Clean Burn Read Free

herself. “Since December 29th.”
    Three months ago. A stone cold trail. “If Patti couldn’t help you, I’m not sure what I can do.”
    “The police won’t do anything. They say he’s a runaway.”
    And he probably was. “Tell me again what happened.”
    Mrs Madison clutched the envelope to her middle. “He was having a hard patch with his stepfather and they weren’t getting along. They fought over a New Year’s Eve party James wanted to attend. My husband lost his temper and James ran out of the house.”
    Tears shone in her dark eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “He was last seen at an Arco station in Emeryville.” She took in a shaky breath. “It was the middle of the day, so I thought he’d be okay. That he’d come back when he cooled off.”
    “You have to understand, as long as it’s been, there’s probably not much I can do.”
    Before I could stop her, she spilled the contents of the manila envelope on my desk. She pointed to the top photo. “This is James’s first baby picture.”
    I stared for a moment at the scrunch-faced infant in a hospital cap. “Mrs Madison...”
    Setting aside the baby picture, she indicated the next in the stack. “Here’s James at his first birthday party.” Whipped cream frosting smeared across a grinning toddler face. “Here’s his kindergarten picture.” Tossing that on top of the first two, then held out a folded crayon-scrawled piece of construction paper. “That’s his first Mother’s Day card.”
    As her hand trembled, glitter floated from the construction paper onto my desk. She carefully slipped the keepsake back in the manila envelope and held out two small plastic bags. “Here’s the first tooth he lost. That’s hair from his first haircut.”
    I stared at the white enamel fragment and the curls of black hair. Sweet baby James smiled up at me from my desk.
    She put away the artifacts of James’s babyhood. “He’s eleven years old and an A student in school.” She handed over a report card, followed by an eight-by-ten of a grinning boy with his mother’s eyes.
    “The police won’t do anything,” she repeated. “No one else cares. Even my own husband thinks he’s dead.”
    She wouldn’t want to hear the truth, but I had to deliver it anyway. “You might have to accept that he is, Mrs Madison. A kid like him, unprepared for life on the streets, it’s a reasonable conclusion.”
    Her fingers crumpled the edges of the envelope. “But Sheri says you found so many children.” She glanced up at my photo gallery. “All those kids. She said if anyone could find my James, you could.”
    I contemplated all the ways I would torture Sheri before I killed her. I had no magic bullet to finding lost kids. It took time and damn hard work, the kind of energy already expended by Patti and the police. To say no would crush Mrs Madison; to say yes would fill her full of cruel hope.
    But her silent plea stabbed me more deeply than the final cut to Tommy’s small chest. I would hate myself later – hell, I already hated myself – but I nodded. “Let me see what I can do.”
    The tears did spill from her eyes then, despite the tremulous smile on her face. I closed my ears to her thank yous as I rose to escort her from my office, focusing instead on the slash of pain in my calf.
    Mrs Madison let me keep the photos – scanned copies of the originals. I stuffed them into Enrique’s file folder, then dropped into my chair, slapping shut the lid of my laptop. Sheri still lurked in the outer office, but I didn’t give a damn. I grabbed a fresh box of matches from my drawer – I’d gone through the others riding BART to my surveillance – and dumped them on my desk.
    The temptation to light them all at once surged through me, never mind the tinderbox status of the rattletrap building I leased space in. I hadn’t given in to that impulse since my teen years, had grown a little maturity along the way. And with Sheri only feet away, I would have to