Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  Done ruminating on my wardrobe, I twisted the key in the ignition and backed away from the Golden Arches. As I drove back onto eastbound Highway 50,1 could feel Greenville sucking at me like some evil Klingon tractor beam. With any luck I’d still be in one piece when the old hometown spit me out again.

  * * * *

  I’d expected the Sacramento Valley suburban sprawl would have spread to Greenville in the twenty years since I’d escaped. It had nibbled at the edges a bit, creeping up the foothills starting at the western edge of the county, filling the empty rolling hills between oak trees. But the cookie-cutter housing developments with inspiring names like Valle Verde Vista and Sunset Equestrian Ranch petered out at about the 2000-foot elevation mark. Nothing competed for the space between oaks except a few scrub pines, some redbud and manzanita and the occasional rustic log home.

  Oddly, Tommy receded in my mind not long after I’d crossed the Sac County line into Greenville County. Maybe he’d been elbowed out by the innumerable other ghosts that haunted my psyche now that I was on home turf. Knowing what kind of dark memories lurked deep in my brain cells, I wasn’t sure Tommy’s absence was a good thing.

  I avoided Main Street once I’d passed into Greenville city limits, unwilling for the moment to confront that blast from the past. Instead I took the back road to the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, a familiar track from days of old when Sheriff Kelsey caught me breaking windows or committing other minor acts of chicanery.

  As I pulled into the parking lot, my ruined calf muscles sent a warning shot across the bow. Long car trips wreaked havoc with my leg, set off breath-stealing spasms. The dull ache I felt when I swung my foot to the pavement was only a precursor to the agony I’d feel when I tried to straighten and stand.

  Hooking my fingers over the car door, I pushed myself up with my good leg and gritted my teeth as I unbent my left knee. I stood there, eyes shut as my knee throbbed, praying no one was watching. When the pain receded from excruciating to bearable, I shut the car door and made my way across the parking lot, pretending I wasn’t sweating from every pore.

  Although the low-slung brick building housing the county sheriff’s office hadn’t changed a whit on the outside, it looked like the interior had been spruced up with another coat of beige paint. The chipped Formica reception desk in the lobby looked like the same one Miss Gladys Woodward had hunched over in my wild adolescence. Since Miss Woodward had been requisitioned from the same era as the desk, I half-expected she’d still be there, her pruney face even more convoluted than it had been two decades ago.

  But instead, a young woman with a bad-hair-day coif smiled as I approached. “Can I help you?”

  “Where’s Miss Woodward?” I looked around. Maybe they had her preserved in alcohol somewhere.

  “I’m afraid she’s passed on.” Her smile faded for an appropriate moment, then she turned up the wattage again. “How can I help you?”

  Julie Sweetzer, her name tag read, her badly fitting red and white striped shirt telling me she was a civilian. An evil impulse in my brain immediately labeled her Miss Sweet-as-pie.

  “Is Deputy Ken Heinz in?”

  “It’s Sheriff Heinz.” She looked offended in Ken’s stead. “I’m afraid he’s out. Can I take a message?”

  “Where is he?” I looked past Miss Sweet-as-pie to where a female deputy sat behind a desk, a metal detector wand at the ready. Homeland security had even reached its tentacles here to Greenville.

  She kept that smile fixed on her face. “I’m not at liberty to divulge Sheriff Heinz’s current location. But I’d be glad to take a message,” she told me cheerily.

  I rarely let myself be thwarted by cheer. I leaned close to the reception desk and kept my voice low. “I’m sure you know Sheriff Heinz was with the San Francisco Police Department.” She nodded. “He’s my former partner. I drove over from San Francisco to discuss a case with him.”

  “You’re a police officer?”

  I always try to avoid the direct lie. “I really could use Ken’s input on this case.”

  She stared at me, washed out blue eyes looking deep into my soul. She’d have a hard time finding one.

  “He’s at the Jansen place.” She pulled a sticky pad over and scribbled an address. “You take Rock Creek Road out past County Line-”

  I snatched the slip of paper from her. “I know where the Jansen place is.” Although since Bart Jansen had been older than dirt when I left Greenville, I doubted he was still in residence.

