Clean Burn (13 page)

“She’s visiting her mother,” Marty said finally.

If Ken caught the prevarication in Marty’s tone, he didn’t have a chance to say so. His radio crackled, and he moved off toward where the Explorer was parked. Denning backed out from under the Dodge and activated the lift. The truck lowered to the bay’s concrete floor.

I wanted to egg him on a little, see what he might give up, so I asked, “You and your girlfriend enjoy the same hobbies?”

If he was evasive before, now he shut down like the gate to solitary. “What do you mean?”

“Does she like fire, too? Like to burn things?”

His eyes all but goggled out of his head as he stared at me. Then he turned his back. “I got work to do.” He swiped his still greasy hands on his jeans, likely the same denims issued to him in prison. I couldn’t see his hands shake, but I was damn sure his palms were sweating.

In for a dime, in for a dollar, I figured. I pulled out James’s photo and held it in front of Denning’s nose. “Have you seen him?”

I saw his reaction as he registered James’s ethnicity. I knew what those double lightning bolts on the back of Denning’s hand signified, could almost hear the n-word squirming around in the ex-con’s warped brain like some toxic worm.

His lip curled in an ugly Elvis parody. “Can’t say that I have.”

Ken called to me from the Explorer. “We’ve got a situation.”

I stuffed James’s picture back in my pocket. As I headed over to Ken, my skin crawled. Marty Denning might hate my guts, but he was watching my butt as I retreated, despite the complete lack of sex appeal in my awkward gait. The thought of his gaze on my body made me sick, which pissed me off so much I longed to sink an elbow into his gut.

It might have been morally righteous, but would just complicate things. I tamped down my fury and resisted the urge to look back as I climbed into the Explorer where Ken waited.

“You get anything else from him?” he asked as he pulled out.

“Those directions to his place have got to be bogus.”

Ken nodded as he screamed off up the road. “I’ll check around. Ask his boss, or the UPS guy. Someone will know where he really lives.”

“Something’s going on at his house he doesn’t want us to know about. Did you see the look on his face when he mentioned that girlfriend of his?”

Ken shook his head, taking a turn on two wheels.

“What’s the hurry?”

Turning toward Highway 50, he hit the lights. “An eight year-old boy fell into the Greenville River.”

“What kind of winter have you had?” A drought year meant the river would be running slower, that there’d be a prayer of getting him out.

He glanced across at me, his expression grim. “Plenty of snow and too much rain in March.”

There went the prayers. I’d never had much use for them anyway.

I could feel Tommy’s accusing stare boring into my shoulder blades from the caged back seat of the Explorer. As if anything that had to do with kids and disasters was my job to fix. I wanted to turn around and yell, It wasn’t me that pushed him in, damn it. Go haunt someone else’s life.

But I kept my mouth shut and sank into my own private gloom.

The river had been one of my escapes during my early teens, a haven free from my father’s attentions. I had a couple of older friends with cars who would drive me out there, just past the Strawberry Canyon turnoff. I didn’t mind that my friends used me as cover for their illicit forays into the surrounding woods with their girlfriends. Or that they’d persuaded Mom or Dad they’d be too busy keeping an eye on little Janelle to be engaging in anything nefarious. I was happy as a clam to stay by the river’s edge while they found a secluded spot among the trees.

Later, I became one of those girlfriends, losing my unlamented virginity in a prickly bed of pine needles near Strawberry Canyon, with a rock the size of Ohio stabbing my lower back. As Ronny Johnson groaned “Oh, baby, oh baby,” in my ear, his breath hot against my neck, I watched a squirrel performing acrobatics in the Ponderosa pine above my head. I remember thinking how funny it would be if the little gray fella crapped on Ronny’s head right at the climactic moment.

The turnout Ken pulled into wasn’t the same one Ronny had used that day, but it pretty much looked the same. Six miles past Strawberry Canyon, black oaks and incense cedars competed for shoreline space with willows and Himalayan blackberry. Below us, the river roared over boulders, fat with treacherous spring melt.

A couple of cruisers were already there, along with a paramedic truck and a handful of civilian cars. A woman huddled in the back of the paramedic truck in the numb aftermath of hysteria, a blanket around her shoulders.

