Clean Burn

by Karen Sandler

  “I wanted to take him back home,” Glenn said. “But Michelle insisted he was Junior, come back to us.”

  “What brought you to Greenville?” Ken asked.

  “My family used to own the cabin, on leased BLM land. We broke in, cleaned the place up.”

  Michelle had three of her children back, she must have been jonesing big time for the other two. She needed more fires to take the edge off her grief, used the excuse of sin to justify the destruction. “How’d she know where to find Brandon?”

  “She knew that cove in the river,” Glenn said. “Would pull the dead things out and burn them.”

  A sickening lump settled in my stomach. “Did she burn Brandon?”

  “No!” Glenn insisted. “I told you, he’s safe. Just like the others.”

  “Have you seen Brandon?” Ken asked.

  “Saturday morning. When I brought them their breakfast.” Glenn turned away from me. “He was... sleeping.”

  My mind kept circling back to the fire that killed the Cresswell kids. Instinct drove me to ask the question. “Were there other fires in Victorville?”

  He shredded the tissue in his hands. “I told you, we moved away from there after the kids died.”

  I turned in the seat to better see Glenn through the cage. “Were there fires before your house burned down?”

  He looked at me, eyes wide, then dropped his gaze. His body had started to shake.

  I leaned closer, right up against the wire mesh. “The fire that killed your kids wasn’t the first, was it?”

  His body vibrated. Another minute and the guy would disintegrate.

  I pressed my hand against the mesh. “What did she burn before your house? A woodpile? Maybe someone’s shed?”

  “It wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been,” Glenn insisted. “She only did it after they died.”

  “Come on, Glenn,” I said gently. “You know better. Seeing her daddy burned that way messed her up. So she went out at night. Leave you and the kids sleeping, go out looking for a way to soothe that inner pain.”

  He flicked a sidelong glance at me, denial battling with stark reality in his face. “She was happy.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “All those children to take care of.”

  “I helped her when the baby had colic,” Glenn said. “I’d walk Lydia at night when she cried. But Michelle loved our kids. She loved to show them off at church.”

  I thought of Holy Rock Baptist Church, sitting beside my mother in the pew. To my mother, religion offered redemption and forgiveness. But to some, God only represented damnation and punishment.

  I had a feeling I knew which side of the fence Michelle Cresswell had fallen on. “Did Michelle ever punish the kids, Glenn?”

  He hunched in the seat. “Sometimes kids need to be punished.”

  “Of course they do, Glenn.” As I pressed my hand against the cage, my arm flexed, burn scars catching on the knit sleeve of my T-shirt. “What did Michelle punish the kids for?”

  He squirmed. “When they broke the rules. When they were bad.”

  “The baby, too?” I nearly whispered the question. “Was the baby bad?”

  The color left his face. “She said they sinned.” He spoke so softly I could barely hear him.

  “They sinned/’ I said aloud for Ken’s benefit. “And she punished them. With fire.”

  His head bobbed, nose dripping. “She burned them.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, Ken’s hands gripped so tight on the wheel, the tendons popped. His voice was hoarse when he asked, “How, Glenn?”

  “She just made them... Hold a candle while it burned.” Glenn wriggled, as if guilt was eating through him like a parasite. “But sometimes when it burned to the bottom...” He swallowed, and I could see his Adam’s apple jiggle in his throat. “It was just their fingers. Their hands sometimes from melted wax.”

  The air in the Explorer seemed to thicken. Glenn had said he wouldn’t let Michelle hurt them. That burning their fingers didn’t qualify as “hurting them” set off a quiet rage inside me.

  Wanting to grab Ken’s shotgun and blow his head off, I spoke quietly. “Then she was only trying to purify them from sin, when she burned them all to death.”

  Glenn jolted, sitting upright. “She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.” He shook his head, snot and tears spraying. “Not her babies.”

  “If she thought it was better for them, if she thought there was too much sin...”

  He tipped his head up, met my gaze. “But now she has them back. She wouldn’t do it again.”