  By continuing on the access road out of the sheriff’s headquarters, I sidestepped Main Street again as I cut over to Rock Creek. I caught a glimpse of Holy Rock Baptist church, its steeple still the highest structure in downtown Greenville. I had only the dimmest memories of walking into that church with my mother, sitting in a well worn Gold Rush era pew and admiring the particularly gory stained glass rendition of the crucifixion over the altar.

  The Jansen place was three or four miles out of town, back in off Rock Creek a good mile or so. The fact that I could picture nearly every winding turn along the way before I hit it wasn’t comforting. Two decades should have obliterated the familiarity.

  Anticipation of my upcoming reunion with Ken added to the anxiety stewing inside me. He’d been the perfect partner, damn near reading my mind when we were investigating a scene or interrogating a suspect. We could still be mowing down evil-doers in San Francisco if I hadn’t stepped over the line with him.

  I nearly missed the turn into the Jansen’s driveway, despite the massive stone and concrete mailbox that had been installed there. Old Mr. Jansen’s mailbox had been standard gray metal on a four-by-four. This new one was five feet tall and topped with the name Markowitz in six- inch-tall letters. Old Mr. Jansen was used to finding his mailbox broken off at the base Sunday mornings after young Greenville miscreants such as myself cavorted through the countryside on Saturday nights with baseball bats in search of mailboxes to flatten. He had a stock of four-by-fours in his shed, ready to repair the damage.

  Local juvenile delinquents wouldn’t put a dent in the Markowitz mailbox with anything short of dynamite. I guess big city transplants have no sense of humor.

  The Markowitzes had also paved old Mr. Jansen’s pothole pitted gravel drive, smoothed it out with a sheet of high- dollar asphalt. It would make the trek up the driveway less messy when the winter rains hit, but considering the lack of a culvert at the halfway point where heavy storms always laid a ribbon of rushing water, the drive would be impassable with the first winter deluge.

  I pulled around the last turn into a clearing and my heart went pit-a-pat at my first view of two pretty red fire engines. Parked alongside were a fire truck, fire department SUV and an EMT rig. They’d apparently already quenched the blaze, leaving in black sodden ruin an out structure too big to be a shed, too small to be a barn. A detached garage maybe, a guess that was confirmed by a glimpse of what appeared to be the skeleton of a car under the collapsed roof.

  The two-story behemoth that had replaced Jansen’s tidy frame house seemed untouched by flame. Lucky Mr. Markowitz. As I did a U-turn in the driveway, parking my car off to the side to give clearance for the fire rigs, the EMT pulled out, no sirens, no lights. Apparently no injuries for the Markowitzes either, another stroke of good fortune.

  I drew my creaky body from the Escort, a matchstick in my mouth to work off some of my nervous energy. As I tried to work some flexibility into my calf, I spotted a Crown Vic and Ford Explorer, both emblazoned with the Greenville County Sheriff emblem, parked over by the house. The fire companies were stowing their hose back in their engines, the captain chatting with a kid way too young to be wearing a deputy’s uniform. If Ken was here, I didn’t see him.

  A skinny, prematurely bald guy that was no doubt Mr. Markowitz emerged from the house. A little girl, maybe six, trailed behind her father, clutching a teddy hear. Markowitz looked around him in agitation, then started toward the burned out garage.

  I couldn’t
help myself, my attention strayed to the ragged, charred edges of unburned siding. In my twisted mind, the only thing more enthralling than fire was its aftermath. It had taken a heap of self-discipline over the years to resist the urge to move into arson investigation. Nevertheless, I’d dabbled in it on an amateur basis over the years, buying books off Amazon, all but drooling over the photographs.

  Then when someone torched the Sudsy Clean Laundromat across the street from my apartment, I’d watched avidly behind the limits of the crime tape. Once the arson investigators finished their work, I’d volunteered to help the Nguyens clean up the mess. I didn’t even bother to tell myself I was only being neighborly. I knew what impulse sent me slogging through that sodden, blackened mess.

