Clean Burn Read Free Page A

save my other, more perverse habit for later.
    I picked up a match and with a deft twist of the wrist snapped off the head. The sin of cowardice. I still lived in terror of the evils from my childhood, even though my own personal monster was dead.
    I set the head to my right, the stick to my left, and picked up another. Snap. The sin of guilt. When I lacked the courage to do, I justified my inactivity with remorse. All these years chasing philandering husbands when I could have saved lives.
    Snap. The sin of despair. I clung to blackness the way others clung to faith. Because it was easier than to hope.
    I went through the entire box of thirty-two. When I exhausted my transgressions, I continued to decapitate matches until all the blue and red heads sat stacked in their neat pile. I tossed the sticks in the trash and crumpled the heads in a tissue. I’d drop them in the toilet on my way out.
    I was nothing if not a sucker for empty ritual.
     
    That night I holed up in my tidy studio apartment off Mission Street, lining up burnt matches like miniature firewood on the coffee table. New red marks joined the dozens of others dotting my arms from wrist to elbow, one for each burnt match.
    I’d just struck another when the phone rang. I blew out the flame and grabbed the portable. Didn’t recognize the caller ID. “Yeah?”
    “This is Mrs Madison.” I heard the excitement in her soft voice. “I have a lead.”
    A faint adrenaline edge from my recent catharsis lingered, befuddling my brain. “A lead for what?”
    “Someone thinks they saw him. Saw James.”
    I’d done nothing since this afternoon, not so much as a Google search for James Madison. Guilt had me itching for another match. I nudged the coffee table farther away. “Tell me.”
    “I got a call,” she said. “Friend of a friend. Her daughter works at a McDonald’s near Greenville. That’s about thirty miles east–”
    “I know where Greenville is.” Damn, what was this? Old home week for all my personal ghouls? “When was this?”
    “Right after James disappeared. Three months ago.”
    A damn long time. “How sure is this girl that it was James?”
    “She seemed sure.” Now doubt seeped into her tone. “Could James be in Greenville?”
    “He could be anywhere.” Or nowhere. Dead like her husband said.
    “A black kid in South San Francisco wouldn’t stick out,” she pointed out, “but Greenville’s as white as Beverly Hills. If he’s there, someone’s seen him, noticed him.”
    I couldn’t deny that. Greenville’s minority population consisted of a few enclaves of Mexican immigrants who worked the orchards and vineyards and the handful of upper-middle class Asians and African-American transplants from the Bay Area.
    “What if you went up there?” she asked.
    “I have a business to run, Mrs Madison.” Even as I said it, I didn’t give a damn about whatever miscreant spouse I was scheduled to chase that week. The dual link between James and Enrique intrigued me, made me want to put the pieces together. Even if it meant returning to Greenville.
    Fending off a sense of doom, I told her, “I could probably go over there for the day.”
    My stomach clenched at her profuse thanks. I’d likely be destroying that happiness soon enough. Before she signed off, she gave me the girl’s name – Emma – and her cell number.
    Since Sheri had delivered this problem to me, I had no qualms about calling her this late at home. “What have I got tomorrow?” I asked without preamble, then waited while she fumbled for her iPhone.
    “The Billings surveillance, then you’re meeting with Mrs Spitzer.”
    I picked up a matchstick, jamming it in my mouth instead of lighting it. “Try to reschedule Mrs Spitzer. Call Patti and see if she has someone to cover for me on the surveillance.”
    “Should I say thank you?”
    “You damn well shouldn’t,” I told her. “This will probably end badly.”
    If not for Mrs Madison, then certainly for