Clean Burn (28 page)

Which had probably been the trigger for whatever psychotic nightmare she was living in now. Oddly, pondering Lucy’s tragedy sparked an idea, but I couldn’t bring the notion to full consciousness.

Either it was important enough to come to me later or it would sink back into the great unconscious. “Then we go back to the question – if Lucy didn’t take the kid, how’d she get her hands on him?”

Ken shrugged. “Maybe someone else took him, was feeling the heat and dumped Norberto at Lucy’s.”

“A cockeyed explanation.” I finished the last of my coffee. “You’ll keep me posted on what you find in the woods?”

“You don’t want to wait around, see what they come up with?”

“Just let me know if you find James and Enrique.” I set aside my coffee cup. “What’s the word on Pickford? Was the photo enough to send him back?”

“That and an outstanding warrant on a DUI traffic stop.” He stepped past me to the doorway. “Cassie! Let’s go! You’ll miss your bus.”

No answer from above. Ken moved closer to the stairs. “Cassie! I have to get to work.”

Her muffled voice drifted from upstairs. “Go ahead! You don’t need to stay and babysit me.”

It looked for a moment as if Ken intended to stomp up the stairs and drag Cassie down. He turned to me, the exasperation clear on his face. “What the hell takes her so long?”

“Girl stuff,” I said, although I had very little personal experience with such mysteries.

I grabbed my computer bag from the trestle table. An image flickered in my mind, a scene from the feature film of my dreams. I couldn’t capture it fully, but a shred of instinct lingered.

“Before I go, could I take another look at those arson reports, see if I spot any more details?” Maybe if I read the material again, something would spark that dim memory. Fires and missing kids, all tangled with sin.

“They’re sitting on my desk,” he said, still distracted by his niece.

“I’d just like a few minutes to look them over.”

“Sure.” Ken shouted up the stairs again. “Cassie! Lock up. And make sure you change your cartridge before you leave!”

“Okay, okay,” Cassie yelled down.

“She’ll miss the damn bus,” Ken said as he walked behind me through the living room. “Then she’ll be calling me asking for a ride.”

“Maybe she’ll surprise you.” Of course, in my experience, teenage surprises were never pleasant.

He hesitated, his hand on the front door, staring back inside. Then he followed me down the porch steps and into town.

CHAPTER 22

Mama never should have stayed out so late. Somehow, the first purification hadn’t been enough and she’d had to find the proper place to perform the ritual again. Still unsatisfied, the sense of sin still too powerful to ignore, she’d had to complete the ceremony a third time to quiet the feeling of wrongness.

After the third purification, she’d felt restless, unfinished. She knew she had to return to the children, that they needed her with time running so short. But she just drove, watching the stars vanish and the sky lighten. It was full daylight now, yet Mama couldn’t let go of the sense that she’d left something undone.

She turned aimlessly, drove slowly through a neighborhood crowded with houses, children’s toys strewn across lawns, flowerbeds full of so much color it made her heart ache. She knew the people in these houses were full of sin, that they passed their wickedness on to their children. But for a moment, she longed for the life they had.

A school bus was stopped up ahead, its red lights flashing. Mama pulled over, tried to see through the bus windows, to see the children inside. But the sun was so bright on the glass, she had to squeeze her eyes shut. She opened them again just as the bus was pulling away.

The paved road Mama had stopped on turned to gravel just beyond. A girl was running up the road toward Mama, waving her arms and yelling at the bus. When the bus kept going, the girl turned and saw Mama’s truck. She smiled and walked over and Mama’s heart stuttered in her chest. Blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect face.

Angela. Mama’s sweet daughter had come back.

Angela opened the door, started to climb into the truck. Then she saw Mama.

“Sorry,” Angela said. “I thought you were–”

Mama grabbed Angela’s arm and yanked her inside. Stomping the accelerator, Mama drove away fast, the door slamming shut. Angela screamed, tried to grab the door handle, but Mama hung on tight to Angela’s arm.

“Let me go,” Angela pleaded. “Please, let me go.”