Kid Deputy – Alex – ambled on over as we climbed from Ken’s Explorer. He gave me a once-over, curiosity ablaze in his punk kid face. “Still no sign of a body.”

The screech of tires announced the arrival of what had to be the boy’s father. He took off at a run for the woman in the paramedic truck, the door to his Subaru still open, the bell dinging out its warning that he’d left his key in the ignition.

“Run me through it again,” Ken said, pulling Alex out of earshot of the distraught parents.

“I was on patrol two miles up the highway when the call came in, so I got here pretty quick.” Alex flipped open his notebook. “The victim’s name is Brandon Thompson. A group of second graders from Greenville Elementary were on their way up to Plover Lake for a field trip. They pulled in to look at the river. They’ve been studying beavers. I guess they were hoping to spot one.”

I took a look down the steep, rocky bank. “How the hell did he get down to the water?”

“His family moved here from Carson City two months ago,” Alex said. “The kid hasn’t made many friends yet. The girl he’d been buddied with stayed in the car with her friends. The teacher and the boy’s mom got to talking and didn’t notice Brandon wandering off by himself.”

“How do they know he went into the water?” I asked.

“Mom finally went looking for him, was watching when he slipped off a rock and went in. Mom tried to get to him. Would have probably drowned, too, if the teacher and one of the dads hadn’t grabbed her before she could jump in after her son. She banged herself up pretty good fighting them.”

The image of the boy tumbling into the water was sharp in my mind; from the tightening of Ken’s jaw, I imagined it was playing out in his as well. “Did you do a preliminary search?”

“I went far enough downstream to realize I didn’t have control of the surroundings. I was about to call OES when you arrived.”

“Go ahead, then,” Ken said.

Alex pressed the talk button on his radio. “Dispatch, this is Greenville Search and Rescue. We need OES at the turnout at mile marker 23. Tell them we need canine, foot team and swift-water.”

Ken eyed the parents clinging to one another, the mother sobbing. “Be right back.” He headed over to the paramedic truck, closing the door to the Subaru on the way and silencing the tinny warning bell.

Done with his radio call, Alex pointed his grin at me. “You’re still here.”

I ignored the implied question of why I was still hanging around. “When I left Greenville, the Office of Emergency Services had about a half-dozen foot search volunteers and two guys mounted.” One of whom, my father, was usually drunk when notified of a call-out. Just as well, since he never attended the training anyway. “What have you got now?”

“Greenville OES has fifty-eight foot search, eleven mounted. Only two trained dogs, one experienced, one new. Six guys on the swift-water team. Well, one of those is a girl. A woman, I mean.”

The color rose in his baby face as he recognized his political incorrectness. Of course, I didn’t give a rat’s ass whether he called me woman, girl, broad or dame. It didn’t matter as long as he respected me. If he didn’t, I’d just whip his Kid Deputy butt.

I moved close enough to the shore to get a better look at the river through the willows. Water crashed into boulders, blue-green turning to creamy white in the river’s frantic rush to race down the canyon.

It reminded me of my one whitewater rafting adventure. Got dumped in the drink with the first rapid, smashed my shoulder into a boulder and had to sit there for an hour, shoulder aching, waiting for rescue. Not my idea of a fun afternoon. I didn’t want to think about what it might have felt like to Brandon, without a vest, without a helmet.

Ken returned, sober-faced from his no doubt fruitless effort at comfort. “I’ll take over coordination while you give Janelle a lift back to her car.”

The vicious flow of water mesmerized me. “Any chance in hell he hasn’t drowned? That he pulled himself out?”

Ken shook his head. “You know as well as I do the river’s damn cold and damn fast with snowmelt. Barring a miracle, an eight year-old boy wouldn’t have a chance.”

I knew he was right, that this exercise would be less a rescue operation and more recovery. If I left with Kid Deputy, I wouldn’t be here when they found that small, still body. I could maintain the fantasy that maybe he was still alive a little longer.

But for some reason, my guilt-o-meter was on overdrive. Maybe because I’d been so impotent so far in the search for James and Enrique. Maybe because I just hadn’t burned away enough sins. Or maybe because I was sure I could see Tommy standing beside a willow at the river’s edge, his sad, upturned face expectant.