  But unlike the Nguyens’ Laundromat, where much of the rubble had already been cleared away before I could get my mitts on it, the fire in the Markowitz’s garage was newly extinguished. It would still hold a fascinating treasure trove of clues I itched to decipher.

  Before I could take a step toward the ruins, Ken rounded the front of the garage, coming into view. And I completely forgot about the fire.

  I had maybe a thirty second grace period before Ken noticed me. Time enough to take in the fact that in three years, he really hadn’t changed much. He’d let the buzz cut from his SFPD days grow out, his sandy hair now long enough to curl behind his ears. The khaki shirt didn’t fit as well as the blues we wore in San Francisco during our beat days, but even at 45, he looked damned good.

  When he first saw me, his gaze rolled right past without recognition. Then he lasered back on me, something flickering in his face he would have killed me for if he’d known I’d seen it. An instant later, that light doused and I saw nothing but disinterest in those blue eyes.

  He sidestepped Mr. Markowitz and headed toward the Explorer. The riled-up homeowner started to follow, then stopped to answer the summons of his cell phone.

  I moved on an intercept course, more unsettled by Ken’s dismissiveness than I wanted to admit. I pasted a cheery grin on my face. “Ken!”

  As he turned toward me, a twitch in his jaw told me his self-control wasn’t quite as all-encompassing as he might want me to think. “Did you make a wrong turn somewhere?”

  “Good to see you, too.” I tapped the sheriff’s badge on his chest. “So you’re already running the place. What happened to Sheriff Kelsey?”

  “Heart attack.”

  “Dead?”

  “Retired.”

  “Too bad.” There was no love lost between Kelsey and me. He and dear old Dad had been thick as thieves way back when, drinking buddies, hunting and fishing partners. Kelsey knew what my father was doing to me, had seen the marks on my arms. At best, he pretended not to notice, at worst, he thought I must have deserved the punishment.

  Kid Deputy made his way over to us, oblivious to Ken’s and my little drama. He gave me a puppy dog smile. “This a friend of yours, sheriff?”

  “Janelle Watkins,” Ken said, the words dragged out of him. “My former partner at SFPD.”

  Kid Deputy thrust out a hand. “I’m Alex Farrell.”

  I shook his hand, keeping my attention on Ken. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Alex pointed at the matchstick I was chewing to shreds. “You just quit smoking or something?”

  I pulled it from my mouth and shoved it in my pocket. “Or something.”

  He grinned at his boss. “Didn’t she do profiles for SFPD? Maybe she could do one for us on our arsonist.”

  “How do you know it was arson?” I asked. “Maybe Mr. Markowitz was cooking meth in his garage.”

  “Nah. It was arson,” Kid Deputy told me. “We’ve had a string of them. I bet you could figure out who.”

  I risked a glance at Ken. He stared off into the middle distance, his jaw working.

  “I don’t profile anymore,” I told Alex. “I’m a private investigator.”

  Alex’s radio squawked and he excused himself, moving to the far side of the Explorer. Ken bent his head, lowered his voice. “We had an agreement.”

  I remembered all too clearly when it had been struck, the verbal missiles we’d lobbed at one another. “It’s been three years, Ken.”

  “‘Stay the hell out of my life’ didn’t have an expiration date.”

  Guilt slashed me at the raw expression of pain on his face. “Can’t an old friend drop by to say hello?”

  “We’re not friends, Janelle. Not since that night, anyway.”

  Our first night, I wondered? Or the final night, when the truth blew up in all our faces? Or maybe the night a week later, when I abandoned all shame and called him, but Tara picked up the phone instead? He might not even know about that night.

  I realized Alex had returned. He may not have heard our exchange, but he had to feel the weight of the rough silence between Ken and me. In typical small-town fashion, he no doubt hankered for all the details. I wasn’t about to add any fuel to that fascination.

  I was almost relieved to see Markowitz hot-footing it over to us, oblivious to his daughter still dogging his heels. As she trotted along behind him, she used the teddy to swipe at the tears running down her face.