She was crying and Mama couldn’t bear it. She slapped Angela hard, once, twice. The second time Mama’s daughter hit her head against the truck window. She was quiet after that. No more yelling, no more crying, leaving Mama to revel in her joy. Her oldest daughter had returned to her. Now her family was complete.

CHAPTER 23

An hour after Ken and I had arrived at the sheriff’s office, I was still flipping through reports, coming up empty but unwilling to give it up as a lost effort. He’d left me in his office while he attended the morning briefing, then came back with the remains of a box of donuts.

Grasping at straws, I’d entered as many of the small details I could think of – the exact time each fire was discovered, the weather, the damn phase of the moon. I had run it all through ProSpy, but I didn’t receive any more enlightenment than I had before.

The list of hits that ProSpy produced contained all the same suspects, plus the house fire in Victorville from a year and a half ago. Ken, leaning over my shoulder to pick out a donut, spotted the anomaly on the screen. “I thought you’d filtered that one out.”

“Should have.” I picked the glaze off an old-fashioned buttermilk. “It was declared accidental.”

I studied the sparse details of the Victorville fire. It started in the early morning hours. Kerosene stored in the service porch beside the gas water heater was an accelerant.

Connect the dots. Dream shreds tried to coalesce in my mind. “I need to do a Google. Can I use the department network?”

“Use my computer.” He woke his monitor from sleep mode, entered a password and brought up his internet browser.

I went to Google and typed in the search terms “Victorville” and “fire”, then narrowed down the hits with the date listed on the hit ProSpy had given me. Google coughed up several citations, including one from the Victorville
Daily Press
.

I clicked on the listing and read it aloud. “‘Five children died today when an early morning house fire destroyed their two bedroom home near Victorville. Their mother, Michelle Cresswell, daughter of a local pastor, suffered severe burns...’ You have to register with the website to read the rest.”

I debated whether to waste a few minutes creating an account on the newspaper’s website, or just look for the article elsewhere.

Ken hovered over me. “I’ve got a meeting.”

I decided to check another of the Google hits. “I’m good. You don’t need to hang around.”

“Will you be here when I get back?” he asked.

That should have been my cue to say my goodbyes, but that little brain cell was still rattling, suggesting to me I stay around awhile longer. Not to mention, I didn’t want to leave without seeing him again. “I’ll wait for you.”

I went back to Google for more information on the Victorville fire. The other hits were even briefer accounts than the one from the
Daily Press
.

Ken’s return distracted me before I could get back to the first article. “Forgot something,” he said, grabbing a report from his desk.

A faint memory popped above the surface and sucker punched me. “Wait.”

“I have to get back to–”

“
Wait
,” I repeated as he started out the door.

He stopped, arching a brow at me. “The mayor’s going to be ticked.”

“
Listen
. The night of the dance, when I was talking with Rich McPherson, he started talking pretty crazy.”

“He was drunk, Janelle.”

I waved him to silence. “He said something about there being more than seven. That those are just the ones we count and the others are way worse.”

Ken glared, waving a hand in a
go on
gesture.

“At the time, yeah, I just figure it was a drunk man raving. But what if it was sins he was talking about? As in seven deadly?”

A flicker of interest in Ken’s eyes. “That’s a pretty slim link.”

“Don’t you think it’s worth going down and having a word with him?”

Ken tapped the report folder against his fingers. “I’ll need ten minutes.”

While he was gone, I tried to get back to the
Daily Press
website to set up an account. Just my luck, the site was down. I checked the site status every minute or so while I waited, but never got past the site unavailable message.

We zipped back to Main Street. Ken straddled two parking places in front of Greenville Electronics. A half-hour past opening time, the store sign read “closed,” the door was locked, the lights off.

Ken rattled the glass front door. “McPherson! Are you in there?”

As we peered inside, Sadie emerged from the Greenville Gazette office across the street. “What’s the ruckus, Ken?” she called out.

“Have you seen McPherson?” Ken asked.

“Not yet. You need to get in? Hang on.” She disappeared inside the gazette office, emerging moments later with a ring of keys heavy enough to anchor a cruise ship.