I turned my back on him. “I’d rather stay, help with the search.”

Before Ken could respond to my offer of assistance, another arrival in the turnout snagged his attention. “Damn. Channel 9, already. The SAR teams aren’t even here yet.”

The van parked on the far end of the turnout, then raised the ten-foot antenna on the van’s roof. I looked up at the sheer canyon walls on either side of us. “They won’t get much signal here.”

“Alex, put Janelle on a foot team.” Ken started over toward the news van. “I’d better handle these idiots.”

Another vehicle pulled in, and men and women in orange search and rescue vests climbed out. I followed Alex over to the SUV. “I knew the way this one would go from the start,” Alex told me. “I called these folks myself.”

Alex introduced me to the seven foot team members, the four men and three women welcoming and accepting of my addition to their number. Ordinary folks, volunteers supporting the sheriff’s department, they likely harbored the same irrational fantasy as me, that Brandon Thompson would be found alive. And just like me, they hoped fiercely they would not be the one to find him dead.

CHAPTER 11

Sergeant Russell, the deputy in charge of the office of emergency services, set up a command post in a larger turnout about a quarter-mile downstream. The remains of a stone and concrete bridge, washed out by time and high water, jutted out on either side of the river, the middle ten feet missing.

The rest of the SAR team trickled in a few at a time, those who lived farthest out in the county reaching the command post last. Swift-water had located a relatively calm stretch of the river another half-mile down from the command post and were setting up shop there. The two dog handlers had gotten the call-out, but since were both out of the county, they wouldn’t be able to join the party for another hour.

After a reporter from the Sacramento Bee and two additional news vans showed up, Ken sicced his communications officer on the press and took refuge in the command van with Sergeant Russell. Since crappy reception in the canyon would interfere with communications with dispatch, Ken offered me the option of driving one of the patrol cars to a higher elevation so the team could use the cruiser’s radio as a repeater.

Glutton for punishment that I was, I wasn’t inclined to sit in the comfort of a cruiser when I could be out hiking the wilderness. One of the other foot team members took the communications job, heading off to the isolated fire road where she’d relay calls between the searchers and dispatch.

Alex teamed me with Charlotte, a tall, mid-fifties woman with a long salt-and-pepper braid and buffed out arms that put mine to shame. She took my hand in a death grip to shake it, smiling with all the enthusiasm of the supremely confident. I had a sneaking suspicion I’d be collapsing at her feet long before she was even winded.

After a quick brief in the command van, we were signed out with a map and our marching orders for the search. Sergeant Russell had paper-clipped a photo of Brandon to the map, although I made it a point to give it the most cursory glance. I didn’t want to make him too real in my mind.

Charlotte drove us to our starting point, down to where the swift-water team was setting up. She handed me a life vest. “Swift-water won’t let us anywhere near the water without a PFD.” She dug in the back seat, producing a helmet. “This too.”

“No problem here.” If I took a header into that icy river, I wanted something to keep me afloat and protection for the few brain cells I had left.

Our helmets and vests in place, Charlotte and I made our way down the rocky bank to the riverside. “I’ll search for items of interest,” she told me. “I’d like you to look for footprints and handprints along the river’s edge. We’ll mark or photograph as needed. Someone should be at the place where the boy was last seen to take us back to my car.”

At her direction, I positioned myself behind and to Charlotte’s right, keeping my focus in front and to my right, on the rocks and mud closest to the shore. Charlotte scanned in front and to her left, searching the brush at the foot of the steep bank.

It didn’t take long to realize that running on pavement in the city was a stroll in the park compared to taking my gimpy leg over shifting riverside rock. I had to take care where I put my feet to avoid disturbing potential clues, any indications that Brandon might have touched shore.

The unfamiliar exercise put an unexpected strain on my left calf. No amount of being a big brave girl and gutting it out allowed me to walk like a normal person would. When my foot slipped sideways between two rocks and torqued my knee, I nearly collapsed in agony. Charlotte couldn’t help but hear my colorful exclamation.

She turned and waited while I leaned over, hands on knees, gasping for breath. “Stub your toe?”