldn’t have laughed as I pulled out of his drive.

  CHAPTER 15

  I made a quick pit stop at the Gold Rush Inn to freshen up and change into another of my thrift store castoffs, then headed over to Beck’s place. He wasn’t home, although the mailbox had been emptied. Mrs. Bertram didn’t answer, which worried me. As old as she was, she could have died in her sleep.

  I flagged down an elderly couple on a power walk through the mobile home park. “Janelle Watkins. I’m a private investigator.” I put out my hand to shake.

  The woman’s grip nearly brought me to my knees. “Raelene. My husband, George.”