Sadie started across the street. “Joe Templeton gave me the key two years ago when the creek flooded his store. For emergencies.”

“You’re not required to let me in,” Ken told her, taking care of the legal necessities.

“Joe won’t mind.” Shaking out the proper key, she unlocked the door with a twist of her skinny wrist, then pushed it open.

Sadie retreated back to the Gazette while Ken and I went inside the electronics store. We headed for the back, Ken toward the storage room on the left, me toward the bathroom on the right.

Everything was tidy in the bathroom, seat down, toilet flushed. As I quickly scanned the TP-stacked shelves of an open cabinet, Ken called out, “Take a look at this.”

At the back end of the storage room, overstocked crowded metal shelves. In the front, a flat screen monitor shared desk space with file folders and used paper coffee cups.

Ken gestured at the file folders. “Check out the names on the tabs.”

Without touching them, I angled my head to read the ones that were visible. Peter McKay. William Markowitz. Sadie Parker. Jill Westfield.

Ken pulled a latex glove from his shirt pocket. Using it as a fingerprint shield, he fanned the folders on the desk, revealing a file for the Jacobys and Elvin Hughes, the caretaker.

A definitive link between McPherson and the fires.

The clatter of the back door lock pulled us both from the storage room. McPherson entered, newspaper under his arm and coffee in his hand. He froze a moment, then dropped the coffee and the newspaper and took off out the door again.

“Shit,” Ken muttered as he ran for the door. He turned to toss me his keys. “Bring the truck around.”

I made my version of a mad dash out the front of the store. In the Explorer, I gunned up Main Street and made two sharp right turns, ending up in the alley behind the storefronts. The row of buildings stretched along to the right, a steep bank leading down to Deer Creek on the left.

I spotted McPherson, nearly to the end of the block of buildings. He looked back over his shoulder at Ken in close pursuit and put on speed. When he reached the end of the alley, instead of turning back onto Main Street, he dove down the embankment toward the creek. Ken scrambled after him.

I slid out of the Explorer, hopping around the front of the truck before I decided Ken was doing a great job on his own. He caught up to McPherson before Rich slogged through the creek, took a moment to catch his breath, then strong-armed Rich back up the bank.

Ken muscled Rich around the Explorer and spreadeagled him against the side. After a quick search, Ken cuffed him. “Let’s go back inside,” Ken said between gasps.

While Ken escorted Rich, I parked the Explorer behind the store. I followed them inside and into the storage room.

Rich’s eyes got big when he saw the folders spread out on his desk. Ken dumped him into the desk chair. “I think we’ve figured this all out, Rich. We just need you to fill in a few details.”

Alarm blared in McPherson’s clear, sober eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“We know about the fires,” I said.

I saw a hint of relief in his face. I didn’t like it. What was I missing?

He bowed his head, evading Ken’s gaze. “I didn’t set any fires.”

I pulled a scarred wooden chair over, then sat facing him. I took both his hands in mine. “You tried to tell me the night of the party, but I didn’t listen.”

“I was drunk.” He tried to tug his hands free, but I held them tight.

“I think you’re a good man, Rich. You want to do the right thing.” I tipped my head to one side so I could meet McPherson’s gaze. “You didn’t set the fires, but you know something, don’t you?”

He shook his head, but I saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. I let him have one hand free so he could dip his head and swipe at his nose.

Then I captured his hands again, gave them a gentle squeeze. “You want to get it off your chest, don’t you, Rich?”

He gulped in a breath, a sob catching in his throat. “Yeah.”

“Who started the fires?” I asked.

He gulped a couple of times, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Then he gasped out, “My wife.”

His wife. A female arsonist. Not unheard of, but unusual. The why of it blared at me, demanding an answer.

“Where is she?” Ken asked, voice as gentle as mine.

“I don’t know.” Rich twitched his shoulders. “She never came home last night.”

That did not sound good. I didn’t like the idea of this pyromaniac at large. “But you knew she was setting the fires.”

Rich shrugged. “The nights I don’t have too much to drink, she takes the truck after I get home. But she’s always back by dawn.”

Ken leaned in closer. “What happened this morning, Rich?”