Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  I scanned the registration slip. It listed Ben Waring as the owner of a 1985 Chevy S10. I could use the license number or VIN to locate the current owner. After all the ritual beating of my head against brick walls, this one was almost too easy.

  Ken’s expression as he tucked away his cell phone derailed me for the moment from my request for a check of ownership. He started toward the Explorer, waving at me to fall in beside him.

  “Something happen to Cassie?” I asked.

  “Cassie’s fine. She talked Rich McPherson into opening the store on a Sunday so she and a bunch of her friends could have some kind of video game competition.” He climbed into the Explorer and waited until I got inside. “How committed are you to going home today?”

  “Don’t be a putz. Tell me what’s going on.”

  He handed me his cell. “Take a look at the last number called.”

  Tamping down my irritation, I checked the call log. A Sacramento area code with a 306 prefix. The 306 sparked a memory. I’d seen it on Enrique’s grandmother’s invoice. “Is that Mrs. Lopez’s number?”

  “It is,” he said smugly. “I just spoke with her. I’m on my way there now. Unless you’d rather I take you back to your car.”

  I gave him a sweet smile. “I could go see her on my way out of town, if you’d give me the address.”

  “Joint effort, Janelle, or I go alone.” He turned onto the entrance for Highway 50.

  “Did you ask her about Enrique?”

  “If I had, I would have had to explain about her grandson being missing.” He flicked his light bar, clearing the fast lane for the Explorer. “I figured it would be better to tell her that in person.”

  “How did her number pop up from out of nowhere?”

  “Remember Trish?” he asked. “The Stuarts’ daughter?”

  I tried to place her in the pantheon of Greenvillians. “Refresh my memory.”

  “Her folks own the place Mrs. Lopez rented. Apparently Mrs. Lopez called Trish yesterday asking for her security deposit. Trish remembered I’d been looking for the woman.”

  “So maybe Mrs. Lopez is desperate enough for money to risk revisiting her past.”

  “Or whatever she was running from is no longer a threat,” Ken suggested.

  I still had the truck registration in my hand. “Can you check on ownership for me?” I explained about Sadie’s trade.

  He radioed in to central dispatch, repeating the license number I read off to him. Half a minute later, Ken relayed dispatch’s response. “Ben Waring.”

  “Sadie’s great-grandson?”

  “Yeah. She’s always bragging on him.”

  “Could we try the VIN?” Maybe Glenn had gotten new plates. Or switched them.

  But the VIN came back the same, registered to Ben.

  “Damn,” I muttered. “So mystery man Glenn never transferred the truck into his name.”

  “He’ll have to sooner or later. When’s the registration due?”

  I checked the slip. “August.”

  “When his registration expires, one of the deputies will catch up to him. Meantime, I’ll put out a BOLO on the truck.”

  A “be on the lookout” was better than nothing, but I didn’t have high hopes it would bear any fruit. I sank down in my seat, trying not to think about James, dead in the woods somewhere or Enrique, raffled off to some child molester.

  Damn, why had I let those boys in?

  CHAPTER 21

  Mrs. Lopez lived in a small duplex in the Arden Arcade area of Sacramento. The living room furniture was threadbare, the carpet worn and freckled with the black dots of cigarette burns, but it was clean and neat. The familiar photograph of Enrique hung on the wall.

  Mrs. Lopez was as tidy as her home, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, slacks pressed, her shirt fresher than the one I’d dragged out of the Safeway bag. A young grandmother, probably in her mid-forties, she greeted us with a soft Spanish accent, a tray of cookies and a pot of coffee. We settled on the sofa while she perched on the edge of a well-worn easy chair.

  “Have you heard from my daughter?” She picked up her coffee cup, her hands shaking. “Is Enrique with her?”

  A lead ball dropped in my stomach. “We have some bad news, Mrs. Lopez.”

  Her mouth clamped down as she steeled herself. “What is it?”

  I glanced over at Ken, but he was leaving it to me. “Your daughter’s dead. A drug overdose three months ago.”

