Authors: Karen Sandler

Tags: #Detective, #Missing Children, #Janelle Watkins, #Small Town, #Crime, #Investigation, #Abduction, #kidnap, #Thriller

Clean Burn (32 page)

Kid Deputy was just outside the door, ready to take Brandon from me, to prop me across his shoulder as we got clear of the growing conflagration. Three other deputies ran toward us through the woods and I could hear the whine of fire engine sirens in the distance.

When Ken started toward the cabin, I waved him off. “She’s gone,” I told him. “You can’t save her.”

I can’t say I was a hundred percent certain that was true. But in either case, I didn’t feel a whit of guilt telling Ken to stand down.

CHAPTER 26

That afternoon and evening was like the mother of all family reunions at the Greenville Sheriff’s Office. Ken rode to the hospital with Cassie, assigning Deputy Farrell and me welcoming committee duties for the parents and guardians trickling in.

Mrs Lopez showed up first to claim Enrique, letters from her daughter in hand to authorize her to pick up the boy. Glenda Madison arrived around six that evening. She’d gotten stopped just west of Davis for speeding, but a call to Ken greased the skids and sent her on her way. Her Heimlich-strength hugs and effusive thanks actually put a lump in my throat. Imagining Kid Deputy laughing at me was all that kept me from blubbering like a girl.

Shortly after Ken called from the hospital to tell us Cassie had been stabilized, the Thompsons turned up to ID and claim their dead boy. After they’d seen his small body in the morgue, Brandon’s mother thanked me over and over for finding him.

Her gratitude was hard enough to accept, but when she said, “I knew it. I knew he was gone. I felt it,” I nearly lost it all over again.

While Deputy Farrell and I waited for the arrival of the baby’s grandparents, Lucy Polovko brought us a tidbit of after the fact enlightenment. Come to reclaim some detritus Ken’s deputies had taken from her shack as evidence, she was rambling again about Baba Yaga the witch when I had an “Aha!” moment. Digging out what lucidity I could from Loony Lucy, I managed to correlate the fire-loving Baba Yaga’s visit with one of Michelle’s conflagrations.

Glenn Cresswell was put on suicide watch in the Greenville County jail until the Sacramento FBI could send someone to come pick him up. Glenn’s hold on sanity might have been firmer than his wife’s before she died, but he’d lost a few French fries from his Happy Meal since then.

Finally, just past midnight, it was the baby’s turn. Mr and Mrs Simmons showed up with their daughter, Naomi, having expedited an overnight DNA test at a Sacramento lab. Once they’d confirmed the baby was their granddaughter, they pulled more strings to have her promptly released to them from foster care. By 3am the infant was in the arms of her dazed teen mom, and under the watchful eyes of her determined grandparents.

I called Ken at the hospital to update him. His voice sounded rough and exhausted over the phone. “Cassie’s out of danger,” he told me. “Nurses are nagging me to go home and get some rest. Thought I would.”

I could hear the implicit invitation in his tone. “Sounds like a good idea.”

Implicit turned explicit, his gravelly voice X-rated. “I’ll sleep better if you’re there with me.”

Far too tempting. To have him hold me, so I could let loose the tears I’d been fighting back. So I could somehow expiate my grief and guilt over Brandon’s loss. “It would be better if I didn’t.”

After several long beats of silence, he said, “Don’t leave without saying goodbye. Please.”

I pressed the heel of my hand into my forehead, gritting my teeth against welling emotion. “Meet you for breakfast at Emil’s?”

We set a time, then I disconnected. I hustled out of the sheriff’s station to my car, then let the ugly sobs rip from my throat. When I was done, I swabbed the wet from my eyes with the hem of my grody T-shirt, then drove to the Gold Rush Inn.

When I got to Emil’s after a few restless hours sleep, he was waiting for me in a booth. There were two cups of coffee on the table, mine properly dosed with sugar and creamer. It was lukewarm – I’d slept through my phone’s alarm and was ten minutes late – but I gulped it down to forestall the conversation I knew was coming.

If I’d hoped to slurp up one cup of java then get on the road, I was disappointed when Diana made her way over with two plates piled high with breakfast. A stack of pancakes and scrambled eggs for Ken and a greasy Hangtown Fry for me, an omelette packed with oysters and bacon. A guilty pleasure of mine, and of course he knew it.