  Ken and I exchanged a look and I saw in his face exactly what was going through my mind. The ticking time bomb of Michelle Cresswell was about to go nuclear. And four children would be caught in the explosion.

  Ken stomped the gas, goosing the Explorer even faster. “Is your wife armed, Mr. Cresswell?”

  Glenn looked startled. “She doesn’t like guns.”

  “What makes you so sure she won’t hurt them?” I asked. “Like she did before?”

  “Because they’re not all there!” Glenn shouted. “Because she wants Angela first. She won’t do anything until she has her.” He collapsed forward, sobbing. I hoped guilt gutted him from the inside out.

  “Which one’s Angela?” Ken asked me, gaze out the window as he watched for mile marker 35.

  “Their thirteen-year-old.”

  “I don’t know of any missing thirteen-year-old girls.”

  “She might not be thirteen. Could be twelve or fourteen.”

  Ken’s radio squawked. “Heinz.”

  “This is dispatch. What’s your 10-20, Sheriff?”

  “Highway 50,” Ken told dispatch, “fifteen miles east of town.”

  “We have another arson. Possible fatality. EMT and deputy dispatched to the location.”

  Another arson. Michelle had been busy last night.

  “Who’s backing me up here?” Ken asked dispatch.

  “Deputy Farrell and Deputy Braun are on their way. The other unit on duty rerouted to the arson scene.”

  Ken signed off with dispatch. “After the first seven fires, she started over.”

  “And probably won’t stop until she reaches seven again. Or finds Angela.”

  Ken’s radio crackled again. “This is central. There are two more arsons, with injuries. One in zone twenty-two, the other in thirteen.”

  “Damn it,” Ken muttered. “Send Alex and Lisa out there. Soon as they’re clear there, have them follow my GPS to my location. South county off mile marker thirty- five.”

  He signed off with dispatch. “That means no backup for at least an hour.”

  “How many deputies do you have on day shift?” I asked.

  “One per zone. Sometimes they double-up as needed.”

  “Anyone else available from another zone?”

  “Sure. But they’re way the hell on the other side of the county.”

  He pulled over at the mile marker, in a slim turnout overlooking the river. A bridge crossed the river here, and an asphalt road led off into the trees.

  “Three fires in one night,” Ken said. “So she’s up to five, counting the one at Abe and Mary’s and that shed.”

  “Assuming Glenn is right, she won’t do anything to those kids until she can find Angela.”

  “And we’ll make damn sure she never does.”

  I jumped when Ken’s phone rang, clipping my elbow on the truck door. “Heinz,” he snapped into the cell.

  His face clouded as the caller spoke. “No, she’s not sick at home. Did she call and tell you that?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll track her down, Maude.”

  He stabbed the disconnect button, muttering a few creative words under his breath. “I have to send someone over to the house. It looks like Cassie’s playing hooky.”

  My urgency ratcheted up a notch. “She never made it to school?”

  Ken picked up on my edginess. “She probably just missed the bus. Thought she could get away with stay
ing home.”

  “Angela was thirteen. Same age as Cassie.” I just stared at him, waiting for him to reach the same conclusion I already had.

  “Shit. Oh, shit.”

  He thrust the Explorer into gear and yanked the wheel to the right. With a squeal of tires we barreled across the bridge and up the narrow road.

  CHAPTER 24

  Mama still hadn’t brought them breakfast. Before Mama had come home with the girl, Daddy had opened the door and looked inside, but he didn’t bring them anything to eat either. As late as it was in the day, the baby was hungry and wet. She was crying so loud, James finally picked her up.

  James rocked the baby in his arms and patted her back, but she just screamed louder. Sean, sitting on James’s mattress, scrunched into the corner and covered his ears. James wished he could do the same.

  Thomas lay on his own mattress, as quiet as ever under the blanket Mama had thrown over him. The girl was slumped beside Thomas, a big bruise on her head. Mama had said her name was Angela.

  The box strapped to Angela’s waist had started beeping a few minutes ago. She’d been kind of awake when Mama had first carried her into the basement, but she’d seemed dizzy and mixed up. Now she was breathing funny, really fast, and she’d fallen asleep.