  “I had a feeling.” She blinked back tears. “There won’t be a problem transferring Enrique from foster care, will there? Felicia intended to send him to me.”

  “Why didn’t she?” I asked, putting off the inevitable.

  She raised the coffee to her lips, but she barely sipped. “A week before I moved out of the Stuarts’ place, Felicia called, said she’d changed her mind. She could take care of her own son.” She shook her head. “Stupid girl.”

  Ken reached for a cookie. “Why no forwarding address, Mrs. Lopez? We couldn’t even find a PO box.”

  Color rose in her cheeks. “My ex-husband. It’s better he doesn’t know where I live. He’s back in prison now, so I’m okay. I can take care of Enrique, no problem.” She looked at me. “I can get custody, right?”

  Better to rip the bandage off quickly. “Mrs. Lopez, we don’t know where Enrique is.”

  “What do you mean?” She stared at me, uncomprehending. “How can you not know?”

  “He wasn’t at the apartment when they found your daughter,” I told her. “Social services has no record of him. If you don’t have him, we don’t know where he is.”

  The cup slipped from Mrs. Lopez’s fingers, shattering on the coffee table. As lousy as I was at comforting, I knew enough to grab her hand as she bent over sobbing.

  As Ken mopped up spilled coffee from the table and carpet, my cell trilled out “Light My Fire.” I would have ignored it, but caller ID said it was the office number. Which meant Sheri was calling me from the office on a Sunday.

  Leaving Ken to try to soothe Mrs. Lopez, I stepped outside. “What are you doing at work on your day off?”

  “You asked about missing eight month-old babies in the Bay Area.” I could hear the excitement in her voice.

  I sat on the cement front steps. “And?”

  “I kept striking out with Google, getting either too many hits or none at all. But then today, I’m out with my folks for brunch and the light bulb clicks on so I come into the office.”

  “Cut to the chase, Sheri.”

  “I’m getting there. I searched for abandoned babies, teen pregnancy. You know how California has that safe surrender baby law? Turns out a sixteen-year-old who used to live in San Francisco but lives in Kansas now, got pregnant, hid it for nine months, then gave birth in a public bathroom. She left the kid in the doorway of the New Holy Light Church. It was one of those storefront churches in the Tenderloin district. On Jones between Eddy and Turk.”

  The location tickled a brain cell. I put it aside for the moment. “When was this?”

  “Eight and a half months ago.”

  Which fit the timeline to a T. “Is there a fire connection?”

  “Big time,” Sheri said. “Someone set a fire in the alley beside the church that night. Spread to the church itself, just about burned it to the ground. Naomi Simmons had left her baby on the front step, which didn’t burn but was covered with shattered glass. At the least, they should have found a body. But there was nothing on the front step in the morning but rubble from the fire.”

  “So someone took the baby.” I didn’t want to think much past that revelation to who that someone might be.

  “Apparently, the teen’s family’s got megabucks,” Sheri told me. “Naomi came clean with her parents and now they want the little girl back, if she’s still alive. Impassioned plea, promise of reward, etcetera.”

  “Go back to the fire. How’d it do so much damage to the church when it started in the alley?”

  “Place was a former dry
cleaners,” Sheri said. “Leftover containers still squirreled away, chemicals spilled on the floor.”

  Which reminded me of the Nguyen’s Laundromat. I felt a prickling up my spine. “Were you able to find out the ignition source?”

  “I saw something about kerosene.”

  “That would be the accelerant.”

  “That’s all I know,” Sheri told me. “Kerosene on rags, set behind a dumpster.”

  “See what you can find out about the ignition source.” I wasn’t sure where that would take me, but more information wouldn’t hurt.

  I stepped back inside, where Mrs. Lopez sat with Enrique’s photo on her lap. Before we left, Ken murmured some encouraging words, promises he probably knew he wouldn’t be able to keep.

  As we drove back to the sheriff’s office, I told him what I’d learned from Sheri. “The girl I spoke to at McDonald’s saw a black infant in the car she spotted James in. Andros at the cafe said a woman in what was likely the same car might have been holding a baby.”