  Markowitz blustered up to Ken. “I need a police report. The insurance company won’t process my claim without it.”

  Ken shifted his attention to Markowitz. “I told you before, it’ll take a few weeks.”

  “That was a cherry ragtop ‘65 Mustang,” Markowitz said. “I just had it transported up from LA.”

  “Tough luck,” I told him, although I couldn’t muster a whole lot of sympathy for a man who was as negligent of his kid as this one seemed to be. “What’s the problem with your daughter? Was the car a favorite of hers?”

  “Her cat was locked in the garage when it burned. I told her I’d get her another one,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “She’s just a crybaby.”

  I took a deep breath, squelching a number of creative possibilities that would make this man cry. “You, on the other hand, are exhibiting tremendous bravery in the face of such a catastrophic loss.”

  Markowitz stared at me, wheels turning as if he was trying to figure out if I’d just insulted him. He sneered at Ken. “Get me that police report. ASAP.” He stomped off back toward his house.

  “Real neighborly guy,” I commented. “I can see why you prefer Greenville over the city.”

  “Sheriff tells me you’re from here,” Alex said. “Was Clement Watkins your daddy?”

  I forced myself to count to five so I wouldn’t chomp Alex’s head off at the shoulders. Not his fault he’d innocently conjured the Source of All That Is Evil. “Yes.”

  Ken knew a little bit about my “daddy”. “What was the call?” he asked Alex.

  “Ruckus at the high school.”

  Ken gave Alex a nudge toward the Crown Vic. “Get over there.”

  Before Kid Deputy folded his lanky body back into the car, he grinned at me. “How long are you here for?”

  “Just the night. I’ll be driving home in the morning.”

  “See you later, then.” He dropped into his patrol car and cranked the engine, then roared out with youthful enthusiasm.

  “You have a reason for being here?” Ken asked. “Besides stirring up the Greenville rumor mill?”

  I should have whipped James and Enrique’s photos from my back pocket, asked my questions of Ken, then continued on my merry way. But here I was, just steps from a freshly suppressed fire scene, a likely arson. This wasn’t photos from a book, it was the real thing.

  My feet moved of their own accord toward the garage. Ken dogged my steps. “That’s a possible crime scene, Janelle. You need to keep the hell away.”

  “I’ll stay on the perimeter,” I told him, still limping toward temptation. “I just want a closer look.”

  Except he knew about my history with fire. “I’m not letting you feed your damn compulsions, Janelle.”

  “It’s not that.” I stopped and turned, forcing myself to meet his ske
pticism eye to eye. As if that would make my lie less despicable. “I have the chance to pick up a couple of new clients if I get some background in arson. You know fire investigation inside and out. Maybe you can give me a few tips.”

  Ken had worked arson with the state before he joined SFPD. He’d had a scientific instinct that made fire investigation an irresistible game. I hoped that drive to solve puzzles still lurked inside him. At the same time, I prayed he wouldn’t be able to see through my bullshit.

  He fixed me with his hard blue gaze and I knew he saw right through me. “You get that sick look on your face and I’m marching your ass out of here.”

  Shame burned in my gut. He’d caught me more than once burning myself, knew that look of blissful agony.

  Leaving me feeling knee-high to a cockroach, he turned toward the burned out shell of the garage, giving the structure a wide berth. He greeted Ed, the fire investigator, as he came around the back of the garage with his camera. Ed was in turnout gear, including helmet and boots, and was starting his documentation of the fire by photographing the exterior.

  We stopped on the far side of the garage, its wall burned down to blackened stubs of two-by-fours. The leaves of the oak tree overhanging the structure, usually bright green this time of year, had faded to brown from the fire’s heat. From our vantage point, we could view the entire interior.

  Seeing the destruction, familiar excitement squirmed inside me. I struggled to keep it from showing on my face. Watch Ed, I told myself. Focus on his process, not what the fire has done.

  I narrowed my gaze on the investigator, imagined myself in his boots. He had to be careful not to contaminate the scene. Trace from outside the structure might confuse the investigation.