Ken drowned his flapjacks in syrup, then set the pitcher aside. He speared me with his irresistible blue gaze. “You could stay, you know.”

I ducked my head to address my Fry, but damn, a part of me wanted to. To risk the crap I would make both our lives. “That’s not a good idea.”

He carefully cut a bite of pancakes. “Why not?”

I tried to craft a lie that would make him mad, that would forever cut him off from me. Nothing but the bare-knuckle truth came to mind.

“Because I’m sick, Ken. Sick in the mind, sick in the heart, sick in the soul.” My throat tightened. “Putrid sick.”

“No. You’re not.”

“You don’t know a tenth of what goes on inside me. What I keep on a leash. I take up with you, let the prison walls soften up, and all that sickness escapes. All over you and me both.” I felt the hard knot of it burn inside me. “It’s better to keep it inside.”

His mouth tightened in a hard line. He didn’t believe that I was so irretrievable, but he at least understood the magnitude of the barriers between us. “You think you might go back to it? Finding lost kids?”

I’d considered it. Except for Brandon, the kids were safe, back where they belonged. Happy ending all around. Nearly.

“I don’t think so,” I said finally. “It’s better if I don’t care too much.”

“Better for who?” he asked, then he waved away the question, and changed the subject. “Are you sure you don’t want me there when you do it?”

“I’m sure. The fire marshal’s got it all set up. We won’t need you.” That was part of the ugliness I didn’t want to risk him seeing. I wasn’t entirely sure how it would be for me.

I forced myself to finish the breakfast he’d bought me. When he walked me to my car, I let him hug me, kiss my cheek. I promised I’d keep in touch, although it was a foolhardy commitment.

I drove off, avoiding a glance in the rear view mirror; didn’t want that last look at him.

I traced the familiar path over to Lime Kiln, turned at the weathered sign lettered with the name “Watkins.” Parked my Escort out of the way of the two fire engines, the fire truck, and battalion chief’s Expedition. Someone had brush-hogged blackberry brambles and manzanita for thirty feet on all four sides.

Peterson approached as I eased myself from my car. “It’s all ready,” he said.

Someone had already been inside pouring a trail of gasoline throughout the interior. It had taken some arm-twisting, but the fire marshal agreed to let me toss the Molotov cocktail. After all, it was my property I was letting them burn for their training exercise.

With firefighters at the ready to constrain the fire to the old cabin, Peterson lit the wick of the gas-filled beer bottle. I allowed myself only an instant to admire the flame before I flung it through the cabin’s open door. The fire took hold with startling rapidity, greedily licking at the floor and spreading toward the door and windows. My heart lifted at the sight of the brilliant sherbet orange flames, the deep black smoke. I imagined my father inside, burning to death. Other than Michelle, he was the only human being on the planet I would have wished that torture.

But it wasn’t my father I saw inside in the last moments of the holocaust, just before the company started their planned suppression. It was Tommy, looking like he was standing in a protective halo of white light. His sad eyes softened as they stared at me and for the first time in eight years, that vision smiled at me.

I staggered back, terrified and jubilant all at once. Stared, thunderstruck, as Tommy vanished in a cloud of steam. As the smoke thrust its tail into the sky, I imagined that towhead boy following it up to heaven.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department, particularly retired Lieutenant Kevin House and Detective Laura Bradshaw. Thanks for your input into
Clean Burn
and for making the Citizens Academy such a fun and informative experience. Also, a big thank you to arson investigator John Beaver for being so generous with your time, for loaning me your reference books, and for answering so many of my questions about fire.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Writing has been Karen Sandler’s passion since the fourth grade. She took a circuitous route to the writing profession, however. Rather than major in English, she studied mathematics, physics and computer science. After earning a BA in math and and an MS in computer science from UCLA, Karen worked as a software engineer for nearly fifteen years. With a move from the Los Angeles area to Northern California, in 1995 Karen optioned her first screenplay, and in 1997 she sold her first novel to Kensington Publishing, with several more novels following thereafter. Karen’s first young adult book,
Tankborn
, a dystopian science fiction, was released in September 2011 by Tu Books.

karensandler.net

twitter.com/karensandler

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