  “Damn.” He didn’t look any happier than I felt at the mounting body count of missing kids. “Listen, I’ve got to get something to eat. Why don’t we head back to my place for some lunch?”

  “Sure. But take me back to my car. I’ll go check out first.”

  But what I really wanted to do was follow up on a radical idea. My nerves jangled as Ken dropped me off at the sheriff’s office, an intriguing pattern coalescing in my conscious mind. I wanted to jump on my laptop immediately, but forced myself to pack up, forced myself to settle my thoughts. I was tempted to forget lunch with Ken so I could manipulate some data. But melding his thought processes with mine might get us to an answer quicker.

  He’d made us each a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and had shaken a can of Pringles out onto a paper plate. Seated at the trestle table, I inhaled the sandwich and chips and guzzled the Sprite he’d poured for me.

  “I want you to consider something,” I said as I wiped my fingers on a paper napkin.

  Giving me a fishy look, he swept up the plates he’d served the sandwiches on. “Okay.”

  “For the moment, I need you to go along with a farfetched storyline.”

  He set the plates on the breakfast bar and dropped into a chair. “I’m listening.”

  Draining my glass of Sprite, I threw out my crazy-ass idea. “What if they’re all connected?”

  “By all, you mean...”

  “The disappearances of James, Enrique, the baby. Even Brandon.”

  He narrowed his gaze. “James and the baby, I’ll buy. But the other two...”

  “They all have a fire connection.” I ticked off on my fingers. “A fire set at a church where someone leaves a baby. The sofa set on fire in the apartment where Enrique lived. James disappears from a service station where a fire is set in the bathroom.”

  “But how do you leap to Brandon, a hundred and sixty miles away? That fire by the river could have been set by a careless camper, kids ditching school.”

  “Maybe. But we do have witness reports that put James and the baby here.”

  Ken tipped his head noncommittally in response to my argument. “How were the fires started?”

  “Not sure about the church, other than kerosene on rags. At the service station, it was a little lighter fluid and a match. The paper towels were damp, so it didn’t get very far before it was discovered. What about the dumpster at the Hangman’s Tavern?”

  “Some kind of accelerant,” Ken said. “Could have been lighter fluid. Fire chief didn’t go very far with it because there wasn’t any property damage.”

  “It could have been kerosene at the church because the kidnapper was prepared. The service station and dumpster fires were more crimes of opportunity.”

  Ken rubbed his cheek, beard stubble scraping under his palm. “I’d be interested to know more about the fire at Enrique’s apartment.”

  “I’ll have Sheri pull the incident report.” I fished an ice cube from my glass and chomped on it. “Until we find out otherwise, let’s pretend the same person kidnapped all four children. We can see if the facts support that.”

  “Okay.” He swept up the last three chips. “We have an eight-month-old African American baby girl. A three-year-old Hispanic boy. An eleven-year-old African American boy. An eight-year-old white boy. Different races, different genders, different ages.”

  “James and the baby were seen together more than once. Each of the four has a link to Greenville.”

  He looked thoughtful as he sucked salt off his fingertips. “There is another common thread.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If we knew these kids had been kidnapped, law enforcement would be all over it. We’d bring in the FBI, we’d have Amber Alerts on the freeway, television and radio.” He gestured with the last Pringle. “But these kids, an abandoned baby no one knew about, a drug addict’s son everyone assumed was with his grandma, a presumed runaway, a boy we figure drowned in the river...’’

  I caught his drift. “They’re completely under the radar.”

  “Lower priority.”

  “No reason for anyone to bust their butts looking for them. Or even know to look for them.”

  He picked up the empty glasses and carried them to the kitchen. “We are searching for Brandon.”

  “You’re looking for his body,” I pointed out. “And you would have gone on thinking you just hadn’t found it yet if Dave the repairman didn’t see the mystery woman. It wouldn’t cross your mind that someone might have taken him. Someone who intended to keep him.”