  James set the crying baby in her playpen, then went down on his knees beside Angela. He shook the girl’s shoulder. “Are you okay? Hey!”

  Angela didn’t answer. As she breathed out, he smelled something sweet, like fruit. She felt hot, too, as if she had a fever.

  The door rattled and Mama came inside. Not sure if he should be touching Angela, James quickly got to his feet. “Mama, the girl’s real sick. She won’t wake up.’’

  Thomas wouldn’t wake up, either, hadn’t since he’d arrived. James knew why, but he was afraid to say anything to Mama about it.

  Mama went down the stairs and dug through the junk under them. When she turned toward James, she had some long, skinny plastic things in her hand. James remembered his stepfather using those to hold together power cords and stuff in the house.

  “It’s time, Junior,” Mama said as she lit a candle beside the mattress. “Time for heaven.”

  “What about the baby?” James asked. “I think she wants her bottle.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, Junior.” She dropped the plastic strips into his hand. “Mama needs you to tie them all up.”

  “No.” James took a step back, dropping the ties. “I won’t.”

  He didn’t even see Mama’s hand. He flew across the room, banging into the wall beside his mattress. Now Sean started to cry.

  Mama stood over him. “Mama doesn’t like bad boys.”

  She pulled a lighter from her pocket, then grabbed James’s shirt to pull him up. She clicked on the lighter and shoved the burning flame right in his face.

  “Be a good boy and tie them up,” she told him, bringing the lighter close enough for James to feel the heat. “You have to be good to go to heaven.”

  James shook all over as he fumbled for the plastic strips. He did the baby first, putting a tie loosely on her little hands. Then he did Sean. The little boy just sat there, staring up at him.

  James had to pull the blanket off Thomas to find his hands. His skin was cold and creepy, his wrist bent all

  weird. James managed to get a tie around both arms.

  The girl was lying funny and Mama had to help James move her. Mama held her wrists side by side so James could wrap them with a tie.

  Finally it was his turn. Mama tightened a tie around his wrists, then his ankles. She tied them both together.

  She went under the stairs again and pulled out the plastic buckets filled with rags. She dumped out the rags and arranged them in three piles in a line, the first between James’s mattress and the baby’s playpen, the next a few feet away, the third between the mattresses and the stairs.

  “Not enough.” Mama pushed the rags into higher piles. “You be good, Junior. Mama has to go out.”

  Mama retrieved one more item from under the stairs and set it beside the rag piles. Then she hurried out of the basement.

  When James read the label on the can, he finally understood. He was going to die down here.

  CHAPTER 25

  The asphalt road ended maybe a hundred yards in, replaced by board-edged gravel the Explorer roared up as easily as the paved surface. But after about three miles of back teeth rattling on the Ford’s stiff shocks, the track narrowed and turned to dirt. Another three- quarters of a mile and tall grass nearly obliterated the going, the trees even tighter, the side view mirrors of the Explorer scraping on branches as it passed between them.

  Ken’s GPS reassured us that backup would be able to track us, even here in the back of beyond. We saw broken branches, churned up undergrowth, signs that another vehicle had gone boony crashing through the trees. Not the best commute for Glenn and it must have been a damned nightmare for Michelle to navigate in the dark, lit only by her zealot’s fire.

  Up and down a rise and there was the Chevy, parked catawampus against a downed pine tree that blocked what passed for a road through the forest. Which meant Michelle was at the cabin. If she did have Cassie—her Angela—she could go nuclear any moment.

  Ken squeezed the Explorer in beside the pickup and reached across the front seat to open the glove box. He pulled out a Glock 26. “You still certified?”

  “I get out to the gun range sometimes.”

  He dropped the gun in my hand. I pressed the magazine release and counted ten bullets.

  “Careful,” Ken said. “There’s one chambered.”

  I slid the magazine back into place. In his cage with the doors locked, Glenn pressed his hands against the wire mesh. “Please don’t hurt her.”

