Clean Burn (2 page)

“What about Mrs Madison?”

My brain chugged along for several moments trying to recall which client she was. The wife of the guy who dated cheerleaders? Or the one whose husband had absconded with his secretary and all the marital assets?

Sheri’s glower finally jiggled the right brain cells. “Your mother’s friend,” I said.

“You passed her off to Patti two months ago. Didn’t want to be bothered investigating it yourself.” Sheri drew herself up, growing an inch in her Prada flats. “James is still missing.”

I remembered Glenda Madison now – a petite black woman in her late thirties. A teacher at the middle school where Sheri’s mother was principal.

“If Patti came up empty, there probably isn’t much I can do.”

“Just talk to her again. Maybe there’s something Patti missed.”

A burning erupted in my gut, crawled its way up my throat. “You know damn well why I can’t do that.”

But Sheri had little patience for my ugly history and nasty scars, emotional or otherwise. “It’s been six years, Janelle. It’s time you stopped treating that dead little boy like a damn albatross around your neck.”

That’s what a college education gets you, a snotty attitude and Samuel Taylor Coleridge references. Even though she was right about Tommy, that wasn’t why I considered giving in. Sheri, once she sank her teeth into something, had more perseverance than a pit bull. If I said no now, it wouldn’t be the end of it.

“Can she come by late this afternoon?” I asked. “I should get back from the Inman surveillance by four.”

I’d like to say Sheri skipped off, happy as a clam that I’d seen the light. But she still eyed me with suspicion. “She’ll be here.”

The surveillance went as well as could be expected. I wasn’t made by the target, I got plenty of photos and only had to limp along on my gimpy leg two blocks to and from the BART transit station. I was downloading photos of Mr Inman feeling up the Other Woman when Sheri announced the arrival of Mrs Madison.

She was well dressed in a decent quality, but not expensive suit, her hair soft and feminine around her dark face. She toted a large, practical handbag with a manila envelope peeking out.

She shook my hand. “I’m Glenda Madison. We spoke a while ago about my son, James.”

I gestured her toward the guest chair. “How long has he been missing now?”

She took the envelope from her purse, then seated herself. “Since December 29th.”

Three months ago. A stone cold trail. “If Patti couldn’t help you, I’m not sure what I can do.”

“The police won’t do anything. They say he’s a runaway.”

And he probably was. “Tell me again what happened.”

Mrs Madison clutched the envelope to her middle. “He was having a hard patch with his stepfather and they weren’t getting along. They fought over a New Year’s Eve party James wanted to attend. My husband lost his temper and James ran out of the house.”

Tears shone in her dark eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “He was last seen at an Arco station in Emeryville.” She took in a shaky breath. “It was the middle of the day, so I thought he’d be okay. That he’d come back when he cooled off.”

“You have to understand, as long as it’s been, there’s probably not much I can do.”

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 escape, 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.

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.