  “Or kill him, if he wasn’t already dead.” Ken brought up the ugly possibility as he rinsed the glasses. “They might all be dead, buried somewhere on BLM land.”

  “Either way we’ve got to find this man and woman.” I rose and leaned against the counter while he put the dishes in the dishwasher. “You think it’s worthwhile now to do a more thorough search of the area where Brandon disappeared?”

  “The dogs are still coming up empty. And while I’m willing to go along with your storyline as a theoretical exercise, I don’t know that it’s compelling enough to call out the troops.”

  I could have whined, pleaded with him, batted my eyes. Even if I’d had it in me, I doubted it would be effective.

  “Then let’s go back to your arson victims,” I suggested. “Maybe if we think about something else, we’ll get some new inspiration on the kidnappings.”

  “Go through the report folders again? I took them back to the office yesterday.”

  I shook my head. “Tell me what you know about these people. About their lives.”

  We returned to the table. I booted my laptop and brought up my notes file. I’d created a table listing dates in the first column, structure burned in the second, victims names in the third. I glanced down the list in time order. BLM, Sadie Parker, unnamed contractor, Westfields, McKays, caretaker Elvin Hughes, Markowitz, Abe and Mary Jacoby.

  “So, what do you want?”

  “Anything. Small town stuff. Secrets. Scandals.”

  His expression dubious, he sat back, staring out into space. “There was a scandal last year involving Mrs. McKay. Something about her and the UPS man. Mr. McKay was living at the Gold Rush Inn a few months until they worked it out.”

  I typed a note on a fresh page. “What else?”

  He considered. “When the Westfields first arrived, people sniped about how they threw their money around, buying sixty-plus acres, building a gargantuan mansion, shelling out for a big flat screen from the electronics store.”

  “Good. What else?”

  He rocked his head side to side as if to shake loose a mental tidbit. “Elvin Hughes is the biggest pisser and moaner about the Westfields. Complains about Abe and Mary too. Doesn’t matter that the Westfields and Jacobys worked hard for what they own. Elvin can’t stand the fact that they have so much and he has nothing.”

  “Didn’t occur to you that he might be a suspect?”

  “Elvin
’s in a wheelchair. His granddaughter shops for him and brings him supplies, takes him into town as needed.”

  I typed, glancing up to prod Ken further. He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Markowitz was a greedy bastard. The contractor has a temper. Punched his hand through a wall in the post office.”

  An envious man. A greedy one. A cheating wife. An angry contractor.

  A deeply buried bit of trivia was tapping me on the shoulder. I shut my eyes, willing it to unearth itself.

  I sat bolt upright. “The seven deadly sins.”

  “Say what?”

  I ticked them off. “Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride.”

  Ken looked at me blankly a moment, then realization struck. “Mrs. McKay committed the sin of lust.”

  “Markowitz filled the bill for greed. The contractor was wrathful. Elvin envious.”

  “You still have gluttony, sloth and pride,” Ken pointed out.

  “Both the Westfields and the Jacobys could be considered gluttonous, because between them, they own half the county.” I noodled over the other two, remembered Sadie’s great-grandson. “You told me Sadie was always bragging on Ben. That could pass as pride.”

  “There have been plenty of folks unhappy with the rundown state of that BLM land where the chicken coop burned. There are still a few other structures standing, just about ready to fall down.”

  The government too lazy to take care of its property. “Sloth.”

  He nodded agreement. “Which gives me a way to link the arsons. Except...”

  “Except...?”

  “Seven fires, seven sins,” Ken said thoughtfully. “But then an eighth. And that shed makes nine. Which could mean...”

  “He’s started over again.”

  Ken grimaced. “So we could be looking at five more fires.”

  Not a pleasant prospect. “But maybe knowing how they’re linked will help you catch him before that happens.”

  I wished I could say the same about my missing kids. I couldn’t see a damn thing that pinned all four together. “Let me enter what we’ve learned, run it through ProSpy. Who knows what we might come up with?”