  “We’ll do everything we can to keep everyone safe, Mr. Cresswell, including your wife,” Ken said. “But the safety of those kids is our first concern.”

  We climbed from the Explorer. Ken grabbed a portable radio and tossed it to me.

  Before he shut the door, Ken leaned in to ask Glenn a last question. “Which way from here?”

  A long beat of silence, Glenn’s reluctance written in his face. Finally he said, “After you go over the tree, look for a pair of redwoods grown together. Take the left deer trail, then the next time it splits off, go left again.”

  Radio clipped to my front pocket and the Glock in the waistband of my jeans, I waited as Ken checked Glenn’s truck. He opened the door and retrieved a purple backpack from the floor on the passenger’s side. He stared at it, expressionless.

  “Cassie’s?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He unzipped a side pocket. “Damn.”

  “What?” I asked, trying to see over his shoulder.

  “The spare cartridge for Cassie’s insulin kit.”

  “Maybe she put in a fresh one at home,” I suggested.

  “Not likely,” he said as he dropped the backpack on the hood of the Explorer. “She probably ran out of time to change it and just stuffed it in her book bag.”

  We climbed over the two-foot diameter tree blocking the road. At the joined redwoods, we found the first deer trail split, then almost missed the second Y in the heavy brush. Once we’d continued on the leftmost track, I could see a granite face maybe a hundred yards ahead.

  “Is that the boulder?” I asked.

  Ken doubled his pace. Pine branches slapped me in the face, and poison oak clung to the trunk of every tree. Blackberries choked the space between the cedars, firs and pines, thorns reaching out to scratch my arms through my T-shirt.

  As we approached the boulder, we slowed, moving carefully around its circumference. It loomed over a small clearing, the adjacent hillside swallowed by spiny brambles that had sent tendrils over the granite face itself.

  “Where the hell is the cabin?” Ken said softly.

  I edged farther around the boulder. A glint of glass through the thick vines caught my eye.

  “Under that mess,” I whispered.


  Greenery enveloped the cabin like a shroud. If I hadn’t seen the glimmer of glass, if Glenn hadn’t told us it was here, I might have passed it right by.

  Ken drew his Glock 22. I tugged the smaller 9mm out of my waistband. Keeping close to the boulder, we crept up to the cabin. The blackberry canes were thick as a man’s thumb, the inch-long thorns scraping my skin as I squirmed between them. We approached at an oblique angle, staying out of direct view of the two front windows.

  It looked as if the sturdy vines were all that kept the rotting wood of the cabin from collapsing. The glass had cracked in the leftmost window. Newer two by fours had been haphazardly nailed to the porch supports to keep the overhang from crashing down.

  Plastered to the wall of the cabin, we stood quietly, listening. Nothing but wind sifting through the trees, the chatter of a squirrel.

  The window nearest us was covered, the stained white cloth shifting slightly as air fingered its way through the cracked glass. Although the fabric was lightweight, the lack of light inside the cabin made it impossible to see if anyone was moving around in there.

  Ken crouched below the window level to creep along the crumbling porch. He tried the door, but the knob wouldn’t turn. I followed his path, then moved past him toward the side of the house opposite the boulder. As I sidled through the pocket of space between the cabin wall and the stickery overgrowth, I saw the second window was covered as well with the same pale cloth.

  I spied Michelle’s makeshift pyre, charred wood and what looked like blackened skulls set in a circle of rocks. I stopped short of a window at ground level and went down on one knee in the dirt, pulling my shirt free of thorns as I went. I worried I’d be hard-pressed to get to my feet quickly, but the window was so low, I had no other choice.

  I could barely see through the scum on the basement window. The leafy vines blocked out most of the sunlight that filtered through the trees. As I used my sleeve to swab a corner of the window, someone moved inside, shifting into my field of view.

  It was James. Crouched on the floor and trussed up like a turkey. I must have cast a shadow through the window because he craned his neck and looked up at me. I couldn’t see all of the basement, but unless Michelle was hiding in a corner, she didn’t seem to be inside.