Clean Burn (8 page)

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.

Cassie snatched the backpack from him. “I forgot it, okay? I don’t have my spare.”

He grabbed her arm. “Then we’ll have to go home.”

“I’m not done playing.”

Ken plucked the controller out of her hand. “Next time you’ll remember to carry a spare.”

Ken perp-walked Cassie from the store and out to the Explorer, the kid complaining every step at the affront to her dignity. Caged in the back seat, she stewed as Ken made a quick stop at the sheriff’s department to drop me off. While family relations between Ken and Cassie hadn’t sunk to the level of dysfunction of my own, I was glad enough to escape the confines of the Ford.

Cassie climbed from the back to take shotgun next to her uncle. Before the Explorer pulled out, she rolled down her window and called out to me. “Hey, you want to come for dinner?”

I caught a glimpse of Ken through the open window. He looked ready to implode from the aggravation. Much as I might enjoy adding to his annoyance level, I’d spent too much time with the man already today. I didn’t want to fall prey to any old habits that might lead to another bedroom episode.

Ken’s gaze locked briefly with mine and I wondered if the same thoughts had flitted through his mind. “Janelle’s too busy to come to dinner.”

“Uncle Ken can’t cook, but if you want to risk it, you’re welcome to come.” Now I saw the plea in Cassie’s eyes. Maybe she hoped my presence during dinner would blunt her uncle’s wrath.

She mouthed, “please,” and sucker that I am, I couldn’t seem to form the word “No.” “Sure. Thanks.”

As Ken glared at his niece, Cassie tore a sheet of lined paper from one of her spiral notebooks and scribbled their address on it. I didn’t recognize the street.

Ken took the sheet from Cassie and added a hastily scrawled map. “It’s behind the new development off Patterson Road. We eat between 6.30 and 7.00.”

They pulled out with a screech of tires, Ken taking out his anger on the Explorer’s suspension. Relieved to be out of that pressure-cooker, I climbed into my Escort and headed over to the motel to check in and grab a shower.

CHAPTER 6

James leaned against the thin pillow he’d propped against the cinderblock wall, Sean snuggled in his lap. The book Mama had given them lay open on the little boy’s skinny legs. It had been a present, Mama said, to reward James the first time he’d held the candle all the way to the bottom. He’d read the book so many times now, he didn’t need to look at the page to tell Sean the story.

Which was good since even daylight wasn’t usually enough to read by. During the day, he did okay if he held the book up toward the window. But times like now, when the sun was on the other side of the house, he could hardly make out the words on the page.

When Mama had come in earlier and lit a candle, James had wondered if he would have to hold it. But Mama had set it on the floor by the mattress. James had almost cried with relief.

James checked the page he was on, the book hard to see in the flickering candlelight. “Then Bunny knocked on Fox’s door,” James read, “‘Where are my carrots?’ Bunny asked.”

Sean turned the page. The little boy knew the book as well as James. “‘Come inside,’ Fox said. ‘Your carrots are right here.’”

As Sean flipped to the next page, Lydia whimpered from the playpen. James held his breath, hoping the baby would quiet down again. If she got going, she would just cry louder and louder until Mama came.

As Lydia started screaming, James shouted the words of the story over the noise. But Sean covered his ears and hunched over the book, so James got up and went over to the playpen. He patted Lydia on the back like he’d seen his Aunt Marisa do with his cousin. But the baby screeched even harder.

Usually Mama heard the crying and came to check on Lydia. But maybe she wasn’t in the house anymore. Maybe she’d already gone out. Except it wasn’t completely dark yet. And she hadn’t given them their dinner.

Should he go up the stairs and bang on the door? Mama had made it clear they weren’t allowed on the stairs. The door at the top was locked, anyway; he heard the deadbolt whenever Mama came or went. Maybe if he broke the no stairs rule for Lydia’s sake, Mama wouldn’t punish him.

Lydia had started to shriek, the high-pitched noise jolting into silence when she gasped for breath. James knew sometimes babies made themselves sick if they cried too hard. His cousin threw up sometimes.

A flicker of red from the windows caught his eye. Was Mama out there? The window was too high for him to look out. But there were some big white buckets under the stairs. If he turned one upside down, he could probably see.

He dumped out the rags that filled one of the buckets, figuring he could put them back before Mama returned. He set the bucket upside down on the mattress right next to the wall. He had to stand on tiptoes and had to grab the windowsill to pull himself up a bit, but he could see out.

He saw the fire through the vines that crisscrossed the window. It was small, like a campfire, flames licking the air. Mama stood beside it, shadowy in the flickering light.

Mama bent to something at her feet. When she rose again, she held an animal by the scruff of its neck. It looked like a possum or a raccoon; James couldn’t tell through the berry vines. The animal wriggled a little bit as Mama lifted it over the fire. It squirmed harder when Mama lowered it closer to the flames. She held it there until the flames nearly reached her hand, then dropped it in the campfire.

James stumbled down from the bucket, feeling ready to puke. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t shut out the image of the animal falling into the fire, the way it struggled. He gagged, his empty stomach knotting even tighter.

He grabbed the bucket and stuffed the rags back inside. Once it was under the stairs, he went to Lydia’s playpen and picked up the baby girl. Her sobs were quieter, but she still whined, like that critter must have when Mama held it over the fire. Shutting his eyes again, James paced the floor with the baby, patting her back as he held her close.

CHAPTER 7

When I made the turn off Patterson into the White Oak Village development, I wound my way along Gray Squirrel Lane through a neighborhood filled with the same beige, cookie-cutter stucco houses I’d seen along Highway 50. Kids tossed basketballs into hoops attached to garages while their dads watered postage stamp-sized front lawns. The houses, kids and dads seemed interchangeable and I wondered if a returning commuter ever pulled into the wrong house by mistake.

I passed a few undeveloped micro-lots filled with knee-high brown grass, then Gray Squirrel Lane ended abruptly, the asphalt giving way to gravel. Here was real country living, with black oak and pine shading homes set well back from the road. Based on the spacing of the houses, I calculated the parcels must be five acres, minimum. I wouldn’t have thought an SFPD pension would stretch that far.

Ken’s place, a two-story farmhouse with a wraparound porch, sat under a massive blue oak with a tire swing hanging from its lowest branch. I tried to imagine wise-ass Cassie using that swing, smiling as her Uncle Ken pushed her. But she would have been eleven by the time she came to live with him, far too worldly to enjoy such a childish pleasure.

I glanced at the car clock before I shut off the engine. 7.10. I was officially late. Once I’d checked into the Gold Rush Inn, I’d gotten caught up reading the court documents Sheri had emailed me on Pickford’s most recent case. When I realized I wouldn’t make it to Ken’s in time, I considered calling and begging off, but somehow I climbed into the Escort anyway and headed over.

Cassie answered the door sporting an inky black streak in her pale blonde hair. As she led me through the living room, I got a quick glimpse of comfy sofas, dusty knickknacks and books piled everywhere. A few soda cans decorated the coffee table and an afghan sat rumpled on the floor beside a recliner.